ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 discusses the gamut of institutions that emerged to be salient in local rationalisations of the continuation of conjugal and battered women’s responses to abusive partners, including police units, social courts and women’s associations operating the local level. All the research participants affirmed the central role of the clergy, who typically served as mediators of conjugal problems and acted as the main point of reference for religious matters among the laity. The chapter presents the discourses of local clergy on gender-related matters and marriage and their pastoral practices in dealing with conjugal problems through the narratives of the laity. The analysis develops a nuanced picture for the role and the effects of the local clergy in the conjugal relationship. While the discourses of some members of the Church have potentially enforced rigid social norms, the clergy have simultaneously provided support services that may not have been otherwise available due to the limitations of state-led institutions. Juxtaposing clergy discourses to the socio-cultural norms around marriage and the conjugal relationship highlighted in the previous chapter suggests that the clergy’s limitations are not the outcome of acculturation or a lack of theological training alone, as many learned scholars and theologians seemed to believe, but might reflect also the Old Testament orientation of both Church and society.
