[Sca-cooks] a Lenten question-

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 05:18 PM 2/11/2005, you wrote:

>I like the story about Saint Jerome and Pelagius. They were hundreds of 
>miles apart, on their respective deathbeds, communicating by mail, and 
>Pelagius, whom Jerome had previously described as a fat dog, stuffed to 
>the bursting point with disgusting Scottish porridge, begged Jerome to 
>forgive him his trespasses, so they might stand as comrades before God in 
>the hereafter. Jerome, of course, ever the patron saint of 2005, responded 
>to his dear brother in Christ's request by saying, in essence, that the 
>possibility of Pelagius standing before God wasn't anything he needed to 
>worry about, and whatever is the Vulgate Latin for "screw you". 
>Essentially, the last scene in the movie, "The War of the Roses".
>
>Gotta love that Saint Jerome...

Yeah, not one of my faves either. Jerome and Origen are responsible for 
most of the dogma condemning women. Stay in your cave and eat weeds, bro.

On a side not kinda having to do with fasting- I've found it interesting 
how many pious women and female mystics express their devotion in their 
diet. Fasting (near starving, if you ask me), rigorously restricting diet, 
or even living on nothing but the Host. One of the female saints- at the 
moment it escapes me who- got a magical wafer from God that she ate and it 
sustained her for some huge amount of time.

It seems me that a significant part of this female fascination with food is 
because it is the one thing that a woman had nearly complete control over- 
that is, to eat or not to eat. She may have no choice in her station in 
life, who she married, or how many children she had, but she could refuse 
to eat, and if that was the one thing of her own that she could give to 
God, that was it. It is also interesting how many of these same women had 
an incredible devotion to the host- and if you've ever read Catherine 
Walker Bynum's _Holy Feast and Holy Fast_, you know how weird and twisted 
that can be.

And as far as I can tell, anorexia and bulimia are not a modern phenomenon...

'Lainie
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O it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it 
like a giant--Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act II