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To: Mrs. Don-o
Actually, if you read her autobiography, St. Teresa liked men (i.e. a virgin, but not a prissy man hating virgin or a clueless asexual virgin nor a man hating lesbian).

She was probably what we call a "tom boy"...tried to run away to be a martyr with her brother as a kid...and when she was a teenager, got in trouble with her strict father over an incident which probably was just meeting a boyfriend outside of her home, which in those days was a no no.

So her father shipped her off to a convent school, where she became religious...but not too religious.

She decided to be a nun because she was worried she'd succumb to temptations to sin and go to hell...but she didn't chose the strict Augustinian nuns who taught her, but the liberal Carmelites...

Her reason was that they weren't strict, but there might have been another reason: The Augustinians required "blood lines" and her grandfather was Jewish...

While in the Carmelite training period (novitiate) she had an episode of illness where people thought she was dead. In today's psychiatry, she was catatonic from a dissociation reaction, something usually associated with sexual tension. She recovered and became a nun who enjoyed visiting outside the convent and with visitors, both men and women, in the convent parlour.

Even her "visions" might have been imagination or perhaps real visions with a lot of egotism... in those days when lots of people had "visions"

By today's standards, all this was innocent: One doubts she did more than flirt.

But at age 30 she was "born again" and the visions probably became a genuine voice of God...

She went on to become a reformer of the Carmelite orders, and continued to have friendships with men...but she no longer had visits in the parlor nor visited relatives. She spent most of her time in prayer, and used her friendships with others to promote love of God and reform of the very lax religious life in Convents and monasteries (you think Pedophilia is new? Read Catholic reformers about the bad monasteries back then)...
And she reminded an increasingly rigid intolerant Spanish church that God is love..

.and was investigated by the inquisition for such a radical thought. Her writing of her life was an "answer" to the Inquisition...luckily, they didn't find her "tainted" Jewish heritage, or she probably would have been killed as a heretic...

Will her "sexiness" ruin the film? depends how they present it. Sounds like the filmmakers are clueless, so I worry about the film...
38 posted on 08/26/2006 6:40:00 PM PDT by LadyDoc (liberals only love politically correct poor people)
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To: LadyDoc

Would you please explain to me how it can be a definitive diagnosis, over 400 years later, that Teresa suffered from "dissociation reaction"?


40 posted on 08/26/2006 10:45:40 PM PDT by Running On Empty
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To: LadyDoc

You must be quite a fan of our Teresita! I enjoyed your post.

I have a favorite icon of her with her castanets. Not your typical Carmelite!

Her enemies wanted to do her in because she opposed the laxity, luxury and scandal of 16th century monastic life; which opened her up to the suspicion, not that she was secretly Jewish, but that she was secretly Protestant. (No good deed goes unpunished, as we know.)

Nade te turbe!


43 posted on 08/27/2006 10:41:14 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (Quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta.)
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To: LadyDoc
Even her "visions" might have been imagination or perhaps real visions with a lot of egotism...

And what about her levitating? Was that a "dissociative reaction" too?

52 posted on 08/28/2006 12:05:30 PM PDT by Aquinasfan (When you find "Sola Scriptura" in the Bible, let me know)
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