The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1910-12-17
THE BLESSED v1Be1N-THE suFFRAeETTE

The unseemly exhibitions of vulgarity on the
part of five thousand women, calling themselves
Suffragettes witnessed in the neighborhood of the
House of Commons, London, last week, warn the
sex that the degradation of woman always begins
and ends with herself. 1t took centuries for the
Catholic Church to raise woman from the frightful
abyss into which paganism had plunged her and,
after she was rescued, many other centuries were
called upon to rehabilitate her and place her on
the high level pointed out by the finger Of our Lord
Jesus Christ, six months before His Crucifxion.
If this Sufragette movement expands, if di-
vorces continue to increase, and woman continues
to commonize and vugarze herself, then, so sure
as night follows day, she will again become the
'plaything and the slave of the stronger animal
man. There Is, in all history, no nobler type of
the pure and refined woman no finer mould for
woman to model herself upon, no grander ideal of
true womanhood than that of the Blessed Virgin.
The world, writes Mr.. Leclzy, in his History of
Ratonalism in Europe" is governed by its ideals,
and. seldom or never has there been one which has
exercised a more profound, and, on the whole
more salutary influence than the medieval con-
ception of the Blessed Virgin.
For the first time woman was elevated to her
rghtful position, and the sanctity of weakness was
recognized as well as the sanctity of sorrow.
No longer the slave or the toy of man, no
longer associated only with ideas of degradation
and of sensuality woman rose in the person of the
Virgin Mother into new sphere and became the
object of a reverential homage of which antiquity
had no conception.
IL, r y
lence was for the first time felt A new type of
character was called into being, new kind of ad-
miration was fostered. Into harsh, and ignorant
and benighted age this ideal type infused con-
ception of gentleness and of purity unknown to
the proudest generations of the past In the pages
of living tenderness which many priestly writer
has left in honor Of his celestial patron; in the
millions who in many lands and in many ages have
sought with no barren desire, to mould their char
acter into her image; in those holy maidens who
for the love Of Mary have separated themselves
from all the glories and pleasures of the world,
to seek in Hastings and vigils and humble charity
render themselves worthy of her benediction; in
the new sense of honor in the chivalrous respect
IN the softening of manners, in the refinement Of
taste displayed in all the walks of society," in these
and IN many other ways we detect the influence of
devotion to the Virgin Mother All that was best
in Europe clustered around her and she is the
origin Of many of the purest elements of our civ
ilization"
When woman stands shoulder to shoulder with |
crowds of rough men at the hastings and elbows |
her way to the ballot box she is destroying her |
femininity and is beginning to unsex herself. The
corruption of the best is ever the worst. Low as
the man may fall, the woman falls lower, and all
nature exposes nothing to the pity and melancholy
wonder Of man more srpremely sad and heart |
rending than a mannish woman who has with de-
tcrmined viii unsexed herself