39.


Women as Christians


The glad tidings preached by Christ were obviously highly
favourable to women. He lifted them to equality before the Lord
when their very possession of souls was still doubted by the majority
of rival theologians. Moreover, He esteemed them socially and set
value upon their sagacity, and one of the most disdained of their
sex, a lady formerly in public life, was among His regular advisers.
Mariolatry is thus by no means the invention of the mediaeval
popes, as Protestant theologians would have us believe. On the
contrary, it is plainly discernible in the Four Gospels. What the
mediaeval popes actually invented (or, to be precise, reinvented, for
they simply borrowed the elements of it from St. Paul) was the
doctrine of women's inferiority, the precise opposite of the thing
credited to them. Committed, for sound reasons of discipline, to the
celibacy of the clergy, they had to support it by depicting all traffic
with women in the light of a hazardous and ignominious business.
The result was the deliberate organization and development of the
theory of female triviality, lack of responsibility and general
looseness of mind. Woman became a sort of devil, but without the
admired intelligence of the regular demons. The appearance of
women saints, however, offered a constant and embarrassing
criticism of this idiotic doctrine. If occasional women were fit to sit
upon the right hand of God--and they were often proving it, and
forcing the church to acknowledge it--then surely all women could
not be as bad as the books made them out. There thus arose the