nazard wrote:The point is that Jesus chose to ignore her lovelife except to mention that he knew about it. He felt it was more important to make her aware of the water which would quench her thirst for ever.
My point, which is in contradiction of your point, is that you have no evidence that he chose to ignore her love life because no confirmation is given one way or another concerning whether or not he communicated with the woman subsequent to the encounter at the well. In short, we cannot know for sure whether or not he 'laid down the law' about her love life. The woman about to be stoned for adultery was spoken to with an imperative, "do not sin again"; why didn't he 'ignore' her love life 'except to mention it'? We have the story of the Syrophoenician woman, whom he was at first far from respectful to, linking non-Jews to dogs.
Instructing Catholics to sing during mass not the same as telling either Catholics or non-Catholics what to do outside of liturgy. He was 'indignant' with the disciples when they were preventing children being brought to him and he issued an instruction then too. His response to a man with a dumb son was, "faithless generation, how long am I to put up with you," followed by an instruction. "He turned and said to Peter, "get behind me, Satan"". We have the book of Acts and letters of the New Testament, where the behaviour of individuals is often enough far from 'ignored except to mention it', with the counsel of excommunication for a man who had his father's wife.
Early church teaching was not completely namby-pamby.
