Links: Catholic identity at universities, meritocracy and the 'working class'

Links: Catholic identity at universities, meritocracy and the 'working class' 

Unless Catholic identity is moved from the chair to the pews, the Church will become irrelevant. Catholic universities and theologians need to be the yeast for this. It is the only way to avoid a generation of Nones.

The Sanders generation will change the discussion in the left toward a more radical direction. Whether anyone in the main stream press pays attention to what is being said - especially when topics challenge the Wall Street status quo will determine whether meritocracy holds on. 

Start with demonstrating that high executive salaries lead to wage theft, that running debt is making the rich richer as long as we roll interest into new debt and stressing that Wall Street speculation is not investment in the way that it is described as an element of Gross Domestic Product. Plant and Equipment is a function of expected purchases by government, retirees and other households. The Catholic Press needs to join the discussion - and not by asking theologians.

COVID deaths have more to do with bad medicine than bad politics. If people do not recognize that, while the first symptoms go away, the second set do not - especially the respiratory ones. That is the real scandal and few talk about it - especially in the media and medical hierarchy.

LGBTQIA and hetero students need to get out of court and quietly educate universities and bishops about the unreality of Catholic sexual teaching. They need to out the asexuals in the clergy to themselves. 

There are better lawsuits - ones on behalf of employees asserting that the bishops' desire for religious liberty is to seek legitimacy behind reasserting religious power. Saying employees and students should go elsewhere is to continue to cede ground to the hierarchy it never deserved in the first place.

There are four classes, the lucky retired, the poor and the working class - who receive the bottom 30% of adjusted gross income and make up the bottom 75% of households, the middle class - who receive the next 30% and who make up from the 75th to the 95th percentiles and the upper class, which receive about 40% of adjusted gross income. The key is to count the money, not the people. 

As for student loans, government held student loan interest and capitalized principle paid for a significant portion of Affordable Care Act baseline counts. Before the Rescue Act, the same people could not afford to pay both the interest and their Obamacare premiums. They are in the working class too.