brighid

This is really quite lovely :

<a href="http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dml0www/domstroi.html" target="_blank">http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dml0www/domstroi.html</a>

No wonder the world is such a terrible place! The roots of child and spousal abuse in the name of the Christian God.

Brighid

Queen of Swords

This sounds Catholic. Note the references to crosses, holy relics, holy water and penance.

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: QueenofSwords ]</p>

Megatron

And this surprises you? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

brighid

No - it certainly doesn't surprise me - I still find it incredibly wierd though! Like how on Earth could ANYONE believe this shit???

Crush your sons ribs?? Oh and we wonder why the world is filled with such brutality? I try and think of applying those principles to my own son - and it makes me shudder! And anyone who did such things to my child would suffer my wrath - I am NOT pretty when I turn into protective mother mode!

Brighid

lpetrich

This is from Russia, so it's the Eastern Orthodox Church. But that church's practices are very Catholic-like, such as being very idolatrous.

And notice what it recommends as a cure-all for diseases -- prayer and repentance and use of holy relics and the like. If that was successful, then there would be no market for present-day medicine.

manhattan

Oh, for Pete's sake.

I'm all for bashing religions, but --

What is the authenticity of this document? Who wrote it? Was it produced by a church, or some just some non-church-affiliated bonehead? Are we confident it's not a hoax?

What was the state of the art of atheist child-rearing thought in the 1500's? How is this document's thoughts different from how a 16th century non-believer might have brought up his kids?

Is it really necessary to go back to the fifteen freaking hundreds to find things about religion you don't like?

Sheesh! Sometimes I think that some of the "freethinkers" on this site have too much free and not enough think.

Amos

Take it easy Pete, it is called "protestant theology" and probably comes from the "School of Divinity."

Edited to add that in the 16th Century there was no such things as "Christian families" because they were all Catholic. The term "Christian" is typical protestant verbiage to 'be counted among the righteous' and Catholics are typically know as sinners in Christendom. Go to Russia today and ask a Catholic if he /she is a Christian and see the response you will get.

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Toto

THe document is on a site run by the University of Durham, "One of Britain's leading centres of learning."

Luckily, most people of that time and place were illiterate. There are a lot of instruction manuals I have seen from historical periods that are probably not accurate representations of real practices. You can see the mischief that happened when people learned to read the Bible and started taking it seriously.

And there were no atheist child rearing practices in 1500 - any atheists were burned at the stake.

Check out this from <a href="http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dml0www/1649code.html" target="_blank">Excerpts from The Code of Law of 1649 (Ulozhenie) </a>:

sullster

Of course Amos, you never miss a chance to bash your protestant enemies in your grandstand manner.

Hogwash, that in the 16th century all families were catholic. The 16th century was the century of the Reformation and thus many families were protestant. Oh, yes, there were Jewish families too.

What is your point about what a Russian would call a catholic? Didn't you just say that the word "christian" was a protestant name? So what would be the insulting term?

Who knows where this text came from, but to call it "protestant theology", is an example of catholic bigotry. I am no fan of any protestant sect, but history reveals that the Protestant Reformation actually brought back an appreciation of the stable family with children. Instead of the catholic idea of locking up women in convents, the protestants advocated marriage and stable home-life. Discipline of children may not have been so severe as advocated in this text but at least the extolling of the family by the protestants was better for children than being orhpans. Few catholic priests and monks cared for their offspring in the middle ages, and those randy monks fathered a lot of children!

Martin Luther was a family man.

Amos

[Sorry sullster, I did not mean to upset you.

[ January 17, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>