Brian Ross wrote on Oct 25^th, 2014 at 6:52pm:


It appears you have a mental issue brian.

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Historically the church's position on this matter followed the biblical texts such as Genesis 3:16, where God tells Eve that her husband will rule over her, and passages where wives are listed along with a man's other goods and chattels. This view is comprehensively confirmed in the New Testament:

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In line with these statements women were until recent times not permitted to speak in church, and they are still expected to cover their heads in traditional churches. Under Christian emperors and bishops the rights that women had enjoyed under the Roman Empire were gradually pared away. As early as the fourth century it was decreed by a synod that women should neither send nor receive letters in their own name (Synod of Elvira, canon 81 ). They were also confined to minor Orders and forbidden to sing in church. Later they would be deprived of Holy Orders altogether. By 581 a Church Council at Mâcon was debating whether or not women had souls. Church law followed the bible:

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The great Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas taught that women were defective men, imperfect in both body and soul. They were conceived either because of defective sperm or because a damp wind was blowing at the time of conception*. Leading scholars accepted Aquinas's teaching that women had a higher water content than men and that this made them sexually incontinent*. Since they were so watery, weak and unreliable it became a fundamental premise of canon law that they were inferior beings. Following Aquinas*, canon law decreed that women could not witness a will. Neither could they testify in disputes over wills, nor in criminal proceedings Generally women suffered the same sort of legal disabilities as children and imbeciles. They could not practice medicine, law or any other profession, nor could they hold any public office. Here is a piece of reasoning from two famous Roman Catholic scholars: after saying that women are intellectually like children, they explain why women are given to the practice of witchcraft:

    But the natural reason is that she is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations. And it should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in a contrary direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives*.

Women, as inferiors to and possessions of men, were not free to choose their own marriage partners:

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Protestant Churches were no better than the Roman Catholic Church. Luther observed that "Women ... have but small and narrow chests, and broad hips, to the end that they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children". The idea is often abbreviated in English to "A woman's place is in the home". Luther was often quoted with approval during the Nazi period, and in strongly religious areas of Germany it is still commonplace to hear that women should concern themselves only with kinder, kirche, küche (children, the Church and cooking), an attitude that has caused a modern childcare crisis in Germany according to the country's Minister for Family Affairs.*. Luther also insisted on a man's traditional Christian right to beat his wife. He also held firmly to the traditional line on a woman's duty to bear children, even if it killed her: Quote:


Under canon law a woman's husband was both her sovereign and her guardian. In practical terms this meant that she could not legally own property or make contracts. She could not sue at common law without her husband's consent, which meant that in particular she could not sue him for any wrong done to her. If she deliberately killed him, she was guilty not merely of murder but, because of the feudal relationship, treason*. Within living memory it was common in Christian countries for a married woman to be denied credit, and to require her husband's consent for surgical operations. This is still the case in some particularly devout areas, for example in Switzerland After all 1 Corinthians 7:4 states that "The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband ...". (The Bible goes on to state the converse — that a wife has power over her husband's body — but canon lawyers either missed this part or else deduced that it bore a completely different interpretation. As Gratian put it "The woman has no power, but in everything is subject to the control of her husband".

The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstruous Regiment of Women is a polemical work by the Scottish reformer John Knox, published in 1558. It attacks female rulers, arguing the traditional Christian line that rule by females is contrary to the Bible.

So it was that under the Christian Salic Law, women were debarred from inheriting throughout much of Europe. As one chronicler put it in the Fourteenth Century with reference to Isabelle sister of the French King Charles IV: Quote:


Even an English queen's job, spelled out in an old marriage service was Quote:


    The very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of her husband*.

It was this legal doctrine that gave rise to Dickens" observation, put into the mouth of one of his characters, that the law is an ass*. The doctrine enabled an Englishman to lock up his wife and not be liable for the tort of false imprisonment. He could beat her and not be guilty of assault. The same principle permitted him to rape her without the law recognising it as rape. A wife could not proceed against her husband, nor be called to give evidence in court against him. Most such constraints were done away with in Britain by Acts of Parliament in 1935 and 1945* in the teeth of fierce opposition from the organised Churches. In England it remained impossible for a man to be charged with the rape of his wife until the 1990s.

Unmarried women were also inferior beings, or as the Bible puts it weaker vessels (1 Peter 3:7). Fathers were free to treat them as their personal property and swap them for other goods or for political advantage, which is what arranged child marriages often amounted to. Unmarried adult women were not permitted many of the privileges allowed by law to men, nor thought capable of fulfilling the duties expected of men. Like married women, they were prohibited from practising all professions and all but a few trades. In 1588 Pope Sixtus V even forbade them to appear on the public stage within his dominions. Soon the whole of Western Christendom had banned actresses and female singers.

Throughout the whole Christian period and into the 1960s, it was taken for granted that a man was entitled to beat his wife. The idea would have seemed slightly old-fashioned when this advertisement was made, but people would still be expected to recognise the biblical reference: Quote:

The traditional position of the Church, that women were mere chattels of their husbands, was challenged by the usual selection of freethinkers such as Thomas Paine and Jeremy Bentham. The atheist Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. Her husband, the philosopher William Godwin (1756-1836), was a campaigner for women's rights, and so was their atheist son-in-law, the poet Shelley. Other prominent proponents included the unbelieving Mary Anne Evans (1819-1880), whose pen name was George Eliot, and Harriet Law (1832-1897). The Utilitarian J. S. Mill launched the women's suffrage movement in England with a petition to the House of Commons on 7 th June 1866. He published The Subjection of Women in 1869. Other active campaigners included the atheists George Holyoake, Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant. In France the argument for women's rights was led by enemies of the Church like Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and the Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794), and much later in the USA by atheists like Ernestine Rose, Matilda Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Anthony.

Poe's law, named after its author Nathan Poe, states that without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is difficult to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism and a parody of extremism.

[wife beating was still socially acceptable in 1950's America, and continues to be in ever-smaller Christian communities] It seems that a disturbing number of men, bolstered by Christian attitudes, still assume that they have the right to subjugate, abuse and beat their wives*. A sociological study in 1962 revealed that religious orthodoxy was positively correlated with social conservatism on issues such as women's rights*. It is notable that the Church continued to discriminate against women for years after such discrimination was abandoned outside the Church. It was not until 1970 that a woman was authorised to teach Roman Catholic theology*, and throughout the world Churches are still given exemption from sex discrimination legislation. Senior Anglican clergymen could still be outraged in 1996 at the idea of a woman playing the part of God in the York Mystery Plays — denouncing it as paganism*. Christian mainstream thought is now in the process of change. The more liberal sects have started ordaining women again, while the more traditional ones still hold out against it. For them feminism is little short of demonism. .

The ardent Christian evangelist Pat Robinson spoke for many traditionalists when he pointed out that feminism has anti-Christian consequences in a 1992 Iowa fundraising letter opposing a state equal-rights amendment ("Equal Rights Initiative in Iowa Attacked", Washington Post, 23 August 1992)