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Indeed, the disestablishmentarian State has usurped many functions that used to pertain to the Church. It was the Catholic Church who founded the university sys

Indeed, the disestablishmentarian State has usurped many functions that used to pertain to the Church. It was the Catholic Church who founded the university system as we know it today, and the hospital system we depend on. When colonists made it to the New World, who was there to educate the children? The Catholic missionaries and religious institutes founded schools and created whole districts to educate children (yes, even Native and Indigenous children such as we vilify them for in Canada.) Parents would often have at least one child set aside to dedicate to the Church, as a priest and/or a professed religious. Children would enter the seminary, monastery, or convent. In return, those insitutions would care for the underprivileged and the powerless. Many monasteries provided services to the Church and to the general public: brewing beer, cultivating gardens, baking bread, you name it. But as all these services and more are privatized and nationalized, it sort of makes the Church redundant, an NGO without purpose, if you're on the outside looking in. So why perpetuate non-profit status of these mere charities when the State can provide entitlements far beyond what meager donations can provide? It's definitely a Sophie's choice, when you get right down to it.

reaperman 3y ago
Catholic Universities are still thriving. The Catholic Churches globally hoard around $100 billion and could absolutely create a world-class endowment for a huge university if they prioritized that. It’s not the states’ fault they choose not to.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  More like 30 billion dollars, and a large swath of that is tied up in completely illiquid assets like churches or gold in reliquia [1]. [1] https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/05/24/the-finances-behind-vatican-city/ https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/05/24/the-finances-behi...
  - dmurray 3y ago
    That source is garbage. It cites a study estimating the worth of the Church in Australia at A$30bn, uses that number as the global number (though now in US dollars, for no obvious reason), and then spends the rest of the article talking about the finances of the Holy See. And on that matter, it attributes the Vatican's budget deficit to "falling gold prices", as if the Church's main asset was a gold mine that produced a set amount of gold each year - not to mention that gold is up about 50% over the time period they consider, 2013-2022. I'd expect a more diligently written article from an average ten year old.
coliveira 3y ago
Of course, this was just another method for social domination from the Catholic church. Education was the churches method to model the elite of the next generation so they would be catholics instead of what they are now (mostly non-religious). And "teaching" native Americans was essentially forced conversion as everyone knows.

reaperman 3y ago

Catholic Universities are still thriving. The Catholic Churches globally hoard around $100 billion and could absolutely create a world-class endowment for a huge university if they prioritized that. It’s not the states’ fault they choose not to.

mschuster91 3y ago
More like 30 billion dollars, and a large swath of that is tied up in completely illiquid assets like churches or gold in reliquia [1]. [1] https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/05/24/the-finances-behind-vatican-city/ https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2022/05/24/the-finances-behi...
- dmurray 3y ago
  That source is garbage. It cites a study estimating the worth of the Church in Australia at A$30bn, uses that number as the global number (though now in US dollars, for no obvious reason), and then spends the rest of the article talking about the finances of the Holy See. And on that matter, it attributes the Vatican's budget deficit to "falling gold prices", as if the Church's main asset was a gold mine that produced a set amount of gold each year - not to mention that gold is up about 50% over the time period they consider, 2013-2022. I'd expect a more diligently written article from an average ten year old.

coliveira 3y ago

Of course, this was just another method for social domination from the Catholic church. Education was the churches method to model the elite of the next generation so they would be catholics instead of what they are now (mostly non-religious). And "teaching" native Americans was essentially forced conversion as everyone knows.