*Feminists outraged by best-seller for young wives


Feminists across Spain are up in arms over a book on marriage and femininity aimed at young wives; but young women made it a best-seller in Italy and it has hovered near the top of the Spanish best-seller list for weeks.

The feminists have launched book-ripping protests. And some politicians have even called for a ban on the book, written by Italian journalist Costanza Miriano and published by the Archdiocese of Granada.

Spain’s Health & Equality Minister Ana Mato, told the media that she “would like for the book to be withdrawn, as it is disrespectful towards women.”

And a United Left councillor in Granada has asked the city’s district attorney to take action against the work, calling it an “apology for violence against women.”

But the author and the Archbishop of Granada, Francisco Javier Martinez, have vigorously defended the book.

Miriano, a wife and the mother of four young children, explained that it is “about engagement, marriage, family life, being open to life, having and raising children.”

It’s not about spouses yelling about their rights, she explained, but about each person recognising his or her own poverty.

Her aim was to “translate the Church’s teaching on marriage into a language that all can understand. Especially those who are distant from the Church.”

She was not upset by the criticism because “any woman who reacts this way is a wounded woman, she has not found her true beauty, she is not at peace and is not happy in her vocation.”

In Italy it had sold 50,000 copies and “the mothers and wives who I know are happy, have loved the book,” she said.

Archbishop Martinez called the criticism “ridiculous and hypocritical.” The controversy, he said, is being caused by people “who have other interests and motives which are not precisely defending women or caring about their dignity.”

He added: “It’s more about damaging the only institution that refuses to be domesticated by the rolling pin of the dominating culture: the Christian people.”

He noted how books which mock sacred realities like marriage and maternity are protected by “freedom of expression which, by the way, is a Christian invention.”

“Neither this book nor any of my statements have ever justified or promoted violence against women,” he remarked.

Rather, he pointed out, it is abortion and “all the measures that weaken or eliminate marriage” that do that.

Some of the hostility may have arisen from the book’s provocative title, Get Married and Be Submissive.

But Miriano was speaking about submission in St Paul’s, not the feminist, sense.

She explained that Paul had encouraged spouses to submit to one another.

It’s a point she makes also in her second book which is for young husbands and is titled Get Married and Lay Down Your Life for Her.

Readers have given the book a 4.5 out of 5 stars rating on Amazon.com. One person called it “a hymn to the beauty of women, a genuinely feminine book. Violence has nothing to do with what Miriano writes, as she describes a family love that luckily still exists in the world. It’s precious!”

For another reader it was a “great read. It talks about service, chosen freely and for love, by the woman to her family … Would be very useful read for engaged people.”

Another comment stated: “I perfectly understand why Spanish politicians attack it. They’re scared that Spaniards might wake up from the ‘politically correct’ dictatorship.”


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