The history of this post is a bit odd. I mostly wrote it several years ago, but ended up never posting it. But I think it would be good to have it available as I did do some research on claims being made, so it's being posted now.
So what is this post even about? Well, "Bad News About Christianity" is a site that, as the name indicates, is very hostile to Christianity. It is run by a James McDonald and attacks Christianity on several fronts. His arguments against the truth of the religion are generally already answered by various apologists so I have nothing to add there, but it also pulls out historical arguments about how Christianity supposedly had a negative impact on society.
While there is some bits of truth sprinkled in among its arguments, far too often it exaggerates things to absurd levels. Bold claims are frequently given without any citation or evidence for them, leaving it impossible to verify (though in some cases I am familiar enough with it to know that the claims being made are blatantly false). In other cases, citations are offered, but the evidence is not there or the citation is unreliable. And finally, one will see specific cases of something occurring treated as if it makes it some kind of general thing. For the record, James McDonald also wrote a book called "Beyond Belief: Two Thousand Years of Bad
Faith in the Christian Church". I have not read it, but from the few
bits I have seen from it, it seems to repeat many of the same claims as
on the website, so an examination of the website would also work as an
examination of the book.
I cannot go through every part of the site, but I will examine and critique a few pages in an effort to show the kinds of errors I am talking about and
why one should be extremely cautious in trusting anything from it. We'll be looking at two pages in it: The first making claims about Christian misogyny, and the second about claims that Christianity impeded science and medicine.
But, since the reader may not want to read through everything, I will give some summary points of some particularly egregious errors he makes. In the woman article, he puts forward a claim (with no citation) that there was a church council where they debated whether women have souls; not only is this claim completely false, one of his own sources admits it's made up. He cites Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologia, but when one goes to look at the places he is citing one observes they have nothing to do with what is cited (the one case where it does relate, it is being taken out of context). Various other quotes are taken completely out of context or totally misinterpreted. In the medicine article, he claims that Vesalius was under investigation by the Inquisition for making medical discoveries that contradicted what the Church previously thought, citing a letter. Setting aside the fact that the accuracy of the account in the letter in question is disputed, the letter actually said he was under investigation for killing someone by dissection. He claims Pope Leo XII forbade vaccinations (providing no citation), but the evidence for that is shaky at best. And he constantly makes claims without offering any evidence or citation for them.
Some of his errors are understandable due to him simply following an incorrect lead, like when he cites as fact what appears to have been a work of satire because his source did not realize it was satirical. But in cases like the above, and in other things I didn't even list above, he is with little excuse for not checking up on his sources... or in many cases, not even providing a source.
With that summary for convenience applied, I will now engage in a more detailed examination of the pages.
The first page to examine is one trying to argue about the Church treating women poorly (the page itself is entitled "Christian views of Women - Mysogny" but the text at the top of the page is "Women's Rights". And yes, Misogyny is misspelled in the title). I'll examine some claims in it.
After some biblical quotes that others have already discussed in plenty of places (e.g. here), we come to a historical argument:
Under Christian emperors and bishops the rights that women had enjoyed under the Roman Empire were gradually pared away. As early as the fourth century it was decreed by a synod that women should neither send nor receive letters in their own name (Synod of Elvira, canon 81 ). They were also confined to minor Orders and forbidden to sing in church. Later they would be deprived of Holy Orders altogether.
Quite early we run into the problem of it simply making assertions without evidence. What were the rights they enjoyed that were pared away, and what is his evidence for this? The only citation we get is the reference to the Synod of Elvira, but it is questionable whether the higher-numbered canons of the Synod of Elvira were in fact there originally; one may see some information on that here. And being confined to minor Orders is in the Christian church itself; exactly what "rights" was the Roman Empire offering there?
However, vague and uncited as it was, that portion at least isn't patently and obviously false. But we then do run into something completely ridiculous afterwards:
By 581 a Church Council at Mâcon was debating whether or not women had souls.
This is completely absurd. If he says something this silly, why trust anything else?
I actually already discussed this issue here, but I'll repeat the information in briefer form. This idea that the Council of Macon was debating whether women had souls (or, depending on who claims it, whether they were human) gets claimed by some, but no one seems able to point to any primary source... because such a thing doesn't seem to exist. The whole thing seems to come from misunderstanding a writer mentioning in a council (unnamed) where a bishop wondered whether women fell under the Latin word "homo" (meaning man or mankind), and the other bishops said it was, and that was the end of it. This was an issue of semantics, not whether women were human, and certainly not whether women had souls!
This is jumping ahead, but he will later cite the book "Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven" for some claims and even some claims he doesn't source are from that--it is quite obvious that he has been strongly influenced by that book. The book is basically a big polemic about how bad the Catholic Church has treated women in the past. There are various problems with that work which I will get to, but the key point here is how it is very much biased in favor of the idea of the Catholic Church treating women poorly. However, even this work has the sense to explicitly deny the claim he just made:
"We may note in passing that as bad as this degrading of women by the Church was, it must be made clear that the worst accusation–that the Church doubted women had a soul or were human at all–is untrue. One often hears and reads that at the second Synod of Mâcon (585) the participants disputed whether women had souls, but that never happened. Souls were not the issue. Gregory of Tours, who was there, reports that a bishop raised the question, "whether woman could be called 'homo." Thus it was a philological question (though raised because of the higher value that men placed on themselves): homo in Latin means "person" as well as "man," as do cognate words in all the Romance languages, and as "man" does in English. The other bishops, Gregory reports, referred the questioner to the story of Creation, which says that God created man (homo), "male and female he created them," and to Jesus' title "Son of Man" (filius hominis), although he was the son of a virgin, and hence the son of a woman. These clarifications settled the issue: the term homo was to be applied to women as well as to men (Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum 8, 20)."
So here we have a hostile source to Catholicism's treatment of women admitting this claim is false. But what is even worse, it means McDonald is especially without excuse for this error, because one of his sources--and one he clearly has read a good deal of, given various talking points are straight from it--flatly denies his claim. Not only has he made a blatantly false claim, he has made it despite the fact one of his favored sources explicitly denies it. This simply shows the kind of sloppy research he has done, and we are only a few paragraphs in.
After this, it is claimed that "Church law" followed the Bible, and several quotations from the Drecretum Gratiani are offered mentioning how wives should obey and be subject to their husbands, more specifically citing the Decretum Gratiani Case 33, Question 5, Chapters 12, 17, and 19 (though in an error, he incorrectly cites Question 4 for one of them). Now, the full "Decretum gratiani" can be found here, but it unfortunately is not translated into English and the site itself is in German. However, someone has translated the applicable portions and it is available here. I am guessing that McDonald took the quotes from that source.
These are being taken a bit out of context, however. The whole section begins with "Gratian: Many authorities prove that a man cannot vow continence without his wife's consent." Now, the whole point of this is whether a man can vow continence (i.e. no sex) without his wife's consent. It answers no. The applicable "Church law" is really just that, that neither husband nor wife can make such a continence vow without the other's consent. However, Gratian goes on to write about women should in general be obeying their husbands, offering several quotes from prior writers to that effect. But he still concludes that "Thus, without the other's consent, neither can make a vow of continence that cannot be repudiated afterwards." This means that indeed the husband cannot do so without the wife's permission, actually a case of equality. Gratian's ponderings on women having to obey their husbands in general are honestly rather needless to the section.
I'm not an expert on the subject of canon law, I admit, but viewing the section in totality, this specific portion appears to be more private ruminations, not a real "church law" despite appearing in it. The only real "actual "law" of church law one finds in this section is that neither husband nor wife can vow continence without the consent of the other.
But, even if he exaggerates his point by claiming these quotations are church law, he at least has a point that it reflects the idea that women should obey husbands. But no sooner does he make this somewhat reasonable (if exaggerated) point than he moves onto nonsense:
The great Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas taught that women were defective men, imperfect in both body and soul. They were conceived either because of defective sperm or because a damp wind was blowing at the time of conception*.
* The views of Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, which shaped theologians" views of women, are discussed in Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, chapter 16.
This inaccurate claim that Aquinas wrote women were "defective men" and "imperfect in both body and soul" casts into question the reliability of the cited book (as well as this article, if the Council of Macon error didn't already do that). Indeed, the quotes and citations he gives afterwards are straight from the book... including the errors made there. But before we get to that, let's talk about the work being cited.
I discussed "Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven" briefly earlier, but here it is time to examine it it in more detail. This is a book that is rather flawed. It makes claims whose citations don't back up, as well as uncited claims that I cannot find verification for. Further, while one can find positive reviews of her book, they appear to be from popular publications (e.g. the book gives positive quotations from The Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle), not actual historians or journals, who take a more dim view. For example, the review of it from the journal "History" states:
"[I]f it were presented simply as a personal document it would doubtless command respect. But as supposedly historical argument it is lamentable; the anachronistic assumptions and value-judgements which fill every page would barely gain a pass-mark for a first-year undergraduate essay."
("History" Volume 78, Number 252 (February 1993), pages 65-66)
Also, although from a Catholic source and thus biased, I feel that this review also brings up some valid points. Yes, I know I cited it to prove the article's claims about the
Council of Macon were nonsense. But the reason the book worked so well
is because it's so biased against Catholicism in regards to its
treatment of women and willing to seize onto questionable arguments to
do so, that when even it stops and says a particular accusation is
wrong, that just shows how wrong it is.
Thus there are problems with using this book as a reference in arguing for the church treating women poorly, which McDonald does repeatedly--both directly (pointing directly to it) and indirectly (taking citations from it and citing those directly). Even some uncited claims are clearly taken from the book. This results in him taking some of the misquotations from the book, like from Summa Theologiae (also called Summa Theologica). An English translation of the Summa has been available online for free since at least 1999, so there is little excuse for him to verify it.
But enough about the general problems of Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven. Let's take a look at some of the specific citations that are taken from it.
Leading scholars accepted Aquinas's teaching that women had a higher water content than men and that this made them sexually incontinent*.
*St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q92, a1.
Here is where things get very odd. The above citation has nothing to do with the footnote, but instead is (presumably) the source for the claim of Aquinas that women were defective and imperfect in body and soul. You can read it here. Here are the applicable portions. For context, Aquinas is answering the objection that women should not have been created:
"Objection 1. It would seem that the woman should not have been made in the first production of things. For the Philosopher says (De Gener. ii, 3), that "the female is a misbegotten male." But nothing misbegotten or defective should have been in the first production of things. Therefore woman should not have been made at that first production."
And then shortly afterward, in the answer:
"Reply to Objection 1. As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence; such as that of a south wind, which is moist, as the Philosopher observes (De Gener. Animal. iv, 2). On the other hand, as regards human nature in general, woman is not misbegotten, but is included in nature's intention as directed to the work of generation. Now the general intention of nature depends on God, Who is the universal Author of nature. Therefore, in producing nature, God formed not only the male but also the female."
The problem, however, is that to claim that Aquinas taught "women are defective men" is to thoroughly misunderstanding Aquinas's actual point.
First, context. Back then, people didn't know as much about how reproduction works as we do now. Aquinas is following the belief proposed by Aristotle that the sperm attempts to create a likeness of itself (a male) but about half of the time, for one reason or another, fails to do so and instead creates a woman.
Now, Aquinas is arguing that the first production
of things was done correctly, including the creation of women. But, the objection is that woman is a misbegotten male, and "nothing misbegotten or
defective should have been in the first production of things" which would mean something misbegotten or defective was created. Aquinas was not in a position to argue (as one could easily do now) that
Aristotle was simply incorrect in his ideas on the reproduction
process, but he simultaneously holds that nothing misbegotten or defective was created in the first order of things.
Therefore, Aquinas argues that the sense of a woman being "misbegotten" only applies in the sense that the sperm failed in what it was trying to do, not that there was anything actually wrong with the woman herself. Someone else goes over this argument, most likely better than I did, here. It is very much worth reading. The bottom line is that Aquinas is actually arguing against the claim being made.
However, we must again return to the point that the citation given is wrong. Perhaps he cited it incorrectly? Looking at the book he pointed to, "Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven", the claim of the water content is there:
"Thomas writes that the adverse circumstances causing a man to beget something not as perfect as himself include, for example, moist south winds, which bring to birth a person with a higher water content (Summa Theologiae I q. 92 a. 1). And he knows what this inconvenient situation can lead to: "Because there is a higher water content in women, they are more easily seduced by sexual pleasure" (Summa Theologiae III q. 42 a. 4 ad 5). Women find it all the harder to resist sexual pleasure since they have "less strength of mind" than men (II/II q. 49 a. 4)."
We have already covered the first one of these; as noted, there is no mention of "higher water content." Even if we assume that perhaps this was a translation issue--perhaps "higher water content" is some kind of German phrase that was rendered overly literally into English, for example--the above issues remain in regards to the misrepresentation of Aquinas's remarks.
However, even that misrepresentation is not as bad as the next two claims. "Summa Theologiae III q. 42 a. 4 ad 5" does not exist. There is a Question 42 Article 4 of it, found here, but there is no objection 5. For that matter, the subject matter is entirely irrelevant to the question of sexual pleasure, and is a discussion of whether Jesus should have written things directly rather than leaving it to others. This is an example of the problems I found in the book, that its citations do not stand up, and McDonald is therefore repeating its errors. Again, Summa Theologiae has been freely available online since at least 1999, so McDonald is without excuse for not verifying this.
As for the third claim of women having less strength of mind, the citation leads here--but it a discussion on whether shrewdness is part of prudence, which obviously has nothing to do with women having less strength of mind than men or finding it harder to resist sexual pleasure. Is it possible that a different portion was meant? Perhaps, but Summa
Theologiae is a lengthy work and I will not dig it out for them. Searching Summa Theologiae is difficult, however, as the translations are different--not only are they done by different people, one is a translation of a German translation whereas the other is a direct English translation. At any rate, it is not my job to make McDonald's argument for him, and certainly it is his job to make sure his citations are accurate! It is not as if translations of Summa Theologiae are difficult to find.
And so Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven made some embarrassingly inaccurate citations, and McDonald, rather than verify them (and yet again, this has been available for free online since at least 1999), just copied them uncritically.
Since they were so watery, weak and unreliable it became a fundamental premise of canon law that they were inferior beings. Following Aquinas*, canon law decreed that women could not witness a will.
*St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II/II, q70, a3.
This is found here. Thomas's statement that women have a defect in the reason that makes their testimony less reliable is disconcerting to the modern reader. But it says nothing about women witnessing wills, let alone canon law decreeing women could not witness a will. This claim is found in the Eunuch book but no citation is given there. Surely it would not be difficult to point to where in canon law this was stated? Even if we were to suppose that canon law specified such a thing, this seems so minor I am not sure why it is brought up as an argument.
Here is a piece of reasoning from two famous Roman Catholic scholars: after saying that women are intellectually like children, they explain why women are given to the practice of witchcraft:
But the natural reason is that she is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations. And it should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in a contrary direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives.*
* Kramer and Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, Pt I, q6.
Malleus Maleficarum was controversial even in its day. Some thought it was useful, others thought it was not. Kramer and Sprenger may have been "famous" but let us not pretend like their work was fully accepted. It should be noted further that, when examined in context, these negative remarks above appear to usually be aimed not towards women in general, but towards what they consider "wicked women."
Women, as inferiors to and possessions of men, were not free to choose their own marriage partners:
Only those who have authority over a woman, and from whose custody she is sought as wife, can make a lawful marriage.
(Decretum gratiani, Case 30, q V, C1)
The context here is removed. It may be viewed in full here. The issue at hand here is clandestine marriages, i.e. the idea that two people could just spontaneously decide they were married and not need to do anything else. His claim that it make women "possessions of men" and "not free to choose their own marriage partners" is not supported by the text. It is true that many women did not choose their own marriage partners in the past--but neither did men due to the frequency of arranged marriages.
If a husband catches his wife in the very act of adultery, he may kill both the adulterer and his wife, but without any further delay.*
The Liber Augustalis, or Constitutions of Melfi, Promulgated by the Emperor Frederick II for the Kingdom of Sicily in 1231, tr. James M. Powell, Laws of Sicily (1231) (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1971). Title LXXXI: About the penalty for a wife caught in the act of adultery
A harsh law, to be sure, but it is one law for one area. Further, it is a secular law, not a church one--indeed, the Decretum Gratiani, which this article has cited, denies the husband the right to kill the adulterers. See Case 33, Question 1, Part 3, C. 5 onward. (Again, found here) This therefore hardly says anything about Christianity or the church.
If a Moor should lie with a Christian virgin, he should be stoned to death for it; and she, the first time, should lose one half of her property, this passing to her father or mother, or to her grandfather or grand-mother if they are alive; if they are not alive, the property passes to the Crown. For the second offense she should forfeit all that she has, the property passing to the persons aforementioned, if alive, and if they are not, it passes to the Crown; and she should be put to death. The same applies to a widow who acts in this way. If a Moor lies with a married Christian woman he should be stoned to death, and she should be placed in the hands of her husband, who may burn her to death, or set her free, or do with her whatever he wishes. If the Moor lies with a prostitute who makes herself available to all, for the first offense they should be lied together and whipped through the town, and for a second offense they should both be killed.
Spanish Laws 13th C. Colin Smith, Christians and Moors in Spain (Warminster, England, Aris & Phillips Ltd, 1989), on Christian Women and Moorish Men.
This quote is in "Christians and Moors in Spain" work, but he unhelpfully does not say which of the three volumes it is contained in, nor does he give the chapter or page it is in. For the record, it is Volume 2, page 85, in the chapter "The 'Siete Partidas'". There are two problems, however.
I'm not sure what the point here is supposed to be. If this is supposed to show some kind of animus towards women, it fails considerably. How is the woman being treated any more unfairly than the man? One can certainly claim that the penalties are too harsh, but in the first instance the man receives the much stronger punishment. With the married woman, the man receives a punishment either equal to or worse than the woman, depending on her husband's decision. For the last one, they again both receive the same punishment. The woman is actually advantaged in these situations compared to the man.
Furthermore, it is unclear if this law was actually applied. Earlier in that chapter, the following remark is made:
"All one can say about it is that presumably the contacts were sufficiently common for a law to be needed, but also that nobody seems to have documented a trial arising out of them in the 13th century, still less any instance of a public stoning."
It is odd that this critical fact is not noted by McDonald. It's right there in the book. Did he simply not read that? Did he willfully not include it because it hurt his case? Did he simply copy it as a citation from another work without checking it? Whatever the case, it certainly demonstrates he is questionable as a researcher.
Protestant Churches were no better than the Roman Catholic Church. Luther observed that "Women ... have but small and narrow chests, and broad hips, to the end that they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children".
No citation is provided for Luther's statement. Now, I know this one is
actually true... but it is not quite accurately represented. This was
from "Table Talks," a collection of statements by Luther later
written down by his students. Even assuming they correctly recorded Luther's statements decades after his death, these were simply offhand statements by
him, not necessarily ones he meant to be taken as general fact or even to be published at all, and no
context is given for them. Thus, using them to demonstrate Luther's
thoughts is tenuous.
The idea is often abbreviated in English to "A woman's place is in the home". Luther was often quoted with approval during the Nazi period, and in strongly religious areas of Germany it is still commonplace to hear that women should concern themselves only with kinder, kirche, küche (children, the Church and cooking), an attitude that has caused a modern childcare crisis in Germany according to the country's Minister for Family Affairs.*
*BBC Website, 9 th June 2005http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/4076396.stm “ The legacy of kinder, kücher, kircher - children, kitchen and church - where women were expected to stay at home, has left the country with a childcare crisis.”, also citing the Germany's Minister for Family Affairs as saying "When it comes to childcare, Germany is a third world country."
No citation is given for the Nazi period claim--I know they did make some use of his writings against Jews (though it is debated whether Luther's writings had any real impact on anti-Semitism) and in any event is not what is being discussed. As for his link, the article is so brief it is difficult to get much out of it. Certainly Luther is not mentioned. To be fair, there is a video, so perhaps that said something of it... but it is of such an old file type it does not work properly anymore.
Luther also insisted on a man's traditional Christian right to beat his wife. He also held firmly to the traditional line on a woman's duty to bear children, even if it killed her: "If they become tired or even die, it does not matter. Let them die in childbirth — that is why they are there"*.
Joachim Kahl, The Misery of Christianity (English translation by N. D. Smith), Penguin Books, p 86 citing Paul Althaus, Die Ethik Martin Luther, Gütersloh (1965), p 100, note 82.
I do not have access to The Misery of Christianity to check on it. But I was able to get the work by Althaus that was quoted by it. It lists the quote, and as a source directs the reader to a German edition of Luther's collected works. After I figured out where it was there, I was able to find it in the English translation. This quote can be found in the English translation in Volume 45, Page 46, of "Luther's Works" as part of an essay called "The State of Marriage." Here is the full paragraph, with the applicable statement being underlined:
"Physicians are not amiss when they say: If this natural function is forcibly restrained it necessarily strikes into the flesh and blood and becomes a poison, whence the body becomes unhealthy, enervated, sweaty, and foul-smelling. That which should have issued in fruitfulness and propagation has to be absorbed within the body itself. Unless there is terrific hunger or immense labor or the supreme grace, the body cannot take it; it necessarily becomes unhealthy and sickly. Hence, we know how weak and sickly barren women are. Those who are fruitful, however, are healthier, cleanlier, and happier. And even if they bear themselves weary–or ultimately bear themselves out–that does not hurt. Let them bear themselves out. That is the purpose for which they exist. It is better to have a brief life with good health than a long life in ill health."
Luther is asserting, based on his medical belief (I do not know how much it reflects the professional medical belief of his day), that those who reproduce are healthier. He acknowledges that childbirth can have adverse effects, even death, but asserts that the health benefits otherwise outweigh it, and that it's better to have a shorter and healthy life than a longer one in ill health. Thus, in context, all he is doing is giving them health advice; even simply quoting the next sentence would have provided the context. This quote loses its force when viewed in context, which presumably is why context is not provided.
Under canon law a woman's husband was both her sovereign and her guardian. In practical terms this meant that she could not legally own property or make contracts. She could not sue at common law without her husband's consent, which meant that in particular she could not sue him for any wrong done to her. If she deliberately killed him, she was guilty not merely of murder but, because of the feudal relationship, treason*.
*J. H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, p 258.
Here is the the paragraph from the cited work:
"It was a common saying, among canonists and common lawyers, that in the
eyes of the law husband and wife (baron et feme) were but one person:
erunt animae duae in carne una. This one person was the husband, since
"the very being or legal existence of a woman is suspended during the
marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the
husband".13 This was, of course, a legal fiction, and did not always
commend itself to the layman; it was the fiction which prompted Bumble the beadle to utter the immortal words, "if the law supposes that . . . then the law is an ass".14 Like most legal fictions, it was not universally applicable; for instance, the wife was not executed for her husband's felony, nor made answerable for his debts. The origin of the doctrine, and the reason for its one-sidedness, may be found in the traditional inferiority of women, and the power (potestas) which the husband exercised over his wife. According to the scriptures, woman was created for man and bound to obey him. The married woman was said to be femina coooperta (a feme covert), and her husband or baron was both her sovereign and her guardian. If she killed him it was not simple murder, but treason. He looked after her and her property during "coverture", while she was incapable of owning property or making contracts. She could not sue or be sued at common law without her baron, and this prevented her from suing him for any wrong done to her. Like feudal wardship, therefore, the guardianship of a wife by her husband was more beneficial to the guardian than the ward.
13. Bla. Comm., Vol. I, p. 442.
14. C. Dickens, Oliver Twist, chap. 51."
There is no mention this was under or due to "canon law." It mentions a saying among canonists and common lawyers, but then everything subsequent, it is indicated, refers to common law rather than canon law. It appears McDonald put that in the claim this was in canon law to try to better relate this to the Church, but his source instead presents it as secular. If these claims concerning treason and suing and the like was in canon law, he doesn't actually provide a citation.
Perhaps it is supposed to say it is Church-based due to mention of the scriptures. But the author merely presents this as a speculation as the reason ("The origin of the doctrine... may be found..."). Further, it oddly does not give a citation for its claims. Perhaps this is as it is a reference book, but I would be curious as to how literal the statement of it being treason was meant to be.
So barring a more explicit statement this was true in canon law, he has not proven his point.
The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstruous Regiment of Women is a polemical work by the Scottish reformer John Knox, published in 1558. It attacks female rulers, arguing the traditional Christian line that rule by females is contrary to the Bible.
Well, this only represents the arguments of John Knox, not Christendom as a whole. But what is more notable is the fact that Knox's problem may have been less that Mary was a woman, and more that Mary was a Catholic. Her being a woman may have simply been an angle of attack against her. But even if he did have opposition purely on gender grounds, it is clear many others did not share his views given that Elizabeth became queen.
So it was that under the Christian Salic Law, women were debarred from inheriting throughout much of Europe. As one chronicler put it in the Fourteenth Century with reference to Isabelle sister of the French King Charles IV: "the realm of France was so noble that it must not fall into a woman's hands." (Jean Froissart {c. 1337 – c. 1405}, Chronicles Ch XXI)
Well, this was not Froissart's statement, but his description of what the peers and barons said. Nor does this seem to back up the claim of women being debarred from inheriting; certainly, the peers and barons were against it, but this is not a statement of it being "debarred." Furthermore, even if this was the case, this would refer to only inheriting the throne, not necessarily all other cases of inheritance.
Even an English queen's job, spelled out in an old marriage service was “to be bonay and buxome in bed and at board*”.
*"I, Katharine, take thee Henry to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to be bonay and buxome in bed and at board, till death us depart, and thereto I plight unto thee my troth." Katherine Parr's marriage on 12 July 1543. From: 'Henry VIII: July 1543, 11-15', Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 18 Part 1: January-July 1543 (1901), pp. 480-489.
Found here:
https://archive.org/details/letterspapersfor18greauoft/page/482
The problem is, this does not say this was for queens in general--it merely says it for this one queen. Even if this was a general thing (which again evidence is not provided for), what exactly is the issue outside of it sounding a bit odd to the modern ear?
In the words of the Anglican marriage service a married couple were one flesh, and the canon lawyers held them to be a single person: erunt animae duae in carne una.
The very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of her husband*.
*Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries, vol. I, p 442.
With this and the next statement, McDonald is simply taking quotes and references from "An Introduction to English Legal History" which he quotes shortly (the citations he gives are simply the citations that work gives). Anyway, one may find the statement here (it's page 442 in the book, but the Google Books counts it as page 626). The problem, however, is that in neither the Commentaries nor that book does it state that the "very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage" was in canon law. Like how earlier he cited something about common law but claimed it was in canon law, again here is something from common law he claims without evidence was in canon law.
It was this legal doctrine that gave rise to Dickens" observation, put into the mouth of one of his characters, that the law is an ass*.
*Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, chapter 51.
Using this as an argument for the inferiority of woman is quite ironic. In this case, the husband is held responsible for the wife's acts. Doesn't this mean it cuts the other way as well?
The doctrine enabled an Englishman to lock up his wife and not be liable for the tort of false imprisonment. He could beat her and not be guilty of assault. The same principle permitted him to rape her without the law recognising it as rape. A wife could not proceed against her husband, nor be called to give evidence in court against him. Most such constraints were done away with in Britain by Acts of Parliament in 1935 and 1945* in the teeth of fierce opposition from the organised Churches. In England it remained impossible for a man to be charged with the rape of his wife until the 1990s.
*Law Reform Act 1935, 25 and 26 George V, chapter 30; Married Women (Restraint upon Anticipation) Act 1949, 13 and 14 George VI, chapter 78.
This is a whole lot of claims (he can't be liable for false imprisonment, can't be guilty of assault, etc.) but not much backup. Citation are not given for this; the citations he gives are simply where one finds the laws themselves. For example, the first one ("Law Reform Act 1935, 25 and 26 George V, chapter 30") is just where in the British code of law the law is located; that first one is found here and you will see that it is written as being in "1935 c. 30 (Regnal. 25_and_26_Geo_5)". Note, however, that this is only citing the current laws, and does not seem to offer evidence for what the prior laws were.
But let us suppose all of his claims about what the laws were like is accurate. The only link he draws to Christianity is to claim that the laws in question were passed "in the teeth of fierce opposition from the organised Churches" which yet again, no evidence whatsoever is offered for.
Unmarried women were also inferior beings, or as the Bible puts it weaker vessels (1 Peter 3:7).
It is not clear where he gets "inferior beings" from "weaker vessels" (KJV). Women are, on average, weaker than men. That's simple biology. What is especially confusing is that says "unmarried women" even though 1 Peter 3:7 is explicitly referring to married women.
In 1588 Pope Sixtus V even forbade them to appear on the public stage within his dominions. Soon the whole of Western Christendom had banned actresses and female singers.
Ordinarily I would skip over this as it's another case of claims being made but with no citations given. However, from what I can determine, Sixtus V's prohibition was directed more at at church choirs than a general prohibition on theater. But even if it did affect general plays and opera, this claim that "Soon the whole of Western Christendom had banned actresses and female singers" seems quite incorrect. The time period this article claims was when they were banned actually appears to be a time period of increasing for them, as the first recorded actress in Christian theater was from the late 16th century (Lucrezia Di Siena). Italy, obviously the closest country to the pope, was allowing women to perform; see Isabella Andreini, Diana Ponti, or Vittoria Piisimi. Apparently they never got the memo that "soon the whole of Western Christendom had banned actresses and female singers."
It is true that England appears to have prohibited them until 1660, but England was also out of reach of the pope due to it having rejected the pope's authority since 1534 under Henry VIII's rule, and in any rate was not "the whole of Western Christendom."
So yet again we have a claim with no citation that seems to actually be false.
Women's lives were of such little consequence that they carried no weight in moral decisions. For example what should a man do if he has promised to marry a woman, but then decides he wants to become a monk. The answer has no moral merit, but satisfied the Church:
One who has sworn to contract marriage with a woman, if he wishes to enter religious life, ought first to contract marriage to fulfill the vow, and then he may enter a monastery before having carnal intercourse.
Decretals of Gregory IX , Book Four, title I, C. 16
The woman had no say in this, and being officially married was not permitted to divorce and remarry. If she was a good Christian, her life was completely ruined.
This can be found here, though it is in Latin. Fortunately, our earlier link includes this. It is not clear where it claims the woman had no say in this--it says nothing about her disliking it. The fact there even was an argument implies that the wife didn't have an issue, because otherwise as far as I am aware it could have been broken off if neither wanted it.
But the larger problem is the context. The man had his father's inheritance, which the wife would then have after marriage. So she would, in this situation, be perfectly fine monetarily if he went into a religious order.
The whole situation seems to be that a man had sworn to contract marriage with a woman, but wanted to enter religious life. However, if he cancelled the marriage, then the would-be wife would be left without the inheritance she was promised, which would be to her detriment. Thus the solution was that he must contract the marriage (so the wife can have her inheritance) and then go into religious life, leaving the wife with the inheritance. Somehow, McDonald interprets receiving a large inheritance as making it so her life is "completely ruined."
The business of women was to marry and have children, and failure to do this was deeply shameful, an idea enshrined in cannon law:
Bearing children is the sole reason for marriage.
It is shameful for a woman when her marriage bears no fruit, for this alone is the reason for marrying.
(Decretum gratiani, Case 32, q II, C1)
This is is an out of context claim. The whole point being made here is that one should not marry just to have sex, but to propagate. In other words, it is a condemnation between marrying someone and deliberately not getting pregnant while having sex. Thus the summary is better described in what Gratian says, namely "Thus anyone who joins himself to another, not for the sake of procreating offspring, but rather to satisfy lust is less a spouse than a fornicator."
Failure to marry at all was even worse. According to Christian thought old maids would spend eternity "leading apes in hell", a sobering idea when one considers that in this context the word "lead" is probably intended as a euphemism for sexual intercourse (though images of Old Maids on church miserichords, like the one shown on the right, show the apes being led around or into hell in chains)
The only citation it gives for this is the text underneath an etching named "Old Maids Leading Apes" which states:
"In Ancient sayings we hear tell
Of Maidens leading Apes in Hell;
But Younger Maidens it is said,
Lead Puppies to their Wedding Bed."
The problem is, this does not seem to be meant literally, as this post indicates:
https://ollishakespeare.blogspot.com/2016/03/scholars-on-meaning-of-lead-apes-in-hell.html
I'm ordinarily not one to just quote blogs but it seemed informative. Certainly, McDonald provides no real analysis and offers no real sources that this was some kind of "Christian thought". It is also odd that he claims that "failure to marry at all was even worse" when one considers the fact nuns, who obviously never married, were clearly approved by the Catholic Church. And I do not think someone could answer that by saying that it was Protestantism that was in mind because this is in the context of "Church law" which is more of a Catholic thing.
Church law made provision for husbands who killed their wives, such husbands apparently being regarded as less culpable if they were young:
As to those who killed their wives without trial, since you do not add that these were adulteresses or anything like that, should they be accounted other than murderers subject to penance? They are absolutely forbidden to remarry, unless they are young men...
(Decretum gratiani, Case 33, q I, C5)
This is incorrectly cited; this is in fact C5 for Question II. Further,
it is notable that he stops there, not quoting the next sentence: "In
which case, the rule of Pope St. Leo in Decretal xxv, 4 [C. 33 q. 2 c.
14], is to be applied with mercy."
Now, if we scroll down to that, we see:
"When a youth, who has done penance because of risk or fear of death, or because of danger of captivity, decides afterwards, for fear of youthful incontinence, to take a wife, lest he commit the sin of fornication, this seems to be pardonable if he has relations with none but his wife. We do not establish this as a rule, but we do think it can be tolerated."
However, it does say "who has done penance." In other words, this is a statement that after all punishment is cleared, they can remarry. McDonald then goes on with more quotes:
Whoever kills his wife without right, cause, or certain proof, and takes another, must put aside his arms and do public penance.
(Decretum gratiani, Case 33, q II, C7)
Gratian: The foregoing authorities forbid killing adulterous wives, but permit sending them away after seven years of penance. Those who kill them lose all hope of remarriage, unless mercy is granted them to contract marriage on account of their falling into youthful incontinence.
(Decretum gratiani, Case 33, q II, C9)
It is not clear what the problem here is. Is it the fact they can remarry? It should be noted that in our modern society, without canon law, someone who kills their wife can remarry! (they might have trouble finding a wife, but it is still legal) In any event, his claim that it "made provision" for husbands that killed their wives is rather odd. The only provision it makes is that remarriage is allowed only if they are still young, and clearly only if done after penance and punishment is completed. Indeed, given he talks so much about canon law being bad, it is interesting that the law he complained about earlier (allowing a man to kill his adulterous wife) is flatly denied here.
Next he talks some about Symphysiotomies in Ireland. The argument is that the procedure is unnecessary under modern medical conditions and caused a lot of problems, and it was because of the Catholic Church it was done (as a Symphysiotomy is less likely to cause sterilization than a Cesarean section). But it is not clear that it was because of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is extremely strong in other countries, such as Italy and Spain, which had abandoned the procedure much more than Ireland. This appears to be something related to Ireland, not Catholicism or Christianity.
Oddly, he provides a link to an article (note that the article now directs you to someplace else, go here to see it) which argues:
"Other Catholic countries did not resort to symphysiotomy. But to point the finger at the Catholic Church, as Walsh has done, is to exculpate the doctors. No laws, and no ethos, however, forced doctors to sever a woman’s pelvis in childbirth."
Thus his own article seems to criticize the claim it was the fault of the Catholic Church. Also, since he seems fond of linking articles, here's one:
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/david-quinn-church-is-victim-of-the-blame-game-yet-again-26865265.html
So largely McDonald's claim that it was the Catholic Church's fault (including "The Church had a secondary possible motives for insisting on symphysiotomies in Ireland" even though there is not an indication it insisted on it at all) is simply speculation.
I think that is enough of that article, as the rest of the article is largely given without citations or evidence, so there is not too much to respond to. Though it is curious that he complains "There is one area in the European Community, Mount Athos in Greece, where for religious reasons women are not even permitted to set foot." It is not clear what the problem here is for Mount Athos--it is an ecclesiastical community of monks, it is no more unreasonable to bar women from entering than it is for barring men from visiting female-only areas. The final portion of the article is mostly a bunch of pictures; since their original contexts are not demonstrated, these pictures mean little, and frequently I'm left unsure what the point of even showing them was.
I will respond to one picture, though, of a newspaper article called "Pope's Insult to All Women" which claims "Vatican says that making a woman a priest is as sinful as abusing a child." This is an inaccurate representation. The maximum punishment the church itself can really grant is to defrock someone. This is the punishment for child abusers, and also for making a woman a priest. To try to claim that means they are "as sinful" is absurd--obviously the child abuse is considered worse, but you can't punish more than the highest punishment you can give. See also here.
So that is our examination of the article. It isn't without a few valid points. Certainly, women were treated as inferiors legally in the past--that is beyond dispute. And certainly, some prominent Christians expressed ideas that we would look on coldly today. But the claims and conclusions he advances are simply too exaggerated. He constantly makes claims without backing them up, including embarrassingly false claims like a council debating women having souls even though there is no proof of that at all and one of his sources explicitly denies it happening, or offering citations of Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae that do not say anything close to what he claims they do. There are also some cases of taking things very out of context. With all of these errors, whatever bits of validity the article might have become worthless.
Now it is time to examine his claims regarding medicine in a a separate article, specifically a section of the site labelled "Science & Medicine" and with a title of "The Progress of Medicine and Science".
This article is, of course, claiming that medicine and science was put down by Christianity. I am going to be mostly skipping over the earlier parts, for there are few citations or evidences offered for the earlier claims; there is little to say to cases such as this when the author is apparently unable or unwilling to offer evidences for their claims. And given that McDonald can be shown to made completely inaccurate claims (as I feel this post of mine demonstrates), it is especially critical that he show his work. However, for the curious reader, some of the things he claims in the earlier portions are addressed in this article, which is by an atheist for the record so there is not really pro-Christian bias there. If you don't mind a work with pro-Christian bias, though, consider the book "God's Philosophers" by James Hannam.
We begin our real examination with this:
When Johann Weyer explained that mental illness was the real cause underlying the symptoms that had been attributed to witches and evil spirits, the Church denounced him, and his book was placed on the Index5. He was himself accused of witchcraft and was obliged to flee for his life. In time Weyer was vindicated: the Church belatedly updated its ideas and stopped torturing the insane.
5Von den Blendwerken der Dämonen, von Zauberei und Hexerie (On Demonic Delusions, Sorcery and Witchcraft) published in 1563.
What he gives for his citation is not an actual source for it being on the Index, but instead what appears to be the German title for his book, though the more commonly used title seems to be its original Latin title, De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis.
I spent some time trying to see if I could confirm the claim it was on the Index. While the claim was made by some, I couldn't find any source. Eventually I was able to confirm it by finding an older version of the Index (his name was not in some versions, though) that listed him and even his book. However, let's note what it says. One can find it in this 1632 printing on page 627.
"IOANNES Vvierus
Phil. & Medicus, Lutheran."
It then goes on to list some works of his, including De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis (shortened to "de Incantionitub, ac venificiis"). However, note the mention of "Lutheran" there. This suggests that the problem was not so much any idea that "mental illness was the real cause" but that they viewed as him being a Lutheran.
Now, the actual religion of Weyer is less clear, as indicated in this article on the subject ("Witchcraft, Spiritualism, and Medicine: The Religious Convictions of Johan Wier" in The Sixteenth Century Journal Vol. 42 No. 2 (Summer 2011), pages 369-391). But whether or not they were right about him being a Lutherana, they at any rate thought he was. The mention of this indicates that it may have been more of a problem with the person than specific claims about mental illness.
To be fair, that one wasn't too problematic. But he then goes on to write:
Andreas Vesalius in the 16th century carried out the most extensive anatomical investigations up to his time. His hands-on direct observation was a huge break with medieval practice, and considered little short of heresy. He was attacked for his disagreement with orthodox ideas derived from Galen's studies of human anatomy. As a young man, around 1536, he had had a dispute with the theologians of Louvain over the physical location of the soul. About the same time, while in a dispute over bloodletting, Vesalius rejected the infallibility of Galen, and was described as the "Luther of the physicians" i.e. the chief-heretic of the physicians. Vesalius went on to make a number of discoveries contradicting truths that had stood for centuries, which Church-trained physicians considered infallibly true. He could not find holes in the heart claimed by to exist by all Church anatomists since Galen (but which do not in fact exist). He discovered that the lower human jaw was only one bone, not two (as claimed by Galen) and showed that humans do not have the same network of blood vessels at the base of the brain found ungulates (again contradicting Galen). Like several other reformers he owed his survival to powerful rulers who could shield him from the wrath of the Church. A letter written a few months after his death related that Vesalius had been under investigation by the Inquisition, and that he had survived only because of the intervention of King Philip II. 6
6 Letter from Hubertus Languetus to Kaspar Peucer, dated, 1 Jan., 1565
As is quite typical, we see no citation for this, outside of the letter from Hubert Languet. However, all it does is say there was a letter, rather than giving us any information as to where this letter can be found.
I was able to find an English translation here, however, as part of a larger article on the subject:
https://clinicalanatomy.com/mtd/802-andreas-vesalius-fatal-voyage-to-jerusalem-1
"On the death of Vesalius, from a letter by Hubert Languet, written to doctor Caspar Peucer in January 1565 pcn.
Rumor has it that Vesalius is dead. You undoubtedly heard of his travel to Jerusalem. The reason for his departure, as it was written to us, is remarkable. In Spain the cure of a nobleman was trust to him. Thinking he was deceased, but not convinced about the cause of his death, he asked his friends to dissect the body. But on opening the chest he found the heart beating. The relatives of the deceased, not satisfied with an accusation for the committed murder, found it necessary to accuse him of godlessness before the Inquisition to obtain a more severe punishment. Once things became clear it was not so easy to excuse that error in a man of such an experience.
In short, the Inquisition intended to execute him. The King himself hardly succeeded to withdraw him from that great danger, relying on his authority or rather on his appealing. Eventually the King, and the entire Court that was pleading for him, were given in, on the condition that he should make a travel to the Mount Sion near Jerusalem, as a penalty for that crime. All the best, Paris, January 1st, 1565."
Even assuming this letter is completely factual, McDonald's representation of it is not. He makes it out to be a case of him getting in trouble for challenging Church orthodoxy--but it was actually because he killed someone by dissection. And given his experience, it was viewed as unlikely that he would have performed this dissection without being aware of that, making it either intentional murder or at the very least gross incompetence. Did McDonald read his own source?
However, assuming this letter is completely factual may be in error. The site where I found the letter continues on the following page to argue that the claims of this letter are likely to be incorrect, given that no one else mentions this:
https://clinicalanatomy.com/mtd/804-andreas-vesalius-s-fatal-voyage-to-jerusalem-2
So what do we have? We have McDonald cite a letter that tells a story of dubious accuracy, and even if the story is true doesn't actually back up McDonald's claims.
McDonald's article subsequently says:
In England, dissection had remained entirely prohibited before the 16th century. Now a series of royal edicts gave specific groups of physicians and surgeons limited rights to dissect cadavers. The permission was still limited for generations to come. By the mid-18th century, the Royal College of Physicians and Company of Barber-Surgeons were the only two groups permitted to carry out dissections, and had an annual quota of ten cadavers between them.
This, from what I can tell, is true for England. But what does this have to do with Christianity? Dissections were not apparently prohibited in other countries where Christianity had taken hold (again, see this link offered earlier).
In many ways the medical practices of the indigenous people of South America were still in advance of European Christians. They carried out trepanation and amputations, excised tumours and used anaesthetics. They had developed prosthetic techniques and were using the jaws of decapitated ants as clamps in sutures.
Yet again we have no citation. But the accuracy of this is questionable. After all, he is claiming they did this, but the European Christians did not. But as far back as the fourth century, Hilary of Potiers wrote in "On the Trinity", 10.14:
"Also when through some grave necessity part of the body must be cut
away, the soul can be lulled to sleep by drugs, which overcome the pain,
and produce in the mind a death-like forgetfulness of its power of
sense. Then limbs can be cut off without pain: the flesh is dead to all
feeling, and does not heed the deep thrust of the knife, because the
soul within it is asleep."
Clearly, anesthetics were known of by Christians even back then, and amputations were carried out back then too. The rest are too vague to answer, particularly with the lack of any citation.
When the rings of Saturn were discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610, using his new telescope, the Church needed an explanation that fitted with Christian theology. The solution, proposed by Leo Allatius, a Vatican librarian in the seventeenth century, was that Jesus' foreskin had been resurrected along with the rest of his body, had ascended to the heavens as he had, and was now encircling the planet Saturn. His theory was set out in a treatise entitled De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba (A Discussion of the Foreskin of Our Lord Jesus Christ).
It is not clear why he believes the Church "needed" an explanation for Saturn's rings, as if somehow they were an issue theologically. But he adds:
Like many embarrassing documents, Leo Allatius's work has inexplicably disappeared from the Vatican Library. Some Catholic apologists have claimed that it never existed.
Below is an extract from a Vatican catalogue - proof that it did exist.
. Fabricius, Johann Albert, Bibliotheca Graeca , (Hamburg, 1728). (Vol. 14, Bk 8, p. 17, item 164.
See also Foote, G. W.; Wheeler, J. M. (1887). Crimes of Christianity. (London: Progressive Publishing Company, 1887) p.94.
Even if this proves the work existed, it does not prove the claims being made about it. From what I can tell, the claim that this related to the rings of Saturn originally comes from that "Crimes of Christianity" book he cites, which writes:
"It should be added that at least one Catholic writer has devoted a treatise to the Savior's foreskin, asserting that it ascended, like Jesus himself, and expanded into one of the rings of Saturn."
The citation, however, only states "Leo Allatius, De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba" with no further elaboration. McDonald tries to insist that this is the case, however, based on (and he shows a picture) it being in a list of the Vatican catalog. One may view it in context here (Bibliotheca Graeca, Volume 14, page 17).
But this proves nothing more than that he wrote a work with that title (which, based on the asterisk, was unpublished); it says nothing of the content. This "Crimes of Christianity" is the only source we have which makes that claim, as far as I can tell, and it is from long after the writing of this supposed treatise on Saturn. So what evidence do we have that this claim was ever in the book? McDonald appears to think that simply proving it existed is sufficient to prove its contents, which makes little sense.
But even if it did exist and did make such an assertion, what does this mean? That one person wrote an unpublished essay with what seems to be a silly thesis that appears to have attracted almost no attention until an anti-Christian writer made mention of it several centuries later. This proves nothing in regards to Catholicism or Christianity being hostile to scientific discoveries.
McDonald goes on to complain about how it was Christianity that prevented the usage of innoculation against smallpox until much later:
Gradually the hold of the Church was relaxed as new ideas filtered into Europe from the Americas and from the East. Thus for example, innoculation was learned from the Turks in the eighteenth century, having already been used to prevent smallpox for 1,000 years in the East. Priests and pilgrims had been passing through Turkey for centuries, but it was the wife a British ambassador who thought to introduce the practice of innoculation to western Europe, and had to fight both medical and religious establishments to do so.
And then adds in:
Lady Montague (Mary Wortley Montague) arguably did more for medicine than the whole Christian Church over 2000 years. She had arrived at the court of the Ottoman Empire in 1717 with her husband, the British ambassador. She wrote voluminously of her travels. In one letter she noted that the local practice of deliberately stimulating a mild form of smallpox through innoculation conferred immunity. She had the procedure performed on both of her own children. By the end of the eighteenth century, the English physician Edward Jenner was able to cultivate a serum in cattle, which, when used in human vaccination, eventually led to the worldwide eradication of the illness.
She did more for medicine than the whole Christian Church is a bold claim. Let's remember what she did: She spread the idea of variolation or innoculation. For those unaware, variolation was essentially a method of giving someone smallpox, but in a way that made it most likely be a mild case. While that had its benefits, it had some considerable drawbacks. The obvious problem is that not only can you still end up getting a full-fledged case if you're unlucky, and there is also the issue that the person with smallpox is still contagious to other people. Vaccination was a major improvement because it meant you didn't give people smallpox, but the benign sickness of cowpox, solving both issues. Perhaps the argument is that due to variolation, vaccination was discovered, but he doesn't provide proof of that.
But let's set that aside. I notice he then complains that
"Priests and pilgrims had been passing through Turkey for centuries"
without apparently taking note of it. Several problems. First, he makes the claim that it had been already done for a millennium. This does not seem to be accurate. As far as I can tell, the first
documented use of variolation (the form of innoculation in question) was
from the Chinese in the fifteenth century. Still a few centuries
earlier, but nevertheless not a thousand years.
Now, it's not clear if by "the East" he's including Constantinople or is referring more specifically to China. If it's China, as noted above, he's wrong. If we're talking about Constantinople, then he's really wrong. Variolation was, at the time it was noted and brought to Europe, not even a century old in Turkey. See, for example, this which says that it was in the 18th and 19th centuries that it made it to the Middle East, e.g. Turkey. This was, to them, a new technique. This is backed up here:
"‘The writer of this ingenious discourse observes, in the first place, that the Circassians, Georgians, and other Asiatics, have introduced this practice of procuring the smallpox by a sort of inoculation, for about the space of forty years, among the Turks and others at Constantinople.’"
This is a letter from Emanuel Timonius. This states that this had only been done for about forty years in Turkey. Where is McDonald's claim of a thousand years? This was a relatively recent development. It is hardly odd that all those who passed through Constantinople had not heard of it in the last several centuries when it had not even been done for even one century there!
But variolation had flaws. As noted in one of his own sources, "A Short History of Medicine" on page 113:
"The West was made aware of this Eastern method for the first time by the writings of two residents of Constantinople, Emanuel Timoni (1713), a physician, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1738), the wife of the British ambassador. But variolation was a dangerous method. Once medicine had accepted the practice of prevention against smallpox, a far better and safer method was evolved by Edward Jenner (1749-1823)."
So the situation here is that we have a reasonable, but dangerous, protection against smallpox which was brought to Christian Europe. And then in Christian Europe, something far better was created. It was the Christian society he complains so much about that advanced it to something more modern. Indeed, as far as I am aware, Edward Jenner was a Christian!
The battle was far from over. Christian leaders were still denying medical help to those who needed it. Leo XII (pope 1823-1829) forbade vaccination during a smallpox epidemic because it was "against the natural law". This undoubtedly increased mortality, particularly among the Jews that the Pope had confined to a cramped ghetto.
As is often the case, this claim that Leo XII forbade vaccination is given without citation. Looking into the issue, there is a lack of proof for this, and it appears to be nothing more than a myth. Here is an article that goes into considerable detail on it:
https://bedejournal.blogspot.com/2009/03/pope-leo-xii-and-vaccination-ban.html
Yes, it's a blog post, but a well-detailed one that links to more scholarly sources. Note that it is actually linked to on a "Vaxopedia" (a pro-Vaccine site) page:
https://vaxopedia.org/2018/04/04/the-catholic-church-and-vaccines/
Also, while an explicitly Catholic source, this repeats some of the points:
https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/02/an-anti-vaxx-pope
So McDonald has (without even bothering with a citation) uncritically repeated a quote that appears to be without foundation and has a good amount of evidence against it being true.
All this so far is likely sufficient to demonstrate his errors. Indeed, in many cases it is hard to argue against him, not because he provides strong evidence, but because he provides no citation or evidence that can be used to evaluate his case, or he makes claims that are far too broad. Since I think his unreliability has been established, I'll only respond to a few more points.
Gynaecology, practised only by men in the nineteenth century, suffered especially badly from the ignorance fostered by the Church. Hysteria was believed to be caused by ambulatory wombs, and could thus be suffered only by women. The only evidence for this was the word's etymology. It followed that hysteria could be cured by preventing the womb from misbehaving, for example by operating to remove the ovaries. Women's bodies were still mysterious and presented plenty of scope for original research. J. Marion Finns perfected techniques of vaginal surgery on black slave women. Surgeons like Isaac Baker Brown treated women for unlikely complaints like gyromania. Any woman displaying "a morbid desire to spin round and round, her waist encircled by a male arm" stood to be diagnosed as suffering from gyromania. Such women, who sound to modern ears to have been no more afflicted than any keen dancer, were treated surgically by cutting into the muscles of their calves and buttocks. Baker Brown also practised clitorectomies — that favourite treatment advocated by Christians opposed to the sin of female masturbation15.
15. Dr. Ann Dally, Women Under the Knife, Hutchinson Radius (1991).
McDonald does not cite what page numbers, so it is unclear what is being referred to, or which parts of the paragraph are supposed to be supported by this citation. Nevertheless, I gave it a try.
I was unable to find anything about "J. Marion Finns" in this book or anywhere else. As it turns out, the individual in question was J. Marion Sims (full name James Marion Sims), who did indeed use black slave women for improvements in surgical techniques, which has caused controversy. Regardless of whatever criticism one can level at him for this, this has nothing to do with religion.
The claim about gyromania is in the book (although it’s page 159, not 158 as the Index claims), which states:
“The other condition described and discussed is ‘gyromania’ with which it seems some young ladies were afflicted. It was a woman’s ‘morbid desire to spin round and round, her waist encircled by a male arm. In such a case a mild subcutaneous operation is all that has to be done.’ Scoffern describes a case of a Miss –, who ‘had a disordered rage for waltzing’. He refers to this as an ‘emergency’ in which a bishop was consulted. He recommended surgery. Miss – underwent ‘a mild peripheral operation’. Again, a narrow knife was inserted and, after ‘division of a few fibres of the glutaei and gastrocnemii muscles [in the buttocks and calf], no more’, the patient was cured. She left the surgical home ‘as complete an ornament to her sex as any charming woman can well be.’"
Here's the problem. That Scoffern pamphlet that the author is relying on? It's apparently supposed to be a joke. Have a look here ("The Benefits of Psychological Surgery: John Scoffern's Satire on
Isaac Baker Brown" in "Med Hist. 2007 Oct 1; 51(4): 527–544"):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2002578/
Apparently, this writing by Scoffern was satirical. The author of the above journal article says "Anybody acquainted with English humour will quickly realize that this is satire" and says that Ann Dally, the writer of Women Under the Knife, mistook it as being serious. This removes some of the blame from James McDonald because he was relying on Dally, but it still means that the basic source for some of his claims was actually a satirical piece that should be taken about as literally as A Modest Proposal.
As for the question of the clitorectomies being "the favourite treatment" advocated by Christians, I do not see evidence for this in glancing through the pages of Women Under the Knife concerning Isaac Baker Brown. It does mention his book on it (which advocated the practice, claiming it would cure all kinds of diseases) received a favorable review in the “Church Times” but that is it. Indeed, Women Under the Knife writes “Until the mid-nineteenth century, clitoridectomy was a rare operation occasionally performed for severe disease of that organ” (page 160), performed primarily for tumors. This therefore, according to his own source, does not seem to have been the "favourite treatment" for anything.
The Church had no problem with surgical techniques to keep women's sexuality in check, but they were vocal in opposing real medical advances, for example in anaesthesia. Anaesthesia was prohibited on the grounds that if God meant us to suffer, then we must accept the suffering, and not seek to ameliorate it. In 1847 the Edinburgh obstetrician Sir James Simpson managed to introduce the use of chloroform in Scotland, despite opposition from the Churches.
While it is true that James Simpson introduced chloroform, the claims that the Church was "vocal" in opposing anesthesia and that there was "opposition from the Churches" appear to be urban legends.
James Simpson did write a pamphlet attempting to address religious objections to anesthesia, with the rather lengthy title of "Answer to the Religious Objections Advanced Against the Employment of Anaesthetic Agents in Midwifery and Surgery". However, this pamphlet appears to have been meant more as a preemptive answering of argument than an answering to arguments that the churches were actually making. A.D. Farr discusses the matter in "Early opposition to obstetric anaesthesia" in the Anaesthesia journal (1980, Volume 35, pages 896-907). This essay discusses, well, early opposition to anesthesia, and does discuss the issue of religious objections on pages 905-906. After noting the lack of actual documented opposition, as well as multiple theologians at the time affirming there was no religious issue with anesthesia, he concludes (ellipsis original):
"It is almost certain that Simpson’s pamphlet Answer to the Religious Objections. . .was written to forestall objections which, in the event, did not arise, and that its publication has subsequently been misinterpreted by other commentators as evidence for a non-existent opposition. Personal reservations about anaesthesia upon religious grounds were certainly felt, but the lack of evidence–either for theological opposition to anaesthesia from the institutional churches or of any widely held (or expressed) opposition on the part of individuals–is too significant to be discounted. It must be concluded that there never was any formal ‘conflict’ between religion and science at this point, and that the whole episode is no more than an artifact of historiography."
Interestingly, a later issue of the journal had another writer, David Zuck, issue a criticism of some aspects of Farr's article (May 1981, pages 538-541), to which Farr wrote a response. However, this criticism actually strengthens the argument against McDonald's claims. This is because Zuck agrees that there was not any kind of organized opposition from churches. He says "Simpson’s argument was not, as Dr Farr rightly says, with the theologians; indeed, Dr Chalmers’ statement, which Simpson quotes in his pamphlet, was made in Simpson’s support" and that "It is noteworthy also that Channing found that the religious objections arose chiefly from medical practitioners, and that the theologians he consulted had no such objections." Zuck's only real criticism on the subject of religious objections is that there were some who objected to anesthesia on religious grounds, while admitting it was not the theologians or churches. The thing is, this is essentially what Farr did say, and Far indeed remarks "Dr Zuck does not appear to differ markedly from myself on this issue"). The point here is that even in a criticism of the article, it is acknowledged that religious opposition was not with the churches or theologians, in contradiction to McDonald's claims.
I'll close with the following claim from the summary of McDonald's writing:
In classical Rome life expectancy had been 50-60 years. After a
thousand years of Christian hegemony it had halved to around 25-30
years.
Where in the world does he get that claim? Everywhere I look people give
something like 20-30 for the average lifespan for Rome. For example:
https://www.thelocal.it/20160527/groundbreaking-study-reveals-brutal-realities-of-life-in-ancient-rome
Life expectancy in Ancient Rome and the medieval period were similar
in that the average lifespan was in the 20-30 range, but with the
caveat that if you got to the age of 20 you were likely to live to
50-60. With no citation, it is hard to figure out where he gets these
numbers. If I had to guess, it is possible that he is comparing the
figure of "this is how old you'll live if you don't die young" for
Ancient Rome with "this is the average lifespan including young deaths"
for Christian medieval times, which would be rather disingenuous. I know
that's a guess, but once again, it's all I can do given he cites no
source!
CONCLUSION
And thus this ends the examination of these pages from this site. Occasionally he has a point to make, but makes far too many errors, and asserts far too many things without any evidence (some of which turn out to be completely wrong) for the work to be something one can take particularly seriously.
Although I only covered two of his articles, I have looked into some of the others and have not found them to be much better, with the same sorts of issues as outlined above; whatever occasional valid point he might make is simply undermined by the various errors. If he makes any claim without a citation, be instantly wary of trusting it; and if he does, make sure to verify it, and possibly try to do some of your own research to check on it. Or, quite possibly, just don't bother with his writings at all, given you have to do so much just to confirm what he's claiming is true.
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