Women vs. Organized Religion
Copyright © 1997-2000
by
Ed Howdershelt
The witch-hunting craze in Europe and America was a direct result of
the publication in 1486 of a book titled "Malleus Maleficarum".
(The title means "Hammer of Witches".)
Written by Dominican friars Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger and endorsed wholeheartedly by Pope Innocent VIII's papal bull (the Pope's official authorization and seal), it became the reference manual by which women have been subjugated and terrorized by law and official church doctrines for centuries.
In it, "woman" and "witch" seem to mean essentially the same thing, with only the degree of guilt at question.
To quote from the "Malleus Maleficarum":
"All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman...
It is not good to marry, for what else is woman but a foe to friendship,
an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation,
a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment,
and an evil of nature, painted with fair colors."
My first inclination was to ask:
"Didn't these idiots have mothers?"
Why were such rantings taken so seriously that they became fundamental to the laws of the time and to Church doctrines ever since?
Well, now... The Church of that time was the unquestionable, ultimate authority and power and had been so for centuries, and the Church was somewhat riddled with corruption.
You could kill someone and pay varying sums to the church
(or local representative) to avoid all punishments.
You could be put to death for knowing how to read Latin or any other language.
You could be imprisoned at the Church's whim, without charges or a trial, and held indefinitely in a dungeon.
You could also be burned at the stake by the accusations of a cleric that you spoke against the Church or acted against nature by helping to heal the sick and injured.
Read that last line again.
Healing the sick and injured was a crime punishable by death, unless it was performed by Church-sanctioned practitioners in Church-sanctioned methods, which mostly boiled down to bleeding the victim and prayers.
(If he lived, it was God's will, but if he died, he didn't have enough faith.)
Women have been the collective repository of healing arts and
knowledge since the cave days. Every tribe and village had a medicine
woman or midwife to assist with injuries, births, and ills.
Many have been spiritual advisors, as well.
Each of these women was a danger to the local power of the Church every time prayers and
bleeding failed to save a loved one.
The Church declared these women to be witches, then it simply ordered them killed and confiscated their properties.
On a grander scale of thinking, the Church realized a need to control the
source of future membership, which was the source of future labor, money, and power, all of which require large numbers of people willing to do and be as the Church wants.
In a world largely decimated by plagues and wars, helping a woman avoid or stop a pregnancy became a death-penalty crime.
Control of women - and thereby, control of human reproduction (membership!) - has since been a cornerstone of religion, law, and politics for the last six centuries, but that is about to change dramatically.
Think about it. Only within the last century have women been able to break into the medical professions in any serious numbers; medical professions which began hundreds of years ago in Europe's Church-dominated world and remain tightly-controlled to this day.
Only recently have the courts had the power, the courage, or the inclination to open those and other doors to women.
On the picket lines, men and women rant against abortion and contraception in the name of God.
Their Church told them what to believe.
They're being used.
The real issue isn't simply abortion. The issues are control of human reproduction and membership and the wealth and power that comes from controlling large numbers of people.
To them, any woman who isn't a broodmare and domestic servant is evil.
To them, a woman who wants to determine her own path in life is evil.
To them, a woman who thinks for herself is still considered a witch.
By the year 2000, close to 60% of the population of the Western world will be female, literate, working for a living, and VOTING.
Over 50% of that population is expected to be above age 50, which puts a large number of women outside the reproductive stage of life.
A religion or government which denigrates women is quite likely doomed to a minor role in our future.
Indexes to my other articles and ebooks
may be found on my websites:
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