The Catholic World, Vol. 15, Nos. 85-90, April 1872-September 1872: A Monthly MagazineVarious
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 15, Nos. 85-90, April 1872-September 1872: A Monthly Magazine
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
In a sermon recently delivered by one of the most popular preachers
of New York, and reported in the columns of a widely-read journal,
occur the following words, which are a singular corroboration of
what we have just said: “There is nothing more dangerous than
an educated community with nothing to do. There are thousands
of educated women who do not work.... I do not wonder the bold,
eagle-like natures fret in their limits and detest life, or that
the great hearts dash themselves out in waste. There must be outlet
for these immense forces, or society will go on getting worse and
worse to the end.” A few days after these words were spoken, the
following appeared in a letter referring to the attempt made by
a woman to drop her vote in the ballot-box, at the New York City
election of the 7th of November, 1871. She gives a lamentable
account of woman’s world, as it has grown to be under the shade of
Protestantism. “The condition of involuntary servitude is favorable
to the cultivation of all the vices of secrecy and deceit. As
women, we have been schooled in hypocrisy and duplicity, until
our deep souls revolt against the oppression that so compels us
to belie our sincere and earnest natures. The most docile wife
has that latent fire in her heart which only needs the air of
freedom to fan into a flame. Many seemingly contented wives would
almost risk the salvation of their souls to make their masters
feel for one day the humiliation they have endured uncomplainingly
for years. If this is true of the favorites of fortune, what
may not be said of the great crowd of women who rush into every
folly, or are doomed to severest trial by stringent laws and the
oppressive customs growing out of them--laws and customs that
disfranchise them, prescribe their pleasures, limit their fields of
labor, and curtail their wages, all on the plea of sex? We have,
gentlemen, very generally arrived at the knowledge that sex is a
crime punishable by law.” The writer of this subscribes herself
“Mary Leland,” and is, no doubt, a fair representative of the
indignant champions of indiscriminate equality between men and
women. If the slumbering volcano she describes is really hidden
beneath the frivolous life of ordinary women, what a fearful
responsibility lies at the door of the system whose effect it is!
This spirit of rebellion can only exist as a reaction against the
forced inactivity of woman’s mind and will, and against the torpor
induced by the delicate flattery of those who would make her a
sultana, or the brutality of those who would fain turn her into a
beast of burden. Both alike are forms of slavery; both alike are
anti-Christian; both are contradictions against nature, and will
inevitably bear their evil fruit. Since their true rights have been
denied them by the spirit of the Reformation; since the education
of their children is taken out of their hands by the state; since
nothing but a savory meal and a pleasant face are expected from
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