Obama: Time to End Catholic Education

[SB Shock]

Obama claims that Catholic education encourages division and discourages cooperation. Contrast that will the "muslims are to be understood and supported...".

[wu_shizzle]

Jeremiah Wright, not divisive.

Catholic School, divisive.

[WuDrWu]

The man has his one dream, his one idea of how everything should be. He's smoked so much weed he's fried what little brain he ever had into a permanent state of kumbaya.

It is a testament to how poorly our education systems functions when this country can elect this buffoon twice.

[BenWSU]

Elected twice because he got the hispanic vote. Promising them free welfare and citizenship. And they'll probably get free college on top of all the other free benefits they feel they deserve.

[60Shock]

Let's see, he received 70 percent of the Hispanic vote and they are primarily Catholic?

I'm sure they don't break it down this way (undoubtedly it would be racist), but it would be interesting to know what percent of the Catholic vote Obama got, minus the Hispanic voters.

[RoyalShock]

What percentage of Hispanics utilize Catholic education? I suspect his remarks are carefully calculated.

But then again, the left can always count on their portion of the low-information voters to overlook comments such as those.

[SHOCKvalue]

What percentage of Hispanics utilize Catholic education? I suspect his remarks are carefully calculated.

But then again, the left can always count on their portion of the low-information voters to overlook comments such as those.

Low-information voters don't follow the news. A reasonable assumption could made that at least 75% of Obama voters have no idea he ever said the comment at hand. You're lucky if the typical liberal can blink and breathe at the same time. A small percentage of them are very smart people; A large percentage of them are dumber than a box of rocks.

[The Mad Hatter]

Just so that we are all clear, the context of the comment in question was a speech in Northern Ireland discussing the long-standing Catholic/Protestant rift. Here is the actual quote:

“Issues like segregated schools and housing, lack of jobs and opportunity — symbols of history that are a source of pride for some and pain for others — these are not tangential to peace; they’re essential to it,” Obama said. “If towns remain divided — if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs — if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.”

The comment was certainly banal analysis of a complex issue, but probably nothing more than rhetoric that was supposed to make an unoffensive appeal to bringing peace to Northern Ireland, but done so poorly as to appear to be an attack on Catholic education.

Back in Northern Ireland, Auxiliary Bishop Donal McKeown dinged Obama over the remarks, but did not criticize them to the extent some American Catholics have. He told the Catholic News Service Obama’s remarks were a “hackneyed analysis” of the current situation in Northern Ireland. McKeown said sectarian division flows not from the classroom, but from the home.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/did-obama-diss-catholic-education-in-northern-ireland

Obama may or may not have a broader agenda against Catholic education, but I tend to agree with Bishop McKeown that the comment was far less a statement reflecting such an agenda as a really bad piece of both analysis and rhetoric that made a statement that was supposed to be about ending religious segregation sound like a statement about ending religious education.

Let's be clear that both Republicans and Democrats have been more than willing to take stupid statements made by the other side build a straw man argument about what the other side believes off of these isolated statements. It seems to me that Obama's policy positions on a variety of issues (including in relation to religion) offer plenty of ammunition in their own right (frankly, I think that both Republicans and Democrats should be outraged at much of what this administration has done) that I don't understand any sort of focus on a statement like this one.

[SB Shock]

What percentage of Hispanics utilize Catholic education? I suspect his remarks are carefully calculated.

But then again, the left can always count on their portion of the low-information voters to overlook comments such as those.

There has been a big push by the Catholics schools to try bring in more and more Hispanics in. Presently there is only about 3% attending Catholics schools while 35% of Catholic Church is hispanic. So this is a big pool of opportunity for the Catholic church in a period of decline for the Catholic Schools.