Kentucky Irish American. (Louisville, Ky.) 1898-1968, 1914-05-02
Woman the Refining and Emo
bling Influence of Our
Civilization.
But Few Catholic Women Have
Yet Been Caught In It's
Lure.
ARE DANGEROUS DEPTHSBEYOND

The Live Issue, edited by Conde b.
Pallen, never spoke truer words
than when il declared that If votes
for women meant merely the casting
of ballot, there would be no occa-
sion for quarreling with the Suffra-
gist movement. But unfortunately it
neither ends there nor begins there
The result would drag woman into
the muddy vortex of politics and
thrust her into the brutal activities
of government.
1t is said that government rests on
force-the coarse fact is that govern
ment is force. In a democracy every
voter by his ballot wields that force.
Every time policeman smashes a
head with his club the voter is do
ing the smashing; every time hang
man adjusts a moose around a GRIM
inaps neck the voter is doing the
adjusting. The application of force
is not pleasant. We can not blink
the fact that it is even brutal. Out
of this ugly work we have kept
women; we have removed her far
from 1t within the sheltering walls of
the home. She is the refining and
ennobling influence of our civiliza-
tion. She is, humanity speaking, the
moral center of life. When she is
dragged from the domestic sphere the
balance of our civilization is de-
stroyed and disintegration sets in.
1t is futile to urge against this that
under the present Industrial condi-
tions many women have been thrust
cut of their domestic surroundings;
in other words. that many of them
have already been unsphered from
the domestic world We grant it
and we deplorel it. But because we
have got into b mess is no. reason
that we should make it messier. To
accelerate the deterioration is not
to mend it, Woman in industrial
life is a monstrous misfortune, and
woman in political life a monstrous
calamity. Political activity and the
exercise of governmental functions
go together To cast ballot and
abstain from politics would be a
futility.
But Suffragism is not a movement
apart. Its roots lie deeper than the
surface controversy of granting
woman the suffrage franchise.
Suffragism is only one of the
symptoms of the underlying radical
ism of the hour, which has its source
in the materialistic philosophy
sweeping the world. Socialism is
its most stalwart manifestation and
feminism, the emancipation of
womanhood from its natural and do
mestic obligations, its logical COM
plement. Suffragism is the latter's
noisily begotten daughter Votes for
women is but the entering wedge to
the ultimate destruction of family
life. Few Catholic women have been
caught in the lure of Suffragism.
Catholic teaching upon the sanctity
of the family, upon marriage as not
only natural but a divine institu-
tion, upon the noble position of
woman and her holy responsibilities,
have sunk so deep into the soul of
Catholic womanhood that Catholic
women are not easily seduced into
a movement which, though plausible
on the surface, is at its source a
gross materialism. The exceptions
among Catholic women are few, and
these few can have lent themselves
to Suffragism only in ignorance of
the dangerous depths beyond. There
is danger and grave danger. Resist
the beginnings is an old and wise
maxim.
II is the little rift within the Lutte
That bye and bye will make the
music mute,
The little pitted speck in garnered
fruit
That rotting inward slowly moulders
all.