2 ummm…unusual post from the Catholics

First up, Deacon Greg has no idea if this rant was really written by a priest, but I’m betting it was. An excerpt:

3. Oh, and all of you with crying babies: God bless you! Everybody is welcome in church, and that’s what babies do. Anybody gives you a dirty look, tell them to go sh*t in their hat. God blessed you with new life, and all they have is a crabby disposition. But for you with noisy teenagers: beat them.

You’ll want to read the whole thing. I appreciated a great deal of this and wonder why he missed telling off the people who forget to turn off their cell phones before mass. Nothing like getting the consecration, the most solemn moment at mass, and suddenly hearing a gangsta ringtone go off.

Now for something completely different, and serious – Jeffrey Tucker writing the cover story at Inside Catholic, looks at The Trouble With Child Labor Laws – yes, you read that right. Agree or disagree, this is probably the most interesting, provocative thing you’ll read all day. And it makes for a good discussion, too:

Let’s say you want your computer fixed or your software explained. You can shell out big bucks to the Geek Squad, or you can ask — but you can’t hire — a typical teenager, or even a pre-teen. Their experience with computers and the online world is vastly superior to most people over the age of 30. From the point of view of online technology, it is the young who rule. And yet they are professionally powerless: They are forbidden by law from earning wages from their expertise.
[…]
[The Child Labor Laws of the 1930’s]…forestalled no nightmare, nor did it impose one. In those days, there was rising confidence that education was the key to saving the youth of America. Stay in school, get a degree or two, and you would be fixed up for life. Of course, that was before academic standards slipped further and further, and schools themselves began to function as a national child-sitting service. Today, we are far more likely to recognize the contribution that disciplined work makes to the formation of character.
[…]
There is a social-cultural point, too. Employers will tell you that most kids coming out of college are radically unprepared for a regular job. It’s not so much that they lack skills or that they can’t be trained; it’s that they don’t understand what it means to serve others in a workplace setting. They resent being told what to do, tend not to follow through, and work by the clock instead of the task. In other words, they are not socialized into how the labor market works. Indeed, if we perceive a culture of sloth, irresponsibility, and entitlement among today’s young, perhaps we ought to look here for a contributing factor.
[…]
What lesson do we impart with child labor laws? We establish early on who is in charge: not individuals, not parents, but the state. We tell the youth that they are better off being Mall Rats than fruitful workers. We tell them that they have nothing to offer society until they are 18 or so. We convey the impression that work is a form of exploitation from which they must be protected.

Like I said – that’s provocative. Read at your own risk. No one has thought about this stuff in years.