Absolutely not, you do know the last book of any man (outside of scripture) that I read was over 20 years ago, I am going so good here, and I wont be able to say that anymore if I read the one you sent (as I would feel obligated). I was tempted a couple of years ago and actually ordered a book someone here made mention of in GT by someone I read but I never read the book, I should actually send it to you (if I can find it). I think its under one of my end tables I can check.
OK, fine... I haven't figured out how to post on a profile page yet, and you know how I hate pm protocols, but this is on topic, so I will quote a little, ahem:
"One support of the celebrate system has not been considered yet - the Virgin Mary. Modern popes tell priests to think of themselves as virgins consecrated to the Virgin.The study of the priesthood mentioned earlier - the one American bishops commissioned, and then canceled when they saw where it was going - found this trait in seminarians: " Mother dominance, or a prevalence of dominant unconscious mother image (an idealized view of women)." It is often said that Maryenhances the dignity of women. But for mysogenists an idealized mother is both safe in herself and an alternative to lesser women. The Virgin isrrepeatedly useful to prevent the ordination of women - if Mary was not a priest, how can they be? John Paul II even told woen that they do not need to bepriestssince they raise and dedicate the boys who will become priests, and they are in the thoughts of the priest as they stand at the alter and consecrate the host. We saw in an earlier chapter how Vatican dispatches on the subject of Mary's humility were used to torpedo the American bishops' attempts at a statement on the role of women in the modern world. No wonder the Catholic novelist Mary Gordon could write:
In my day, Mary was a stick to beat smart girls with. Her example was held up constantly; an example of silence, of subordination, of the pleasure of taking the back seat... For women like me, it was necessary to reject that image of Mary in order to hold onto the fragile hope of intellectual achievement, independence of identity, sexual fulfillment. Yet we were offered no alternative to this Marian image; hence, we were denied a potent female image whose application was universal.
Precisely because the Marian image held women back, it contributed to male immaturity as well as male power in the church (te two often go together). Sipe finds that a feeling of being "children of Mary" can infantilize spiritual life.
: "Both the idealization of women as virgin/mother and their demotion to a role less than equal to man stultify emotional growth and actually retard celibate development." The past development of a childish piety in minor seminaries helps explain the simplistic sermons that priests produced later on, and the endless concentration on Marian feasts and devotions all through the year. Intellectual adventure and depth in sermons was not for the "little people" who imitate the Virgin's submissiveness.
Although there has been a falling off of devotions like novenas and rosaries in much of the laity, the hierarchy is more Marianized than ever, and private apparitions to women and children result in waves of emotional weeping. Thus on two fronts, as it were, in the center and at the periphery, Marian devotion is kept white hot. The conservative minorityat Vatican II kept lamenting that Mary was not getting enough attention, that she should have been the subject of the treatise on the church, that her role in redemption and the distribution of graces should have been reaffirmed and emphasized. The only two formal exercises of papal infallibility in modern times have been definitions of Marian dogmas - her Immaculate Conception by Pius IX and of her Assumption into Heaven by Pius XII.
The popularity of Mary makes infallible statements about her hard to oppose. Her feast days fill the calendar, and there is constant pressure to add more. The dates of her various appearances are celebrated - John Paul II is sure that Our Lady of Fatima saved him from an assassin because the attempt made on his life occurred on the anniversary of Mary's first appearance to the children of Fatima in Portugal. He undertook a pilgrimage there to thank her for her intervention, and the bullet from Mehmet Ali Agca's gun is now mounted in the crown on the Virgin's statue in the Fatima shrine. "
