THE CATHOLIC WOMAN OF THE DAY

New Zealand Tablet, 28 August 1919, Page 9

THE CATHOLIC WOMAN OF THE DAY

(By Archbishop Redwood.)

It is hard to realise the times we live in. Presumably future generations will look back upon them and deem them momentous in the history of the world. Such wonderful, nay, revolutionary, alterations are taking place that it is well-nigh impossible to prize them at their value as epoch-making events in every order—social, political, economic, and educational. The world has lately put crowds of women into positions of responsibility, has assigned to them a thousand varied duties for which they were regarded as unsuited, either in their powers of endurance, or their judgment and discretion, or their sex. The world-war has recorded the great achievements and heroism of women in various spheres of life. We are at the daWn of a new epoch. The purely naturalistic basis of an irreligious modern civilisation has proved a failure. Woman’s position henceforth will be more public, and her character, if moulded and directed by right forces, will be strengthened, and accordingly will wield an influence, for the good of society, on public affairs, immeasurably greater than exercised in past ages. The professions will make greater demands than ever upon women, and for these higher education is fitting them. By their numbers and their qualifications they can effect great changes in the social and economic orders. The political world is divided in opinion as regards their entrance into its arena with equality of. ballot and of eligibility to every office. Some countries are less apprehensive than others. Americans, for instance, view the outcome of this innovation with favorable omens. Their women have had much preparation for work outside the home. Their civil war called forth women from domestic duties, and placed them in public positions. Hosts of American girls and young women found employment in the many lines of the reorganisation and the industries during the last 50 years. The multitudinous inventions, the extraordinary manufacture of machinery, the running of which could be handled and controlled by women, offered them spheres of usefulness and emolument. And other openings, too many for enumeration, were available for women. The compulsory system of American public education, in which the majority of the teachers in the primary grades were women, also added greatly to the army of the fair sex employed outside the home. Self-supporting women in public life have multiplied year after year, and we may look to their increase in the future. No doubt, as was natural, individuals have suffered in being exposed to dangers from which they were shielded in home life; and others have lost some of their feminine charms. No human system is, or can be, perfect and in every readjustment or rearrangement there must be drawbacks and difficulties, which work hardship on individuals. On the other hand, public life, in America, and proportionately in other countries, has given women independence and self-reliance, and has been a character-builder. Catholic American women in particular are subjects to bo proud of. And the'war, by putting them to fresh and greater tests, has still more ennobled their character. Universal suffrage gives them a larger share in the administration of public affairs. Our Catholic women must be forewarned of the dangers ahead of them. Covenants of reconstruction without consideration of religion, without recognition of God, without . guarantee of the liberty of conscience, many theories on education without the basis of morality and the supernatural, much that is erroneous written on the woman question—all this points to danger ahead. Hence Catholic women must study truth and prepare themselves for its defence. They must strive to be models of vii'tue, so that a modern world must say of them, . as the pagans said of the women of the early Christian Church, “Oh, what women are these Catholics!” The central figure of. history is Our Lord Jesus Christ; Owing to this paramount Teacher dominating nations and persons, 'the position of woman has changed

in the history of. the world. Before the advent of Christianity woman’s' lot was verily most ■ degraded ' and deplorable. Among the ancient Egyptians her condition was somewhat better, as they had a high respect, for womanhood. , Also among the Jewish people, who, enlightened by divine revelation, showed to woman a respect unknown to pre-Christian heathendom. The ancient records exhibit woman as degraded in India, China, and Japan. The classical nations of Greece and Rome treated her with slightly greater deference, but her equality was not recognised. Mohammed and the Koran established yet greater feminine degradations. Against this treatment the Church has ever protested, and has strenuously endeavored to set woman in her true and honored position. Let us recall some unquestionable principles concerning the position of woman, Catholic education, and justice. Almighty God Himself created both male and femaleeach an individual, each equal in His sight as created for Heaven. This is God-given equality in the spiritual order, which transcends every other consideration, and compared with which social, economic, and intellectual qualities are as chaff to the wheat. .Woman’s position ought to be such that each individual of her sex may attain her perfection in the moral order, which is the main purpose of her creation. Almighty God also made a difference in the sexes, by which one completes the other, and by which one man and one woman represent entirely human nature. This difference naturally gives rise to different duties, both domestic and social. Any revolutionary changes, any calling of woman to public life, to fill positions,, and discharge duties, must not fail to recognise the God-made difference of the sexes and of their respective duties, in accordance with right reason, revealed truth, and the teaching of Christ’s Church. In the physical order woman’s strength and endurance are not equal to man’s. She has no business to allow herself, and employers have no business to require her, to overtax her strength in a manner likely to incapacitate her fulfilment of the duties of her sex. There are limitations set by Nature and sanctioned by grace. These limitations necessarily affect the industrial, domestic, and social orders. The transgressions of these natural limitations is justly condemned by many, because they induce bad health and delay or unfit woman for motherhood in the married state. As the Catholic Church adores the majesty of God, and acknowledges His Supreme Dominion, she does not limit her condemnation to merely natural reasons. She sanctions every law of Nature and inculcates respect for the performance of every duty in compliance with Nature’s laws, or in accordance with any restrictions which Almighty God Himself has placed. We are bound to respect Nature’s laws, because they come from God, the Creator of Nature. Grace and the supernatural do not destroy Nature, but elevate and perfect it. The Church has ever required that woman should so behave, and so serve society and religion, as she has been fitted to do by her sex, her qualifications' and perfections, either in the stated of blessed virginity, holy celebacy, or the married state.

The Catholic Church holds up the state of virginity as excelling that of married life for men as well as women, -She does not urge all to embrace it, but only those who, from the highest motives, wish to give their best attentions to God and the things of God, for their own and their neighbor’s sanctification. In days such as ours, when expediency, false appearances, and erroneous principles and teaching prevail, surely the doctrine of the Church on the excellence and preference of virginity, for women consecrating themselves to God, either in the religious state nr in a life of -single blessedness, prompted and governed by the highest supernatural motives, is light shining out of darkness. Calculate, if you can, the work wrought by the Church for civilisation, for the poor and the aged, for the orphan, for the sick and suffering and dying, for the cause of education, for the benefit of the State and the Church, by an army of noble, selfless women—virgins consecrated to God—in a great variety of religious

Orders. ; Every country has these noble women in great numbers. In the United States of America, for instance,. there are over.'. 60,000 js and, before the war, 50,000 nuns of all nations were engaged as civilising influences in the foreign pagan field. Who will say that the work they have done could be as well done, if. they were not in a state of single blessedness, and directed by the highest supernatural motives? Again, the work of the celebate clergy throughout the world commands the respect and receives the commendation of honest thinking men not of the Catholic faith. A matter-of-fact, pleasure-seeking world, little concerned with God, religion, and the supernatural, can have practically no appreciation of the teaching of the Church on virginity and a life of continency for its moral advantages as a purchasing value of an eternal future life. ' ‘

Never before in the history of the Christian world has there been more urgent necessity of inculcating the doctrine of the indissoluble and sacramental character of matrimony, by which one man and one woman are united in holy wedlock until death. We are but suffering to-day the full consequences of Manichean, Albigensian, and Lutheran attacks on the Catholic Church’s teaching of marriage, which Christ raised to the supernatural order, giving it the dignity of a Sacrament. We need as never before every agency for good in the Catholic Church to work against the evils of divorce. Catholic women especially Catholic women of education and culture must exerise their influence to the utmost. There can be no hesitation as to their duty, no uncertainty as to the doctrine. They should speak out courageously whenever opportunity occurs. The evil of divorce works greater hardship on women than on men. Women should determine that this social pestilence and moral degeneracy shall be ended. They have the power to do it. By agitation and organisation they can take the initiative and begin the work of putting an end to a national shame —divorce— which is in reality only legalised sexual crime. Catholic women, owing to their association, conversations, and reading of ephemeral. literature, are in imminent danger of imbibing false, unchristian, and pagan principles regarding marriage. Catholic women must know, and be true to, the sacred obligations of the married state. They must be shining examples to the whole world. There is no obligation of entering the married state, but when one assumes its obligations she must be true to the discharge of its sacred duties. She is not at liberty to regulate, according to her pleasure or judgment, the duties of this state in which she becomes a public official of civil and religious society, in the divine institution of the home. As a public official of the State and of the Church she must follow the code that Christ gave, governing the Sacrament of Matrimony and the state of marriage. To-day when divorce is so common — in the United States for instance, one of every nine marriages is brought to the divorce —when unnumbered women are untrue to Christ and untrue to the principles binding them in an indissoluble —long contract in the married state, it behoves young Catholic, marriageable women to reflect seriously on all the onerous duties of marriage. They must not allow fascination, nor social position, nor worldly gain to hurry them into this blessed state, and then shirk its responsibilities, claiming either exemption because of their unpreparedness and ignorance, or justification according to the unholy and pagan conduct of divorce court women, or the secret—crime women of the manned state. With fervent and persevering prayer, with counsel of parents and trusted friends of holy lives, with unalterable resolution, not to yield to the opinions and judgment of married women who have no conscience, and with determination not to be influenced by their example, with unchangeable purpose to follow the mandate of Christ and the laws of the Church, should women bind themselves in the Sacrament of marriage, and be true to its life-long obligations. N ; ' We may inquire why it is that the Church is not more generous and ready to give advice by official pro-

nouncements to the whole world on many questions pertaining to 'women- in public life to-day. The Church, being the Kingdom of God in the world, has for her chief concern .the sanctification of souls. -: She has a divine power to scent error and to detect influences and agencies that militate against right morals. With these things the Church is directly concerned, and also with anything that has a bearing directly or indirectly on them. It is to be expected then that the Church, in the course of centuries, has not concerned herself with, nor made pronouncements upon, many conditions and movements, which have neither interfered with the personal moral perfection of woman, nor with the exercise of those duties which nature and grace required her to perform, for civil society and for religion. Thus also to-day we may expect the Church to be silent on many movements, methods, and processes of development of the woman question, which concern her neither directly nor indirectly. The passing importance attached to these, and the demand for discussion, by a sensational press which has developed a degenerate appetite, will not induce the Church to break her silence. The Church to-day, and. during all the centuries of her existence, will be the champion of woman in upholding her rights in defending her dignity, and her equality before God in that only which is really worth while, namely, the possession and perfection of the human soul. The Church will insist, in so far as she can, upon woman’s Christian education under the light of the sublime and supernatural principles of her divine Teacher and Founder. Should the least danger for the faith or morals of woman arise owing to any revolutionary changes, we may be assured that quick condemnations will follow. The protesting- voice of the Church will be heard throughout the world. Her condemnation will be uttered in terms that cannot be mistaken. In these days when false theories are proposed, when principles and programmes are shifted over night, when there is no co-operation between Church and State in education, when philosophy is divorced from .theology, when so-called scientists declare that the conclusions of reason and revelation are irreconcilable, when the rejection of the principle of authority in religious matters has effected not only a division in matters of faith, but has put Church and State at variance on the principles of education, when purely intellectual education is separated from the moral and religious, when the supernatural is overthrown, rejected, ridiculed, when we are dealing with the consequences of more than three centuries of non-Catholic education on a purely naturalistic basis, when all this is going on, without the power of the Church to correct it outside of her own domain, it is natural that many false conclusions are proposed and many roving principles upheld. In Catholic college? and institutions the foundation of true philosophy has been laid and our Catholic girls are trained to appreciate the value of the supernatural in their daily lives. They are taught to reject as the basis of education the merely naturalistic. They go forth—at least we hope —from these institutions determined to preserve the union of the natural and the supernatural in their own lives, recognising that religion is an essential part of education. Surely it seems incredible that educators of trained minds, who believe in a personal God and a future immortal life, can insist on the mere instruction of the intellect and

on a vain, futile attempt to teach the child or the young woman her duties to herself and to her neighbor, while at the same time insisting that she ignore her duties to God. Catholic girls leaving our Catholic institutions go forth into a world -where there are so many false appearances. Almighty God judges by realities, by motives, sud by justice. Appearances can neve l ' deceive divine judgments. _ The hidden and secret things of our lives, if they be against God or God’s laws, make us worthy of condemnation. . The revolt of the 16th century, with its logical consequences, asks for judgment on externals and on appearances. Such cannot be the judgment of God, nor is such the teaching of the Church. We are' living in a I day when the sense of justice is in great measure

weakened and unknown. ; . There is ■wanting. in our public press a, sens© of: justice. In our halls of legislature and in the minds of legislators, does not influence count more than justice? We condemn might.for right, and yet mighty institutions of monopolies experience no reproach of conscience for their injustices, because they are powerful enough to enforce them. The rich individual or, co-operate employer has not accounted himself as unjust in depriving his employee of an honest living wage. It is not fear of the power of the union of laboring men that is bringing about a changed attitude in capital to-day, rather than an awakening of conscience to the injustice of the past. Perhaps in no war the precise and exact purpose, in the measure sought, has been attained by any nation. Unquestionably the late war has won for the laboring classes what ■ neither Governments contemplated nor working people dreamed of. The power of labor to-day is such that its victory can be complete, but labor also is exposed to the greatest dangers. Governments and capital have lost the sense of justice, and they are paying the consequences. Let labor in its hour of triumph begin by injustice, or by disregarding its duty to cultivate' a sense of justice, and it begins at once on a downward course to ruin and defeat. The war lasted too long, especially for European countries, and the masses have been aroused, because they had no voice in bringing about a conflict which in the last analysis was due to lack of morality and a sense of justice based on the religion of Christ. Governments of Europe have for the most part rejected the principles of morality in education, and a loss of the sense of justice has followed the rejection. Everywhere in the world to-day a greater sense of justice is needed, and the Catholic Church is the only power under Heaven that can unerringly teach justice. May our women of to-day, and especially the,„ Catholic women, look to Christ, recognise the primal and basic importance of religion, of Catholic education, and of justice. May we all hear the voice of Christ and carry out His injunctions by which alone the world can be saved ! “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and ..all things else shall bo added unto you." (Matthew vi., 33.) - '' . •