Returning from South London where I've spent the last two days running critical & reflective thinking workshops, I shared a table on the train back into the capital with three women debating the effect of a children's character called Rastamouse on their impressionable youngsters' speech patterns.
Typical comments included such pearls of wisdom as "I’m struggling to help my two children learn to speak English and it doesn’t help when programmes such as Rastamouse are aired on CBeebies," and "I'll be proper angry if my children start beginning every sentence with the word “me”."
I'd like to have had the social skills to join in and point out that there are different dialects on TV all the time, none of which can compete with the influence of a child's home environment, but having been brought up with Bill and Ben, I'm one of a generation that's been held back because none of us can start a sentence without going "flobbleswobbledobbledeplob"....
Friday 18 February 2011
Monday 14 February 2011
It'll be all Rite on the night
I'm just back from two weeks in the USA where the current box office number one film is a horror movie called The Rite starring Anthony Hopkins who's been given the job of training a sceptical young priest in the casting out of demons, a role which US Airway's in-flight magazine says is based on a Californian priest called Father Gary Thomas.
Reproducing a Catholic World interview with the "Official Exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose", we get to know that there are about 500,000 exorcisms annually in Italy (yes, you read that right: 10, 000 a week ! ), that there's been an increase in demonic possessions lately and it's all the fault of the Internet, and the utterly bizarre claim that the Catholic Church has "a rite that’s recognized, even by the demons, as legitimate", with no explanation as to why (or how) they'd agree to any sort of framework.
Now I don't know about you, but I just love the idea of Beelzebub's hordes examining the rites of the Catholic Church, assessing them, and agreeing that: yes, those are indeed legitimate.
Got me wondering whether these nasty old demons are supposed to have appointed representatives, simply taken a majority vote, or if the Church got feedback as part of some iterative process until the final version was sanctioned as binding?
Reproducing a Catholic World interview with the "Official Exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose", we get to know that there are about 500,000 exorcisms annually in Italy (yes, you read that right: 10, 000 a week ! ), that there's been an increase in demonic possessions lately and it's all the fault of the Internet, and the utterly bizarre claim that the Catholic Church has "a rite that’s recognized, even by the demons, as legitimate", with no explanation as to why (or how) they'd agree to any sort of framework.
Now I don't know about you, but I just love the idea of Beelzebub's hordes examining the rites of the Catholic Church, assessing them, and agreeing that: yes, those are indeed legitimate.
Got me wondering whether these nasty old demons are supposed to have appointed representatives, simply taken a majority vote, or if the Church got feedback as part of some iterative process until the final version was sanctioned as binding?
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