This is the school that has given birth to what is called "_Arts
of Pleasure_," to which it sacrifices the knowledge of more
necessary things which instruct the mind, fortify the heart, and
invigorate the will. Our compassion and disgust are simultaneously
aroused, when we see so many women whose education has given them no
other knowledge than to teach them how to flatter the taste of others
at the expense of Christian modesty.
How many women there are who, from their youth, have renounced the
dignity and glorious privileges of their sex, calmly resigning
themselves to play the inferior and humiliating role that the
prejudices and passions of a frivolous society impose upon them!
It is our heart-felt desire that you may never experience anything
of the kind; suffer not the aureola with which God has decorated your
brow to be ruthlessly removed and trampled under foot. Remember that
your soul is just as noble as that of man; that it is illuminated by
the same faith, drawn towards heaven by the same hopes, and united to
the same Author of all greatness and of all life by the same charity.
Should your belief in this waver, transport yourself in spirit to
Calvary: there you will see that women were the only sympathizers of
Jesus, and, while hanging on the cross, women were, with the
exception of St. John, the only witnesses of His death.
The apostles and disciples, all had fled; and in this memorable
scene in which all things seem to be confounded courage and valor
seemed to have taken refuge in the soul of women. Hence the Church
records, with love and gratitude, on the brightest pages of her
history, this noble and generous act of devotedness as being the
special privilege of your sex, since it was won on the ever-memorable
day of our redemption.
It is not easy to look a painful truth in the face; but we are
forced to do so when we reluctantly confess that female frivolity is
the source of that levity which prevails now-a-days, to such an
extent as to affect the very laws and government of society. To keep
aloof from this poisonous atmosphere, you must cultivate that serious
turn of mind, that gravity which gives women an air of majesty, and
wins the homage of those who do not even understand her.
Experience will teach you that the importance attached to the
seriousness with which woman's life should be enveloped is
undervalued. Learn to appreciate it as it merits; show that
appreciation by now giving to all the actions of your life that
weight and gravity which shall render them agreeable to God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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