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
would only indicate by a passing notice how truly liberal is his
teaching, including both states as honorable, _commanding_ neither
marriage nor continence, and providing with minute foresight for
each circumstance that human mutability can create. And in one of
these, the case being the desertion by an unbelieving consort of
the Christian yoke-fellow, he distinctly says: “If the unbeliever
depart, let him depart; for a brother or sister _is not under
servitude_ in such cases; but God hath called us in peace” (1 Cor.
vii. 15). The very custom of calling women “sisters,” universal in
the early church, is a token of the respect that was paid them, and
of the Christian equality which denied them no legitimate share in
the spiritual and social life of man. St. Paul has traced out in
one word the whole duty of man to woman when he said, “The elder
women entreat as mothers, the younger as sisters, in all chastity”
(1 Tim. v. 2). In the First Epistle to the Philippians, he says:
“Help those women who have _labored_ with me in the _Gospel_, ...
and whose names are in the _book of life_.” St. John dedicated a
whole Epistle, or letter, to the “Lady Elect and her children,
whom I love in the truth, and not I only, but also _all_ they
that have known the truth.... And now I beseech thee, lady, _not_
as writing a _new_ commandment, but that which we have had _from
the beginning_, that we love one another.... Having more things
to write to you, I would not by paper and ink, for I hope that I
shall be with you, and speak face to face, that your joy may be
full.” St. Peter, in his First Epistle, does not disdain to give
counsel as to the outward dress of women, thus dignifying the
subject through the symbolism he wishes it to express. And let not
any one of our own times call these counsels either frivolous or
interfering, for has not every sect that arose as a self-appointed
reformer begun by the restraint on female apparel, typical of
moral restraint over our passions and inclinations? Even now, in
a mistaken and distorted interpretation of the significance of
dress, have not the ultra-advocates of Woman’s Rights laid their
“reforming” hands upon the current fashions?
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