Hili broaches a topic sensitive in her country:
Hili: Do you tell the children at school about such scientific innovations?*
Gosia: I should.
________
*Hili’s paw rests on the contraceptive patch worn by Goaia, who is a schoolteacher (and the owner of Fitness). I am informed that “In Poland the problem of contraceptives is very difficult because of the stance of the Catholic Church, and school children are mostly carefully shielded from knowing about them, especially in small towns and villages.”
In Polish:
Hili: Czy ty mówisz dzieciom w szkole o takich naukowych nowinkach?
Gosia: Powinnam.
I had no idea that contraceptives were such a big deal in Poland! The one thing Pope Frankie could do is deal with contraceptives……it’s bloody absurd.
It’s within living history – i.e., I remember it – that people resident in Ireland had to obtain contraceptives from friends visiting from abroad.
Case in point : in the mid-80s, my parents went to visit some former colleagues now married and living in Dublin. Expecting an answer involving obscure spices, they asked if there was anything that was needed bringing over ; the answer was several packets of condoms. not for the parents, but for the son and daughter of the family who were on the verge of going off to universities.
Given the strength of the RC idiocracy in Poland, it doesn’t surprise me that they still have problems there.
Yep, Poland is one of the most strongly RC countries in Europe. Not surprised that contraception is a problematic topic, sadly.
> and school children are mostly carefully shielded from knowing about them, especially in small towns and villages.
Which, of course, is a quite effective way to produce more school children in small towns and villages.
THE Greatest Invention Over All of Time Over All the World* = chemical birth control
Thank you, Sweet, Sweet Science.
Blue
*Sorry, Poland / Ireland / All Other Religiously Patriarchal Areas = of course NOT wherein your worlds. Still … … not.
lovely and perfect history lesson: “The Pill”= pbs documentary re the science behind it ( incl that performed in the 1950s and 1960s by a rogue ‘roman catholic’ man on its discovery – team led by Sanger of the activism and McCormick of the $ and the activism ) and the struggle against patriarchal religion ( American Experience ) likely available on dvd from your public library ( incl via interlibrary loan there ) —- Blue
• American Experience | The Pill | Timeline – PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/timeline/index.html
Rollover text information, American Experience Logo … Timeline: The Pill …
Margaret Sanger and Katharine McCormick first meet at one of Sanger’s Boston …
December 31: The Roman Catholic Church makes its first definitive statement on …
The actual chemistry of the Pill has been invented, but neither Djerassi nor the …
June 8: Sanger realizes McCormick can fund Pincus’ research and brings her to …
Vatican II comes to an end and the Roman Catholic Church implements some …
Andrea Tone: Sanger and McCormick subscribed to a feminism which held that …
the opposition, uh, is mainly from the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church …
Francis, if you don’t take on the morality of contraception, you are a complete fraud. Contraception saves lives, reduces abortions and empowers women. I can understand religious squeamishness about abortion, but their is no moral justification for opposing birth control.
The Church will never end its ban on contraceptives. It can’t; it would be the end of the Church. Or, rather, if it ever does, it’ll be an obviously desperate act as a last attempt to avoid a slide into irrelevancy. The best we can hope for is for the Church to gradually stop being so vocal about it.
You see, the Church has already killed so many people — especially in Africa — with the policy, and they’ve ruined so many other lives, that contraception simply has to be evil on a cosmic scale; else why all the misery in the effort to defeat it? And if the Church can be so spectacularly evil itself as to have done all that for no good reason, then how can anybody even pretend that the Church is deserving of respect? What other fundamental moral values has the Church fucked up, and why should anybody trust the Church itself to get this sort of thing right?
And that’s their stock in trade: moral authority. They’ve planted their flag on that hill, and, by the gods, they’re going to defend the flag or die trying.
…of course, at some point, they’re going to realize that their private empire with all its profits and perks (especially a steady supply of children to rape) is in jeopardy unless they do something. We’ll know that the end is nigh when all they do is something.
Cheers,
b&
Oh, I’m not so sure they are locked into any position just because of history.
“We have always been at war with Eastasia.”
Oh, I’m sure they’d try to spin it like that.
But this one is far too tied up in so much else that’s so important — including abortion, marriage, and everything else related to sex. And they’d have all the good Catholic women who faithfully bore all those children despite wishing they didn’t have to absolutely furious at the thought of the lives they could have led had the Church not lied to them about the sinful nature of contraception.
As I wrote, the best they can do is stop beating the drum quite so loudly until enough generations have gone past where it’s one of those “technically, ____ is evil but that hasn’t been enforced in centuries” sort of things. The problem for the Church is that I don’t think they can survive that long in modern society while clinging so firmly to primitive absurdities like this one.
b&
“Teacher, what’s that patch on your shoulder?”
“I’m not allowed to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s about sex and the priest doesn’t want you to know.”
Inquiring young minds…