August 27th, 1975:The womens rights movement was in full flow in the 1970s, and needed to be, as this extract in which Nell McCafferty took apart contemporary Catholic booklets shows:
The London Catholic Truth Society peddles a series of booklets on love and marriage, issued between 1973 and 1975.
Let us start at the beginning of the series “Boy meets Girl”. (Homosexuals can stop reading at this point. They do not exist.) The booklet sets the priorities in the first page. “A boy finds that for some extraordinary reason a girl makes quite good company; perhaps because she listens to him, while a girl soon discovers that she needs the companionship of a boy, to catch and hold his attention even in quite a small way, if she is to feel fully confident in herself . . . because a man and a woman look at things in different ways, each can help the other to a greater understanding of life . . . a complete person may be said to be one who is fulfilling the purpose of his existence and is aware of doing it successfully.”
Notice that the complete person is a male.
“A boy and girl brought up as Catholics are already in agreement on all major issues and do not have to argue about them when fun stops being fun and becomes sin.” Presumably, Protestants, Jews and Quakers in this country sail gaily into sin, whatever that is.
“Having decided to give Catholics the first choice on your list of possibles, what other points should you look for in a companion?
Do I presume from that that I may never enter Bewley’s again, in case I meet a person of Quaker persuasion. Does anyone know a Catholic coffee shop in this town?
The booklet advises us to share each other’s interests. “Go and watch him play football, take her to the theatre, listen to him talking about aeroplane engines and try to take some interest in the dress she is making.”
But then we proceed to Nature.
“Sooner or later, a boy and girl who are becoming fond of each other are bound to want to hold hands . . . common sense tells us that things which are intended for one purpose must not be used for another.” Back to your aeroplanes and sewing machines, you dirty things!
“The boy should talk sensibly about what he proposes to do about his work and a career . . . his girl friend should encourage him to make the right decision.”
And then we blame the Federated Union of Employers for holding out against equal pay.
The next booklet moves on to “Courtship”. In this we are warned that “the girl partner has a special responsibility to remember that sex is usually much more alert in the man, and that her seeking a great warmth and affection, which merely gives her innocent pleasure, may involve the other in a serious struggle for self-control.”
And when you actually get married, the following is a hint of how to avoid misunderstandings: “There can be discussions on . . . what money the wife is to have, and how far the husband has a right to know about its spending.” Not a word about how much he has, and how much right the wife has to know how he spends it . . .
And now for the real danger: “Mixed marriages.”
First there is a word of encouragement. Many a non-Catholic spouse, we are told, goes on to make an even better convert than a native Catholic.
And then comes the finale . . . has this to say about marriage: “In any human undertaking there has to be someone ‘in charge’, some final authority, someone upon whom the other people involved with him can rely.” Can rely on him. Him. Him. “In the human family the husband and father naturally fill this position . . . the husband is, and ought to be, the head of the family, the ‘boss’.”