A nosegay from the Vatican
Oh isn’t the Vatican just too adorable? It’s not so busy excommunicating doctors who save the lives of raped little girls by aborting their pregnancies (yes I know that was a Brazilian archbishop and not the Vatican as such, but the Vat sets the policy) that it can’t find time to exercise its puckish sense of humour and love of fun. No indeed, it makes a point of celebrating international women’s day by insulting women with an article about washing machines in l’Osservatore Romano on international Women’s Day. Hahahahahaha – that is so funny.
The Vatican newspaper says that perhaps the washing machine did more to liberate women in the 20th century than the pill or the right to work. The submission was made in a lengthy article titled “The Washing Machine and the Liberation of Women – Put in the Detergent, Close the Lid and Relax.” The article was printed at the weekend in l’Osservatore Romano, the semi-official Vatican newspaper, to mark international Women’s Day on Sunday.
Condescend much?
I saw the piece about the article at Faith in Honest Doubt, where Dale suggested that the Vatican ‘has moved past self-parody and gone straight to provoking [me] intentionally.’ It would be fun to think so, wouldn’t it?
Well, if women aren’t grateful for the labour-saving devices we men devise they can go back to the poss-tub.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bandl.danby/Posstub.jpg
(Note, she is smiling and happy. Clearly content with her lot.)
I mean, c’mon, we’ve given you the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner and the micro-wave. What more do you want? Autonomy? I respect and admire woman’s innate talent for nurturing and carrying out domestic tasks, why can’t you reciprocate by respecting the innate talent of celibate males to define and enforce woman’s blessed role in the world?
We should be grateful to this papacy for so clearly delineating in a single week why no thinking person could ever take it seriously.
What more do I want? Diamonds! I want diamonds! Lots and lots of them!
I didn’t notice anywhere whether they’d said they thought the washing machine was a good thing. If I were to go mainly by what I’ve learned about Catholicism, I would have to judge the article an attack on the washing machine, that infernal engine that outdoes even the condemned pill in the disgraceful project to liberate women.
I now understand that every out-of-order machine I’ve ever encountered at a coin launderette had to have been the work of saboteurs on the payroll of Opus Dei.
“The Washing Machine and the Liberation of Women”
The washing machine emancipated not only the Magdalen laundy women, but also small children and very young teenagers of industrial schools like Goldenbridge.
“Ireland’s “architecture of containment” made undesirable segments of the female population such as illegitimate children, single mothers, and sexually promiscuous women literally invisible by having them work in Dickensian conditions. These Magdalen laundries were mandated by the Irish state beginning in the eighteenth century, they were operated by various orders of the Catholic Church until the last laundry closed in 1996.
James Smith, of Boston University who wrote a book about the Magdalen Laundries, should be made aware that there were also within the confines of industrial schools all over Ireland, very small children, much younger than the Magdalen laundry inmates, daily slogging away in steaming ‘hidden from the world’ laundries washing and starching the robes, coifs, underclothes and wimples belonging to the religious.
This was all during (supposed) school hours.
I thought this was good. The Olam Shrine site: “My teachers were Sisters of Mercy, who told us the white whimple represented our souls. When we sinned, it was equal to making a black crayon mark on our soul, and we had to keep our souls as white as the whimple Sister wore.”
A commemoration stone has been laid in Galway for the Magdalen Laundry girls.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0311/1224242661552.html –
In the 1990s James Dyson created a washing machine that had two cylinders rotating in opposite directions. This was said to make the clothes cleaner and shorten wash time.
Where was he indeed when the Magdalen laundy girls and the children of the child prisons were slaving away washing the clothes of the religious, trying their best to make them clean and whiter than white.
I hope this statue in Galway will prick at their consciences.
James Dyson, (wherever thou art at this given time) I say please join with me in a cup of cappuccino. Cheers!
Because it’s WOMEN’S job to do the laundry, of course!
So the liberation of women can’t be because we started making men do the laundry too. Oh, no. It’s just because we made it slightly easier for women to fulfill their natural, God-ordained role.
Well of course – women and men are complementary, you see. This is much better and more spiritual than mere equality. It’s all so pretty – men are good at law and scholarship and medicine, women are good at laundry and cooking and baby-feeding. Men are good at science and engineering and politics, women are good at sweeping and dishwashing and flower-arranging. Men can handle power and airplanes and trucks, women can handle crystal and infants and sponges. See how nicely that works out?