Are Women Sacks Of Manure?

Al Salamu 'Alaykum.

A selection of quotes from Churchmen showing the 'high' position of women in Christianity:

"What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman... I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children."
-- Saint Augustine of Hippo, Church Father, Bishop of Hippo Regius, 354 – 430

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 a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence.
-- Thomas Aquinas, Saint, Doctor of the Church, 13th century

Although far more women are witches than men... yet men are more often bewitched than women. And the reason for this lies in the fact that God allows the devil more power over the venereal act, by which the original sin is handed down, than over the other human actions.
-- Henry Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, Inquisitors, 1486

Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one's guard with every woman, as if she was a poisonous snake and the horned devil. ... Thus in evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive woman toward every evil, just as reason impels man toward all good.
-- St. Albertus Magnus, Dominican theologian and Doctor of the Church, 13th century

In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die... Woman, you are the gate to hell.
-- Tertullian, 2nd-3rd century Churchfather

To embrace a woman is to embrace a sack of manure...
-- Saint Odo of Cluny

Saint John Chrysostom commanded every Christian father to instill into his son "a resolute spirit against womankind ... Let him have no converse with any woman save only his mother. Let him see no woman."
-- Christianity and Pagan Culture In the Later Roman Empire, by M.L.W. Laistner

[Churchfather, venerated as a Saint upto the 17th century] Clement of Alexandria: "Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman."

Tertullian: "Woman is a temple built over a sewer, the gateway to the devil. Woman, you are the devil's doorway. You led astray one whom the devil would not dare attack directly. It was your fault that the Son of God had to die; you should always go in mourning and rags."

[Saint] Ambrose (339-97): "Adam was deceived by Eve, not Eve by Adam... it is right that he whom that woman induced to sin should assume the role of guide lest he fall again through feminine instability."

[Saint] Augustine (354-430): "Woman was merely man's helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God."

Pope Gregory I (540-604): "Woman is slow in understanding and her unstable and naive mind renders her by way of natural weakness to the necessity of a strong hand in her husband. Her 'use' is two fold; [carnal] sex and motherhood."

[Saint] Thomas Aquinas (1225-74): "[Woman] was made only to assist with procreation."

[Reformer, founder of Scottish Presbyterianism] John Knox (1513-72): "Woman was made for only one reason, to serve and obey man."

[Reformer, founder of the Methodist movement] John Wesley (1703-91):
"Wife: Be content to be insignificant. What loss would it be to God or man had you never been born."

Local church in Holland (2004): "More and more we see women being placed in the position of Elder or Pastor in churches. Is this a good thing? Well, if your goal is to undermine the authority of the Word of God, it's a good thing."

Martin Luther (1483-1546), leading Reformer, founder of Lutheran Protestantism:

"If [women] become tired or even die, that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth--that is why they are there."