Stan Parmisano

The Craft of Love: Love and Intimacy in Christian Marriage Stan Parmisano

Those who think of Adam and Eve as merely a mythical story also know instinctively that this myth, like all great myths, reveals an eminent truth-human society is fashioned first and foremost on the complementarity of male and female. While Parmisano confirms marriage to be the primordial society, he begins with an alluring topic-romance and love-making. He avoids ideology, and carefully eschews dialectical argument. A legalistic approach, he notes, could find facts to 'prove' anything. Rather, in his search for the truth, he takes a period when Christian theory was fully developed and well recorded and describes the philosophical, liturgical, literary, and poetic understanding of that time-14th century England His thorough scrutiny does not deny the sublime "emotions" of amour courtois. But it grounds them in Christian "theory" that celebrates the love of husband and wife as the greatest of human loves, so great as to be indissoluble, so holy and meritorious that the more passion in loving the better; and that the marriage-act, the natural expression of the union of husband and wife, symbolizes the union of the soul with God. He shows the sacred nature of marriage accepted by the Church demands nothing less than free choice. This was often bitterly opposed. From time immemorial it was customary for the young, and in particular women, to be directed to marriage by family. This drive for personal freedom became emblematic of Western culture. Is the import of The Craft of Love for today just interesting history? No! In accord with the true purpose of history, it provides muscular ideas to fashion responses to the challenges at hand.