Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes
The false glorification of asceticism, which denies the true nature of marriage while at the same time professedly regarding marriage as a sacrament, has involved a corresponding and unhealthy classifying of love into higher and lower, the spiritual and the physical; and the action of this double standard in the sexual life has led, on the one side, to the setting up of a theoretical ideal of conduct which, as few are able to follow it, tends to become an empty form, and this, on the other side, has led to a hidden laxity, within marriage and outside it.