Conferences are, among many other adjectives, inspiring. As a result of the one I have been at today, I have a new favourite Figure from Women’s History. And if I am ever afflicted by patent-mad intellectual property paranoia I will take a leaf out of Albrecht Durer’s book and say:
“Hold! You crafty ones, strangers to work, and pilferers of other men’s brains. Think not rashly to lay your thievish hands upon my works. Beware! Know you not that I have a grant from the most glorious Emperor Maximillian, that not one throughout the imperial dominion shall be allowed to print or sell fictitious imitations of these engravings? Listen! And bear in mind that if you do so, through spite or through covetousness, not only will your goods be confiscated, but your bodies also placed in mortal danger.” (1511)
And the Portuguese word of the day? why it’s “mofo” (pl. mofos) meaning mold, mildew, mustiness.
Heavily pregnant waitress, cafe:
“The doctor told my husband that if it’s overdue he should screw me ’cause it would make my womb contract and get the baby moving. Idiot. All you actually need for the womb to contract is an orgasm. Why didn’t he tell me to masturbate, or tell my husband to go down on me?”
One of three old ladies, park bench:
“It just goes to show that women are just as good at public life as the men. And of course they are, they’ve been typing the speeches and ironing the shirts of the fellows in public life for a hundred years!”
My money was on Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger for the new Pope. And I was right. I know far too much about the more shadowy workings of the Vatican, not least that Ratzinger’s nickname is ‘The Rottweiler of Christ’. I grew up amongst liberation theology tomes and Basic Ecclesial Communities meetings, watching the loving adults in my life get sacked from their jobs and marginalised by their peers in the church because of the likes of this mang. These are people who believed in god and wanted to be part of a catholic church, but who often had to fight hard, and suffer, because their vision of god and church included people other than old, white, celibate, conservative-thinking men. (Losing one’s job, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the suffering that the Church has caused for people like this, and even more so for those who these people were standing up for - women from all walks of life and people living in dire poverty, mostly).
Under the rule of JPII, Ratzinger was the Cardinal responsible for weeding out dissidents in the global Church and making sure that Catholicism retained its sheen of arch-conservatism - e.g. that only men took up leadership positions and got to wear the nice white frocks and stoles with brocade trim (an essential uniform for the eternal task of policing women’s bodies and the like). It is largely because of Ratzinger’s terrier-like pursuit of those who didn’t keep to the black letter of the Canon Law that any form of living outside that law is still so roundly condemned by the Church. Examples that I remember quite vividly include the ‘re-location’ or ex-communication of priests like Tissa Balasuriya , I was reminded of this recently at the censure of Carol Christ here in Sydney.
To paraphrase Paul Kingsnorth, it’s quite an ordinary event in that no-one could have nor should have expected anything different in the election of a new Pope. I’m largely complacent myself - thankfully, what happens in the Vatican really doesn’t impact on my life these days. But I can’t help but feel echoes of the frustration I remember being surrounded by as a child.
I tend to read Australian political news items in terms of how they might contribute to the Howard Government’s downfall. In this vein, I was idly chuffed about the kerfuffle over interest rates. Of course, this has probably come rather too late, but any holes in the Government’s credibility with the Aspirational Australian is a plus, in my view - given that said Australians didn’t seem to be perturbed by other blatant lies, e.g. Children (Never Thrown) Overboard. If the lies over interest rates did swing any votes away from the Liberals, I might even call it a case of being hoist by one’s own petard, given that the last election was indeed the Interest Rates Election.
On a similar note, these same Australians would be right to be disenchanted in the Government’s announcement that they will ‘have to’ raise the threshold for the Medicare safety net.
Of course, what should *really* be making them sick is stuff like the miserable conditions of ‘out of sight out of mind’ asylum seekers on Nauru, but then mediocrity rules here, as Le Tigre might say.