Religion: The Pension Concubines

Living in sin is bad enough without the government's encouraging it, protested the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Vienna, and if the Church had to break the law to stop it—the Church would just have to break the law.

Ever since the war, thousands of Austrian couples have been living together without benefit of holy wedlock. Pensions, not passions, are to blame. Widows of public servants and war widows get a pension ranging from $24 for the wife of a streetcar driver to $80 for the wife of a field marshal—but the money stops if the woman marries again. The result has been...

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