As a veteran 12 years of Catholic schools, where grades Kindergarten through 12 went to Mass en masse on First Fridays because the Blessed Virgin suggested it, and prayed for the President regularly, I can't get too excited about this. It really didn't prevent a good number of us from thinking outside the box, or reading outside the Book. Believe me, half a dozen rebels can have a real leavening effect.

Also, praying for the President didn't produce any appreciable positive result. Kennedy was shot, Johnson was destroyed, Nixon was disgraced... I had stopped praying for the President by then.

What bothers me the most is that it's a "camp". Lots of things happen in camps for children. Some camps are about fun, or a change of environment, but others are about learning "correct thinking" in isolation from "corrupting influences". The religious aspect is only windowdressing. The process itself can be the threat.

When I was working on my master's, I did a project on the New England Primer which highlighted the role of austerity and religious education in the spread of childhood literacy in America. Children have been urged to repent, taught they were abominable sinners, and threatened with the burning sulphur of hellfire since, well, forever. Many of them still grew up to be remarkably well-balanced, and even brilliant, individuals.

It really depends more on how the children are treated. Children in colonial New England were taught to repent because their parents had true worry for their eternal souls, especially since living to adulthood was pretty much a crap shoot back then. The threats and austerities visited upon them were, in this context, proof that they were loved and cherished. These were also the kids who grew up to tell George III to take a hike. No slavish idolatry to authority there!

As long as children receive proper physical care and appropriate affection from a regular source, get daily intellectual stimulation, learn how to read, and are not locked in the house, they'll probably turn out all right. They are remarkably resilient and intelligent people. We underestimate them all the time. The children we really need to worry about are the ones who don't get all the things on this list, and they are legion.

Those who are concerned about the camps have the option of making sure that all the counsellors have background checks by the state police and by a credentialed national child advocacy organization, which is no more than anyone who works with children, paid or volunteer, ought to have. (Me, too, and all my volunteers.)

Until we're willing to take children from their parents based on incorrect thought, we will have to tolerate this. Civil rights work for everyone. Until a child complains of being confined against his or her will, and can provide testimony and evidence of a credible threat to safety or civil rights, we must presume innocence on the part of the parents. We don't have to like a thing to defend it.