Book Review: Badger’s Moon
Originally published at Grasping for the Wind. Please leave any comments there.
This is a resurrection of an old post.
The third reading was one of Peter Tremayne�s Irish mysteries. Badger�s Moon is a book filled with stunning description and detail of the pre-medieval Irish world. A.D. 667 is the time and of course, the place is Eirann. I find the mystery interesting and often surprising. I rarely ever can figure out the culprit, although all of the clues are there for me to see, plain as day. The other point I would like to make about this book is that I do find its arguments that it was all right for monastics to marry because it was more �natural� less than compelling. It is true that God created woman for man and man for woman, but unfortunately its nature is corrupted due to sin. This then means that the argument that marriage between monastics is just as compelling as the argument for celibacy, at least to me. Both have inherent sin in their lifestyles, so the argument holds no water. Of course, I do not have a problem with having monastics marry (after all, my preacher is married and he is as close to a monastic as the Protestant tradition gets) but I also have no problem with monastics choosing celibacy as well. I just think that the argument Tremayne presents (I don�t know if he believes it himself) is not compelling enough. And yes, I am aware that his is a work of fiction and not meant to be a theological argument, but if a writer brings it up, he better be able to defend it, even in fiction.