Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

US History And The Pope Election

Rate this topic


Proud_to_be_SELFISH!

Recommended Posts

I go to the University of South Florida, a public school. Recently (since Pope John Paul II died), at the beginning of every class my US History professor gives us a brief update (5 minutes) on the latest pope news. He has never given us any other current events news. My solution was to go to class late and just skip that part of the lecture. Today, I followed my usual routine and arrived about 5 minutes late for class to witness him still discussing the pope situation. It was so bad that he actually had a live video feed (of the chimney) displayed adjacent to our lecture notes. We maybe had 50% of the time in class as normal lecture and 50% was interupted due to false smoke alarms and finally a debate over whether the smoke was black or white.

Am I justified in being upset over this matter? Does the election of a new pope have enough significance in American history that it should garner attention in a college US History course or is this another violation of the first amendment in a public school?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Am I justified in being upset over this matter?  Does the election of a new pope have enough significance in American history that it should garner attention in a college US History course or is this another violation of the first amendment in a public school?

Pointing to many other threads about what John Paul II contirbuted, he did have a big effect on helping end pro-communist sympathies inside the church and in fact turned it quite anti-communist. Which did a good bit to help end the cold war but then he's the one that is dead. Most people find the whole process itself fascinating for 1 reason or the other. Catholics are the largest sect of Chrstians in the US so it goes to hold that since they are and especially that the national media center is in NY, then it's going to get alot of press coverage.

Nobody in my office is Christian much less Catholic. There's a Hindu, a Hare Krishna, a Shia Muslim, a Sunni Muslim and me the Atheist. We usually have CNBC or the fiancials on but given the sheer volume of Catholics in the US and the world in general, it is a big story. Even the pure financials carried a pick of the smokestack in the corner of the screen no matter what.

So we had it on Fox News. Since everyone emigrated well after John Paul II ascended to his job, it was the 1st chance to catch it for maybe 20 years or so. So think of it like an irritating Hallye's comet.

So your prof may be Catholic and obviously this is something very important to him so it's on the tip of his mind the same way and Objectivist prof may rail about a stupid plan for the city to build another football stadium using tax dollars. Unless he starts prosthletizing you, I wouldn't complain. My old classes usually wasted the first few minutes of the class talking about something totally worthless and unrelated so the fact it's the pope I wouldn't be to bugged about it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...