Posts by Danielle
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Since my earlier post was all about how most Catholics don't even follow the teachings of the Church on birth control, I don't see how I'm saying that they're acting or thinking uniformly at all. Sigh. In fact, I think I was saying that they mostly seem to believe the Pope is wrong. Which... look, there's some internal inconsistency there doctrinally, you must admit.
I'm familiar with the Catholicism-as-tradition-and-community thing, since I'm half-Cajun (and therefore half Catholic myself! All my relatives cross themselves when they drive past a church, for goodness' sake, and they're also all on the Pill. Ha). But aren't we talking about Bill English's wife? Who is, according to all reports, not just all about the tradition and community, but about the reproductive stuff too.
(Sorry for the 'over-intellectualising'. I wrote my thesis on the use of the contraceptive pill in NZ and I spent quite some time reading all the Catholic literature put out in the 60s. Frothing. At. The. Mouth, some of them!)
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Your'e saying in the arch conservatives within the Catholic Church would submit to the wifes view?
Apparently I am not explaining my point very well. My point is that because sexual activity and reproduction are linked within Catholic doctrine, and because they have this Papal edict about Teh Condoms and Teh Pill, you can't just avoid the whole subject if you're married to a conservative Catholic woman. It's not a 'legitimate difference of opinion', like me being into Vegemite and my husband thinking it's black tar. It's about sex and procreation: it cuts to the very heart of how marital relationships are negotiated. He *must* smell what she's stepping in, to quote some reality show contestant I can't recall.
The Pope is not infallable, infact he has said some clangers.
Well of course he's fallible. I'm not Catholic - I don't have to think he's the voice of god. But Catholics *do* have to think that, because he's the freaking Pope! Otherwise they'd just be boring old Methodists and Presbyterians, wouldn't they? The whole point of the religion is that there's a man-of-god hierarchy, and then there's this big priestly intermediary at the top of the chain, and he's *always* right, according to Church doctrine. Always. That's why Humanae Vitae was such a big deal - Catholics had been waiting for years for some kind of relaxation about birth control, particularly after all the church reforms in the mid-1960s. And then out comes this utterly reactionary document, and the issue upon which Papal infallibility now rests is... contraception. He, whoever he is, can't back down on it, because that's like saying God's wrong. It's a mess.
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While some conservative Catholics might feel bound not to practice artificial contraception, liberal Catholics certainly did disagree with the Vatican at the time of Humanae Vitae.
It should be noted that in the early 1970s, in the years after Humanae Vitae, approximately 80 percent of American Catholics did not follow the teachings of the Church on birth control. Most of them just thought the Pope was wrong. (Which... yeah. Mental disconnect, since dude is meant to be the infallible voice of God, so... God is wrong? Or the Pope isn't the infallible voice of God? OK. Then why is anyone a Catholic at all?)
My point is not that all Catholics follow those teachings, but that married heterosexual Catholics have to make some kind of stand somewhere on that spectrum, and if one member of the partnership is anti-contraception or anti-abortion, then the other member of the partnership can't just say 'oh, agree to disagree!' It's not like they can keep the issue separate from their sexual life. They'd have to come to some kind of mutual arrangement. Thus: Bill English's wife's stance is probably not that different to his stance.
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It is possible to assume that women are capable of having lives -- and opinions -- of their own?
Yes, of course. Although there is a key difference between you and your partner having different religious beliefs and English and his partner (possibly) having different religious beliefs and opinions, and that difference is that you, Craig, can separate sexual activity for recreation from sexual activity for procreation. If you're a practising Catholic in a heterosexual relationship, you can't - they are inextricably linked. English would have to be giving at least tacit approval to her beliefs in the reproductive realm, wouldn't he?
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it's also a job that's cursed with the idea of being a 'calling' rather than a profession
Like nursing. And teaching. And various other jobs predominantly done by women. Meh.
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too many mad polar bear in concrete bunker memories
Oh my god, the pacing. The PACING. They still haunt me.
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I reckon they know diddly-squat about organising CDs/DVDs/computer games.
It should be noted (as a former public library worker) that it is almost impossible to keep any of those things in any kind of order that makes sense, since they are so heavily browsed and/or stolen. (I am never leaving academic libraries again, by the way.)
Their job has certainly expanded in the internet age rather than been made redundant. There's a vast academic Web (after all, that's what the WWW was intended for) accessible only through subscription and they spend a lot of their time managing that for university use - Is it worth investing in this e-journal subscription? Are people using it? How does the budget stretch? What about rights? Etc etc.
Yes. This deserves repeating any time anyone implies that librarians are redundant. There is a *lot* of shit to do behind the scenes - the assessment and accessibility of vast swathes of information is the whole point of academic or governmental librarianship nowadays.
(I do, however, find libraries insanely hierarchical and the bunker mentality Russell refers to is often off-putting.)
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Well, this seems germane to the discussion:
'They talked to the sister, the father and the mother
With a microphone in one hand and a chequebook in the other
And the camera noses in to the tears on her face
The tears on her face
The tears on her face'Elvis Costello, 'Pills and Soap', 1983
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Heh - I think I'm with you now Danielle :) - after the Magnolia experience, did you bother subjecting yourself to Punch Drunk Love?
I forgot to say: there are three members of my Very Tiny PT Anderson Hate Club* - my husband, my friend Ben, and me. Ben *did* subject himself to Punch Drunk Love, and reported to me that although it was not as horrifyingly bad as Magnolia, it did also suck, for similarly hateable reasons. I had faith in him and stayed well clear.
Although there are plenty of perfectly respectable film-loving people who like Magnolia, I am very happy that Russell doesn't like it either! I feel not only affirmed, but validated. Like parking.
*subtitle: 'With The Exception Of Boogie Nights, Which Is A Pretty Good Scorsese Homage'.
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Well ...... while its fair to say There Will Be Blood is very different to Magnolia, there are a few similar themes.
Are the characters one-dimensional set-pieces who keep repeating, heavy-handedly, what they symbolise in the film? Is the music weirdly portentous when nothing interesting is happening? Does everyone chew the scenery like a maniac? Are the camera zooms distracting and annoying? Are the themes so obvious that you feel like PT Anderson is thumping you over the head with a Big! Wooden! Meaningful! Mallet! of Importance! Is it leaden and humourless? Because... yeah.
You see, Richard, I'm not sure if you've gathered, but I really, really, really hated Magnolia. :)