"9--But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry, for it is
better to marry than to be burnt."
When the church became a political power rather than a strictly
religious institution, it needed a high birth rate to provide laymen
to support its increasingly expensive organization. It then began to
exploit the sex force for its own interest. It reversed its position
in regard to children. It encouraged marriage under its own control
and exhorted women to bear as many children as possible. The world was
just as sordid and the birth wails of the infants were just as
piteous, but the needs of the hierarchy had changed. So it modified
the standard of sex morality to suit its own requirements--marriage
now became a sacrament.
Shrewd in changing its general policy from celibacy to marriage, the
church was equally shrewd in perpetuating the doctrine of woman's
subjection for its own interest. That doctrine was emphatically stated
in the Third Chapter of the First Epistle of Peter and the Fifth
Chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. In the Douay version of
the latter, we find this:
"22--Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord.
"23--Because the husband is the head of the wife; as Christ is the
head of the Church.
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