The Protestant Reformation and Women

There was a French author, Robert Beauvais, who said, "We all wake up each morning a little more Protestant." The Protestant spirit has dominated the outlook of Western Civilization since the 1500s. It traveled to America with the Mayflower and became the dominant mentality of Early American life. So many social commentators, from Max Weber to Robert Nisbet, have written about how it has been transfused, like lifeblood, into the economic, social and political life of the West. It is natural then, that this revolution had a strong influence on women, and this is the topic I want to address here.

Sometime ago, I spoke about how the natural and civil rights of women were respected in the Middle Ages [See audiocassette available from Tradition In Action, "The Middle Ages and Women"]. I told how under the influence and protection of the Holy Church and through the practice of virtue, Catholic queens and princesses converted their pagan husbands and gave birth to the Catholic nations of the West. I spoke about their role and impact on local and national affairs, in education and hospitals. Only in the Middle Ages could the simple daughter of a town cloth dyer, Catherine of Siena, exercise the authority to promote crusades, reconcile bandits and counsel her beloved Babbo - Pope Gregory XI. Christopher Dawson, a great 20th century English historian, noted that women at the end of the Middle Ages had a wider share in social life and a greater influence on civilization than at any time in history.

The role of women changed significantly after the Protestant Reformation.
How and why this was possible is what I want to examine here.

Allow me to first make a brief review of some essentials of Protestant doctrine so that we can look at their effects on women and society.

From the beginning with Martin Luther and John Calvin, there have been some basic common principles of Protestantism:

Let's look first at this loss of any intermediary relationships - the Blessed Virgin, the Saints, and the Church.

In my opinion, the greatest loss to the high status women had gained by the end of the Middle Ages was doing away with the cult and devotion to Our Lady. In the Catholic Church, there is the Kingship of Christ, and also the Queenship of Our Lady. In a Catholic nation, while the king was the father of families, in the household, the man was king of the family. As devotion to the Blessed Mother increased, the role of women likewise took on increasing dignity inside the home and family. Her queenship, similar to the Queenship of Our Lady, was emphasized. Subject to the head, the mother of a family was nonetheless imbued with the rights, dignity, and respect due a queen. This aspect of the mutual respect and dignity suffered a blow with the Protestant reformation.

By closing the convents and insisting that women marry, Protestantism also stripped the high respect and honor the Catholic Church had always given to virgins. In fact, the religious life for women, like that for men, following the three counsels for perfection that Our Lord gave - obedience, chastity and poverty - was considered a higher state of life. The religious vocation was the higher state of life, because it involved a complete dedication to the true work of God, which in the Middle Ages was understood as the praying of the divine office, which never ceased to be said. Hence, the name laus perenne - uninterrupted praise and glory to God. No, this is not a practical work by today's standards, because it existed first and foremost for the glory of God.

Further, as religious, they dedicated their lives to assist others, either through works of charity (teaching, nursing, etc) or prayer. These propitiatory prayers and sacrifices had the intermediary action of earning the salvation of others.

Neither this intrinsic good of prayer for the greater glory of God, nor this intermediary action for the salvation of others was considered "necessary" in Protestantism. Note I stress this word necessary - because one of the characteristics of the mentality that came from the Protestant Revolution is this tendency to reduce everything to the status of a useful good, the bonum utile, and the blindness to the reality of things that can be classified as bona honesta, intrinsic goods. An intrinsic good is something desirable for its own sake and not merely desirable for its ability to help us attain something else. A cloistered convent of Poor Clares, whose life centered around the praying of the Divine Office to give glory to God was the kind of bona honesta rejected by Protestantism. According to Luther and Calvin and all the reformers, convents and monasteries were places for idleness and sin, and the women in convents were either lazy or coerced to be there.

For man cannot be pure, according to Calvin and Luther's doctrine of depraved man. Of course, we know that the Catholic Church teaches that perfect chastity, in imitation of Our Lord and Our Lady, is possible with the supernatural life. The rejection of the supernatural life led Luther to say something very naturalistic, that most modern man raised with Freudian notions, would agree with: "A Christian body must generate, multiply and behave like those of birds and all animals. He was created by God for that. Thus, where God performs no miracle, man must unite with woman and woman with man."

So the convents were closed and the women were "liberated." A woman, who as the Bible said, should be governed by a man, no longer had any right to any vocation but marriage. The Church as the Bride of Christ was eliminated. From this came a new tragedy for a woman: that is, the tragedy of not being married. You can see how deeply entrenched this Protestant notion is in our own society with the negative connotations of the "old maid."

So, what should women do? What they were built for, according to founders of Protestantism. Let's go straight to the words of the major Reformers, or rather, Revolutionaries.

I will quote Luther, the self-proclaimed authority on family, for he said of himself: "Before my day nothing was known, not even what parents or children were, or what wife and maid." Until him, "not one of the Fathers wrote anything notable or particularly good concerning the married state."

This: "The saintly women desire nothing else than the natural fruit of their bodies. For by nature woman has been created for the purpose of bearing children. Therefore she has breasts. She has arms for the purpose of nourishing, cherishing and carrying her offspring." Again, the purely natural view of woman. Nothing of the supernatural.

Or this: "Even though they grow weary and wear themselves out with child bearing, it does not matter; let them go on bearing children till they die. That is what they are there for."

Calvin said many similar things. In Protestant Geneva, motherhood became a sign, even a precondition, of a woman's moral and physical health. It was impossible for a woman to be good Christian except through marriage and motherhood.

John Knox, Scottish reformer: "To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion or empire above any realm, nation, or cities is repugnant to Nature; contumely to God, a thing contrary to His revealed will and approved ordinance. Finally, it is the subversion of good order, or all equity and justice." Good bye then to the women who were heads of orders and communities, who exercised such considerable influence in the Middle Ages through the ownership of property and privileges.

It really comes as no surprise to me that several centuries later, the feminist revolution and emancipation movement found fertile ground for growth, and particularly in the Protestant countries. It was in part a reaction to a distorted view of women, quite different from the view of the Middle Ages, in a Catholic society where there were many outlets for a woman to exercise her influence and capacities.

In Protestantism, what replaced virginity and poverty as the essential female virtue that signal holiness? For surely it couldn't be poverty anymore - a beggar woman like St. Fina or Margaret of Costello could never be held up as holy with the Protestant notion that the predestined souls can be identified by success in this life. Nor could it be charity like that practiced by St. Elizabeth of Hungary, because good works are no longer necessary, but "faith alone" saves.

Rather, the essential virtue for women became obedience, but it was an exaggerated obedience with no rule or intermediary, the Catholic Church, to govern its practice.

I'd like to tell a story that illustrates well a change in mentality that took place from the time of the Middle Ages to the era of the Protestant Revolution.

With Chaucer, it is clear that Griselda is a playful allegory of the virtue of Patience, and is not in any way an attempt to discuss everyday behavior. And just in case someone might be taking the story too seriously, Chaucer says at the end: (permit me to make a loose translation) 'This story is told not for wives to imitate Griselda's actions, for it would be insupportable if they should.'

However, by time Boccacio repeats the same story in the Decameron, he leaves off this warning at the end. This story actually became popular and was taken seriously as an ideal of perfect obedience the wife owed to the husband in the age of Protestant Revolution.

It is interesting to see that Protestant fundamentalists still stress this kind of unthinking obedience, ungoverned by any higher law of a Church, in the submission a woman owes a man. This point is driven home in a popular Protestant book, Me, Obey Him? by Elizabeth Rice Handford (more than a half million in print a few years ago). Several years ago, a Catholic woman gave me this book and asked my opinion. And in fact, it has many good points on the hierarchical structure of marriage established by Christ and the submission owed by the wife to the husband. Many Catholic women have also looked to it for "Biblical" guidance, because of a certain vacuum in recent Church guidance on the matter of obedience. Since the Council there has been much talk of complementarity and different but equal roles, but nothing about submission and obedience a wife owes her husband.

However, there are essential Protestant errors in Handford's book, such as her false reading of the Esau and Jacob story. Further, without sound direction, today's Catholics can become confused over the insistence that Handford placed upon obedience -- to the point that if a wife's husband does not want her to go to Church, she should not go.

What if the husband asks her to have an abortion? According to Mrs. Handford, you ask God to change your husband's heart on the matter. But if his heart doesn't change, the woman can have the abortion and kill her child, provided she obeys lovingly from the heart every command of her husband (like the patient Griselda). With this kind of fundamentalist interpretation, it is no wonder to me there should be a woman's liberation movement. I don't condone it. I only understand its existence.

In a Catholic society, the family, for all its importance, does not control the whole existence of its members. There remains a spiritual side of life that belongs to a spiritual society. In it, authority is reserved to a celibate class. A child must be obedient, but has a right to choose his or her vocation.

In a marriage, marriage is an "order of Love," as St. Augustine says, an order that calls for the primacy of the husband and the willing obedience and ready subjection of the wife. However, as Pius XI says in Casti Connubi, the husband may not command his wife to disobey God's law. And how does the wife know when her husband may be asking her to act contrary to God's will? A well-formed conscience should be her guide. He also distinguishes the subjection of the wife from the obedience that children owe parents.

The limits to the Catholic wife's submission are established by the Magisterium of the Church. Without this authority, early Protestantism sought for a new point of authority, and found it in an exaggerated authority of the husband and father, more reminiscent of the Old Testament Law than the New.

Of course, this Puritanical patriarchal power conflicts with the Protestant principle of equality. Therefore, while first movement of the Protestant revolution would uphold a strict family structure with an exaggerated authority given to the husband and father, the seeds of the revolt would eventually produce a different kind of family structure. It would be the feminist revolution that would demand absolute equality not only in matters of religion and private interpretation, but in every social institution, including marriage.

Here is another contradiction. While this first Protestant prototype of family emphasized the male and made the family the religious and social base of society, at the same time it struck a powerful Herculean blow to the stability of the institution of marriage itself with the introduction of divorce.

In the Catholic Church, The Church seals the sacrament of Marriage as an inviolable union. A union so sacred that St. Paul makes it the symbol of the union between Christ and his Church. As St. Frances de Sales said: "God joins the husband to the wife in a union so strong that the soul must sooner separate from the body of the other, than the husband from the wife."

However, this was not the way Luther and the Protestant revolutionaries interpreted St. Paul's words. Luther was clear about this: Marriage was a civil affair, "something to be ruled by local traditions, without any kind of Christian standard." "A material thing, like any other secular business." It shows how far free judgment may go in dealing with the most sacral of things.

Was this a good for the woman? Remember, her sole function in society now is marriage and childbearing. Now, further, with the introduction of divorce, she is denied the security and benefits - both psychological and economic - which come from an indissoluble marriage that affords her the security to raise her children without going to work and have a stable home.

Even Protestant historians agree that divorce, even though it was rare at the beginning, tended to favor the husband, not the wife. Further, divorce has been a major factor contributing to the present crisis in the family. Today more and more sociologists are agreeing that divorce is detrimental to the children, and has contributed to a narcissist, egocentric society we have been reduced to today.

I am sorry to say that the Protestant "reformers" are the remote cause for the sin and disorder that have followed in the wake of divorce in our day. Thus one modern feminist professor can teach: "Beginning with Henry VIII's attempts to divorce Anne Boleyn, the Protestant Reformation in England was from the start a reformation of gender and sexual politics."

Protestant revolution was not the origin of protestantism.The first protestant church was the apostolic church. The church depicted in New Testament Bible do not pray to “saints” or use statues\images in prayer,worship or have other lies like compulsory celibacy,purgatory,transubstantiation,Apostolic succession etc. Thus the original Apostolic God’s Church was Protestant/Evangelical in essence. Later in 4th century Constantine the then roman emperor gave Christianity a special status in his empire,inorder to consolidate the diminishing power of his goverment because of the fastly increasing christian minority that was spread throughout the Roman empire.Through the edict of milan, thessalonica and council of nicae what they did was not toleration for christianity,but to create a new fake religion in the name of Jesus,in which they integrated the ancient roman idolatry as the practice of intercession to saints. Many christians at that time and after 4th century AD, were against this.Some of them were early Jewish Christians,Donatists, Manichaens,Paulicians,Bogomils,Cathars,Waldensians,Hussites and finally Protestants. When Constantine gave Christianity a special status in his empire in-order to consolidate the diminishing power of his government because of the fastly increasing christian minority that was spreading throughout the Roman empire.But majority in his empire was still pagan and they found it hard to forgo of their old idolatrous practices. So the state changed the names of their old idols to “christian” names and continued to use them in prayer/worship . This came to be known as “intercession/veneration to saints” and is still practiced by catholic and orthodox ‘christians’.Other pagan to christian transmutations include changing of Solar mass of December 25th to Christ mass,changing of fertility goddess Ishtar festival to Easter. True Christians like early Jewish christians,Donatists(North Africa,Southern Europe),Manichaens(middle east,,central asia) who existed from1st-15th century AD,opposed this idolatrous practice of intercession/veneration of saints but catholics branded them heretics and massacred them.Later Paulicians & Bogomils who existed from6-12th century AD were against this idolatrous practice.Aftar that Cathars who existed from 11-13th century AD,Waldensians,Hussites & Protestants who existed from 11th century AD till this day, were against this idolatrous practice and other unscriptural lies of catholic/orthodox sects.Iconoclastic movement of (7th-8th century) century was against this practice, later protestant revolution (15-16th century) was waged mainly against this practice. Thus when Constantine gave Christianity special status in his empire,idolatry also entered along with it in the unsuspecting name of “intercession to saints”.This soon spread to most of the church,because such was the influence of roman empire at that time.But few like early Jewish Christians,Donatists(North African Christians) and followers of Mani ~ Manichean’s (Mani was a 2nd century apostle of Jesus whose followers spread from Persia to Balkans in the west and to China in the east,before falling into oblivion probably because of Islamic conquest) remained true to the gospel of Lord Jesus Christ,despite severe persecutions from Catholic/Orthodox sects. Later remenants of these Christians spread to Turkey and Balkans where they were called Paulicians and Bogomils respectively in 6th century AD.They were behind the Iconoclastic movement of 7-8th century(Protestant-Christian revolution of 16th century is considered by scholars to be the 2nd Iconoclastic movement).Both these groups came under heavy persecution from Catholics because they dared to expose the truth of Christ to them.Finally they were wiped out by catholic crusaders,en route to capture Jerusalem by a secret directive from Vatican in 12th century,perhaps the real intention of antichristians(catholics) for taking up crusades was to wipe out true christian like Paulcians and Bogomils who exposed their idolatry and lies. But almost simultaneously,the spirit of God started 2 new christian movements in heart of Catholicism itself~in Italy and France in 11th century AD . In italy they were called Waldensians and in France they were called Cathars .Cathars were wiped out in the 12th centutry by catholic crusaders~a mass murder popularly called as cathar/albunesian crusade (catholic church still take great “evil” pride in these crusades) .But Italian Waldensians continued to survive despite of severe catholic persecution and they remain to this day . By 15th century printing was invented and bible became available to masses . The ignorant masses came to know about truth that catholic church was doing idolatry in the name of god and following unscriptural lies. They revolted and it came to be known as protestant revolution and were led by many great leaders like Jan Hus,Jan Zizka,Martin Luther,Ulrich Zwingli,John Calvin,Petr Celcisky,John Knox,John Wesley and many others .Today protestants number more than 900 million . In future (after the soon coming WW3) they(protestants/evangelicals) will unite as single God’s church and all people living on earth will be it’s members.The 3rd temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem and it shall be called “the house of prayer for people of all nations” exactly as Jesus predicted nearly 2000 years ago.Animal and other sacrifices will be offered there in the remembrance of the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross,just as it symbolized the coming sacrifice of Lord Jesus Christ in the old testament period.Thiswill remain till coming of Lord Jesus Christ in mid heavens to take his church from this earth ( rapture) . In rapture believers will be taken and hypocrites left behind to face great tribulation(such as never happened before or never will in the future) which will last for 7 years.In the half of this 7 year period antichrist will break his agreement with Israeli’s and set himself up in Jerusalem Temple as God,and stop the temple sacrifices and offerings.He will require all to have number 666 imprinted on them to buy or sell.Those who get this mark of 666 are damned for eternalhell.So anybody who happens to be in tribulation period,want salvation he/she has to die as martyrs,or be a part of 144,000 who will be fed in wilderness. I understand catholics will be angered by this, but their anger is in vain because this is the truth and truth will triumph.Also note that throughout the centuries catholics branded(and still branding) all these groups as dualistic pagans heretics who need to be wiped out from face of earth… such brandings(stereotypings) were less effective against prots,inorder to fulfill the prophecy of Jesus-”You are peter(petros-masculine noun in greek, meaning a small stone) and i shall build my church(non feminist Protestantism) on this rock(petra-feminine noun in Greek, meaning a large mass of rock,not the degrading dead body of peter buried under Vatican as catholics claim/believe)and gates of hell(Catholicism and other false religions/ideologies) will not prevail over it”. The Roman Catholic Church interprets Jesus here to say, “You are Peter, and upon you, Peter, I will build My church.” Peter would be the rock upon which the church is built. There are several problems with this interpretation. The first is that someone reading Matthew’s Gospel in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, would not have immediately concluded that Peter was the rock. In the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus said to Simon, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church” (Matthew 16:18), His choice of words was significant. Though Peter’s name means rock (petros), Jesus did not say, “You are Peter (Petros), and upon this rock (petros-which accurately means a small unstable stone) I will build my church,instead he said you are peter(petros) and i shall build my church on this petra(meaning bedrock,or a large rock mass). Peter’s name, Petros,is masculine in gender and refers to a boulder or a detached stone. Greek literature also uses it of a small stone that might be picked up and thrown. What Jesus said to Peter could be translated, “You are Stone, and upon this bedrock I will build My church.” His choice of words would indicate that the rock on which the church would be built was something other than Peter,which can only refer to the revelation given to Peter by the most high God,that is-Jesus is the Christ(messiah), the Son of the living God in the given scriptural context-Mathew16:16-18. Also apostolic succession claim by catholic/orthodox sects by which they claim that authority of keys given by Lord Jesus to Peter in Mathew16:19 is transferred only to a select few leaders who have dubious claim of lineage to Peter like catholic papacy.ButLord Jesus gave this “authority of keys” to all his believers/followers in Mathew18:18.Thus this Apostolic succession claim of catholic/orthodox sects is proved to be another lie by scriptures. These are the events that will happen in the future:- After the soon coming WW3/Gog Magog war(Ezekiel 38,39) all false religion in the world will become extinct and the all people living on earth will become members of the one true religion of God aka God’s/Christ’s church aka non feminist protestantism(those christians that reject catholic/orthodox idolatry of intercession/veneration of saints and other lies like apostolic succession and donot promote feminist lies like female pastors and sexual perversions like homosexuality/adultery etc) atleast for namesake. The 3rd temple will be built in Jerusalem and animal and other sacrifices will be offered their in tribute to eternal and ultimate sacrifice of Lord Jesus Christ on the cross for the sins of all mankind ,some 2000 years ago. People from all nations of the earth will come to offer their prayer and sacrifices in this temple and the temple shall be called “house of prayer for people of all nations” exactly as God spoke through prophet Isiah,which was repeated by Lord Jesus-Mark11:17,Mathew21:13,Isiah56:7. Then rapture will occur in which Lord Jesus will come in mid-heavens with trumpet sound of arch-angel and take all true christians(both living and dead) to heaven and leave behind all hypocrites-namesake christians on earth to face 7 year tribulation period aka wrath of God. Events that happen on earth before rapture(church age) are detailed in Mathew24:4-14,Mark13:5-13, The rapture event is detailed in 1Thessalonians 4:13-18,2Thessalonians2:7. After the rapture, for 7 years great tribulation/wrath of God on those who rejected him will occur all over earth.At the end of this 7 year period Jesus will come with 10,000′s of his saints and defeat satanic forces of beast and false prophet and send beast and false prophet to lake of fire and sulfur which burn eternally ,ressurect the 144,000 elect of Israel along with martyrs of great tribulation period who didn’t recieve the mark of the beast,which is 666--Revelations 20:4-6 (this ressurection along with the ressurection of the rapture and the resurrection of Jesus Christ along with some ressurected saints who appeared to people in Jerusalem after Jesus rose from the dead(Mathew27:52,53) is the ressurection of the just),set up his millennial kingdom and martyrs of church period,old testament period and the great tribulation period will rule with Lord Jesus Christ for the 1000 years(millenium)-Revelations 20:4 and chain Satan in the abyss for a period of 1000 years-Revelations 20:1-3 .These events are detailed in Revelations chapter 4 to chapter 20:6,Jude1:14-15. After this thousand years Satan will be set loose for a short while and he will bring many nations(Gog and magog) to attack God’s people.But fire will come down from heaven and destroy them,and Satan will be thrown into lake of fire and sulfur to which beast (antichrist) and false prophet was thrown and will burn eternally-Revelation20:7-10. Then God will sit in a white thrown and earth and heaven will flee away from his prescence and all who were not resurrected in the resurrection of the just, will be ressurected and will be judged according to their works and all those whose names are not written in the book of life will be sent to lake of fire and sulfur which burn eternally.Then New heavens,New Earth and New Jerusalem will come for all eternity which will be God dwelling with all whose names are written in the book of Life, forever.-Revelations20:11-22:21.

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Mid-Summer Hiatus Issue July 15 - September 1, 2002 volume 13, no. 104 TRUE ECHOES OF CATHOLICISM www.DailyCatholic.org