The ends don't justify the means. a private organization doesn't get to spy on its members. They can ask you to install MDM, they can't peek in your bedroom window. We live in a society.

I think society is better off if nobody is allowed to purchase advertising data that identifies specific people and use it to uncover their activities.

Possibly with the exception of elected officials. :)

Whether it’s right or wrong from the perspective of the church or followers of the religion should be separate from our rules about privacy.

Priests within a religion are something like government officials and something like members in a fraternal or sororal organization (such as the Masons or Elks). In another sense they're like "independent sales representatives" in a multi-level marketing scheme. In another sense they'd be like enlisted or officers in a military. In another sense they'd be like executives in a corporation (who have contractual fiduciary, and yes, moral obligations that regular employees don't have).

The duties and expectations are different from that of regular employees. In fact, I'm sure most religious institutions have many regular employees (such as janitors, some teachers for religious schools, etcetera), who are probably held to lesser standards.

> Whether it’s right or wrong from the perspective of the church or followers of the religion should be separate from our rules about privacy.

Yes. Unfortunately we don't have many such rules when it comes to data we've shared with third parties.

> This is about your view of morals as they relate to religion though, right? Legally speaking priests are employees and the church is the employer.

Everyone involved in this discussion is positing moral views that are independent from the current law. It's apparently legal for companies to sell their users personal data, just as a priest may be legally considered an "employee" even though I don't think that is what a priest is.

> I think our government system should treat them as such.

> Whether it’s right or wrong from the perspective of the church or followers of the religion should be separate from our rules about privacy.

I would disagree that the government should treat priests as employees, but regrettably I think this won't be a fruitful venue for discussing this since it's likely that we have too many different priors in this area that would take too long to hash out.

In terms of how privacy rules should work, I am generally inclined to support generalized prohibitions on selling/distributing user data without an explicit voluntary opt-in. Where I likely differ is in that I don't believe that in principle it's wrong to use available data in ways that I see as being moral. If a company has data that would prove one of their users is a serial killer I'd say they'd have the obligation to use that to help the killer get caught, but I also think generally in order to prevent greater societal evils that user data should be protected.

I'll try an example, hopefully it's not too strained. I think spying on people in their homes would be bad, it would be detrimental to familial privacy and unity among other things. But if someone happens to see into someone's house and witness a crime I wouldn't have any issue with that crime being reported. So I can say we should have laws preventing peeping toms/protecting privacy in homes while also not seeing every instantiation of acquiring information as being immoral in and of itself. Hope that makes sense, I'm a bit scrambled right now regrettably.

Yes, that would be ideal.

> Girls are far more likely to thrive, get GCSEs and stay in education if they go to a single-sex school, according to new research, which reveals pupils who are struggling academically when they start secondary school reap the biggest rewards of girls-only schooling.

> The analysis of the GCSE scores of more than 700,000 girls taught in the state sector concludes that those at girls' schools consistently made more progress than those in co-ed secondaries.

> The fact that pupils with the lowest test scores when they started secondary made the biggest leap in girls' school will reopen the debate about whether more children should have access to a single-sex education in order to drive up results.

And if talking about UK then there are even more instances in which the church embraced cultural evolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-sex_education

And not all Catholic schools segregate by sex.

I didn't mention discrimination against women at all, I don't know enough about catholicism to say if it was a thing.

The geocentrism-related issues commonly cited were due to flaws both in scientific and theological thinking (false theological justifications of novel assertions, among other things).

The inquisition was just and I would have no issue with it returning in catholic countries. The picture people have is often based on black legends rather than fact.

The crusades (generally, with some exceptions) were good, but for practical reasons it's not really feasible to engage in again in a way that would not bring about greater harms.

Hmm. I do wonder if any of the priests were on these apps to try to identify any other priests who were on there, not because they themselves were gay.

This could be true, merely having an application doesn't mean someone is continuing on to do other things. The problem is that a priest isn't understood in a Catholic context merely be a private person. Publicly going on one of these "dating" applications and identifying oneself in such a manner lends itself towards the sin of scandal among other issues.

> I do wonder if any of the priests were on these apps to try to identify any other priests who were on there, not because they themselves were gay.

This would need need to be considered, but it seems unlikely. First, this idea is highly unlikely since without data analysis (which was done by the group discussed iirc) you're essentially exposing yourself to material you find objectionable go a goal that has minimal practical likelihood of being successful. On top of that, the kind of priest who would want to expose bad behavior isn't the kind of person who would ever considering using these applications. Also, if my memory serves me from when I first heard about this, data/information was simply referred to the relevant bishop who in turn would choose if/how to proceed.

I hope those bishops respond appropriately.

Thanks for the comment.

Specifics of the example aside, are people really defending organizations buying private user data for use in employment decisions?