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3DOCTORS
Guest
Okay, for the sake of argument, say we accept the premise that this is a mental and spiritual exercise. But I still suspect that most people wouldn’t be able to get through the whole thing or even one book without getting burnt out on the tediousness of it.
I also have a hard time picturing someone’s life and spirituality being profoundly changed - unless it is to change them to become more like those who conceptualized this SVB project in the first place. People, often young, though not exclusively, maybe at midlife - but in a time of life where they question their beliefs and are vulnerable to making changes if something sounds really good on the surface and they don’t delve into the deeper agendas behind it and the long-term implications of those agendas.
Another possibility is that they were leaning in that direction and reading SVB tipped them over the edge into “full communion” with the womenpriest advocates, so to speak. Or they already were game for similar experiments (for example “women’s Eucharists” or something). So for them, the SVB is, in effect, preaching to the choir in that instance.
Those who see something like the SVB as a social-justice eye-opener are making certain assumptions from the get-go. It’s not that hard to see where they may have started off with a good idea but carried it too far off and ended up in strange territory with it. In America, where there have been legitimate civil-rights struggles, we are going to have a harder time sorting the wheat from the chaff.
It was wrong to treat people differently on the basis of race or ethnicity. And women should get equal pay for equal work, be protected from abuse, rape and harassment and financial snafus like debt their husbands incurred without their knowing - in other words be treated with respect and charity. Persons with same-sex attraction, too, should have basic human rights and be treated with kindness (but I don’t believe they have the same status as an ethnic group or have the right to redefine marriage - but that’s a topic unto itself which already has many CAF threads devoted to it).
Anyway, bottom line, I think the SVB could be a thing that offers a false premise of “consciousness-raising” that is attractive on the surface to many, but has more potential to deliver harm than good. Fortunately, I think it’s literary clunkiness may impair its widespread popularity, that it will collapse rather quickly under the weight of its own pretentiousness.