The Virtue of Women

 
Rev. Mr. Gregory L. Foley

GOD, ON THE SIXTH DAY OF CREATION, after having made man from the slime of the earth and breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, miraculously taken by Him from the side of Adam as he was locked in sleep. God thus decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race. From them the human race might be propagated and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout the ages.

When Christ came and established His Church, He also elevated the state of marriage and the family, and in particular, the role of the woman. This is evident in the Gospels where He chose, from all eternity, to begin His public ministry by a miracle at the wedding feast of Cana, and this through the intercession of a woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary (Jn. 2:1-5).

"Woman, the crown of creation, and in a certain sense its masterpiece: woman, that gentle creature, to whose delicate hands God seems to have entrusted the future of the world to such a great extent, insofar as she is man's helper; woman, the expression of all that is best, kindest, most lovable here below, still finds that, despite the deceptive appearances of being placed on a pedestal, she is often an object of a lack of respect, and sometimes of a subtle but positive contempt on the part of a world moving rapidly toward paganism" (The Woman in the Modern World; "The Dignity of Woman," 8-14-56, Pope Pius XII.).

The Church's meritorious role in restoring womankind to its original dignity is a matter of fact. Those who ignore this attempt to associate the Church with something that it has firmly opposed from its very beginning—that unjust status of personal inferiority to which paganism often condemned women. For St. Paul hardly relegated woman to a status of personal inferiority: "[There is] neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor freeman, there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). This passage reflects the internal nature and external attitude of all Christian civilization.

The real foundation for the dignity of woman is precisely the same as the basis of the dignity of man: both are children of God, redeemed by Christ with the same supernatural destiny.

There is another basis for dignity that is identical for both sexes: God has given both man and woman a common destiny here on earth, the destiny toward which all human history is moving and which is indicated in the command which God gave to our first parents together: "Increase and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over it. . ."(Gen. 1:2; 1:28).

The Creator, with His wonderful ways of bringing harmony out of variety, has also given the two sexes different and complimentary functions, like two roads leading to the same destination.

That is why men and women have a different physical and psychological structure: different attitudes, different characteristics, different inclinations . . . So we have an absolute equality in personal and fundamental values, but different functions which are complementary and equivalent . . . and out of them arise the various rights and duties of the one and the other.

There can be no doubt that the primary function and sublime mission of the woman is motherhood. This dominates the life of the woman. Her very physical structure, her spiritual qualities, the richness of her sentiments, combine to make a woman a mother and represents the ordinary way for woman to reach her true perfection. Motherhood gives her such splendor and so great a role in the working out of human destiny that this alone is enough to make every man on the face of the earth, great or small as he may be, bow with reverence and love in the presence of his own mother.

The perfection of woman, who is naturally ordained to physical motherhood, can also be achieved in higher ways, through many different kinds of charitable works, but especially through the voluntary acceptance of a higher calling, whose dignity is to be measured by the divine summits of virginity and the Christian apostolate, shown forth in the Sisterhood, the Bride of Christ. From all this the radiant truth that shines forth is that woman, both as a person and as a mother, derives all her dignity from God, and His wise dispositions.

The husband is the chief of the family and head of the wife. The woman, because she is flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone, must be subject to her husband and obey him; not, indeed as a servant, but as a companion, so that her obedience shall be lacking neither honor nor dignity. The husband represents Christ, the wife represents the Church. For "the husband is head of the wife, as Christ is head of the Church. Therefore as the Church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their husbands in all things" (Eph. 5). And as Christ loves, nourishes and sustains His Church, so let husbands be towards their wives.

For many years now, but above all since the French Revolution (1789), evil men have worked hard to destroy the Church's influence for good, in the hope that finally this influence would no longer make itself felt in society. And from the very first, everything was done by these revolutionaries to snatch the woman from the maternal care and vigilance of the Church. For it is under the maternal care and vigilance of the Church that the woman achieves her true dignity. When she forsakes or is deceived into forsaking Holy Mother Church, the woman is in turn degraded. If the role of the woman is undermined, the very foundation of society will then proceed to collapse.

It is in fact amazing what the woman can do for the good of the human race, or for its ruin; if she should leave the common road, both the civil and domestic orders are easily upset. This truth was readily understood by the revolutionaries, the enemies of the Cross.

With the decline in religion, cultured women have lost with their piety, also their sense of shame; many, in order to take up occupations ill-fitting their sex, took to imitating men; others abandoned the duties of the housewife, for which they were fashioned, to cast themselves recklessly into the current of life. And this is the source of that deplorable perversion and morals, which has multiplied and propagated beyond all belief.

The so-called "women's liberation movement" is an abomination in the eyes of God. Rather than liberate, it is a debasing of the womanly character and the dignity of motherhood, and indeed of the whole family. This false liberty and unnatural equality with the husband is to the detriment of the woman herself, for if the woman descends from her truly regal throne to which she has been raised by means of the Gospel, she will soon be reduced to the old state of slavery and become as she was among the pagans, the mere instrument of man.

Communism is particularly characterized by the rejection of any link that binds the woman to the family and the home, and her emancipation, her "liberation," is proclaimed as a basic principle. She is withdrawn from the family and the care of her children, to be thrust, instead, into public life and collective production under the same conditions as man. The care of home and children is relegated to the collectivity. The right of education is denied to the parents, for it is conceived as the exclusive prerogative of the community.

With reference to work, the physical and moral makeup of woman calls for prudent discrimination as to its quantity and its quality. The idea of using women for various types of heavy labor is not a modern achievement at all; instead, it is more like a sad return to paganism . . . to an age that Christian civilization laid to rest long ago.

The mass murders of hundreds of thousands of unborn infants in the womb, in the name of "women's liberation" is an unspeakable crime crying out to heaven for divine vengeance! It is a sorrow and a tragedy and a shame that is unexpressable in words. Let it suffice to say that there is only one true liberation and that is the liberation from sin. I repeat, a liberation brought about through the Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ and shed on our altars in the most holy Sacrifice of the Mass (see Rom. VI, 18).

The sickness of which mankind, and particularly the West, is suffering today consists in forgetting, in ignoring and many times even denying the existence of all that is invisible, of the noblest moral values, of any supernatural ideal. In this machine age, the human being is often considered a mere tool more perfect than most, to be utilized for work, or, sadly, for war. The ambitious of the multitude are fixed on material pleasure.

Our society shows signs of breaking up, of dissolving into materialistic individualism. One example of this is a certain retreat on the part of the older generation, yielding their intellectual leadership to the younger generation. It is against the natural order of things for those who are the youngest, with the least experience of life, to have the greatest influence in directing the life of society. One can say then that this is what forms the spirit of the age, the current of public opinion, when people in authority are reluctant to enter into an argument even when they hold a different opinion. It is considered embarrassing to put forward one's counter-arguments lest one become involved. And so there is a certain surrender of responsibility on the part of the older generation which is typical in the West, where we idolize youth. We live in a youth culture . . . we worship youth!

Those times are past in which it was granted to the young girl to preserve the freshness of her purity, protected in the enclosed garden of the family, the school and the Church. With a little good will, supported by a love of virtue, she could develop and grow and flourish in adolescence and youth, all pure, pious, innocent—ignorant even of error and evil.

The world of today is very different. The irreligion and lack of morality are the norm for a noteworthy portion of women. Once she has banished from her heart every religious thought and sentiment, the woman easily cleaves to the most tragic errors and then, under the impulse of passion, she does not hesitate to follow their extremes, however unreasonable or repugnant, the doctrines which have seduced her.

But here is the great tragedy: without the Faith, without Christian education, deprived of the help of the Church, where can bewildered woman find courage to face moral demands surpassing merely human strength? And that under the blasting assaults against the Christian foundations of marriage and of the family, of all personal and social life, by enemies who know how to exploit in poor women and young girls the anguish and destitution which are theirs. Who can hope to see them always hold fast through their mere natural strength? And how many have fallen! Only God knows the number of these poor souls, left to their despair after the loss of their purity, their honor.

It is a sorrow and a shame to have to mention and confess that even among Catholics, false doctrines on the dignity of woman, on marriage, and the family, on conjugal fidelity and divorce, even on life and death, have infiltrated souls, and like gnawing worms have attacked the roots of the Christian family and of the Christian ideals of womanhood.

Is it not a false pity which claims to justify euthanasia and to remove from man purifying and meritorious long suffering by instant death, as if one were dealing with an irrational animal without immortality? Is it not again this misleading sentimentality which offers divorce as a remedy to unhappy wives?

Unhappy marriages abound . . . everywhere! What are their causes? Well, to start, it cannot be doubted that the woman contributes more than the man to the happiness of the family life. To the husband belongs the primacy of ensuring the material well-being of the family. But to the wife belong those thousand tiny details and particulars, those immeasurable daily cares and attentions which mould the family atmosphere, and render it healthy, or else make it dull, unpleasant and stifling, by their careless execution or entire absence. The work of the wife in the home should always be like that of the valiant woman so highly praised by the Holy Scriptures as the woman in whom the heart of her husband trusts and who will render him good and not evil all the days of her life (Prov. 31:10-31).

Is it not a truth proclaimed not only by the experience of the remotest ages, but also in our own times, the truth that it is the woman who must mould and nourish the family life, and that in this, her place can never be taken by her husband.

This is the task assigned to her for the good of society by nature and by marriage. Drag her, draw her out and away from her family with the attractions of one or another of the too many causes which compete to win and subdue her and you will find the woman neglecting her family. The atmosphere of the home cools, the family circle practically ceases to exist, the center of daily life will be found elsewhere for her husband, for the wife herself, for the children.

Whether we want it so or not, the married man or woman, who is resolved to remain faithful to the duties of this state, cannot build the beautiful edifice of happiness except on the firm foundation of family life. But where can you find a true family life without a fireside, without a real visible point of union, where this life is centered, rooted, maintained and deepened . . . where it may bud and come to flower?

But the material fireside is not enough to form the spiritual fireside of happiness. The matter must be raised up to a rarer atmosphere; from the earthly fire must spring up the living and life-giving flame of the family. This is not the work of a day!

Who will create then, little by little, day by day, the true spiritual fireside, if not the action of her in whom the heart of her husband trusts? It is inevitable that his work should carry him for the most part outside the home, out of the current of family life. For him, the home will become the place where, at the end of his working day, he will restore his physical and moral powers in rest, peace and in intimate enjoyment.

Whereas for the woman, the family life will be the focal point of all her efforts—efforts which will gradually make, however poor it may be, a home whose members live together in peace and happiness. And she will decorate it not with furniture like in a hotel, without style or personal touch, without character, but rather with souvenirs which hang upon the walls the happenings of a life lived together: of common pleasures and worries, joys and sufferings. Traces and signs these, sometimes visible, sometimes almost imperceptible, from which with the passing of time, the fireside of stone will draw its soul. But the soul of it all will be the woman's touch and her art, wherewith the wife will render attractive every aspect of her home if only by means of her attention, with orderliness and cleanliness, by having everything ready when it is needed: the meals to fortify fatigue, the bed for rest.

God has granted to the woman more than to the man, the gift of rendering charming and pleasant even the simplest of things, precisely because she was created to irradiate joy about her husband's countenance and to ensure that the life of both will develop and flourish agreeably and fruitfully.

When God in His goodness bestows on the woman the dignity of motherhood beside a cradle, the cries of the newborn will not disturb or destroy the happiness of the home. Rather, it will increase and transfigure it with divine light resplendent with the angels of heaven, whence descends a ray of life which surpasses nature and generates in the sons of man, sons of God. Herein lies the sanctity of the bridal bed; herein the dignity of Christian motherhood, the salvation of the married woman. For the woman, proclaims the great Apostle Paul, shall be saved through motherhood if she continues in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety (I Tim. 2:15).

A cradle consecrates the mother, more cradles sanctify her and glorify her in the eyes of her husband, her children and the Church. Those mothers who are filled with regret when another child seeks the nourishment of life at their breast are foolishly unhappy. They do not know of what stuff they are made of! Complaint at the blessing of God which increases the family is the enemy of domestic happiness. The heroism of motherhood is the pride and glory of the Christian wife. If she has not the joy of having a little angel, the loneliness and solitude in her home becomes a prayer and invocation to heaven; her tears flow like those of Anna, who at the door of the temple begged of God the gift of a son—Samuel (I Kings 1).