Word: sinfully
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...exactly the 200-year-old bloodsucker he claims to be. He was the dark eminence in Rice's first chronicle, Interview with the Vampire, and his monstrous self- fascination has taken over succeeding narrations. Lestat is something of a windbag, alternately luxuriating in the dark perfection of his sin and then writhing in rather stagey shame for his moral awfulness. This foppish introspection fogs the early chapters of the present novel. But just before the reader's eyes glaze over, the willful and impulsive Lestat tangles with a mortal con man whose extraordinary psychic powers let him cheat the vampire...
...Catholic bishops gathering in Washington. For nine years they have tried to produce a coherent document on women to straddle the demands of conservatives in Rome and of feminists in the U.S. At issue is everything from whether women can serve as priests or deacons to whether sexism is "sin." Among the characterizations of the bishops' efforts: "almost laughable" (from the angry left), "an embarrassment" (from the angry right). The document has been diluted so thoroughly that reformers hope that the hierarchy will throw it out and start all over again...
Pope John Paul II addressed the subject with his 1988 letter On the Dignity of Women, which is quite progressive by Vatican standards. Examining Genesis, the Pope blames Adam and Eve equally for original sin, and says the famous curse "your husband . . . shall rule over you" is not God's will but evidence of humanity's fall into the sinful state. The Pope also declares that in marriage, husbands and wives must be in equal submission to each other...
...permanent nests for feminist activism. Liberals are far more infuriated, because the bishops' writing panel backed off on allowing female deacons, much less priests; dropped the assertion that inability to relate well to women should bar a man from the priesthood; and even shelved the declaration that sexism is "sin...
...scenes are indelibly repellent. In one, a nun is raped in a church; in the other, the cop viciously and pathetically humiliates two teenagers with verbal sexual abuse. The movie, a lapsed Catholic's anguished prayer for last-minute salvation, says the cop is so addicted to sin he can't enjoy it. "Vampires are lucky," observes the cop's junkie girlfriend (co-screenwriter Zoe Lund). "They can feed on others. We gotta eat away at ourselves." Bad Lieutenant is a serious film about the gnawing of conscience and the thirst for redemption, but the tone is so dispassionately vile...