AS more and more women left their traditional roles in the early decades of the twentieth century, Pope Pius XI, in his Encyclical Casti Connubii of December 31, 1930, vehemently spoke out against this immensely significant cultural shift. He called the emancipation of women from the home a “crime.”

Now many decades later, at a time when the majority of married women are employed, it is rare for members of the Catholic clergy to speak in strong terms about the spiritual devastation caused by absentee mothering. 

Pope Pius XI wrote:

The same false teachers who try to dim the luster of conjugal faith and purity do not scruple to do away with the honorable and trusting obedience which the woman owes to the man. Many of them even go further and assert that such a subjection of one party to the other is unworthy of human dignity, that the rights of husband and wife are equal; wherefore, they boldly proclaim the emancipation of women has been or ought to be effected. This emancipation in their ideas must be threefold, in the ruling of the domestic society, in the administration of family affairs and in the rearing of the children. It must be social, economic, physiological: – physiological, that is to say, the woman is to be freed at her own good pleasure from the burdensome duties properly belonging to a wife as companion and mother (We have already said that this is not an emancipation but a crime); social, inasmuch as the wife being freed from the cares of children and family, should, to the neglect of these, be able to follow her own bent and devote herself to business and even public affairs; finally economic, whereby the woman even without the knowledge and against the wish of her husband may be at liberty to conduct and administer her own affairs, giving her attention chiefly to these rather than to children, husband and family.

This, however, is not the true emancipation of woman, nor that rational and exalted liberty which belongs to the noble office of a Christian woman and wife; it is rather the debasing of the womanly character and the dignity of motherhood, and indeed of the whole family, as a result of which the husband suffers the loss of his wife, the children of their mother, and the home and the whole family of an ever watchful guardian. More than this, this false liberty and unnatural equality with the husband is to the detriment of the woman herself, for if the woman descends from her truly regal throne to which she has been raised within the walls of the home by means of the Gospel, she will soon be reduced to the old state of slavery (if not in appearance, certainly in reality) and become as amongst the pagans the mere instrument of man.

                              — Comments  —

Mabel LeBeau writes:

Perhaps Pope Pius had the high rates of European unemployment contributing to unrest and the rise of the National Socialists, beginning of the Chinese Soviet Socialists, 16% unemployment and droughts in the US, and the beginning of the Great Depression in mind when he wrote his Divinely inspired Encyclical. In any case, times have changed and there is no going back in time to an anachronistic aristocracy promoting wide social gaps in society.

Laura writes:

I think he had only one thing in mind when he wrote this and that is the family at its most ideal.

I’m not sure what you mean about anachronistic aristocracy as those were very democratic times.

Paul writes:

The Pope was farseeing. The woman is merely the instrument of men in most pagan societies such as Islamic societies. Pope Pius wrote it 81 years earlier, and we see it today in the terror upon women in Afghanistan and Egypt. The public rape of a Western CBS female journalist in Egypt (Logan) is just one of many examples in Islamic and other non-Western societies. Yet Western feminists and Islamists have joined forces to excuse Islam and therefore debase women. I cannot explain the motives of Western feminists, but the Islamists are bound by religion to debase women.

On 9/11, maybe some women were taken in by liberal propaganda: “Islam means peace” or “Islam is a religion of peace.” Yet history and the Koran are nothing if not a written record of a continuous claim that non-Muslims are garbage and must be killed. To the extent there is a “moderate Islam,” it is that non-Muslims must be ruled by Muslims. So where does that place Western women? Maybe that is the nondiscrimination they seek?

But liberals are so perverted that common sense has turned into, “I can criticize my brother, and so can you . . . please.” Now because a person is perverted does not mean the person must be cast into darkness in the here and now. It simply means they are perverted and should seek redemption.

Peter S. writes:

To characterize Islam as “pagan” is as much of a basic factual inversion as to characterize it as “Satanic”, given that the early history of Islam was closely bound up with the rejection of Arabian paganism. Further, as Islam is arguably the most universally monotheistic of religious traditions, supporting neither a theological Trinitarianism nor the tribal particularity of a chosen people, tarring it as pagan – a blanket term for polytheism – is particularly ill-chosen. 

As for women being “merely the instruments of men” in Islam, there is certainly little to admire or approve of with respect to the status of women in certain contemporary Muslim societies such as present day Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, but this is something distinct from the status of women in Islam per se. On the contrary, women gained a raft of formal rights under Islam – the barring of female infanticide, inheritance, property ownership, education, employment, marriage consent, divorce, and equal justice before the law – some of which would not be gained in the West until the 19th century. Further, women are fully acknowledged by the tradition as persons standing equally with men before God. These observations are not meant, of course, to suggest that Muslim societies are a kind of feminist paradise.

 As for the view that, according to Islamic history and scripture, “non-Muslims are garbage and must be killed,” one hardly knows where to begin. While the Koran takes a firm line against Arabian paganism, it explicitly recognizes Jews and Christians as communities possessing valid revelations and accorded protected status. The centuries-long existence of Christian and Jewish communities in historically Islamic lands – partly problemitized in recent history by the foundation of the Israeli State – is a clear indication of this. Similarly, when Jews fled Christian Europe – whether following their expulsion from Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella or in response to various pogroms – they typically settled in the comparative safety and religious freedom of Islamic lands.

Laura writes:

On the issue of women under Islam, see this previous post on the subject. I particularly recommend Jim Kalb’s observations.

Islam has a history of peaceful coexistence with Christian and Jewish communities which are under Muslim subjugation. It does not have a history of peaceful co-existence wherever Christians, Jews or Hindus are self-determining political communities that do not recognize shariah and that are not governed by Muslims. The Muslim who takes his religion seriously is called to bring about Islamic rule and political law wherever he lives. This does not necessarily mean infidels must be killed. Jihad may also be waged non-violently.

Christians are not permitted to freely practice their religion in Muslim countires today and priests and churchgoers are killed without any effective outcry or calls for violence against Christians to end from the larger Muslim community in these countries. Christians do not live in “comparative safety and religious freedom” in Muslim lands today. Muslim countries, and Muslims in general, did not denounce the killing of innocents on 9/11 and, in fact, many Muslims openly celebrated this violence as Muslims. The safety of Jews in Paris and other areas of France has been seriously imperiled by the presence of large numbers of Muslims. A significant number of Jews have left the country for this reason. Muslims have desecrated churches in France. You may say these acts are the work of irreligious vandals, but then where is the outcry from Muslims if they do indeed recognize the integrity of Jewish and Christian beliefs?

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