The Catholic Church was not a fan of freedom of expression or democracy in the 1930s and nor was it a fan of religious tolerance, as we now understand it. It was a fan of states that were identifiably denominational. It was extremely taken with Franco's Spain and it constructed a concordat with Mussolini in Italy which involved the dissolution, by the Vatican, of the most active Catholic political party. They dissolved a major political party to pacify Mussolini. That was the context in which there was a dominant and triumphant church which, in this country, did not want the State involved in anything to do with the education, welfare or protection of children. It wanted a quiet romantic view of the family in which the father's primary duty was to provide for his children, while the mother had to stay at home and look after them. It was a romantic, very authoritarian and extremely male view of society.