Posted on 10/26/2011 7:38:12 AM PDT by Borges
A senior Russian Orthodox official claimed Wednesday that novels by Vladimir Nabokov and Gabriel Garcia Marquez justify pedophilia and said they should be banned in the nation's high schools.
Father Vsevolod Chaplin's demand that Russia's government investigate and limit the use of the books was his church's latest attempt to impose religious norms in a country that once rejected religion altogether. Chaplin, who heads the Moscow Patriarchate's public relations department, discussed Nabokov's "Lolita" and Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" on Ekho Moskvy radio, accusing both of "justifying pedophilia."
The priest later elaborated in comments carried by Interfax, saying the authors' works should not be included in high school curriculums as they "romanticize perverted passions that make people unhappy."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Hmmm. Sounds like what a religion that cares for souls SHOULD be saying.
Explain the positive value of reading these works? How does this prepare high schoolers to be well formed adults?
p s - Noted elsewhere that the Russians are reinststing bans on abortion. Perhaps there is hope that Western values CAN be saved, after all.
I don't think any enterprising youngster is prohibited from seeking these books outside the classroom. I think it is a question of curriculum, and I am with the Good Father on this one.
Let’s ban Romeo and Juliette and “Death in Venice” by Thomas Mann too.
As usual, this is defined as ‘banning books’ when actually it is merelt being said that these books are inappropriate for assignment to high school kids.
That anti-’banning’ people here in the US do the same thing. When a book is assigned in high school the kids have to read it. If parents object to overt sex scenes in some novel, they are attacked as fundamentalist dolts who want to ‘ban books’.
As adults they can make their own choices. Therefore more cafre must be taken with what is assigned. But there are a lot of pedophiles in our school systems as we see in the news every day.
The Russian church is NOT seeking to ban modern classics.
Lying headline.
They are in the process of building 200 Christian churches in Moscow right now. You might try asking yourself whose side God would be on if there were to be a war between us and Russia given that information.....
In truth, the article misstates when it says, “was his church’s latest attempt to impose religious norms in a country that once rejected religion altogether.” It was Lenin, and the rest of the Soviets who did that. The populace didn’t really have a choice in the matter. And while I would truly prefer unity between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, I would definitely say, hands down, better Orthodox than atheist, insofar as Russia is concerned. That’s my opinion. But it is colored by the fact that three of my horde are daughters, who, like their mother, are cute as bugs.
Lolita is pedophilia, pure and simple, and certainly is not a classic.
I can’t imagine any member of the clergy, respectable one anyone, not arguing against it.
This certainly has no business as being part of a grade school or high school cirriculum.
That book by Nabokov?
It doesn’t seem that he wants them “banned,” but simply not part of the high school curriculum. I agree and I don’t think they should be part of required reading, except perhaps for an advanced literature class of older students that would analyze them and their moral implications.
Granted, they’re pretty mild by today’s standards (although I have always thought that Lolita was one of the ickiest books ever written), but maybe the reason today’s standards are so low is that most of us were forced to read books like this in high school.
‘Lolita’ is a “Modern Classic”?
I must be dumb because I thought it was one of the most useless and retarded books I ever opened.
Lolita is very much a literary classic - one of the best novels of the 20th century and a great piece of Americana. It doesn’t endorse pedophilia any more than Macbeth endorses Regicide. The Church should be focused on battling abortion and fighting the Islamic onslaught in Russia - this is a waste of time.
It pops on lists of Best Novels of the 20th century all the time. Retarded? LOL
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Please give me an example of a great Anglophone writer of Nabokov’s generation. He’s been compared to Joyce as a master of English Prose. Lolita is about the collision of Modernism and Postmodernism.
Wodehouse.
The positive value of reading Lolita is being exposed to a masterly use of language that’s close to unprecedented in the last century - the ideas are also still very relevant.
He’s a generation earlier. :) Nabokov’s contemporaries are Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck...
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