marriage was treated as an inferior state. It was regarded as being
necessary, indeed, and therefore justifiable, for the propagation of the
species, and to free men from great evils; but still as a condition of
degradation from which all who aspired to real sanctity could fly. To
'cut down by the axe of Virginity the wood of Marriage' was, in the
energetic language of St. Jerome, the end of the saint; and if he
consented to praise marriage it was merely because it produced virgins."

Indeed, the entire ascetic attitude was well summed up by St. Jerome
when exhorting Heliodorus to desert his family and become a hermit; he
expatiated with foul minuteness on every form of natural affection he
desired him to violate: "Though your little nephew twine his arms around
your neck, though your mother, with dishevelled hair and tearing her
robe asunder, point to the breast with which she suckled you, though
your father fall down on the threshold before you, pass over your
father's body ... You say that Scripture orders you to obey parents, but
he who loves them more than Christ loses his soul."

It has only been with the advance of secular literature that the
degrading assumption of St. Paul that marriage is to be regarded solely
as a more or less legitimate outlet for lust has been discarded, and the
act of love as applied to marriage has come to have any meaning. And in
this modern day the conception of the relationship of the sex act to
marriage is far from being on the high plane where it rightly belongs.
Bertrand Russell comments, "Marriage in the orthodox Christian doctrine
has two purposes: one, that recognized by St. Paul, the other, the
procreation of children. The consequence has been to make sexual
morality even more difficult than it was made by St. Paul. Not only is
sexual intercourse only legitimate within marriage, but even between
husband and wife it becomes a sin unless it is hoped that it will lead
to pregnancy. The desire for legitimate offspring is, in fact, according
to the Catholic Church, the only motive which can justify sexual
intercourse. But this motive always justifies it, no matter what
cruelty may accompany it. If the wife hates sexual intercourse, if she
is likely to die of another pregnancy, if the child is likely to be
diseased or insane, if there is not enough money to prevent the utmost
extreme of misery, that does not prevent the man from being justified in
insisting on his conjugal rights, pro