WOMEN’S ROLE AND CATHOLIC RELIGION

Women’s role and Catholic Religion, throughout history is a controversial topic. We will see how since prehistoric times, the power of women has been diminished by the influence of the Catholic Religion, and the disastrous consequences it has had on human sexuality and relationships, which persist today.

Most people believe that in prehistoric times man’s role as hunter-gatherer was essential for survival. However, recent studies have shown that it was actually a society of “Mother-centered Families”. Raising and feeding depended primarily on women.

Recent studies support the idea that the safe, reliable, constant and daily supply of food for children comes from the gathering and hunting of small animals from their mothers.

In fact, the most archaic human groups ate in a very varied way and were not so dependent on meat. Therefore, the theory that a mother and hers children of the Palaeolithic, needed the male to hunt for them is discarded..

According to studies collected by Jared Diamond in “What are men good for?” (1999). “Men invariably spent more time hunting large animals, while women spent more time gathering plant foods and small animals and caring for children.” …

Furthermore, when men hunted large game they did not always share them with women and their children. In prehistoric times, the woman was not linked to the man, women’s role was took careof feeding her children. In fact, there was no male bond, because in this period, men were unaware of being the cause of human fertilisation.

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WOMEN’S ROLE OF POWER

A “mother-centered” family, which gave women enormous power, by forming a strong economic unit with their children. The woman provided food for her children and sought the means of ensuring it, through propitiatory rituals to the Goddess Mother Nature.

In Prehistory, there was Divine female monotheism and there were only priestesses / magicians / sorceresses / female-healers / fairies / shamans / witches / meigas / remedeiras / health-givers / female-pharmaceutics / vestals / fortune-tellers

EARTH AND WOMAN

The Neolithic begins with the discovery of agriculture. This allowed tribes to settle for long periods in fixed territories. With less difficulty surviving, men and women were finally able to better understand the joy of reproducing.

With the importance assigned to the field, a capital conception was made for civilisation: woman (who gives life to new beings) was identified with the earth (who generates food). From which the cult of female sexuality was born. Earth and woman began to receive idolatry and adoration from men, although this would change drastically in later centuries.

WOMEN’S ROLE THE MIDDLE AGES

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Christianity spread throughout the West. It is in the second half of the IV century, when Saint Augustine imposes the restrictive norms related to sexuality.

The Catholic Church begins to interfere in these types of issues, considering sexuality as something focused solely and exclusively on the perpetuation of the species. Love had to be increasingly chaste and pure, sex being dishonest, impure, tacky, grotesque, obscene, immoral and diabolical.

Moreover, the influence and partial interpretation of the Old Testament by the Church, turn the medieval period into a time of darkness in the field of sexuality. Beliefs related to sexuality were peppered with superstition and related to divine punishment and Hell.

WOMEN’S PLEASURE AND SIN

Misogyny and the consideration of the inferiority of the woman in front of the man overlapped all the feminine desires to those of the father or husband, women’s role included an endless list of duties and a minimum of rights.

Pleasure during sexual intercourse (understood only as intercourse between a man and a woman), was a sin. It was considered as a means of interacting with the devil and sexually transmitted diseases. These were called “venereal” in allusion to Venus, the Roman goddess of love), they were the result of sexual corruption and divine punishment.

Sexuality was demonised and condemned, until the creation of the Holy Inquisition, which would be in charge of strict compliance with sexuality norms imposed by the Church. For hundreds of years the Catholic Church only approved the missionary position. The Catholic Religion condemned the rest of sexuality as a source of perversion, vice and above all, sin; which meant the need for punishment.

The influence and power over people that the Catholic Church has exercised throughout history has had disastrous consequences on human sexuality and relationships. It is really sad to observe that this power continues to influence millions of people today, through taboos, feelings of guilt and macho attitudes.