The premise behind that awful book the De Vinci Code, was that Mary Magdelene was not only Jesus' wife but also his right hand man (or woman in her case) and the one he appointed to be head of his church. It seems history was rewritten in the 3rd century when the Emperor Constantine became the first Roman Emperor to become a Christian and Mary Magdelene's name was at that time besmirched when she was re-cast as a prostitute, because of course in the Catholic religion, women as we well know can only ever be Madonnas or whores. One of the theories put forward in other books written about the same subject, was that it was a possibility some men were or are jealous of women because they are able to give birth and keep the whole cycle of life going and far from being inferior they are rather afraid that women could be deemed superior. Religions are run by men and it seems to suit their patriarchs to peddle the notion that women are weak minded inferior beings that need to be subjugated. My mother, who was a devout Catholic, wasn't however blind to the fact that women were treated as second class citizens by the church,she told me St Paul was a misogamist, I don't know whether he was because I'm not that well up on his writing. She also told me that one of the Popes a few decades ago asked for some women journalists to be removed from the Vatican when a group of journalists were there by invitation and the only role women had in the church was that of arranging flowers and tidying up. The people I know that go to church on a regular basis seem well aware of it's flaws and just take the bits that suit them and I believe that most priests don't bother to peddle the ridiculous notions the Catholic church has on birth control here because they know in Western countries their congregation wont go along with it. Clearly the traditional Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain don't either as they have extremely low birth rates. The church doesn't appear to have the stranglehold they did when I was growing up and of course their dreadful handling of the child sex abuse scandals has undermined their position, particularly I believe in Ireland, who were back in the Dark Ages a couple of decades ago.