2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[Barrister]

The catholic school board has to follow the same standards as the public board here (I learned evolution for example). Don't think this governor hopeful envisions the same stringent standards for the school options he wants to make available.

I'm no Catholic, and it's a long time since I graduated from St' Paul's High School, but I'm pretty sure Catholics believe in evolution.

[HVC]

Technically it's a null position for the church re evolution.

But I'd very surprised if a large portion of American catholics weren't creationist.

Point stands though, most of these school funding guys (both south of the border and north) want convenient ways not to teach icky things like evolution or sex ed or other liberal lies.

[Barrister]

Technically it's a null position for the church re evolution.

But I'd very surprised if a large portion of American catholics weren't creationist.

Point stands though, most of these school funding guys (both south of the border and north) want convenient ways not to teach icky things like evolution or sex ed or other liberal lies.

This is very tangential, but it always struck me as weird how many US evangelicals have adopted very RC positions when it comes to birth control, when if you go back 50 years ago they'd be horrified at the very thought of it.

[garbon]

Cool, Canada.

[HVC]

Cool, Canada.

We're talking about grumblers congress buddy

[Barrister]

Cool, Canada.

Thank you - we are.

[garbon]

Cold != cool

[Barrister]

Cold != cool

WE CAN BE BOTH THINGS!

[garbon]

Cold != cool

WE CAN BE BOTH THINGS!

[HVC]

Cold != cool

WE CAN BE BOTH THINGS!

Be nice, if the UK hadn't let you in you might have had to escape to Canada instead

[garbon]

Cold != cool

WE CAN BE BOTH THINGS!

Be nice, if the UK hadn't let you in you might have had to escape to Canada instead

Girl, I moved nearly a decade ago.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I am a Catholic, and an American so I can maybe speak to it a bit, but it will require delving into issues most probably aren't interested in.

Firstly, global churchwide, there is no official position on evolution, no dogma. Rather it has been said there isn't a dogmatic position that evolution is false, or that would cause an issue for any Catholic to believe, or even teach, evolution (including priests.)

In the United States, the church operates a large number of K-12 schools, and a number of colleges. Around 6000 K-12 schools, with around 1.6 million students. Both of these numbers represent significant declines from the year 2000--a number of factors have lead to ongoing declines in enrollment.

But anyway, as Catholic education is constructed in America, the cultural view has always been that these schools should strive to be very high quality in terms of producing educated students to the broader standards of society. This means that, due to the lack of any dogmatic position against evolution, embracing the teaching of evolution in our science classes is not really controversial. There are religious K-12 schools that teach creationism and denial of basic science, accredited universities tend not to even view students from those schools as having valid High School diplomas. Students from those schools often get funneled into the unaccredited bible college system, which produce bachelor's degrees that are generally not recognized by any secular organization that cares about college accreditation. (This means those graduates generally can't become K-12 public school teachers, their degrees don't satisfy degree requirements to attend higher level education like medical school or law school etc.)

The Catholic Church in America has never wanted that, we want our K-12 schools to have good reputations. Students graduating from them can go to good colleges--and if they go to a Catholic college, any number of those are very well respected academic institutions which are fully accredited (think: Notre Dame, Georgetown, Boston College, Villanova et al.) I would say institutionally, American Catholic leaders of all political persuasion tend to view this academic reputation as a major church asset, and there is not really much controversy about evolution or anything that would threaten that.

Beyond that--American Catholicism is highly diocesan, which is after all the core organizational bloc of Catholicism everywhere. I assume in other countries Catholicism operates similarly, but I don't know that well enough to be sure. In the U.S. the ~200 dioceses we have and the ~200 bishops who rule them, set quite different tones. We have bishops who are far left, partisan Democrats, who push their dioceses as far into progressive Catholicism as can be pushed. The priests they ordinate priests of that sort of bent. Attending Church in one of those dioceses is going to be very different than a diocese overseen by a far right bishop. On that point we have many of those two--including several very prominent ones who are far right Republicans and regularly push a very partisan agenda. Attending Church in their diocese is going to be a very different vibe.

On top of that we have a ton of fraternal organizations that men are involved in, many of which are very conservative in nature. I would say among those conservative Bishops, conservative fraternal organizations--you will find many practicing Catholics in America who are highly "skeptical" of evolution, and have what I would often argue are strange evangelical views that have almost "seeped into" the Church.

I think Protestant evangelicalism is just such a powerful cultural force among the far right it has backdoored into some parts of the Catholic Church here. You see the same thing going on with the Orthodox Church as well--arguably even more there, because the Orthodox Community in the United States is much smaller, it is a well known problem that many converts to Orthodoxy in the United States are very politically conservative evangelicals, who are also bringing a lot of Protestant "mindset" into the Orthodox Church. Interesting to see how it all shapes up eventually.

[grumbler]

Hadn't seen this one before:

[Tonitrus]

The Republican candidate for Congress in my districts is primarily running on "the US economy is totally broken," "the US is no longer sovereign because the border," and "parents should be able to send their kids and the tax money to support them to any school of their choice."  He's go the usual bromides about strong defense and law and order, but his opponent has those as well.

I wonder if they'd take the same logic of being able to take out my tax contribution towards the police and using it to hire my own security guard.

[Admiral Yi]

I wonder if they'd take the same logic of being able to take out my tax contribution towards the police and using it to hire my own security guard.

It's not the same logic.  The logic of police is the logic of public goods.  If you hire body guards you still get the benefit of the police.