Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality, and the Catholic Church - Hardcover

Ranke-Heinemann, Uta

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385265271 ISBN 13: 9780385265270

Publisher: Doubleday, 1990

Synopsis

Looks at how the Catholic Church's view on sexuality has been used as a weapon to control women, and offers suggestions on making the Church's teaching on sex more realistic

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

From Publishers Weekly:

A bestseller in Europe, this erudite, impassioned attack on the Catholic Church's hostility toward sexual pleasure, women and the body is sure to spark controversy. German Catholic theologian Ranke-Heinemann argues that the historic Jesus opposed biases against women and evinced a positive attitude toward marriage but celibate theologians misinterpreted his message as a call to renounce marriage. Theology became the business of bachelors; sex was equated with sin. Excoriating the Church Fathers for their contemptuous attitude toward women, the author reviews the Church's positions on infanticide and abortion (often said to be the same), its revulsion for homosexuality and its "embittered struggle" against contraception. The Virgin Birth, she contends, is a New Testament metaphor, not a historical event. For expressing this opinion, she lost her ecclesiastical license to teach at a German university in 1987. Her scholarly polemic in Heinegg's flowing translation is crammed with absorbing sexual and religious lore.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0385265271
• ISBN 13: 9780385265270
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368