Pius XI, 1922-1939

of domestic society, in the administration of family affairs, and in pre- venting or destroying of the life of the offspring, and they call these social, economic, and physiological: physiological, indeed, in that they wish women freed, or to be freed of the duties of wife, whether conjugal or maternal, at her own free will (but we have already said enough to the effect that this is not emancipation but a wretched crime); economic, of course, whereby they wish woman, even unbeknown to or with the opposition of the man, to be able freely to possess, carry on, and ad- minister her own business affairs, to the neglect of children, husband, and the entire family; finally, social, insofar as they remove from the wife domestic cares whether of children or of family, that she may be able while neglecting these, to follow her own bent, and even to devote her- self to business and public affairs.

2248. But this is not a true emancipation of woman, nor is it a freedom which is in accord with reason, nor worthy of her and due to the office of a noble Christian mother and wife; rather it is a corruption of the feminine nature and of maternal dignity, and a perversion of the entire family, whereby the husband is deprived of a wife, the offspring of a mother, and the house and entire family of an ever watchful guardian. Rather, indeed, such false liberty and unnatural equality with man are turned to the destruction of the woman herself; for, if the woman descends from that royal seat to which she was raised within the walls of the home by the Gospel, she will shortly be reduced to ancient servitude (if not in appearance, yet in very fact), and will become, as she was among the pagans, a mere instrument of man.

But that equality of rights which is so greatly exaggerated and ex- tended, ought to be recognized of course among those which are proper to a person and human dignity, and which follow upon the nuptial contract and are natural to marriage; and in these, surely, both spouses enjoy absolutely the same right and are bound by the same obligations; in other matters a kind of inequality and just proportion must exist, which the good of the family and the due unity and stability of domestic society and of order demand.

Nevertheless, wherever the social and economic conditions of the mar- ried woman, because of changed ways and practices of human society, need to be changed in some manner, it belongs to public authority to adapt the civil rights of woman to the necessities and needs of this time, with due consideration of what the different natural disposition of the feminine sex, good morality, and the common good of the family demand; provided, also, that the essential order of domestic society remains intact, which is founded on an authority and wisdom higher than human, that is, divine, and cannot be changed by public laws and the pleasure of indi- viduals.