"Tell me about your mother superior"

[apostle_of_eris]

It's a long-standing puzzle to me that it seems so much clearer to me than to many other people that one of the basic drivers of the right-wing program is sexual hysteria. "Anti-abortion"ists want to punish sexually active women. Homosexuality is so deeply provocative that it can't be talked about rationally at all

Comments

[saycestsay]

I think that's Dan Brown's next thriller... the evil psychoanalysts' overthrow of religious life.

More seriously, religious community life requires suppression of natural emotions and those wonderful drives evolved in the propagation of species. Of COURSE a program designed to open your eyes and give permission to own up to those emotions and drives will play hob (and I use that word advisedly) will orderly religious life.

Though I kinda feel bad for the new crop of religious who are given this new tool in self-repression.

Almost makes ya wanna jump up and down on Oprah's sofa.

[siderea]

Thank you for this! I'm actually (veeeeery, veeeeeery slowly) working on an essay about the history of the relationship between religion and psychotherapy.

[mplsfish]

I have always felt called to a monastic life without feeling an affinity for any christian religion. Buddhism seems like it might work for me, once I get the parenthood phase of my life out of the way. Celibacy still gives me a problem, but I am willing to be convinced it is necessary to enlightenment. Eventually. I have several other callings to fulfill. Monasticism can wait.
I wonder what is the basis of a calling one can be essentially talked out of.