Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women
| Authors | Brennan, Dan |
| Tags | Man-woman relationships -- Religious aspects -- Christianity, Friendship -- Religious aspects -- Christianity |
| Publisher | Faith Dance Pub. |
| Published | 14 set 2010 |
| Date | 26 set 2020 |
| Languages | eng |
| Identifiers | Goodreads, Amazon.com, lcn: BT 7058 .B746x 2010, isbn: 9780982580707, google: IUAJQgAACAAJ, url: https://archive.org/details/MenWomenFriendship, uri: https://www.danjbrennan.com/, oclc: 618923911 |
| Formats | PDF, PDF_ORIGINAL |
Description
WARNING: Author an "evangelical Protestant", but his book mentions "Catholic" 26×; he thinks Evangelicals should be more aware of the beautiful male-female relationships in the "Catholic tradition". Contains interesting insights on the strength of brother-relationships (stronger even than marriage‽), St. Mary Magdalen's kissing Jesus's feet, and meeting Jesus in the garden where His sepulchre was (Song of Songs set in an enclosed garden, too).
John Fortin, O.S.B. review on back cover.
Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions offers a compelling case for Christian men and women to move beyond the fears of sexuality and open themselves to deeper friendships.
There is so much more to male-female friendships than "genital sex"!
cf. pp. 90-91 of Sweet Surrender: How Cultural Mandates Shape Christian Marriage;** p. 91n40 cites a quote from p. 17 of this book:
Friendships between the sexes are increasing in contemporary culture and, even more significantly, trans-marital friendship love is emerging as a sacred option for husbands and wives in Christ-honoring marriages. More than ever, friendship love between a man and a woman is poised to become a receptive love coexisting with marriage, not a rival love to it.
Dan Brennan - Friendships between Men and Women
I'd like to read this book on Kindle
The book really seems to be a treatment of virginal or platonic relationships; cf. Ford's Validity of Virginal Marriage.
p. 22:
If you are looking for […] an appeal to return to a "Focus on the Family" 1950's value system [cf. +Williamson's #177 August 3, 1998 “Fiftiesism”, PDF pp. 1005-1010] with safe, predictable, distance, cut-and-dried boundaries to protect marriages and "family values," then this book might prove terrifying. However, if you are beginning to see there is more to male-female relationships than either marriage or extramarital sexual relationships this book is for you.
Celibate Love by Conner, O.P., is good, too, and written from a Catholic and Dominican perspective, but Brennan's is geared more toward marrieds and covers some examples of male-female friendship in Church history that Conner, O.P., doesn't (like Queen St. Margaret of Scotland and Turgot, pp. 64-5, PDF pp. 58-59).