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Post by hibernicus on Mar 13, 2023 2:38:55 GMT
I am not sure whether you can see this as Rod Dreher has moved from blogging to a subscription-based model, so I'll summarise it briefly: roddreher.substack.com/p/the-idyllically-sex-positive-world The BBC recently broadcast a documentary about the US comedian Bill Cosby, who has been accused by numerous women of drugging and raping them. (Mr Cosby denies the charges, most of which fall outside the statute of limitations; his conviction on one charge was overturned on appeal.) This documentary included an interview with a "s*x therapist" who claimed that behaviour such as that of which Mr Cosby is accused is due to "s*x negativity" and it would be a good thing if men who like drugging and molesting women had access to women who would accept payment for being drugged and molested. Feminists have been protesting at this, and rightly so. Leaving aside the obvious point that such behaviour is degrading even if all involved are consenting adults (not to mention the obvious limitations of the concept of consent when similar behaviour is practiced in the real world where consent can be influenced by poverty, mental illness etc) what strikes me about the claim is its naivete. Does this person not realise that for many/most rapists the sense of power gained by cruelty and breaking a victim against their will is not incidental - it's precisely what they are after? [BTW the asterisks are to try to minimise the risk of objectionable ads popping up.)
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 14, 2023 22:20:31 GMT
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Mar 22, 2023 11:47:06 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 23, 2023 22:42:34 GMT
Given that Fintan O'Toole justified the sacking on the grounds that refusing to use the preferred pronouns endangered the trans pupil's mental health, this certainly does put it in a new light.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Mar 24, 2023 10:15:31 GMT
Given that Fintan O'Toole justified the sacking on the grounds that refusing to use the preferred pronouns endangered the trans pupil's mental health, this certainly does put it in a new light. 1. It would be weird to call anyone by the third person to their face; and 2. Pupils have been called much worse than the wrong gender pronouns when they are talked about in the third person, in places like staff rooms.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Mar 28, 2023 22:46:26 GMT
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Mar 29, 2023 8:58:27 GMT
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Post by maolsheachlann on Mar 29, 2023 9:02:57 GMT
It's sadly nothing new, look at the case of Eric Gill.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Mar 30, 2023 8:42:57 GMT
It's sadly nothing new, look at the case of Eric Gill. While this is true, Gill wasn't let loose on either clerical students or novice/simply professed nuns. There is a need to address the position of vulnerable adults in the Church. These are not necessarily people who are not all there: there are also those subject to unscrupulous authority. To give one example in Ireland, the former Monsignor Micheál Ledwith. He was not a paedophile as such. His victims were in their late teens, but he was successively a seminary professor and then president. It was believed he would climb higher than that, but his past caught up with him.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 1, 2023 0:35:55 GMT
One point that comes to mind is that this architect was actually part of a movement to revive traditional church architecture in reaction against modernist designs. The "he's on our side, therefore we can trust him" mindset should not be underestimated, and conservatives are as liable to it as liberals. As regards Eric Gill, it might be noted that he made much of being a Dominican Tertiary, and some friends and admirers, before and after his death and up until the Fiona mcCarthy biography spilled the beans, saw his commitment to craftsmanship as a form of sanctity and the erotic element in his work as reflecting frankness/honesty rather than obsession. If I recall correctly, he also preyed on some of his disciples/apprentices, which is clearly abuse of power. He may well have had a sort of personal magnetism which is easily mistaken for sanctity and used for manipulation.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 1, 2023 1:06:28 GMT
BTW, the IRISH TIMES last Saturday had an agony aunt column responding to a correspondent who had taken up BDSM and felt a bit uncomfortable about it. The columnist replied by congratulating her on finding something which gave her pleasure and providing a list of hints about how to practice it more comfortably. Somehow this reminded me of an old article by Julie Burchill accusing agony aunts' moral neutrality of disguising moral abdication, and parodying their approach with an imaginary column in which a correspondent who asks "My boyfriend likes to put out my eyes with red hot knitting needles... Is this normal?" gets told "Everything that gives pleasure to consenting adults is OK." We've come a long way since Angela MacNamara.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Apr 4, 2023 18:33:37 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 11, 2023 22:57:08 GMT
One thing that has struck me in recent years is that a number of academic acquaintances who themselves have no sympathy for Catholicism have remarked at separate events that their students openly express hatred for the Church and believe the worst of it, even when specific accusations have no historical foundation. Oddly enough, this often coexists with a belief that an "authentically spiritual" Church existed at some time in the past (before the Vikings and the Penal Era are the favourites). Such is the bulk of the rising generation, I fear - at least the university-educated. It's a complete reversal from Maureen Wall in the 1960s complaining that Irish schools had given the undergraduates whom she was teaching the impression that the Penal Laws were unique in Europe.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 2, 2023 23:05:05 GMT
About 10 days ago I was on a Luas passing through College Green which was held up (in mid-afternoon) by two men fighting on the tracks in front of it. My impression was that this was a drug dealer trying to collect debt. This reflects how we have become a more atomised society, and how city centres (not only Dublin) have deteriorated since the lockdown. I'm not making a "rare aul times" point - just saying this is a development which has to be acknowledged.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 16, 2023 23:48:10 GMT
This article argues that seeing films with nudity etc is always sinful, with particular reference to the film OPPENHEIMER. It strikes me as an example of how not to evangelise. crisismagazine.com/editors-desk/a-movie-isnt-worth-sinning-overFirst, having seen this particular film I agree that the scenes in question are gratuitous and hypocritical ("This is something so private and intimate that raising it in public is an intrusion - let's enact it on the big screen in front of millions of paying viewers to show how private and intimate it is") and that some of the commentator's concerns about occasions of sin are correct. Second, the author's blunt declaration that any argument against his position - such as studying the development of film as a medium, or to learn something about the historical events depicted - is merely an excuse amounts to a wholesale accusation of bad faith, which will antagonise anyone who knows their motives are being misrepresented. His conclusion "Is a movie worth going to Hell for", while it may be intended as a warning of spiritual danger, comes across as a threat *if you don't do as I say, you will certainly go to Hell, no ifs or buts" and is guaranteed to provoke a similar reaction. Third, the commentator seems somewhat naive about the extent to which Renaissance art - including religious art - was produced by morally questionable people under morally questionable circumstances. Lastly, a great deal of contemporary film is indeed degraded and obscene and should be avoided if possible (though I might add that there are features other than direct obscenity, such as the moral assumptions built into a narrative, that are as dangerous as direct obscenity and that it may often be best to educate oneself about such flaws than to ignore the whole issue.
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