Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven

Women, Sexuality, and the Catholic Church.
written by Uta Ranke-Heinemann.

I did not read the whole book.

On page three (the first page of the first chapter) the author states "...that Jesus was a thoroughly "lust-free," i.e. joyless Redeemer."
Now that we have established that lust is the only way to joy:

...connects sexual pleasure so closely with the concept of "sin" that one more legal point should be clear: Sexual pleasure is not a good thing...the old Catholic view that there can be no sexual pleasure without sin.  (p. 4)

 These two points are in discussion of a session held in 1981 in the District Court of Hamburg.  The court is the one doing the connecting of sexual pleasure with sin, while the author is the one doing the connecting of all sexual pleasure to lust.  Presumably for the purpose of this book.
On page eleven it is stated that "...marriage was a permit to indulge in lust for those who found lust indispensable..." in reference to the Stoic view of marriage/sex.
Now that we have established that all sex is lust:

Like many neurotics he radically separates love and sexuality.  (p. 76)

This reminds me of my philosophy class in college.  When defining the term "love" in the first week the professor asked if there could be a difference between making love and having sex.  With no hesitation a girl in the front row said, "no."  This was rather disturbing to me as there is most certainly a difference between making love and having sex.  The contrast is quite stark, to me, and should not be overlooked.  But it is being overlooked by many, including the author.

So.  We have established the following:
Lust equates to joy.
Sex equates to lust.
Sex equates to love.

The implications are, to me, that one cannot find joy without lust and one cannot have love without sex.
I'm not following this line of thought.  It is apparent that you can find joy without lust, as there are many things that bring joy other than lusting or sexing whomever you please.  Sex with no love is the purest form of lust, and this does not make a good majority of women happy, yet this is what the author seems to find as the ideal (as the quote from p. 76 seems to show).  Further adding to my suspicion that this is her stance the author writes the following:

The philosophers of the Stoa condemned all extramarital sex and demanded conjugal fidelity from both spouses.  (p. 10)

The above is put in a negative context.  Apparently being faithful to your spouse is a bad thing.

So, with these in mind we move to Augustine.  The book had a lot to say on Augustine (and a fair bit on Aquinas as well) such as, "And since at bottom Augustine loathed pleasure more than he liked procreation, Catholic tradition has been preserved..." (p.280).  This is in reference to pope John Paul II allowing periodic continence as a form of birth control, basically saying that since periodic continence restricts sex, the pleasure-hating continues in accordance to Augustine.
Augustine is, apparently, the source of all Catholic teaching.
Also on page 280, "...the continual stress on children as the first purpose of marriage is really aimed at...keeping married couples away from sex."  I seem to have forgotten exactly what the natural product of sex was.  Isn't it something about creating more of the species.  What do you call it?  Oh, children.
This brings me to the final quote I wrote down:

Strictly speaking, it is an insoluble problem, because where there is no moral difference, none can be found."  (p. 281)

This is concerning the difference between contraception and what the author calls the rhythm method.  Never-mind that the author is completely uneducated about said method calling two separate methods (one bound to fail for it's incorrect assumptions, the other being following the natural cycle of the woman) the same.  I suppose that being a practitioner of NFP/FAM I'd know the difference a bit more readily than someone who is not acquainted with either.  Still...
At any rate, the difference is pretty distinct in my opinion.  What the author calls the rhythm method does not disturb the natural cycle of things.  Contraception, largely, does.  That is the difference between the two.
Not only that, but with the "rhythm" method you strengthen your self-control, the relationship between your partner, and your family (if you have one).  There are other benefits to it as well.

Like I said earlier, I didn't read the whole book.  I sometimes skipped entire chapters because they weren't about anything that interested me (namely oppression of women) and I skipped large sections of chapters for redundancy, or things like relating antiquated scientific views.
There was not a large part in this book about the direct oppression of women.  There was a whole chapter, maybe two devoted to it, but one of these was about how terribly hateful celibate men were to women.
The whole book put sex and lust on such a pedestal that I started to kind of feel sorry for the author.  If sex was that important to her, she might have been kind of miserable.

To sum all of this up:
I got the impression that the book attributed more import to sex than I think is due, and from the very get-go I could not agree with the author's view of lust as joy (being as I see lust as loveless sex, and loving sex brings far more joy) and so there were a lot of other associations I had trouble understanding.
This was the first book in a long while that I found I had to stop, reread the paragraph I had just read (sometimes twice), and then occasionally the paragraph before to follow what the author was saying.
It was a nice challenge, but I don't particularly find it relevant (although it did once site the Roman Catechism regarding marital sex).  The majority of the text was spent harping on how terribly in hate with all sex Christians are, and thus women must also be hated.  There was too much quoting of saints and not enough direct teaching of the church.

What I learned:
A lot of men who followed the Catholic faith also hated women.

As a small note, this book is dedicated to the author's husband.  I can't figure out if that means she liked being married, or hated it.