Catholic Ideals in Social Life by Father Cuthbert (1911)

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rCatholic Idealsin

Social Life

By

FATHER CUTHBERTO.S.F,C.

R. ^ T.WASHBOURNE, LTD.I, 2 & 4 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

And at MANCHESTER, BIRMINGHAM, & GLASGOWBENZIGER BROS.: NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO

I9II

\iAU riiht* rtsrvd\

Nihil ObStatF. GULIELMUS, O.S.F.C.

Censor Deputatus.

ImprimaturF. ANSELMUS, O.S.F.C.

Min. Prov. Angliee.

Imprimatur^ FRANCISCUS Archiep. Westmonast.

AUTHOR'S FOREJVORD

Several of the papers m this volume" St Francisand Tou" " The PForking-man s Apostolate" " ThePriest and Social Reform " and " The Idea of Re-sponsibility "

have already appeared as pamphletsor as articles in magazines, I have to thank theEditors of the " Catholic World" the " Tablet " andthe " Weekly Register" for their kind permission toreprint these articles.

Throughout these papers the reader will perceivea unity of thought and purpose. My desire has beento give expression to the Catholic mind touching someof the most urgent questions of the hour in regard tosocial life and conduct. I have written not for thestudent or specialist, butfor the ordinary intelligentwayfarer whom these questions concern.

Father Cuthbert.Crawley, March 12, 1904.

Archbishop's House,Westminster, S.W.

Dear F. Cuthbert. I am very gladto learn that the first edition of your book" Catholic Ideals in Social Life " is alreadyexhausted and that many copies of thesecond edition will be sold as soon as itappears. Social problems are not lessurgent or nearer settlement in our midstthan they are elsewhere, and Catholics inEngland must face these questions andgive all the aid they can in finding a satis-factory answer to them.

You have endeavoured to find in Catho-lic tradition and in the teaching of the Su-preme Rulers of the Catholic Church thesolution of many of the difficulties whichconfront all those who feel interest in thesematters and who are striving to heal the so-cial evils of the day. Under your guidanceCatholics are able to gauge the extent, andto learn the remedies, of these evils.

May your book have a wide circulationand awaken among us a hearty desire inall classes of society to face and to over-come the perils which surround us, by afirm adherence to the teaching of the Gos-pel both in public and in private life.

Believe me, dear F. Cuthbert,Your devoted servant in Christ,

+ FRANCIS,January 15, 1905. Archbishop of Westminster,

CONTENTS

PART IFAOB

The Church and Personal Liberty , . iThe Christian State 22The Education of Woman 42Marriage 59The Value of Work 74The Priest and Social Reform 88The Responsibility of Wealth 99The Idea of Responsibility . , . ii6

PARr n

Religious Aspects of Social Work . . . 127The Working-man's Apostolate:

i The Catholic Working-man a ^is-sioner 152

ij Conditions essential to the Working-man's Apostolate 160

iij Duties ofthe Qatholic Working-manat the Present Time , . . 168

St Francis and Tou:i The Franciscan Vocation . , . 195

ij The Three Radical Evils in Societyat the Present Day .... 209

iij The Need of Personal Service , 233

CATHOLIC IDEALSIN SOCIAL LIFE

The Church and Personal Liberty

THE old things have gone and thenew are before us. At every mo-ment in our existence, once we

have passed the initial stage, is this say-ing true. Whilst we live we can neverrest in what we have achieved, but everystep gained is but an indication of furtherprogress. "To live is to change, and tobe perfect is to have changed often"; andthat is true of all life, intellectual, socialand political. In our time the change hasbeen of so radical a character as to justifyus in regarding the period as one of themost momentous in the history of Chris-tian civilization. For several centuriesChristendom has been undergoing a pro-cess of disintegration. The system builtup by patient and heroic toil during thelong mediaeval period has slowly and vio-lently been shivered and broken up. To-day but little of it remains; but out of the

2 Catholic Ideals

destruction has sprung a new order otthings. We can see now more distinctlythan those who were engulfed in themaze of the transition, whither we aretending; and out of the contradictions andviolences of their struggle we perceive anew system emerging, having a shapelyform of its own and imperative in its de-mand upon our allegiance. Call it whatyou willdemocracy or constitutionalismor any name you likethe thing itself ishere and will remain, permeating ourwhole social life. And the more franklywe recognize the fact the better it will befor us. We cannot go back upon the past,but we can, if we are wise, take our partin shaping the future. And this is mani-festly the duty of all Catholics accordingto the measure of their opportunity.

For the Church is bound to no particu-lar secular system or method. It mattersnot to her whether dynasties flourish orrepublics, whether the established policybe feudal or constitutional, whether menwork by competition or co-operation. Allthese things belong to the temporal orderof the world and are incidents in seculardevelopment. In themselves they repre-sent the working out of the divine orderof the world in its merely temporal aspect.But the Church has to do directly with thespiritual and eternal, and if she intervenes

The Church and Liberty 3at all in temporal affairs, it can only be tosecure the eternal truths which are oftenso intimately bound up with temporal de-velopment. It does not belong to her todetermine the course of this development

:

that runs by a law of its own, which toois divine in its origin, inasmuch as God isthe author of nature. This law the Churchmust recognize and co-operate with. Shemay neither hurry it forward nor hold itback : she may but accept it as it comes. *

Throughout all secular changes her oneobject is to make manifest to men the per-sonality of Jesus Christ as the vivifyingsource of moral and spiritual life ; and toinsist that under all circumstances Histeaching shall be maintained. But theGospel in no wise contravenes the lawof secular development : it only securesthat this development shall run in har-mony with the highest spiritual life, re-vealed in the personality of our Lord.The work of the Church is to enforce andmaintain this harmony; and this she doesby keeping clearly before the world the

* It has always seemed to me that the policy of thelate Pope Leo XIII in regard to the French Republicwas a heroic assertion of this principle. Whatever maybe the immediate results of that policy from a politicalstandpoint, it emphasized the independence of theChurch from any particular secular system, and thushad world-wide significance.

4 Catholic Idealstrue mind of Jesus Christ, which is con-tained in that divine tradition handeddown inviolate through all Christian ages.

But this divine tradition, in so far as itfinds expression in words and institutions,has necessarily to be clothed in forms andlanguage borrowed from secular life. Theidea of Church authority, for example, ofnecessity took to itself legal forms bor-rowed from secular governments ; thelanguage of theology has been takenfrom secular philosophies ; and in theformation of social life generally theChurch has taken the social conventionsand methods of the world and adaptedthem to her purpose. In the ecclesiasticallegislation of the middle ages, the feudalsystem was taken for granted, even whenthe Church was making laws to correctits evils. Serfdom was recognized thoughthe action of the Church always tended tohumanize the serf's condition. And howlargely religious Orders and Confraterni-ties have been shaped by the conventionsof mediaeval society

!

Now it is no part of the mission of theChurch to maintain and perpetuate thesesocial forms and conventions : she does butmake use of them at the time to expressher mind to the generation for which shelegislates. But it not infrequently happensthat because these conventions are found

The Church and Liberty 5to have been accepted in ecclesiasticallegislation and institutions at some pasttime, the Church is therefore supposedto be irrevocably allied to them. It ishard to convince some Catholics thatthe cause of a dynasty is not bound upwith Catholicism, or that Anglo-Saxonmethods of government are compatiblev^ith the Catholic idea of authority, sim-ply because for centuries the Churchnas had to deal with dynasties, and hasnot found it wise or needful to adoptAnglo-Saxon methods. Some centurieshence, when Catholic life has come to beformulated more in accordance with thedemocratic spirit of to-day, a new phaseof secular development may occur in whichthe democratic trait may be less promi-nent; and then there will be Catholics whowill find it hard to reconcile the new de-velopment with the democratic characterof the then existing laws and conventions.So very difficult is it for the ordinary mindto disentangle an idea from its temporalembodiment. Thus it is that Catholic tra-dition is often confounded with mere tran-sient forms and systems with which fromnecessity it has had to ally itself in timesEast. We often hear liberal violence up-raided as subversive of social life; and

justly so. For no individual has any rightto set himself up as arbiter of the destiny

6 Catholic Ideals

of the Church, and dictate a line of actionin violent opposition to those who governthe Church. Nevertheless, it is well toremember that conservative prejudice mayembarrass the freedom of the Churchequally as much as revolutionary vio-lence. And at no time has there beengreater need to keep one's mind free fromprejudice and short views than at thispresent time.

Now the most radical feature in thesituation which confronts the Church to-day is the growing predominance of theAnglo-Saxon spirit in the political andsocial life of the civilized world. By theAnglo-Saxon spirit I mean that enthu-siasm for personal liberty and individualinitiative which from the beginning hasbeen the moulding principle of Englishlife, but which now has found an entranceinto the aspiration of other races. Bornand nurtured in the atmosphere of thisenthusiasm, the Anglo-Saxon race mayrightfully claim it as especially their own.With them it has been the chief passionof their life, separating them as a peoplefrom the peoples around them, and form-ing them first into a nation, and then intoan empire. But now this spirit is no longerconfined to its native home. It has seizedupon the Latin races, hitherto ruled byan idea and enthusiasm the very anti-

The Church and Liberty 7thesis of the Anglo-Saxon. In its en-deavour to find a lodgement amongst theLatin nations, the spirit of personal libertyhas so far not been altogether conduciveeither to their peace or dignity. Slightlyunderstood even by its Latin votaries, theAnglo-Saxon idea has had to battle withprejudices and habits formed by centuriesof absolutism, and one can well understandhow a conservative Latin observer, know-ing this spirit of liberty only as it is pre-sented in the immature enthusiasm of hisown race, will look upon it as a moralfever, to be treated as a disease. Onlywhen it is observed in the life of the peopleit has formed, can a just estimate be had ofits true nature, and of that tenacity of pur-pose which will yet modify the life of thenations amongst whom it is finding a wel-come. It can never be to them what ithas been to the English-speaking race,the supreme factor in political and sociallife; nor mould their character with thesame completeness with which it hasmoulded ours. Nations cannot take tothemselves altogether new characters.Nevertheless, the personal liberty of theAnglo-Saxon has become an ideal in theirlives, to be reckoned with by Church andState.

There are those even amongst our-selves who are apt to look upon this spirit

8 Catholic Ideals

of liberty as an utterly evil thing, and whoregard an alliance between it and Catho-licism as wholly impossible. Some havegone so far as to say that the English-speaking peoples can only become Catho-lic when they renounce their birthright;as though any nation yet has had to re-nounce its national character at its bap-tism! Such extremists are fortunatelyfew. Many, however, there are, vaguelysuspicious and distrustful.

Such a spirit of distrust is not onlymischievous beyond measure to the causeof the Church, but is opposed to the verygenius of Catholicism, which hitherto hasshown itself capable of assimilating thecharacteristics and tempers of all peoplesand nations, and has not been afraid toclaim all these things as her own. Thisdoes not mean that the Church, in assimi-lating national traits and policies, has notto correct excesses or remedy defects towhich a national or racial spirit may beprone. But it does mean that the way ofthe Church in dealing with the people isto take to herself their dominant idealsand their characteristic methods, supply-ing for their limitations out of the greaterfulness of her own life. And in the imme-diate future we may confidently expectthat the Church, brought intimately intocontact with the spirit of personal liberty,

The Church and Liberty 9whether amongst the English-speakingpeoples or the Latin, will ally herself withthat spirit in working for the salvation ofthe nations.

Much indeed of the opposition whichis raised against the Anglo-Saxon idea ofpersonal liberty is due to a misconceptionof its purpose and nature. It is regarded inthe first place as inimical to authority : andthat in spite of the fact that of all peoplesthe English and American are the mostlaw-abiding and the most loyal to autho-rity. An objection to this statement mayperhaps be found in the anarchical condi-tion of the Anglican church. But in thisinstance the anarchy arises from the factthat there is no definite authority in theAnglican Church to be loyal to : it is a com-munion without a head, and suffers accord-ingly. This religious anarchy, however, isbut a transient phenomenon in the hfe ofthe English nation. In the political andsocial life of the English-speaking peoples,where authority is well defined, the prin-ciple of personal liberty goes hand in handwith a deep personal reverence for thesanctity of the law.

Amongst people accustomed to abso-lutism liberty is usually conceived of aslicense; and to be free is to be without re-straint. They are so accustomed to re-gard external positive law as the rule of

lO Catholic Ideals

morals as to lose a proper appreciation ofthe restraining influence of personal con-victions and of honour. With a free people,on the other hand, liberty begets a senseof personal responsibility in which lies thebest security for the law.

According to the best tradition ofAnglo-Saxon life, liberty might be defined as theright of every man to the possession andrealization of himself as a rational being.It implies that every man has a naturalright to live his own life, and that thisright is inherent in his very being, prior toany sanction on the part of the commu-nity. But no man can properly realizehimself apart from his fellowmen, andhence arises the natural necessity of so-ciety and the State. The State, therefore,has its origin in the right of the individualto self-realization as a rational being, andit exists primarily to secure to all its mem-bers the exercise of this right. For thispurpose it is endowed with authority torepress individual violence and to guardand foster the common interests. What,however,we must particularly notice aboutthe Anglo-Saxon conception of the Stateand of authority is that the true English-man will never submit to be held in bond-age by a social body with which he is infundamental disagreement; for to do sowould be to surrender that personal liberty

The Church and Liberty 1

1

which is the first article of his social creed.Yet convince him that his interests arefundamentally one with the society orparty which claims his allegiance, and nomore loyal subject can be found, nor onemore ready to sacrifice smaller personalinterests to the common good. The pivotof his allegiance is a personal convictionthat the society represents a fundamentalcommon interest between himself and hisfellowmen. Whilst that conviction lastshe is unalterably loyal : when that convic-tion is wanting, he holds apart in honestisolation. To retain his allegiance, there-fore, it is necessary to convince him thatthe fundamental interests binding him tohis party or the State are being main-tained : for to him authority exists onlyto maintain these common interests, andwhen it ceases to maintain these, authorityitself no longer exists.

It is at this point that the Anglo-Saxonspirit diffei's so radically from that whichhas been fostered during the past four orfive centuries in the Latin nations. Thesystem prevalent in these nations hastended to divorce obedience from a per-sonal conviction of the common good, andto secure authority, not by the reasonableassent of the subjects, but by coercion.

Now there are cases in which obe-dience by coercion is necessary for the

12

Catholic Ideals

common welfare. It is frequently neces-sary in times of great popular excitementor of revolutionary violence, when the peo-ple are incapable of reasonable thought.But as a normal condition of affairs it ismanifestly unworthy of human society.In ordinary life it is much better thatobedience should proceed from a har-mony of mind between those in authorityand the subjects who are required to obey.But such harmony is possible only whenthe two parties take each other into mu-tual confidence, and in this the wisdomof the English-speaking race has shownitself Whilst the Latin governments havebeen ruling on the principle of militarydiscipline, the Anglo-Saxon have recog-nized the principle that the people ascitizens of the State are co-partners in theworking of the State, to be convinced ofthe necessity or utility of the law beforethe law is made. Doubtless the systemhas its defects. Many a good law has hadto wait for years before taking its placeon the statute-book, because it was notproperly understood by the people. Manya good work has been left undone be-cause the people were not convinced ofits utility. Yet on the whole the systemhas worked well ; and though a good lawor a good work has been delayed, yetonce it has won the people's allegiance,


3

it acquires a stability and influence im-Dossible to enactments or institutions)uilt up by penalties or against the popu-ar will.

But it may be objected that this ideaof popular liberty is at variance with the di-vinely appointed authority which governsthe Church, and can never be recognizedin the dealings of the Church with thepeople. The Church, it will be urged, de-pends for her authority not on the willof the people but upon the commissionof Jesus Christ. This objection, were itnot so frequently urged by the votariesof another system, need hardly be se-riously considered. For we are not con-cerned here with the principle of au-thority but rather with its method. TheAnglo-Saxon spirit absorbed into Catho-licism will necessarily acknowledge thatthe source of the Church's authority isthe commission of Jesus Christ; nordoes this idea of personal liberty inany way derogate from the absolute pre-rogatives of the Holy See and the bishopsas pastors of the Church. But it willundoubtedly affect the methods wherebythe ordinary discipline of the Church ismaintained, and still more will it affectindividual and social action amongst Ca-tholics on the thousand and one ques-tions which lie outside the ordinary

14 Catholic Ideals

sphere of ecclesiastical legislation, in re-fard to domestic, social or political life,t will, in a word, affect our general no-

tions of the ordinary relations betweenthe individual and the community, and inmany ways alter the point of view towhich Catholics have largely grown ac-customed during the past four centuries.

For owing to the peculiar circum-stances of the time, the social and politi-cal life of Cathohcism has been almostentirely shaped by the system and me-thods of the Latin nations. The greatschism forced the Church into a closealliance with the nations, and to preserveher authority in the face of the revolu-tionary spirit of the north, she had per-force to seek protection in the assertionof the uttermost prerogatives of authority.The temper and the methods of the Latinpeoples helped her to do this; and thusit came about that the Church has seemedto be in antagonism towards the spirit andmethods of the English race. But if wego back beyond the period of storm andstress, and study the political and social lifeof Catholicism in its more normal attitudein the middle ages, we shall find a singularregard for personal liberty. As illustrativeof the normal Catholic policy we may takean instance where least one might expectto find it. In the rule given by St Bene-


5

diet to his monks it is laid down thaton all matters seriously affecting the wel-fare of the community, the abbot shallnot act without consulting the wholebody of monks, even to the youngest no-vice. A later asceticism would have de-nied the monks any voice in the govern-ment of the community. Not so, however,with St Benedict, in whom the Catholicinstinct of the middle ages recognized amodel law-giver. And hence in the his-tory of the Benedictine Order one finds aspirit of personal liberty ever blendingwith a most perfect system of authority.In the twelfth and thirteenth centuriesagain this same individualism is even morestrongly marked. The democratic awaken-ing of that period, manifested in the riseof the commercial towns, is also prominentin the spirit of the new Orders of friarsand in the intellectual revival. Wheredoes one find more fearless speculationand bold originality of thought than in theearly scholastic period? Where greaterliberty of spirit than in the devotionalliterature of that time? And what a rushof personal initiative we find in the wholeecclesiastical life of those days!

With this period of the Church thespirit of the present does indeed find it-self in deep sympathy; and if the newspirit of our own time must needs justify

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Catholic Ideals

itself by historic precedent, it has but topoint to those "Ages of Faith": there itwill find sufficient justification. And forthis reason we may say that the spirit ofpersonal liberty is far more in accordancewith the normal Catholic instinct than isthe spirit of absolutism, and that, in re-turning to a more normal and construc-tive condition of existence, the Churchwill naturally ally itself with the spirit ofpersonal liberty.

Perhaps one of the most difficult no-tions to eradicate from the mind of Catho-lics is the notion that the Church is on itsdefence against universal anarchy and re-volt. This notion has become so ingrainedthat the ordinary Catholic is apt to see ineverynewdevelopmentofsecular life a con-scious attack on Catholic teaching and sen-timent. Whereas it is much more true tosaythat the world is more or less indifferentto Catholic claims, and pursues its course,not with any strict thought of Catholicism,but with the immediate desire of satisfyingits own thirst for life : it is more or less byaccident that it opposes itself to Catholic-ism, since it has come to regard the Churchas out of touch with the thought and life ofthe modern world. It is no longer anti-Catholic of set purpose, but because theChurch is held to have no part in modernlife save as a drag upon its progress and


7

an upholder of the dead past. The atti-tude of mind of the world at the presentday towards the Church is thus radicallydifferent from that which guided theworld's policy down to the beginning ofthe nineteentn century. Modern seculardevelopment is indifferent to the Churchrather than hostile; and it is indifferent be-cause it expects no help from the Churchin the building up of its life. Much thesame phenomenon is apparent in the his-tory of the early thirteenth century, be-fore the new Orders of friars succeeded inreconciling the democratic spirit ofthe timewith the Church ; only perhaps the breachbetween the Church and the new spiritto-day is wider than it was then. Thesignificance of the present situation there-fore is that the Church is no longer a be-sieged city. The beleaguering forces havedrawn off^ so far as the main body of secu-lar development is concerned, and are pur-suing a course apart from the Church.But the Church, by the law of our divinecommission, cannot let the world thuspass by. Her duty is to follow the worldup, and out of its secular achievementsconstruct the kingdom of God. Thus thesituation to-day is radically different fromthat of the past four centuries. Then theproblem was for the Church to maintainmtact her own sovereign authority; now

18

Catholic Ideals

it is to reconstruct her social and politicallife, and make good the ravages incidentalto a state of war. But this reconstructioncan only take place upon the lines de-manded by the needs and ideals of the pre-sent age : in this way only can the world bereconciled and the modern peoples madeinto good subjects. Reconciliation is nowthe watchword of the Church's policy, asformerly the watchword was Defence.

Enough, however, has been said tojustify the position of those who believe inthe ultimate alliance of Catholicism withthe ideals and methods of the English-speaking race, and who see in the presentsituation of the Church a demand for afuller recognition amongst Catholics ofthat ideal of personal liberty which, iden-tified by history with the Anglo-Saxon,is now becoming the property of theyounger generation in the Latin nations.The hard and fast adherents of absolutismwill, of course, never be convinced; tothem personal liberty will spell licenseto the end of their term. But it is wellfor those to whom the spirit of liberty isas the breath of life to keep faith in theirown ideal, and work to bring about its in-corporation into the visible life of theChurch. In doing this they will as-suredly be doing a service to the Ca-tholic cause; for only as this comes to


9

Dass will the Church regain the sym-Dathy of the multitude and CatholicismDecome again, as in the "Ages of Faith,"synonymous with the highest human de-velopments, whether in secular or reli-gious life.

At present the greatest weakness ofCatholicism is undoubtedly a lack of en-thusiasm, due to a mistaken and inordi-nate repression of personal initiative underthe absolutist system of the Latin nations.This system has tended to reduce all ac-tivity to specialized forms, and to represswhatever activity lies outside these forms.It has tended to reduce everything to rule,and to set measures beyond which humanendeavour shall not pass. The conse-quence to-day is that our organizationsand associations lack buoyancy; theyhave become rigid from over-systematiz-ing and over-formulating, and are in-capable of meeting the new demandsupon them. Instead of assisting andfostering personal effort, they tend toencage it; and thus in too many in-stances the spirit has drooped and be-come inert. In the effort to control in-dividualism they have stamped out indi-viduality, and destroyed the enthusiasmwhich leads to success.

The influence of the English-speakingrace will, it is to be hoped, revive in the

2 Catholic Ideals

Church the spirit of personal initiative.To this spirit we look for that yet widerdevelopment of Catholic life, which theworld now needs after the distractionsand disruptions of the past four cen-turies. But in incorporating this spiritof initiative into her social life and insti-tutions the Church will naturally sti-mulate the sense of personal responsi-bility, which is the surest corrective ofthose defects to which the English spiritis inclined. Under the Latin systemresponsibility for the common welmre istoo much relegated to those who admi-nister the government of the community;nor could it be otherwise. Where thereis no freedom of initiative there can be nointimate sense of responsibility. Under asystem of greater personal liberty the de-velopment of a sense of personal respon-sibility for the general welfare becomesimperative: in this chiefly lies the securityof the social bond under all systems. Nogovernment can long be stable which isnot supported by the popular conscience

;

no community can flourish and give forththe best human results in which the ma-jority of the people are but as pawns on achessboard. And this is true of religiousassociations even more than of secular

:

it is peculiarly true at this present time.The spirit of liberty is abroad and it can-


1

not be repressed ; but it can be taken intothe service of religionas it was in timesbygoneand from an enemy convertedinto a friend. And this is what theChurch of the immediate future will do

;

and in doing, save humanity and justifyherself.

The Christian StateAmong the religious problems of the hour,one of the most ominous is the gene-ral tendency amongst the nations to se-cularize the State. It is difficult to sayexactly how far this tendency is due toa materialist temper of mind with itsworship of the merely visible and tem-poral, and how far it is a symptom ofthe popular discontent which demands areadjustment of the relations betweenChurch and State in the general recon-struction of political and social life. Un-doubtedly much of the anti-clerical temperis directed not so much against religion it-self as against the existing conventionsunder which the Church secures herrights and privileges. Everywhere thereseems to be a widespread feeling amongstthe people that the Church represents aparty in the State rather than the peopleat large; that she is allied with certainvested interests rather than with thecommon welfare. And until this popu-lar discontent is allayed the anti-clericalpropaganda will find support, if not in theactive sympathy of the multitude, at leastin their apathy. Anti-clericalism is, in fact,

The Christian State 2^the temper of the hour amongst largemasses of the people both at home andabroad, and it will increase and flourishuntil the mass of the people is per-suaded that the influence of the Churchis exerted for the general good, thatthe Church is the guardian of popularliberty and that her action in the State isfor the benefit of the people themselves.The Church, said Cardinal Manning, has nolonger to deal with dynasties but with thepeople; and that is true in a deeper sensethan appears on the surface. Whetherrightly or falsely, the Church has come tobe regarded as having interests apart fromthe multitude, and so far she has got out oftouch with the people. To remedy this un-fortunate condition of things, to win backthe people's confidence and regain her ownliberty of unfettered intercourse with thepeople, is nowone of her most urgent needs.How this is to be brought about only thefuture can show; amongst the English-speaking peoples fortunately the Churchis free, and this is the reason why it wouldseem that the strength of the Church inthe immediate future lies, not in the nomi-nally Catholic States, but amongst the freepeoples of the North. Of the utmostimportance is it then that in these coun-tries the rights of the Church should besecured not by concordats or other legal

24 Catholic Ideals

alliance with the State but by the peoplethemselves making use of their civicrights. With the people, not with govern-ments, lies the strength of the Churchto-day.

It is the more needful that the Catholicsin England and America should keep freeof any embarrassing alliance with the State,which might tend to put the people outof sympathy with the Church, since in thenear future the question whether secular-ism or Christianity is to determine thereligious character of the nation will un-doubtedly depend upon the position whichthe Catholic Church will secure in the es-timation of the country. We have cometo a point in the people's life when their re-ligious destiny is again being put into thehands of Catholics. The present alliancein England between nonconformity andsecularism in the agitation over educationis hastening on the moment when the Eng-lish people will have to decide whetherthe nation shall be avowedly Christian orsecularist. The nonconformists to-day de-mand the secularization of education; ifthey gain their end, to-morrow their free-thinking allies will demand the entire de-christianizing of all State policy and legis-lation. Nor can Anglicanism effectivelystop the flood-tide which is setting in

:

its very legal position as the Established

The Christian State 2 5Church handicaps its freedom and effect-iveness at this crisis, even more than theconcordat fetters the Catholic Churchabroad. Moreover AngHcanism is a housedivided against itself, hardly knowing fromone day to another its own mind, but con-stantly swaying between Catholic anderastian principles. Against the consis-tent policy of the nonconformist andsecularist alliance the Catholic Churchalone can oppose a policy, equally con-sistent and uncompromising; and the fu-ture lies between them.

But it must be well understood that thecleavage between secularist and Catholicto-day is on no question of detail in na-tional policy : it goes deeper down intothe fundamental principles upon which thenation's life is built. It is the most radicalof all differences; a matter of an entireState policy. And unless this fact is clearlyunderstood we shall be apt to play into theenemy's handsas Catholics have oftendone beforeand perhaps after a tempo-rary triumph, find ourselves in a falseposition. Not for any apparent advan-tage, however inviting, may we betraythese fundamental principles upon whichthe security of the Christian life depends.It will be well then to understand clearlywhat are the principles which lie at thebasis of the Catholic conception of the

26 Catholic Ideals

State. They can perhaps best be explainedby a series of propositions.

Our first proposition is

that the Stateis not the absolute master of the individual;that in fact it has no rights at all over theindividual, except what the welfare of theindividual in his personal and social rela-tions gives to the state. The individualcitizen has a right to exist prior to thatof the state ; and he forfeits this right onlywhen he ceases to live as a reasonablebeing should. Only when a man abuseshis liberty to the injury of his fellow-manhas the state any right to restrict hisliberty or to interfere with his action.But as long as the individual in no wayinjures his fellow-man or himself, he isfree to do as he wills. And if the Statedoes interfere without necessity and inviolation of that natural freedom whichbelongs to every human being, then theindividual has natural rights to resist.Nay, not only has he a right to resist,but in some cases he has a duty, when-ever by submission to State interferencehe would betray the cause of God orthe rights of his fellow-men.

This principle may be said to be themost fundamental in the constitution ofStates according to Cathohc teaching.Often has it been said that the Churchis opposed to the cause of hberty; and

The Christian State 27with sorrow be it acknowledged, too oftenhave Catholic princes and politicians, for-getting their Catholic principles, actedin violation of that essential individualHberty which the highest Catholic teach-ing has ever proclaimed ; indeed it is withshame that we see the sacred principleof personal liberty so generally violatedin the so-called Catholic countries.

But we must remember that thesecountries, Catholic in name though theybe, have for centuries been under the in-fluence of that pagan statecraft, whichwas brought in at the Renaissance, andhas since done its best to enslave boththe people and the Church. It is oneof the blessings for which in the light ofevents, English-speaking Catholics maythank God, that for nearly four centuriesthe}^ were cut off from participation inthe iniquity wrought by unchristian state-craft : we have at least this advantagethat we can appeal to our Catholic prin-ciples to-day without having to blusn fora participation in the tyrannies of thepast. To us therefore is it given as apeculiar right to uphold this Catholicdoctrine of personal liberty as a funda-mental principle of Christian statecraftagainst all who would violate it, be theythe free-thinking politicians of the conti-nent, or the secularist politicians of our

28 Catholic Ideals

own country, or those even amongst our-selves who for the sake of some tempo-rary advantage to the Church would be-tray those fundamental principles uponwhich alone the Christian State can rest.We can never consistently with Catholicprinciple admit State Absolutism. TheState exists for the citizen, not the citizenfor the State. This does not mean thatthe citizen is not bound in certain circum-stances to sacrifice himself for the com-mon good of the community. But it doesmean that the State, as an impersonalidea and apart from the common good,has no right to interfere with personalliberty.

Our second proposition is: That thesovereignity of the State is limited, not onlyby the rights of personal liberty, but also bythe inherent sovereignty of the Church andthe Family. It is Catholic teaching thatin all matters affecting man's spiritual andeternal welfare the authority of the Churchis supreme. In these matters the Statehas no right to rule or determine. Tothe Church alone it belongs to decide whatbelongs to, and is consonant with, Chris-tian faith; and to her alone it belongs ina supreme degree and for final appeal, tosafeguard the sanctity of Christian life.In this sphere of life the State is subordi-nate to the Church, and at most has

The Christian State 29the right to support the ruling of theChurch.

Again, the Family has certain inalien-able rights apart from the State. It isa parent's natural right to wield authorityover his child until the child is capableof governing himself; it belongs primarilyto the parent to educate the child, andparents have always a claim upon thechild for support in case of need. Theserights are inalienable, and the State actsoutside its sphere of authority when it de-prives the Family of its rights. Catholicteaching, therefore, holds that in thegovernance of society there are threesovereignties: the Church, the State andthe Familyeach independent within itsown proper sphere, though oftentimesoverlapping each other in the subject oftheir authority. Thus, for example, in theeducation of a child, the State rightlyclaims to supervise the education in sofar as to see that the child shall be pro-perly fitted to exercise the duties of citi-zenship. The Church, on the other hand,has the right to demand that the child'seducation, whilst fitting him for citizen-ship, shall also fit him to be a worthymember of the Church, for it belongs tothe Church to guard and foster the re-ligious development of the child. At thesame time the right to educate the child

3

30 Catholic Ideals

belongs primarily to the parent, and aslong as the parent satisfies the rightfuldemands of the Church and the State hehas the right to educate the child as hedeems best for the child's welfare.

Marriage, again, is an example of over-lapping jurisdiction. The State has theright to affix certain conditions to themarriage contract, and may lawfully punishan infringement of these conditions bya loss of civic rights. Yet the supremejurisdiction over the marriage vow be-longs not to the State, but to the Church,since marriage is a sacrament. And onlythe Church can legislate regarding thevalidity of marriage.

Now we Catholics are bound to up-hold in all their integrity the rights of theChurch and of the Family; nor can we inconscience surrender these rights to theState. On this point we are for everopposed to all those who would make theState the one supreme authority in so-cietywhether they be Protestants of thetype who believe the Church to be a meredepartment of the State, or the Socialistwho denies any independent rights toeither Church or Family; or whetherthey be those who, admitting all rightsin theory, in practice deny them accord-ing to the policy of the moment. Un-doubtedly it is sometimes difficult to ad-

The Christian State 3

1

just exactly the rightful the claims ofChurch, the State and the Family, wherethese claims fall upon the same subject;and the solution is for wise and prudentstatesmanship. To a case in pomt. InEngland one of the claims of the Churchis to have the actual guardianship of theneglected children of the Catholic poorand of poor Catholic orphans, and to placethem in Catholic institutions, whilst at thesame time claiming State aid for their sup-port. Here we have a statesmanlike so-lution of what to some is a knotty pro-blem. For when a parent neglects a childor ceases to be able to provide for it, theparental right falls to the State, so far asthe child's temporal welfare is concerned,but to the Church in regard to its spiritualwelfare. To bring up the child in a Pro-testant or non-Catholic institution is often-times to expose the child's faith to graveinjury, and in any case is a hindrance tothe free exercise of the discretion claimedby the Church in fostering the child's spiri-tual development. To secure then herown rights the Church assumes part ofthe proper responsibility of the State inproviding for the temporal welfare of thechild. The ecclesiastical authorities pro-vide institutions and schools, acceptingfrom the State less than the cost of thechild's temporal support. In strict justice

3 2 Catholic Ideals

the State should provide the entire costof the child's livelihood, whilst leaving theChurch free to direct its spiritual educa-tion. On the other hand the State mightlawfully claim exclusive guardianship ofthe child's temporal interests, did it in noway interfere with the rights of the Churchover the child's soul. A practical compro-mise is the existing system. The Statecedes part of its right to the Church; whilstthe Church assumes part of the responsi-bility of the State, in order to secure thechild's spiritual welfare as well as its tem-poral. For of course the Church can neversurrender the spiritual interests for thesake of the temporal, since the spiritualare of infinitely greater value. And inthis sense it is that the claim of theChurch upon a citizen is superior to thatof the State; whenever spiritual interestsare at stake they demand prior considera-tion to the merely temporal.

Keeping these limitations of State au-thority in view we come to our third pro-position, which is: That the States firstduty is to see that every man is let live whohas notforfeited his right to live.

At first this may seem a simple truism,but let us look back at the past and seewhether the State has fulfilled this clear,simple duty. Has the State in the pastendeavoured to secure to every citizen

The Christian State 33his right to Hve ? The back streets andbyways of our English towns and thestarved, stunted mass of humanity whichdrags out its earthly existence there, giveno uncertain answer.

Those slums and that large demoralizedmultitude are the results in large measureof centuries of legislation, of which the aimhas been not to secure to every man hisright to live, but to ground down one classof citizen for the benefit of other classes ; itis the result of the policy of the State toside with the strong against the weak,with the rich against the poor. We havenow entered upon a happier era of Statepolicy. To-day all parties have come ina measure to recognize the injustice ofmere class legislation. But the promiseto reform is still often larger than thefulfilment. So far as the nation is arousedto a sense of its responsibility to itsweaker citizens, it is in the right way;and our simple duty as Catholics is tothrow all our energy into sustaining thenation in the better way in which it hasbegun to walk. But when we speak ofthe right to live, we mean the right tolive a proper human life. To every manthe State owes it to secure that he shallhave reasonable opportunity to live ac-cording to his highest moral and humanstandard, and that the laws be framed

34 Catholic Idealsso as to support him in his endeavour.Hence the duty of the State to securebetter housing of the poor; to restrict thepower of the pubhcan to tempt the weakto their ruin; to prevent the speculatorfrom manipulating the markets m a wayto put the price of food or clothing be-yond the working-man's means. Ourpolicy as Catholics is to favour and se-cure such legislation as will foster andbring about more human conditions of lifefor those whom the selfishness of moneyor power has hitherto debased.But here, perhaps, it may be well to re-

mark that, whilst it is a duty to fosterlegislation which will give even the poor-est and weakest the opportunity to live aproper human life, nevertheless we mustnot fall into the error of making the pooraltogether dependent on State-aid for theirbetterment. There can be no real improve-ment in the condition of the people whichis not in some measure the result of theirown effort. The State cannot make a man.In the final resort a man must make him-self Hence the policy of wise legislationis to foster self-help and not to take awaythe need of initiative and effort. Our aimshould be to make men and not mere pup-pets of the State.

Very grave therefore is the mischiefdone by instilling into the minds of the

The Christian State 3 5weak and unfortunate the notion that theState can do everything. No, when theState has done its best, self-help and per-sonal endeavour are still necessary for thebuilding up of a human life.

Nevertheless in the first instance it isfrequently useless talking to men aboutself-help whilst they are bound hand andfoot by conditions of life which renderself-help morally impossible and kill allhope. It is vain to demand of men thatthey lead self-respecting lives whilst land-lords exact exorbitant rents for mere gar-rets and hovels : and it is mere mockeryto talk of thrift to a man who is unable toobtain a life-supporting wage.

How far it is wise to permit State inter-ference in social economics is a questionthat will at all times exercise the minds ofpractical workers. To protect the weakagainst the selfishness of the strong, andat the same time to foster self-relianceand initiative, is a problem depending forits solution upon the wisdom of the mo-ment. There will always be, however,people whose sympathies lean to oneside of the problem, and others whosesympathies incline to the other side.

All will agree upon the necessity ofthe State taking the initiative in better-ing a man's condition when he has sunkso low as to have no moral incentive

36 Catholic Ideals

within himself to seek self-betterment, orwhen he has lost the very sense of better-ment, as is so largely the case in ourtown-slums. The difficulty arises laterwhen a man has been aroused to a desireof better things and put in the way ofattaining to them. Then how far he isto be assisted by the State and how farleft to his own exertion is a subject ofpractical judgement concerning whichthere will be diversity of opinions. Yetit is a far advance towards social jus-tice when men recognize that the Statehas a duty to the weak in their effortsto better themselves.We come now to our fourth proposi-

tion, and it is this : A State is Lhrtsttanonly when in its laws and general policy itco-operates with the Church in maintainingreligion and the sanctity of human life asdemanded by the Christian consciousness.The notion that life can be absolutelyseparated into a secular interest and areligious, is entirely opposed to the Catho-lic idea. Catholicism does not admit oneinterest on Sundays and another, altoge-ther distinct, on week-days. Life is one,and the secular and religious interests in-timately commingle. Consequently thenotion that the State has nothing to dowith religion but only with man's tempo-ral concerns is from the Catholic point of

The Christian State 37view untenable. The State necessarilyeither supports Christianity or discour-ages it : the Gospel and secularism areessentially contradictory of each other;if you support the one, you deny theother. Tne State therefore cannot beneutral; either it is Christian in its policy,or anti-Christian. For Christianity is nota detail of life ; it is a spirit animating thewhole being of man and directing hiswhole life.

Hence, though the direct concern ofthe State is with the secular interests ofits citizens, still indirectly it must eithermake for religion or against it. If in itslaws it fosters an ideal of life opposed tothe Catholic consciousnessif it opens theway to neo-paganism or naturalism, itrenounces its claim to be considered aChristian State.

The question now arises, how far mayCatholics tolerate anti-Christian legisla-tion in the State, and how far are theybound to work against it? Now there canbe no doubt of the duty resting on everyCatholic citizen to oppose to the uttermostanti-Catholic legislation. For good or forevil the State in no small measure affectsthe moral and spiritual life of its indivi-dual citizens. When the laws permit ofeasy divorce, there will be no high idealof marriage amongst the mass of its citi-

38 Catholic Ideals

zens; class legislation tends to accumu-late class-selfishness, and thus a moralatmosphere is created to which theweaker characters will always succumb.Indifference therefore may easily becomeculpable neglect of duty on the part ofthe citizen who fails to use his civil rightsor to assert himself against laws whichencourage an anti-Christian conceptionof life.

At the same time however it is to beborne in mind that the Christian State isconstructed not so much by laws as byconscience. The statute book may con-ceivably be a perfect application of theSermon on the Mount, whilst the livesof the citizens are its uttermost denial.The absence of divorce laws does notnecessarily mean that the marriage vowis kept inviolate amongst the people; themost stringent regulations 01 the drinktraffic are not necessarily s3^nonymouswith perfect sobriety. In a wisely-regu-lated community the law always bears avery direct relation to the conscience ofthe citizens, nor is it ever wise for legis-lation to run far ahead of the popularconscience. When it does so it defeatsits own purpose and remains little morethan a dead letter; or if it is active at all itusually operates in a direction contrary tothat for which it is intended, intensifying

The Christian State 39the evil it would correct. Hence the wisecourse is often to tolerate legislationwhich cannot be approved, and to turnone's energies to tne elevating of themoral consciousness of the people. Forthe State can be justly expected to upholdthe Christian consciousness only when itactually exists amongst its citizens. Todo otherwise would be an unwarrantabletyranny. It belongs to the Church pri-marily to create the Christian conscious-ness, not to the State. Hence our firstduty as Catholics is to arouse and educatethe moral sense of the people and gradu-ally to elevate their ideal of conduct.Then when the moral sense is aroused,must we see that the laws of the Stateare such as guard and foster the con-science of the nation. The principle to beborne in mind is that whilst the State isbound to give expression in its legislationto the Christian consciousness of its citi-zens, this duty falls upon it only in pro-portion to the development of the Chris-tian consciousness amongst its citizens.And the duty of fostering the Christianconsciousness belongs primarily and di-rectly to the Church, not to the State.

It is only by a due appreciation of thesefundamental principles that we Catholicscan hope to save tne Christian characterof the nation from the secularist onslaught.

40 Catholic IdealsThe time has come or is fast coming whenthe State must be either frankly Christianor frankly secularist. The alliance be-tween Christianity and the neo-paganismof the Renaissance has broken down. Butwe cannot too well bear in mind that whatmakes a nation Christian is not the exist-ence of a concordat, whether formal or in-formal, nor the mere recognition of Godand the Church in the statute-book. AChristian nation is one whose principlesof government is in accordance with theCatholic conception of life. And the Ca-tholic conception of life recognizes a three-fold sovereignty: of Church, State andFamily, and holds as sacred the principle ofpersonal liberty. Only in a State in whichthese principles are recognized does theCatholic life find its proper development.

Were this fact more widely understood,secularism would, I believe, be deprivedof its chief weapon. Catholicism is re-garded generally as a sectarian interestinimical to the welfare of the people atlarge. Were it recognized for what ittruly is, as a broad human policy, reach-ing indeed unto the heavens, but havingits foundations deep in the aspirationswhich elevate human existence here onearth, then would it gain the nation's earand have power to save.

Our duty then is to take our stand by

The Christian State 41Catholic principle in so far as it alreadyforms part of the nation's life, and tostrive to introduce it where it is wanting.Nor can we afford to throw away theopportunities which are given us in theexercise of our civic rights. It may besaid that Catholics in English-speakingcountries are a small minority. But smallminorities can do much, if they are com-pact and in earnest. It is in fact usuallythe vigorous minority that wins. At anyrate, minority though we are, the uphold-ing of the Christian character of the Staterests with us, and as this fact becomesmanifest to the people at large, we shallgather to ourselves whatever of genuineChristianity remains in the land.

But let us bear in mind at this day thatour strength lies in identifying ourselveswith the welfare of the nation, and notin standing apart as though we werestrangers in the land. The nation's in-terests are our interests; the people'scause, our cause. This in truth is thevery strength of Catholicism that it doesnot stand for any sectarian interest, butfor the nation itself. To-day this claimmay be scoffed at by the multitude, but ifwe Catholics are true to ourselves thelogic of events will yet justify it. Mean-while, whatever others may say, our pathis clear and our duty imperative.

The Education ofWomanThe impetus given to the education ofwomen has been one of the most strik-ing achievements of the past century.Every woman with any claim to an edu-cation is now expected to know some-thing about most things that interest herbrothers; nor can we say where woman'sambition will lead her in search of acade-mic conquests. There has been muchsenseless jargon and fussiness about itall; yet when the chaff has been siftedaway, this good thing remains: woman'sintelligence is now recognized as compeerwith that of the man. She is no longerregarded as essentially inferior to the manin the higher qualities of human nature.

This emancipation undoubtedly marksa positive advancement in the history ofcivilization. For a people's ideal of wo-men is one of the supreme factors in themaking of moral and social life. In alarge sense it may be said that woman'spossession of her own, marks the triumphof right over might, of moral power overphysical.

And yet, as is the case with all revolu-tions, the achievement has been encum-

The Education ofWoman 4.3bered with much foolishness and intem-perance of word and deed. Long ago,when the movement was in its first fer-vour, Ruskin uttered the warning thatwoman's equahty with man does notmean her identity with him. Womanis not a lesser man, nor a greater; noteven a man at all. She is ever woman,and her power and dignity are derived asmuch from that in which she differs fromman as from that in which she is at onewith him. Nay, her proper power de-pends upon maintaining the difference;tor in so far as she loses the individualityof her womanhood, she becomes but asorry double of the proper man. Theignoring of this fact by so many of theloudest agitators for " woman's rights," iswhat has surrounded the feminist move-ment with much mockery and unreality.Whatever the agitator may say, the com-mon sense of mankind is assured that thedifference of woman from man is notmerely one of physical form and function,but of mental character and moral force.

If then we would avoid the snareswhich have overbalanced so many femi-nist advocates, we must have some clearconception of what the true woman is,lest we make of the growing womansomething not herself and less than theman she is imagined to be.

44 Catholic IdealsNow the true woman is by nature the

indicator of the moral ideal and the nurseof mankind: she is at once judge andphysician. In her, in the highest sense,justice and mercy meet; but the founda-tion of her character is devotion to theideal. Hence it does not belong to herto legislate or to fight the world's battles

:

these functions belong to the man. Hisoffice it is to build up constitutions, directpolicies and generally to deal with allmatters that demand a certain compro-mise between the ideal and the actual.Woman of her nature is less fitted to ar-range such compromises. A man usuallyviews ideals from a point of view bearingon the actual world around him, and isapt to be satisfied when he attains thepoint where the actual and the ideal offerleast resistence to each other. His tempta-tion is to worship the merely actual, to beimpatient of the ideal. In any case he in-stinctively allows room for the actual.

But a true woman cherishes the idealwith a certain absolute devotion; so thatto her the necessary compromise whichmakes up the actual life of the world istolerable only in as far as it bears the re-flection of the ideal and gives promise ofits fuller realization. When she regardsthe actual world otherwise, she is con-scious of betraying the ideal she wor-

The Education of Woman 45ships. If she is a wise woman she recog-nizes her impotence to realize the ideal ata bound and is grateful to those who inany way help to bring the actual and theideal into closer harmony. But though inher wisdom she may be tolerant of com-promise, she never ceases to deplore itsnecessity; and is seldom fully convincedof the necessity. This prejudice will oftenmake her unjust in regard to those who,honestly seeking to realize the ideal, yetrecognize the necessity of a gradual ad-vancement.

At the same time this absolute devo-tion to the ideal and this prejudice againstcompromise constitute woman, in regard tomoral life, the world's natural " speculumjustitiaethe mirror of right-livmg," inwhich mankind beholds its higher self.And thus her especial office in the worldis to bear witness to the highest life mancan attain to, and inexorably to approveor condemn the actual by its relation tothe ideal towards which man ought totend. Her function it is to beckon manever forward to greater moral achieve-ment, nor to allow him to rest in aughtother than the highest he is capable of.His part it is to tashion the world; hersto maintain the moral standard by whichhis work must be judged.

But it belongs to her not merely to4

46 Catholic Idealsjudge of the moral value of man's work;hers it is to assist him in the realizationof the ideal she holds before him ; tostrengthen him in his moments of weak-ness, to cheer him onward, to bear wit-ness to his valour in an honourable fight,to bind up the wounds after the conflictand generally to foster the realization ofher best hopes of him by timely counseland sympathy.

This duty of fostering pity and sym-pathy is implied in that other duty of wit-nessing to the ideal. For it is a mostsubtle injury to set a law upon others un-less you are prepared to assist their weak-ness in the obsei-vance of the law. Andso it is that every woman is appointed bynature nurse and foster-mother of man-kind. Like her heavenly proto-type, theVirgin Mother, she is not only "Specu-lum JustitiaeMirror of Justice," but also"Health of the Sick," ^Refuge of Sin-ners," " Consoler of the Afflicted," and inthe uniting of all these qualities she at-tains her queenly sovereignty. For thisfostering care of mankind is she fitted bythat exquisite sensitiveness which is partof the true woman's nature, and enablesher, when not turned back upon herself, in-tuitively to appreciate the needs of others.Hence no greater injury can be done towoman than to blunt this sensitiveness

The Education of Woman 47which is so necessary a condition of herproper life. Only what is frequentlyneededis that she learn to turn this sensitivenessto account for the understanding, comfort-ing and healing of her fellow-creatures,and not for the indulgence of her vanityand self-love.

In any scheme of woman's education,therefore, these two fundamental qualitiesof her character must ever be kept in viewher idealism and her sensitiveness; forin these two natural qualities we find thepredominating marks of true womanhood.

And yet, thus boldly stated, this pre-sentment of the truth leaves much to bedesired in view of the objects aimed at bythe feminist movement. The fact is, ofcourse, that many qualifications enter intoperfect womanhood which are not ex-pressed in these two predominant notesof her character; and which, though sub-ordinate to her idealism and sensitive-ness, are yet necessary for the proper de-velopment of these two qualities. Herewe may state at once that whatever entersinto the composition of the perfect manmust in some degree be found in the per-fect woman, just as all true feminine quali-ties are in a measure to be found in th ehighest masculine character. For the dis-tinction between man and woman is notso much absolute as relative : both possess

48 Catholic Ideals

all human qualities, only in each thosequalities predominate which determinethe distinctive function in life. So thatthe mark of the true woman is not theabsence of masculine qualities, but theirdue subordination to the distinctive marksof her womanhood. The making of thetrue woman is in fact not a question ofexclusion, but of right subordination. Inconsidering it a question of exclusion iswhere the educationalists of a former timewent astray; in failing to see that there isa question of right subordination is wheremany educationalists of to-day go equallyastray. But without enclosing a woman'seducation within any narrow lines thatmark her off from her proper participationin the interests of her brothers, it is yetevident that the chief concern of her edu-cation must be to safeguard and developher womanly traits. Isow it is a truismthat in one's strength lies one's weakness.The very idealism and sensitiveness whichare the strength of woman and the con-ditions of her power amongst men, areapt to be a source of weakness unless herwhole human nature is healthily exercisedand developed. Her idealism may easilymake her unjust in her judgements unlessher intelligence is equal to the problembefore her; her sensitiveness may leaveher a prey to emotion unless she knows

The Education ofWoman 49the secret of self-control. Her educationthen should proceed alone two chief linesthe strengthening of ner self-controlwhilst preserving her womanly sensitive-ness, and the enlarging of her mental out-look upon the actual world whilst foster-ing her proper idealism. In so far as thepresent feminist movement is achievingthese aims, it is good. Undoubtedly insecuring for woman a greater freedomfor self-development it is giving her theopportunity for exercising her womanlyPrerogatives in a larger measure thaneretofore; and in her greater freedom

she will learn that self-control in whichshe is apt most to fail. To see in the in-creased independence of women merely adanger to her womanliness is surely tolook merely at the surface of things. Thatthere is a danger is evident; but it isequally certain that independence deve-lopes self-dependence and fosters self-control, and these conditions are properto a truly human life. To deny them towoman is to deny her a human right.To safeguard the modern woman agamstthe danger of her newly acquired in-dependence no surer method can befound than to convince her that theright of independence is coincident withthe duty of self-control. Undoubtedlyin her most exalted independence a wo-

50 Catholic Ideals

man requires certain external safeguards,which the greater physical force of theman renders unnecessary, nor will anywise woman disregard them. Neverthe-less, it remains true that the independentwoman's greatest danger lies in her ownemotional nature, unsecured by the con-trol of her more spiritual faculties of in-telligence and will.

But for the full exercise of her pre-rogative a woman must be self-dependent;and the conditions which make for greaterself-dependence are therefore to be wel-comed, even whilst the dangers are recog-nized and guarded against. Nothing per-haps has so hampered the proper de-velopment of woman as the exaggeratednotion of her dependence on the man,which so widely prevails. That she doesdepend upon him in some measure isof course not questioned. Ordinarily aman has a broader outlook on life, ajuster balance of judgement, a greaterpower of resistance against adversecircumstances; and in these respectsthe woman naturally turns to him tosupply her own deficiency. Yet thisdependence can be easily exaggerated,and the tendency is to exaggerate it.The self-reliant, strenuous type of wo-man, so frequently produced m circum-stances which give a woman greater

The Education of Woman 5

1

opportunities of exercising her latentpowers, proves conclusively that naturenever meant her to be a mere satelliteof man, finding hec life in revolvingaround his. Rather has nature endowedher in such wise that she may be man'sindependent ally and co-worker. Butthis she can never be whilst she lackssufficient self-reliance and strength ofcharacter to enable her, if need be, tostand apart. A woman's education, there-fore, should aim at developing her latentpowers of resistance and self-dependence,so as to enable her to face the world alonewithout a probability of failure. Only inso far as this is accomplished is the per-fect woman possible.

But it will be said such an educationwill unfit her for marriage or render herless willing to marry. Already, it is said,the greater independence of women ren-ders them more difficult in regard to mar-rying. As regards the objection that theeducation we claim for her unfits a womanfor marriage, no objection could be moreabsurd; for a self-dependent woman willmake a better wife and mother than a wo-man helpless or servile. And as regardsthe charge that such education makes themless willing to marry, what does it amountto but a confession that many womenmarry by a sort of moral compulsion, and

5 2 Catholic Ideals

that if they were less dependent they wouldnot marry. And is it not evident that sucha condition of affairs is degrading to themarriage bond? Marriage must be a per-fectly free contract, entered into for thehigher perfection of two lives, if it is toreach the sacred ideal of the Christiansacrament; and this can be only when thewoman as well as the man is entirely freeto consent or refuse on motives of a spiri-tual nature, and not as constrained bymerely material interests. Moreover, itis altogether opposed to the Christian con-ception of woman to think that her destinyin life is invariably the marriage state.That the majority of men and women findthe proper development of their lives inmarriage is true. It is equally certain thatmany can live fuller and more perfect livesoutside the marriage state. And this free-dom applies to women equally as to men.Such has been the teaching of the Churchfrom the beginning, and with steadfast pur-pose has she consecrated the single life de-voted to God and good works. And inmaintaining woman's freedom to marry ornot to marry, the Church has at onceguarded the proper liberty of human lifeand the sacredness of the marriage bond.The sanctity of Christian marriage impliesthe duty of the single life, when by a singlelife one can attain to a fuller perfection.

The Education of Woman 53Thus, far from interfering with the justclaims of marriage, woman's self-depend-ance enhances its Hberty and sacredness.

It is certain, however, that the moraleducation ofwoman is intimately connectedwith her intellectual training. A mean in-tellectual outlook will distort the keen.estmoral judgment and render it ineffectual.Perfectly to fulfil her proper purpose, bothas the vindicator of the ideal and nurse ofhumanity, a woman needs intellectual sym-pathies of the highest order; to her science,philosophy and art should not be a closedbook, but an open page. She need not bean expert in any particular branch of know-ledge, but she must at least have sufficientknowledge to enable her to sympathizewith her fellow-mortals in their intellectualdevelopments; otherwise she will be lessa companion to man than a hindrance, andfail to elicit that confidence in her moraljudgements, upon which her proper sove-reignty depends. Every woman, there-fore, has a natural right to an intellectualeducation sufficient to enable her to be asympathetic companion in that sphere ofthe world's life in which she is called bybirth or ability to move. But her intellec-tual equipment must ever be considered inreference to her moral vocation; for her,even less than for the man, is intellectualachievement to be regarded as an end in

54 Catholic Idealsitself; but rather must it ever be but ameans to a fuller exercise of her womanlyprerogatives. To act otherwise would bea betrayal of her womanhood. For thisreason no true woman can find content-ment in merely intellectual pursuits in thesame degree as is possible to men. It hasbeen said, with that measure of truth whichgeneral statements contain, that a manfinds his goal in Truth and a woman, hersin Goodness. This much at least is cer-tain, that with the true woman intellectualachievement is less appreciated than moralcharacter; she values a man not for whathe knows, but for what he does and is.With her, too, philosophy ever ends in re-ligion, and this by a natural compulsion ofher nature. She is impatient to embodyher vision of the Good in conduct and inactual being. The True, apart from its re-lation to moral action, does not absorb her.

And herein lies a danger: frequently inher impatience to compass some moral orreligious act she ignores that intellectualtraining which is requisite for the highesthuman act, and so her moral action and herreligion are apt to be too exclusively basedon sentiment and affection, to the detrimentof "a reasonable service," and her willpower is too often developed without re-gard for her intellect: so she often lacksthat well-balanced liberty of soul which an

The Education of Woman 5 5active intelligence alone can give. Heraffections are apt to run in narrow grooves,and her religion to be wanting in sufficientrobustness to convince the world of its per-fect sincerity. And thus, with so many re-ligious women in the world, mankind re-mains so largely uninfluenced by religion.It would not be so were religious womenable to challenge the religious indifferencearound them with a more intelligent andreasonable witnessing to their faith. To theindifferent world their religion seems toooften to be secured by intellectual apathy.On the other hand an intelligent religiouswoman, alive to the intellectual interests ofthe world in which she lives, never fails toimpress and persuade, even when she doesnot wholly convince. For her intellectualsympathies give her the key to the mindsof others, and to understand the minds ofothers is as necessary as the understand-ing of their hearts; yet it is in this matterthat women so frequently fail.

On all accounts therefore it is goodthat woman should receive a liberal andgenerous education and be encouraged tomake herself acquainted with all mattersof knowledge which will increase hersympathy and give her a juster judge-ment. Nor should a woman look merelyto the immediate circle around her toknow how far her studies will be of use

56 Catholic Ideals

to her. Her proper test is her ownabihty; her circumstances are but themodifying element in her hfe, not itsstandard of progression. A woman whohas to gain her own hvehhood will ne-cessarily give a large share of attentionto those particular branches of knowledgeupon which depends her power to earnher bread. But she should neverthelessnot exclude other intellectual pursuits forwhich she has ability and taste. So tooa woman with a particular object to attainto, will wisely make that object a centreof her studies, yet would be foolish toshut out all intellectual sympathies whichhave no immediate bearing upon it. Muchinefficiency is due to this mistake ; for thevery fact of having intellectual interestsnot directly associated with any particularaim, tends to preserve that freshness ofspirit which is essential to efficient work.Hence, as I say, a woman's intellectualdevelopment must be guided not so muchby her circumstances as by her ownproper power and interests. She is her-self the centre of her life and its guidingforce; she ought never to surrender her-self to any merely extraneous force what-ever.

Keeping then in mind the proper traitsof true womanhood, we Catholics haveevery reason to welcome the broader

The Education of Woman 57education woman now claims. It is herrighta right consecrated by the tradi-tion of CathoHcism. For CathoHcismhas fostered the conception of woman-hood, to which this latest movementpays homage. With her unerring in-stinct for the needs of human nature, theChurch has ever refused to recognizethe absolute dependence of the womanon the man, whilst at the same timeholding fast by the essential distinctionof woman's function from that of the manin the social life of the race. Woman, inthe eyes of the Church, is the free andindependent ally of man; and while safe-guarding her weakness in the presenceof the more forceful personality of theman, the Church has ever fostered herstrength and secured her individuality.Through long ages of untutored barbarismand but half-disciplined brute force, thenun's veil was the charter of woman'sfreedom; and in the cloisters were de-veloped types of strong, independentwomanhood, to which the present worldmight well look for examples of the per-fect woman. I do not mean that all nunshave been perfect women. In their se-clusion from the wider life of the worldor in their concentration upon one par-ticular work, they are apt to neglect thatintellectual development which is neces-

58 Catholic Ideals

sary for the fullest exercise of woman'sErerogatives. But this only means thatuman nature even in the cloister easily

falls short of the ideal pursued by thewisest policy. Nevertheless the veil of thenun has been the symbol of an emanci-pated womanhood, and has given to themarriage ring a nobler and more sacredsignificance than would be possible werewomen less independent in the choice ofher own life. It is for us to pursue thissame ideal of a strong, self-dependent, in-tellectual womanhood, and to encouragewhatever tends to compass its realization.

Marriage

It belongs to the genius of Christianity todiscover in the temporal the germ of theeternal. The spirit of Christ entering intohuman Hfe does not destroy but perfects

;

it takes our life as it is, and out of themerely natural or earthly raises up thesupernatural and heavenly. And in this itis so completely at variance with thespirit of the Manichean, which sees invisible nature a mere denial of the in-visible, and in our earthly life only whatis bad. But to the Christian spirit theworld in which we live, with its naturalphenomena and its human relationshipsand affections, is essentially good; tran-sitory in so far as it is earthly, yet at thesame time not altogether transitory, sincewhatever is temporal has a latent eternalpossibility and indicates, whilst it veils,some eternal reality. Nay more; wTienrightly understood and dealt with, thevisible world leads us to the knowledgeand enjoyment of the invisible and eter-nal; draws us into communion with thespiritual. The Christian spirit thus be-holds a sacramental value in all nature,but especially, in human nature. For this

6o Catholic Idealsreason any abuse of the gifts and joys ofnature is so much more a sin, since it isa perversion to evil, brutish ends, of whatin itself is destined to lead us on to thespiritual and usher us into the eternal. Itis the consciousness of the eternal in thetemporal which more than aught elsedifferentiates man from the brute; andit is the object of the Church to fosterand develop this consciousness in allthe relations of human life. When PopeGregory the Great told St Augustine notto destroy the pagan temples of the Anglo-Saxon nor to abolish pagan festivals, butto purify and consecrate the temples forChristian worship, and transform thefestivals into Christian festivals, he did butapply in this particular instance the uni-versal principle of Catholic Christianity.

It is not nature which is evil, but ourabuse of nature, and our blindness to thesacramental character of nature.

This truth is nowhere more intimatelyrevealed than in the Catholic conceptionof marriage. Here we have one of theprimary institutions of the civilized statetaken over into the Christian life, conse-crated by a sacramental blessing and re-garded as one of the seven sacramentalfoundations of the Church. Marriage isnot regarded by Christianity as a mereaccident of life, it is not tolerated as a ne-

Marriage 6

1

cessary evil ; but it is taken as a recognizedvocation essential to the building up of theChurch on earth, and thereby enteringinto the scheme of the world's salvation.Husband and wife have their part to do inthe life of the Church and in the work oftransforming the world into God's king-dom, just as the priest and the consecratedvirgin have their part; and it is from itsrelation to the divine economy of theChurch that Christian marriage derives itssanction and peculiar sanctity. Christians,according to the mind of the Gospel, marryin order to give effect to the divine planof human society; and this they do notmerely by carrying on the human race,but by the creation of a domestic society,which shall be in itself a microcosm, con-taining the germ of the larger society ofthe Christian world; and it is upon thefoundation of this smaller society of theChristian home that the larger society ofthe Church is built. The home is, as itwere, the domestic chapel from which isfed the more extended life of the basilica;and as the Christian character of that is,so will this be. Marriage, therefore, inthe Christian dispensation cannot be se-parated from the idea ofthathome-life uponwhich Christian society is built as upon aproto-typal foundation. Marriage is forthe home, and the home for the Church.

5

62 Catholic Ideals

Such is the Catholic idea, and it atonce gives the answer to the free-lovetheories so unhappily undermining thedomestic morality of the modern nations.All these theories assume that marriage isa matter of merely personal convenienceor pleasure. They ignore the truth, often-times so painfully borne in upon us, of thesocial responsibilities attaching to indi-vidual life; they seem unconscious of thefact that mere personal pleasure or incli-nation is no criterion of true self-develop-ment. The free-love theory in its furthestapplication is a denial of all social respon-sibility whatever; in its less extreme formsit is a denial of Christianity. Whether froma Christian or a non-Christian point ofviewmarriage is always the ordering and con-trol of a natural instinct for the purposeof realizing social unity. In every casemere personal interest and gratification issubordinated to more unselfish ends. Butfrom a non-Christian or secularist point ofview the social purpose of marriage, whilstit imposes certain restraints, does not ab-sorb the natural instinct into an abidinglaw and purpose, ever present in a man'slife, and rendering mere self-indulgencealways sinful ; whereas in Christian societythis is the case. Christianity places thesexual instinct under a spiritual law, andpermits its gratification only for the defi-

Marriage 63nite purpose of creating a Christian home.Apart from this end any gratification ofthe sexual instinct is sinful, since it con-travenes the divine purpose in humannature.

Marriage, therefore, according to Chris-tian teaching, demands an entire surrenderof mere natural impulse to one only pur-pose, the building up a Christian societythrough the home: and it is only whenwe recognize this that the laws of theChurch regarding marriage are seen to beintelligible and consistent. We see atonce how the Church, regarding the homeas the germ of Christian society and thetype of Christian social life, can neithertolerate the free-love theory nor anytheory which places the supreme controlof the marriage bond either in the indi-vidual or in the State. The integrity andstability of the home is essential to Chris-tian social life, and therefore the Churchcan never surrender her claim to be thesupreme arbiter in matters concerning thestability and sanctity of the marriagebond.We can see now what answer the

Church must make to all arguments infavour of divorce. Marriage, it is urgedby the advocates of divorce, is meant toenable husband and wife to live more hap-pily in this world; its primary object is to

64 Catholic Idealssecure the happiness of the married parties.Consequently, when it proves to be con-ducive rather to their misery than theirhappiness, it is only just that they shouldbe nreed from each other. Further, it isurged, to force a man or woman to liveti^ether when they prove to be unfittedfor each other is to tempt them to throwoflF all responsibiHty and seek pleasure un-lawfully, thus putting the legal bond toscorn and robbing it of all respect Butto this argument the Church can onlyreply that though it is true that marriageis meant to conduce to the happinessof husband and wife, yet it is not trueto say that this is its ultimate object,except in so far as the happiness ofanj^one is bound up with their true vo-cation in life. Husband and wife aresupposed to find their happiness in theirhome and in each others comf>anionship;but the right object of their marriage isto create the home and make it a centreof Christian life. To this purpose husbandand wife are supposed to dedicate them-selves when they take the marriage vow;and this purpose alone justifies them intaking their vow. Marriage, therefore,under the Christian law demands a sacri-fice of that ultra-individualism which istaken to justify divorce, nor can theCfanrch consistently consider such ultra-

Marriage 65individualism afterwards as a plea for thedissolution of the marriage bond Marri-age, in fact, implies in the contracting par-ties a surrender of the individual to theChristian purpose, and in this surrenderthe individual who is properly called tothe marriage state finds tfiat higher de-velopment of his personal self, which isfound in all self-sacrifice which proceedsfi'om a sense of dut>' and religion.

WTiat the Church then demands ofhusband and wife, firom the moment thatthey are imited in wedlock, is that theyput aside all thought of self in so far as ittends to turn them aside fi-om their properCurpose; for husband and wife no longer

.

elong to themselves, they are consc-fcrated to a purpose above and beyood

,

themselves, and to turn their thoughts*backwards upon their personal interest orpleasure to the detriment of the purposeto which they are dedicated, is a violationof their vow and a sacrilege. The Church,therefore, can never sanction any law orinstitution which tends to introduce per-sonal pleasure or interest into the mar-riage relation to the detriment of that pur-pose for which alone under the Christiandispensation marriage is instituted, orwhich tends to foster an ideal at variancewith that of the Gospel. To sanction di-vorce would be to recognize a purpose in

66 Catholic Ideals

marriage other than that which alone shedoes recognize.

This only can the Church grant inconsideration of human weakness andfallibility, that in certain cases hus-band and wife may be permitted to liveapart. Even in this matter the action ofthe Church is controlled by the idea ofthe stability of the home or the generalwelfare of society. Permission to liveapart is granted only when it is evidentthat the continuing to live together willnot conduce to the sanctity or integrityof home life. Such permission too isgranted only by way of exceptionallegislation designed to lighten the bur-den of useless suffering, but not to in-fringe in any way the essential stabilityof the marriage institution. It may hap-pen even to the most thoughtful and con-scientious man or woman to have chosena partner in marriage with whom it ismorally impossible to live with self-re-spect, or whose entire want of sympathyor moral conduct renders the life of theother an excessive burden. To such theChurch extends the indulgence of a legalseparation; yet in bending so far to hu-man weakness she preserves the radicalbond; husband and wife still remain hus-band and wife. The ideal of the Churchis thus vindicated even in legal separation,

Marriage 67and neither party, therefore, is at libertyto marry again.

It may be said : "This doctrine is hard;this ideal too high; and human nature isweak." That was in effect what the earlydisciples said when our divine Saviourlaid down this doctrine for the first time.They said : " If the case of a man is sowith his wife, it is not expedient tomarry."* But our Saviour did not mo-dify His teaching because of their timi-dity. His faith in human nature wasgreater than theirs. He replied that in-deed it was not expedient for some tomarry, either for physical reasons or be-cause they were called to duties in thekingdom of God which make it expe-dient not to marry. But He did notmodify His law of marriage to meet theirfears. And of those who do not marryHe demanded self-restraint: a self-restrainteven greater than that demanded by themarriage vow: for the command holds goodfor all, whether married or unmarried, that"even to look upon a woman to lust afterher is to commit adultery with her in theheart." In truth in all matters concern-ing marriage and purity the Gospel isaustere ; and when we consider its scopeand purpose, could we expect it to be

* Matt, xix, 10.

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otherwise? Christ came into the worldto lift the world up ; to free men from thetyranny of sense-pleasure by which theyare ever drawn downwards towards thelevel of the brute creation, and so toconstitute man once more in that spiri-tual perfection which is properly his. Forthis reason he appealed always to man'shigher nature; to the spiritual in man, notto the brutish. The law of marriagewhich He promulgated is hard only mso far as men are guided in their desiresby the lower instincts, whereas Christwill recognize as a legitimate rule of hu-man life only the higher, more spiritual,instincts. Before the coming of Christthe recognized purpose of marriage waslargely the gratification of passion, withincertain limits made necessary by the well-being of the community. But Christianmarriage was put at once upon a morespiritual foundation. Christ's union withhumanity became the law of the union be-tween husband and wife, and Christ's loveof the Church became the law of conjugalaffection. As Christ loves the Churchwith a pure, self-sacrificing love, and asHis love finds its gratification in realizingGod's kingdom amongst men by the unionof Himself with humanity, so must hus-band and wife love each other and findtheir highest gr

Catholic Ideals in Social Life by Father Cuthbert (1911)

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