| ***For one thing, the religious orders made it possible for women to be educated and to hold influential positions as nuns.*** |
| The Reformation greatly escalated literacy of males and females. |
|
Posted on 04/13/2004 3:40:11 PM PDT by narses
I can't believe this article would argue that it is better to keep a woman a virgin and in poverty than just simply be obedient to her husband. And the author feels this is what started women's lib?!? Is this the National Equirer of the Catholic Press?
But what's worse, judging from some of these posts is that some of you believe it!!! This is prove positive that you Catholics are so gullible and will believe anything that comes out of some Catholic approved printing plant.
| ***For one thing, the religious orders made it possible for women to be educated and to hold influential positions as nuns.*** |
| The Reformation greatly escalated literacy of males and females. |
|
It means (according to the author) that if a man tells his wife to commit a sin (such as adultery) or a crime (such as murder), then God wants the woman to obey. In effect, there is no such thing as right and wrong for women, only obedience or disobedience to their husbands.
You said: Knowing she will "submit" to me puts me under the pressure to ask it only when I would feeel comfortable explaining to the Lord why I asked her to do it. I am accountable to Him. Do you mean that if you asked your wife to commit an obvious sin or a crime, you believe you would be responsible, not her?
I'm not trying to start a fight (honest!), just to nail down the exact meaning.
Thank you.
Your quote from the Encyclopedia Brittanica is even more absurd and outrageous than the original article. They can't even get the right chronological order between the Renaissance and the Reformation. Clue: the Renaissance era began at least 100 years before the Reformation. So it's ridiculous to make unsubstantiated statements like "The spread of literacy during the Reformation and the Renaissance."
I hope you're not going to claim that Luther was responsible for inventing movable type, although one could get that impression from this brain-dead Britannica piece. And I don't think you would want either to support the claim that "the adoption of vernacular languages in place of Latin" facilitated literacy. This is such a vacuous statement that one doesn't know where to begin to criticize it (kind of like the article on women and the reformation). the adoption of the vernacular for what? everday conversation? in the liturgy? in universities? Directly contrary to this stupidity, wasn't it true that the main emphasis of education in protestant countries like England continued to focus almost exclusively on the study of Latin and Greek well into the 20th century? And wasn't the demarcation point for our decline into decadent ignorance marked by the abandonment of classical studies?
Compulsory schooling, established in Britain, Europe, and the U.S. in the 19th century, has led to high rates of literacy in the modern industrialized world.
More ignorant propaganda for the leviathan state that I'm surprised you would want to be associated with. The documented fact is that literacy rates in the United States were HIGHER in 1850 than they are today, back before Horace Mann and his program to brainwash all American children.
| Elizabeth L. Eisenstein. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xxi + 794 pp. Table of contents, preface, bibliographic index and general index. $54.95 (paper), ISBN 0-521-29955-1 |
The use of this new technology produced unexpected results. How the differing reactions to the changes brought about by printing shaped subsequent European society is most clearly seen in Eisenstein's extended discussion of the role print culture played in shaping religious debates before and after the Protestant Reformation. There had been many earlier heretical movements within the Catholic Church before Luther's posting of his 95 theses. But the dissemination and greater permanence of print culture allowed his challenge to have a much greater impact. Moreover, the competitive nature of the printing industry, which was driven by a desire for sales, provided a new, more public outlet for controversies, and insured that what began as a scholarly dispute between theologians gained an international audience. Reformation impulses and the printing industry fed off and accelerated one another in an age where religious materials were popular sellers.
Differing Catholic and Protestant attitudes towards print culture resulted in two widely divergent historical paths. In Protestant lands, approval of vernacular bibles led to encouragement of greater lay literacy and a closer tying of biblical lore with developing national cultures. In Eisenstein's view, the differences in Catholic and Protestant reactions to printing were not due solely to theological differences, or to Protestants being more enlightened or trusting of their congregations. Some individual Protestant leaders were hostile to the changes wrought by printing, particularly the wider dispersal of controversial books to lay audiences. But areas under Protestant control were generally less able to implement censorship of the presses than the more centralized governments of Catholic areas. One of the most important events in the shaping of early print culture was the successful rebellion of the Netherlands. In their small, semi-autonomous provinces, numerous printing presses sprang up that operated relatively free of censorship, and provided an outlet for authors, even within areas held by the Counter-Reformation. Books coming off the clandestine presses proved impossible for the Counter-Reformation to block, with significant impact for both religion and science.
This part sounds accurate, but I hope this is not something that you're proud of. To me this sounds like the work of Satan. A new technology is immediately exploited to destroy the unity of Christian civilization. And often the motive is profit. So printers are driven by "a desire for sales" to print controversial works, even if their effect is to divide the body of Christ and to split Europe into warring camps. Rather reminds one of another new technology more contemporary with our own age, the television. No sooner does it exit the scientific labs than Satan has immediately put it to work to wreak the ruin of tens of millions of souls.
You sure can put words together! I can't remember the last time I saw "wreak" spelled correctly and used correctly! You've made my day :-).
Yep, up until the 1960's. Most colleges still had language requirements, and many programs for PhD and the like required the mastery of Latin and Greek (and also modern languages).
This: "The saintly women desire nothing else than the natural fruit of their bodies. For by nature woman has been created for the purpose of bearing children. Therefore she has breasts. She has arms for the purpose of nourishing, cherishing and carrying her offspring." Again, the purely natural view of woman. Nothing of the supernatural.
Compare to:
"... the woman, being seduced, was in the transgression. Yet she shall be saved through child bearing; if she continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety." (1 St. Timothy 2.14-15).
I can't say Luther is far off from St. Paul.
Rather, the essential virtue for women became obedience, but it was an exaggerated obedience with no rule or intermediary, the Catholic Church, to govern its practice.
Compare to:
"Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection." (1 St. Timothy 2.11)
"Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord: Because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. He is the saviour of his body. Therefore as the church is subject to Christ: so also let the wives be to their husbands in all things. ... let the wife fear her husband." (Ephesians 5.22-24, 32)
"In like manner also, let wives be subject to their husbands: that, if any believe not the word, they may be won without the word, by the conversation of the wives, ... For after this manner heretofore, the holy women also who trusted in God adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands: As Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters you are, doing well and not fearing any disturbance." (1 St. Peter 1.1, 5-6)
"On the other hand, the duties of a wife are thus summed up ... To train their children in the practice of virtue and to pay particular attention to their domestic concerns should also be especial objects of their attention. The wife should love to remain at home, unless compelled by necessity to go out; and she should never presume to leave home without her husband's consent." (Catechism of the Council of Trent, "On Matrimony")
http://www.cin.org/users/james/ebooks/master/trent/tsacr-m.htm)
My fellows! Does your wife actually follow this, or does she "run free" without consulting you? Where is this sort of sensible direction in Dr. Horvat's article?
Instead, Dr. Horvat is replacing the husband with the Church as the intermediary! Clearly, she missed this command of the Apostle:
"Let women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted them to speak but to be subject, as also the law saith. But if they would learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church." (1 Corinthians 14.34-35)
Let me reemphasize that. "But if they would learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home." Not the Church, not other women, but "their husbands" "at home." Dr. Horvat contradicting St. Paul is an excellent example of the very point St. Paul was making.
I have never trusted this lady, and do so even less now.
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Britannica Concise
