Reviews for Mary's instructions to the servants at Cana

The average rating for Mary's instructions to the servants at Cana based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-10-02 00:00:00 AMEEN Ahmad This is a book of passionate and meticulous scholarship. Why, Ranke-Heinemann asks, did the church turn from forbidding priests the right to divorce their wives at the Council of Nicea (in 325), to requiring all priests to dump their families in 1074? Why did this demand arise in the Latin Church, and not in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Coptic Church, or in Judaism? Sometime around the year 1000, the Latin Church hierarchy shifted from trying to end sex in clerical families, to a goal of ending the families period. The question of how to do this was both practical and moral. Because speaking directly on the issue of divorce, Jesus said that if a man and woman really loved each other unconditionally, they would never find reason to end their relationship. Taking these words legalistically, the Western Church had long taught that the only moral justification for divorce was adultery. And if that was their doctrine, how could the clergy justify divorcing their mainly loyal wives en masse? When Christianity became Rome's official religion, most clergymen still believed that having wives was a good thing, and marriage helped prepare a man for religious leadership. As the Jews expected their rabbis to be married, so most Christians expected the same of their priests. If a priest was not married, most adults in the community would assume there was something wrong with him. A bachelor priest seemed immature. Marriage was a school of life, and if a man had not learned its lessons, how could he teach those who had? Ranke-Heinemann traces the movement for enforced celibacy through an ecclesiastical struggle lasting over 700 years. Her presentation of the arguments pro and con is so revealing, that these chapters alone are well worth the price of the book. Then she documents the measures taken to enforce the great divorce - and they were horrific, including punishments of whipping, prison, banishment, or sale on the slave markets for the offending priest's wives. With their backs to the wall, many priests grew violent to defend their families. In the Paris Synod of 1074, Abbot Galter of Saint Martin demanded that the flock must follow its shepherd in celibacy. A mob of outraged priests and bishops beat him, spit on him, and threw him into the street. In the same year Archbishop John of Rouen threatened protesting priests with excommunication, and had to flee for his life under a hail of stones. In furious debate, the celibate party denounced its opponents as fornicators trying to prostitute the church. Married priests hurled accusations that their foes were sodomites, whose obvious preference for homosexuality rendered them hostile to married families. For decades church synods regularly broke into riotous fistfights, with monks and priests actually smashing each other's faces in the church aisles. In 1233, protesters murdered papal legate Conrad of Marburg, who was touring Germany partly to enforce chastity. (p. 109) Beyond this, Ranke-Heinemann surveys the impact of this policy on the church over centuries to come, showing what it took for the parish clergy to live without wives, or what it took to train future priests, if no priest could train his son. And last she shows the history of resistance across Europe, in which love between priests and churchwomen survived despite all attempts at "sundering the commerce between the clergy and women through an eternal anathema". Finally, this book of protest becomes a testament to the power of love, which proved stronger than all efforts to control it.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-06-12 00:00:00 John Griffin If you have ever been curious why the Catholic Church is so strange when it comes to sexuality, this is the book you want to read. Ranke-Heinemann treats the reader to a brilliant discussion of primary texts that include a merciless pinpointing of where translations were tweaked, or altogether changed to benefit a theological perspective. She consequently backs up every assertion made with the original texts which series of translations have mangled. In this way she is able to track down the changes that supported anti-sexual message, from changing Mary’s youth to virginity and changing Paul’s request of priestly wives as priestly sisters. She goes on to give a thorough analysis of Augustine’s anti-pleasure diatribe and recognizes, in him and in other Church fathers, the progression and perpetuation of the Gnostic and Stoic influence that were prevalent in early Christian thought. She continues with brilliant discussions of the beginning and progression of clerical celibacy and of the absurd regulation of the sex lives of married couples, humorously pointing out the absurdities of some of the positions taken with respect to sex. Lastly, her discussion on the impact of all of this for our perception of women and the way in which Mary is so far removed from being a woman as to be a celibate’s concoction was nothing short of amazing. This has been by far the most illuminating book when it comes to understanding the mentality, errors, arrogance and sheer absurdity of the Church’s position on all and every sexual aspects.