Alright uninformed rant time. It kind of bugs me that, when studying the Middle Ages, specifically in western Europe, it doesn’t seem to be a pre-requisite that you have to take some kind of “Basics of Mediaeval Catholic Doctrine in Everyday Practise” class.
Obviously you can’t cover everything- we don’t necessarily need to understand the ins and outs of obscure theological arguments (just as your average mediaeval churchgoer probably didn’t need to), or the inner workings of the Great Schism(s), nor how apparently simple theological disputes could be influenced by political and social factors, and of course the Official Line From The Vatican has changed over the centuries (which is why I’ve seen even modern Catholics getting mixed up about something that happened eight centuries ago). And naturally there are going to be misconceptions no matter how much you try to clarify things for people, and regional/class/temporal variations on how people’s actual everyday beliefs were influenced by the church’s rules.
But it would help if historians studying the Middle Ages, especially western Christendom, were all given a broadly similar training in a) what the official doctrine was at various points on certain important issues and b) how this might translate to what the average layman believed. Because it feels like you’re supposed to pick that up as you go along and even where there are books on the subject they’re not always entirely reliable either (for example, people citing books about how things worked specifically in England to apply to the whole of Europe) and you can’t ask a book a question if you’re confused about any particular point.
I mean I don’t expect to be spoonfed but somehow I don’t think that I’m supposed to accumulate a half-assed religious education from, say, a 15th century nobleman who was probably more interested in translating chivalric romances and rebelling against the Crown than religion; an angry 16th century Protestant; a 12th century nun from some forgotten valley in the Alps; some footnotes spread out over half a dozen modern political histories of Scotland; and an episode of ‘In Our Time’ from 2009.
But equally if you’re not a specialist in church history or theology, I’m not sure that it’s necessary to probe the murky depths of every minor theological point ever, and once you’ve started where does it end?
Anyway this entirely uninformed rant brought to you by my encounter with a sixteenth century bishop who was supposedly writing a completely orthodox book to re-evangelise his flock and tempt them away from Protestantism, but who described the baptismal rite in a way that sounds decidedly sketchy, if not heretical. And rather than being able to engage with the text properly and get what I needed from it, I was instead left sitting there like:
And frankly I didn’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole that would inevitably open up if I tried to find out
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i try not to be too obnoxious about liking kids media but i will be honest my one thing that really gets on my nerves is when people compare shows like idk the owl house or whatever to shows like bluey or like talk about them as if they are similar. like yes i logically realize they are probably exaggerating in order to frame all cartoons as especially childish but it still makes me want to tear my hair out like do you know how wildly different the target demographics for these shows are!!! do you realize that preschool television is generally a whole different world from tv for older kids!!!!
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i have little to no interest in the TV albums & obviously agree that the constant repackaging of what is essentially the same content with minor aesthetic changes is a cynical cash grab slash frantic bid to remain in the cultural conversation continuously at all costs, but it is also VERY rich to suggest she isn’t creating…enough art? lmao
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Books Read in 2022:
The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell (1977)
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (2022)
Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2001)
Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018)
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013)
In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honore (2004)
Sex and the City by Candache Bushnell (1996)
The Anarchist’s Guide to Travel by Matthew Derrick (2017)
Inuyasha Vol. 5 by Rumiko Takahashi (1998)
[ID: Covers of the aforementioned books. End ID.]
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