[AGL] daVinci Code? Hey at least it ain't Mel Gibson's blood bath...

[Frances Morey]

I guess it's all a matter of perspective, Jon,
  It's the old glass half empty or half full business. At least we (women) are not expected to wear burkas, even if the nuns habits approximate them. The Catholic church is made up of humans, humans of the male gender, and the purpose of celebacy was to keep the Church "employees" from having any of those damnable-offspring who, with their mothers, might vie for the wealth of the Church when the "father" kicks off. That is the motive behind the emphasis on chastity among the clergy that became a custom in the Middle Ages, I think it was. Interestingly, this fostered pedophilia since as the kind of sex both without consequences of offspring and so terribly unspeakable that perhaps it would go undiscovered, or so that was the belief that the church fathers clung to in the pretense that it didn't happen, even when it did. Something like that can only go on for so long until the silence and secrecy burst open at the seams. It now threatens to bankrupt the Church. That kinda
 reminds me of that primative tribe where the men espoused that once they reached adulthood they no longer had to have bowel movements. When I heard that I immediately thought about the curious anomaly that is celebacy.
  I decry the Church's belittling of my gender by expecting the role of women in the church to be that of cleaning ladies and baby sitters or the gatekeepers of concupiscence through the sacrament of marriage. Still, in the West women are allowed to work and support themselves, unlike the preposterous sanctions against same in the Muslim world. It's all a matter of degree, Jon.
  Best,
  Frances

 Ford <jonmfordster at hotmail.com> wrote:
  
Connie: I am sorry to admit I did read the book. I have heard the film is a 
pretty close rendering of its ideas, most of which are derived from an 
obsessive 19th century French hoaxter short on facts and long on BS. 
However, it's undeniable that since the beginning of the Catholic Church 
organisation (and even in some of the biblical gospels) , there has been a 
concerted effort to diminish the role of women in the Jesus narrative to 
adoring baby makers. They aren't even allowed sexuality in the physical 
sense, with Mary having a 'virgin birth.' Some miracle-- all the pain of 
childbirth and no fun in bed with Joseph.

Jon

yep, I went with the fam to see it Friday night. I liked it, but of course, 
hadn't read the book, so don't know how it compares.

It is sort of a far fetched story. I mean a lineage from Jesus Christ would 
be quite extensive, with a lot of families, not just one pretty little 
French lady.

I didn't know or realize the extent to which the Catholic organization, Opus 
Dei, would go to keep women from the pedestal, and emulate Jesus' chastity, 
in their religion.
a nice tale of fiction and a little bit of an expose on religion.

Connie



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