Parents who design their children for a celibate priesthood _should emasculate them in their infancy_, instead of forcing them, reluctant or ignorant, _into a furnace of licentiousness_." What was this furnace of licentiousness? The cloistered convent, or the monastery. In his notes to the New Testament, a Greek translation of which Erasmus made, he said, after alluding to St. Paul's injunction about the "one wife," that the priests could commit homicide, parricide, incest, piracy, sodomy and sacrilege: "_these_ can be got over, but _marriage is fatal_." He adds that of all the enormous herds of priests, "very few of them are chaste." In his letter to Lambert Grunnius, (in the year 1514) Erasmus gives an awful picture of monastic slavery in houses "_which are worse than brothels_." But once a young man is entrapped, there is no escape. "They may repent, but the superiors will not let them go, _lest they should betray the orgies which they have witnessed_." Then Erasmus tells of instances where men were buried alive inside the monasteries to prevent their escape. "Dead men tell no tales!" Remember, reader! Erasmus was writing to the Pope's own Prothonotary, in order that the "Holy Fathers" might of a surety _know_ what was going on inside the monastic houses! And in reply, the Prothonotary, Lambert Grunnius, writes to Erasmus-- "I read your letter aloud to the Pope, from end to end: several cardinals and other great persons were present. The Holy Father was charmed with your style!" And the Holy Father waxes wroth at some personal grievances of Erasmus, and granted _him_ relief from monkish diabolism; but what was done to correct the frightful conditions which Erasmus had brought to the Pope's personal attention? Nothing! Absolutely nothing. It was the same way when the exposures were made in Spain, when they were made in Tuscany, when they were made in England, when they were made in the Philippines! The answer of Rome is ever the same: _Nothing can be done_. The Pope _knows_ what enforced male celibacy does, when screened from the civil law behind thick walls, _and given unlimited license among young women, who cannot resist, and who cannot tell_! And you _know_ that the Pope _does_ know--for he also is a male like me and you. Again, Erasmus asks what would Saint Augustine say _now_, if he were to see these convents and monasteries become "public brothels." In those standard works, "The History of Prostitution" and "Human Sexuality," you will learn the fearful fact that the utter lewdness of nuns and of wives who had been debauched by the priests, became so universal that _the trade of the professional harlot was almost entirely taken away from her_. Why should loose men _pay_, when there were so many places of gratuitous entertainment?