Canadian nun, sexologist: Catholics must increase their sexual maturity 

Immaculate Conception Sister Marie-Paul Ross told the French-language Canadian news agency Presence info that the faithful must accept that ecclesial structures might need to change.

QUEBEC CITY (CNS) — A Canadian nun with a Ph.D. in clinical sexology said the sex abuse crisis in the church does not mean “the end of faith” but rather “the end of a lack of formation and the end of deviance,” and a call to return to Jesus’ message of love.

Immaculate Conception Sister Marie-Paul Ross told the French-language Canadian news agency Presence info that the faithful must accept that ecclesial structures might need to change.

“If we really want to save the faith, the spiritual experience of the people, the depth of Christianity, and focus on evangelical values, we have no choice but to let go of the structures Continue reading “Canadian nun, sexologist: Catholics must increase their sexual maturity “

Massive increase in pickpocket crimes in Paris metro 

Paris Metro

Since the start of 2019, crime on Paris public transit has shot up, most from pickpockets, organised in groups who target tourists in metro cars. The Paris police prefecture has registered an increase of 33 per cent in the number of pickpocket crimes reported on the metro, RER and local trains.

The thieves’ methods are as varied as they are familiar. Groups, often of young women, get close to their victims, then leave as the train doors are close, a smartphone or wallet in hand. Or they bump into someone getting off a train, and take advantage of the confusion to slip a hand in an open bag or pocket.

While Parisians are used to keeping their bags close to them, visitors are less wary, and become targets.

Police have trouble apprehending the perpetrators, as over half are minors, which makes it difficult to prosecute them, or deport them, as many are foreigners.

Train drivers will often make their own announcements to warn passengers to hold onto their belongings if they see a pickpocket gang on the platform.

The RATP, which runs the Metro, has set up a way for victims to file a complaint directly in 49 stations, without going to the police, which allows for victims to quickly receive documents to provide to insurance companies or to ask for a replacement passport at an embassy.

Source: Massive increase in pickpocket crimes in Paris metro – France – RFI

Agnès Varda, her life as a feminist activist

She shifted the cinematic look on the feminine, represented characters of women themselves in perpetual displacement – loafers, vagabonds … She accompanied all the struggles and feminist movements of her time. Journey of a militant woman.

“I’m an empty body, without you, without you.” Cleo’s heartbreaking song, camera face on a black background, is echoed now that death is no longer a threat to Cleo’s hero of 5 to 7, but a reality for the filmmaker who has given a voice to women.

While the New Wave is in full swing with hero figures with wrinkled feathers, because the women resist them (Out of breath) or disappoint (the adulterous mother of the Four Hundred Blows ), Agnès Varda – the only woman stamped group – stands out. After her debut feature La Pointe Courte, Varda is not afraid to build a film about an unpleasant, selfish heroine who only thinks about her image and her career.

Cléo flips into the film at the moment of this song, Without you, passing from the status of consumer item (Cléo is a singer of variety) to that of subject questioning its reflection and that of others. Cleo starts to look. As Sandy Flitterman-Lewis has analyzed: “It ceases to be an object built by the gaze of men, and assumes the power to look.”

This is what happens when Cléo enters the room where her friend Dorothée poses nude from behind, and that the camera passes subjective view. Cléo slowly approaches her. We see men and women carving the body of the model, all in their own way, the body of Dorothea which is multiplied.

He is never sexualized either by the eyes of Cléo or by that of the camera. Along the film, Varda questions the relationship between the muse and the artist, nudity and desire. Already Varda’s camera tells us that the female body is multiple and that we can film it without eroticizing it, and even give it an aura of power. We are in 1962.

Source: Agnès Varda, her life as a feminist activist – Les Inrocks

Discover the melancholy folk of “The Wooden Wolf”

Led by the melancholy voice of Alex Keiling, the Alsatian band “The Wooden Wolf” released a 6th album last November. “Winter Variations” takes you into a folk and melancholic mood. An ode to open spaces and introspection.

“My music, I want it poetic and profound” explains the singer and composer of “The Wooden Wolf” Alex Keiling. Meeting in Strasbourg on the occasion of the group’s 6th album,  “Winter Variations”  (Deaf Rock Records)

Source CULTUREBOX: Discover the melancholy folk of “The Wooden Wolf”