Talk:Forty Hours' Devotion

Latest comment: 8 years ago by 2001:A61:210E:7201:1C0A:B531:B871:BA9D in topic Untitled

Untitled edit

Curious. This is an interesting devotion and intriguing prayer exercise. But can anyone shed some light as to why "women must be excluded" from the devotion at night? I mean, other than general Catholic institutional sexism? Why only at night? Are they afraid they're more tempting to men when the moon is up?

75.6.9.36 20:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)B.FloodReply

I should have thought it was a fairly obvious precaution against scandal and gossip, given that there would naturally tend to be few people attending in the small hours, so giving occasion to all manner of salacious speculation as to what Father X and Miss Y were doing alone in there all that time … Vilĉjo (talk) 02:05, 25 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

Nowadays at least it is presented as a safety measure in case the unlocked church is invaded by drunks or troublemakers, but perhaps this is skating over the original intentions for which I am inclined to agree with Vilcxjo (but source?). In practice women are permitted to attend at night and can in fact outnumber the men. 146.90.169.97 (talk) 17:54, 29 March 2014 (UTC)Reply

Note that the Wikipedia heavily relies on the Catholic Encyclopedia (because public domain) which describes what was then the practice. The reason for the exclusion of women at night was as a safeguard to 6th commandment issues and suspicion of such (obviously; though yes, a soure might be helpful still); this was, perhaps, shall we say it, overly anxious (or adapted to a society much less adapted to women and men being together). The rule does not exist any-more; should it still be practiced somewhere, it would be out of a "let's do it as they used to do it" feeling. - Now once it is agreed to shut out one of the sexes at night, the female one is the logical choice, as men make up the clergy (which is, so to speak, there by profession and not bound by their laical duties next morning) and could more easily drop out at night for an hour of watching. In nunneries I guess it was different, and the women made up the night-time watchers (any material on that?).--2001:A61:210E:7201:1C0A:B531:B871:BA9D (talk) 18:36, 7 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

Article edit

Im putting up a speedy deletion for this article, its almost a complete copy of New Advents page._Þέŗṃέłḥìμŝ LifeDeath 12:01, 21 April 2009 (UTC)Reply