Word: stolid
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...some of the overstimulated moral idiocy of the secular world, I think that in two areas -- 1) contraception and 2) ordination and the role of women -- the church has gone needlessly, dangerously astray. John Paul II, who should be one of the greatest Popes, has settled for a curiously stolid "Here I stand." Strangely unevolved, he seems thus diminished in what should be a triumphant time...
Normally, watching the awarding of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film is a painful and disappointing experience. Instead of rewarding excellent or innovative films, the stolid voters usually opt for something ponderous and portentous--recall the year that the excruciatingly tedious "Pelle the Conqueror' won over "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." So it was refreshing to watch this year's Oscar go to the Spanish entry, Fernando Trueba's "Belle Epoque." Trueba's film isn't necessarily a cinematic masterpiece, something like "The Piano." But given Trueba's more modest goal of entertainment, the film succeeds quite...
...like Orange Juice--or The Orange Juice, as Edwyn Collins called his band during its declining years--generally compare these fey Glaswegians to the Smiths. (Glaswegians, by the way, were and are unpredictable people from Glasgow, Scotland. The Smiths, similarly, were distraught people from Manchester, England.) These stolid naysayers aren't entirely wrong: Johnny Marr may have picked up the soulful, chiming guitar sound of the first Smiths records in part from the soulful, chiming sound perfected by James Kirk, the Orange Juice guitarist whose (real) name may or may not have inspired the Wedding Present and the Bodines...
While adding exotic new creeds, the tide of immigration since the 1960s has also increased the variegation within Christianity. Millions of Hispanics have brought a florid, fervent Latin sensibility into U.S. Catholicism, challenging a church hierarchy dominated by the stolid sons and grandsons of Irish immigrants, who now are struggling to recruit Hispanic priests. The bishops also face Pentecostal or Baptist soul winners who successfully target Spanish- speaking neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Koreans have had a notable impact within - Protestantism with their evangelistic zeal and religious traditionalism...
...social and political institutions, then homosexual activity clearly must unravel the fabric of such a society and "undermine civilization." The "queer" polemicists at least have the advantage of facing squarely the radical implications of their social and political program; the BGLSA's attempt to hide behind a screen of stolid social respectability is simply naive...