The Catholic maiden of advanced age has a place as secure, and a sphere of action as respectable, in Catholic society as the married woman, nay, the very spirit and effect of her religion is to ensure for her increased respect on account of her vocation to celibacy. We know of many beautiful instances where such persons are the beloved and guiding spirits of households embracing all ages, and the beneficent patrons of their neighborhoods.
If she is favored with a vocation to a religious life, how many homes are open to her happy choice, where affection, honor, and countless opportunities for the exercise of angelic virtues and charities await her!
Verily, the Catholic maiden need not despair if she has no vocation for matrimony! She knows she does better in remaining single than she would in entering the married state without such vocation. These questions
are, therefore, made the subjects of long, serious, and prayerful consideration. The Catholic wife enters that state, forewarned and forearmed for all the painful trials and anxious cares it involves, with the full knowledge that she can evade none of them, however trying to flesh and blood or irksome to her tastes and habits, and remain guiltless in the sight of the Arbiter of her destiny, before whose tribunal she appears as often as she approaches the holy sacrament of penance.
She takes up the tender and healthful delights of maternity with joy. and bears its pains and penalties with cheerful courage and patience. Already the Catholic mothers of America may glory in the fact that their children will form a very large proportion of the future citizens of our great republic. Let them, then, rise to the level of their destiny. Let them see that those children are thoroughly instructed in the principles of their religion. No station is so humble and no lot so hard as to prevent the mother from teaching the children God has given her, if she is earnest in her wish to do so. In no way can her boys be better prepared for exercising their elective franchise intelligently, and no one can deny that a woman’s suffrage offered through a fine group of boys will be far more efficient than her single vote.
Catholic women are inexcusable if they do not put aside the allurements of the world, spurn the glittering kaleidoscope of fashionable vanities, and, clinging with ever-increasing affection and allegiance to the ancient and mighty Mother, who is their best, their only sufficient, friend and protector, keep themselves aloof from all the agitations that distract their less favored sisters in the fruitless attempt to build up woman’s
rights upon the ruins of her ancient safeguards.
Woman’s suffrage—should they obtain it—will only betray their feet into a political slough, and bespatter them with political defilements from which none but an omnipotent power can rescue and cleanse them. Woman has everything to lose and nothing to gain in this movement, for, after all, men will manage affairs to suit themselves. The Almighty pronounced no idle decree when he said to the woman: “Thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee.”