HEADING II
THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN AND THE WOMAN APOSTLE
We now come to explain the two conclusions: from them we shall have the key, I would say, the summary of what will be said subsequently.
[To train in true virtues]
One conclusion is this: in spiritually caring for women, aim at training them in true virtues. - It is not the case here to investigate all the reasons with which priests prefer to attend to the care of women. A certain natural inclination, a certain spirit of ease, an extended habit of not welcoming anyone but those who come across, some rare time something I do not really know, very similar to a passion, etc...: nonetheless here are some causes, to justify or not, such a manner of doing. Not wanting however are those who entertain the illusion that they are doing enough and pacifies certain remorse of conscience by saying: After all, I am working! Watch out though: how are you working? How are the women you are taking care? - Are they Christians? - Surely through baptism and through a profession of piety. And yet Christianity is a way of life: the Christian woman has a withdrawn life, works for herself and for others: most prudent in her speech, modest in behavior and in appearance,
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alien to what might suggest a danger; she is patient, charitable, humble. - Are these women so? If not, they are not truly Christian. - More: the Christian woman is a consoling angel of the family, she is a perfume that fills the home, she is the oil that is spread out to defuse or diminish or take away every form of conflict due to differences of character or real defects. A daughter shall be truly Christian if she is obedient, respectfully affectionate to her parents, caring towards her brothers and sisters. A wife shall truly be Christian if she surrounds with the truest affection and with most attentive concern her husband, if she shall extend to him humble submission, if she reserves for him the most delicate faithfulness. A Christian mother lives for her children, whom she instructs with jealous concern in religious and moral principles, to whom she is a living example of virtue, whom she watches over continually. - Are the women like that, they who most frequently go to church and confession and listen to sermons? - Whatever might be the answer, it is certain that here the priest shall aim all his efforts if he does not want to transform piety into ridiculous pietism. From the confession and from the pulpit, in advice and in sermons, in exhortations and admonitions, in public and in private, wherever, he shall try to infuse Christian life on women. It is a life that is capable of making the weakest creatures into heroines of fortitude, the meekest creatures to heroines of patience, the most timid creatures to
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heroines of charity. In the history of Christianity, a great number of them are remembered and it is certain that a much greater number of them are unknown to the vulgar human look: God alone has taken an account of their merits and he shall make them known on the day of judgment. But it is as well certain that generally they had as guide virtuous priests who also generated virtues.
[Through woman to man]
The other conclusion is: address the care of souls to men, at least as much as women are cared for. Here, however, I do not intend to treat this topic precisely and directly: it is not my purpose for now, although it is of capital importance. However, anyone who wants to see it directly discussed, let him confront: L'apostolat entre des hommes by P. Contier (Gibier)1 (Publisher: Charles Amat - Rue Cassette, 11 - Paris). Nonetheless, I shall indirectly speak of the spiritual care of men: in this sense: avail with women to reach men, involve women in this supreme task: to sanctify man (sanctificatus est vir infidelis per mulierem fidelem).2 And this for many reasons:
1. Today not only the laudatores temporis anteacti,3 but also the more modern lovers of today's life themselves exclaim: with regards to religion and Christian morals, the level has gone down so low! We sense it so close when we notice the feverish thirst for pleasure that pervades everyone,
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when we see so widespread a press that does not respect either faith or modesty, when we notice everywhere the immense number of discontented individuals, those who can't bear discipline, when we hear of so many vulgar errors, when we notice above all the intense and widespread work of the sects. It is a general ill that penetrates all the strata of society: they are symptoms that disquiet all the well-meaning individuals, that make one fear for the future. Most surely, we have the words of the infallible Master to assure us: The gates of hell shall not prevail4 against the Church. It is not said, however, that they shall not prevail against this or that parish, this or that province, this or that country...; and especially it is not said that they shall not prevail against these or those souls: our daily experience and a long history tells us otherwise. There are evils and other things more serious that preannounce the thickening of black clouds in the horizon. But aside from many other reasons for hope we also have this: women are ours, women are Christian and these can be of strongest help. Fr. Ventura,5 after having described the present moment, said that the Church would have entrusted to Catholic women a mission of restoration, almost an apostolate; and Msgr. Pujia, archpriest of St. Severina, writes: At present we witness a marvelous movement
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of religious restoration, moral and social, that has arisen as an apostolate of the Catholic woman: an apostolate that after having developed within the walls of the home, has often gone beyond such boundaries. Therefore, avail with women in order to remedy so many ills6 and in order to sow so much good among men.
2. More: we know too well that our best conquest is not the woman: but man. Thus is the example of Jesus who, in the Gospel, addressed himself more to men: thus does the nature of our religion want it to be if it adjusts itself to all in its simplicity, in its sublimity, it is better understood by the intelligence of man: thus would the nature of the Christian family want it to be, where vir caput est mulieris7 and man ought to instruct and give example of religion to the other members: many other considerations want it that way... In practice, however, there is a certain number of priests who would not have the courage, perhaps even the aptitude, to dedicate themselves to serving men. There are priests who would excellently govern a company of Daughters of Mary,8 or the society of Christian mothers, but would experience an almost insuperable repugnance for taking care of men. More: there are others whose ministry is exercised in the confessional, almost singularly, and in the confessional most are
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women. These priests, real hidden benefactors of humanity, directing women in firmly Christian lives and in an apostolate of prayer, of example, of action, shall not fail to let salvation reach so many men. Then, whatever would the priest's action be, it shall still be most true that woman is by nature more inclined to piety and that she shall always find comfort in her own weakness before the priest. The priest then shall have many occasions of exercising his salutary influence on her and avail with her for the welfare of so many souls who would not be going to him.
3.?Neither is wanting another reason drawn from an opposite consideration. A woman, if she is not good, will be bad: and a bad woman is an extraordinary power in the devil's hands; she is a center of corruption, and an infecting germ. She shall destroy even the patient and daily work of the most zealous priest.
If we do not model women after the Most Holy Virgin, through whom life came, we shall have women modelled after Eve, through whom came man's destruction; if we do not make of them Helens9 we shall have Eudossias,10 Elizabeths of England11 Catherines of Russia:12 if we do not make of them Matildes of Canossa,13 Catherines of Siena,14 we shall have
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Marozias, Teodoras.15 If women do not inspire modesty, they shall be forward in fashion; if the educated woman does not give us clean reading, she shall give us pagan and pornographic productions;16 if woman does not spend her time in good, she shall lean on to wantonness and to evil activities: if she is not zealous, she shall become scrupulous and petty.
If we shall not have Clotilde,17 the salvation of Clodovis, king of the Franks, and woman apostle of Gaul, we shall have Anne Boleyn,18 the destruction of Henry VIII19 and of England.
One who is familiar with the ways of the world has but to cast a glance far and wide and he shall see its disastrous truth. Just as in a parish, a well-organized group of Daughters of Mary would also keep within bounds the group of young men: similarly and even more, truly, young women20 who are rotten and shameless are enough to lead to corruption also the better young men from among the group of St. Aloysius. It is then that we have women working for men, or we shall have them against us! And it is well known: when a woman loses faith and shame, worse yet, when a woman is prey of subversive parties, she becomes even more violent, more anti-clerical, a more passionate apostle of evil than man himself. Have a hold on women, therefore!
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1 Probably, Gibier Charles-Henri-Célestin, born in Artenay, France, on 25 December 1849 and died on 3 April 1931 in Versailles, where he was bishop,. He published different series of Conférences aux hommes (16 volumes, Paris 1907-1911) touching on fundamental themes as God, Jesus Christ, the Church, the family and society. He is considered a precursor of Catholic Action (MM).
2 Cf. 1Cor 7:14: “For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife”.
3 Those who praise the times past. Horace (Ars poetica, 173). It alludes to the habit of undermining the present in favor of the past.
4 Cf. Mt 16:18.
5 Gioacchino Ventura di Raulica, Theatine publicist, orator and philosopher, was born in Palermo on 8 December 1792. He was a student of the Jesuits but already in 1818, he joined the Theatines. A follower of the French Ultramontanists and of Lamennais in particular, he translated and diffused the latter's works in Italy. His funeral speech (held on 28-30 June 1847 for Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), an Irish politician (cf. DA 238) had great success. Fr. Ventura demonstrated that there cannot be real opposition between religion and freedom. Another speech, however, held for those fallen in the siege of Vienna (27 November 1848), wherein he hypothesized an alliance between the Church and democracy, was placed in the Index. Ventura saw in democracy the concrete putting into practice of natural principles, the heritage of all peoples and guaranteed by the Gospel. Even then, it seemed to him that revolution itself was “the blind and desperate effort of a Christian nation, but this was to place power back within the limits that Christianity has placed it” (Speech for the dead of Vienna, Rome 1848, p. 11). Someone defined Ventura as “the man of a single idea: the Christian idea; and the man of a single book: the Bible.” Comforted by the blessing of Pius IX who remained friends with him also during an exile for the political mistakes he committed, Fr. Ventura died in Versailles, France, on 2 August 1861. Mentioning Fr. Ventura here, Fr. Alberione has in mind one book of his entitled, La donna cattolica (The Catholic Woman), a continuation of Donne del Vangelo (Women of the Gospel), in 3 volumes, published by Coeditors Turati of Milan and Dario Giuseppe Rossi of Genova, 1855.
6 Variation in the Italian DA, mali = ills was omitted.
7 Cf. Eph 5:23: “For the husband is head of his wife.” and 1Cor 11:3.
8 Cf. also DA 25; 27; 170; 180f; 198; 201; 235; 255; 307; 309; 318; 333. Alberione refers to a manual of the Daughters of Mary Immaculate. (cf. DA 181 and 111) and he mentions the Pious Union of the Daughters of Holy Mary Immaculate (cf. DA 184f), of which he mentions some rules copied from a booklet by Giuseppe Frassinetti (cf. DA 186-187), founder of the “Pia unione dei Figli di Santa Maria Immacolata” (Pious Union of the Sons of Holy Mary Immaculate).
9 Saint Helen (267-328), King Constantine's mother, dedicated to the service of the poor and the care of churches of the new and pilgrim Christianity at the Holy Land.
10 There are at least two Eudossias: the first is the Empress of Byzantium, wife (from 27 April 395) of Arcadius and mother of Teodosius II. She was detested for her unbridled luxury and her hostility to the bishop, St. John Chrysostom. Instead, Eudossia Lucinia, daughter of Teodosius II, designated “august” in Ravenna in 439, moved on to Rome in the same year and founded there the Church of St. Peter in Chains.
11 Elisabeth I (Greenwich 1533 - Richmond 1603), was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (see note 18). She became queen at 25 years old, in 1558. In her 45 years rule, she changed the face of England.
12 Both Catherine I (1682/1683-1727) and Catherine II (Stettine 1729 - Petersburg 1796) were known for their adventurous and unbridled lives.
13 This countess had given refuge to Pope Gregory VII, the pope of the “Gregorian reformation” in her ancient castle of Canossa, in the province of Reggio Emilia. Pope Gregory VII was persecuted by King Henry IV of Germany for having proclaimed the superiority of the pope's power over every earthly authority (libertas Ecclesiae), including that of the Emperor (MM).
14 Catherine was born in Siena 1347 and died in Rome on 29 April 1380. She united profound contemplation with an untiring activity. A messenger of peace in a society overwhelmed by a violent rivalry, she worked for the Pope's return from Avignon, for the mending of the schism of the West, for the reform of the Roman curia, for the betterment of morals, for the assistance of the sick and the imprisoned. Her writings excel in wisdom, in fervor, in charity and the extraordinary quality of language. She is the patroness of Italy since 8 June 1939 and Doctor of the Church since 4 October 1970 (MM).
15 Teodora is the name of at least three Byzantine Empresses (the first [527-548] was the wife of Justinian; the second was the wife of Emperor Theophilus [829-842]; with the third [995-1056], the Macedonian dynasty was extinguished). Alberione, however, could be alluding to Teodora of Rome, a famous noble woman of the IX-X century, wife of the patrician and then the magister militum Teofilattus. - Marozia, her daughter, together with her powerful family, exercised great influence on the politics and on the papacy of the so-called “iron age of the papacy.”
16 For example, read about this general worry due to the spread of pornography as what the German newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung of Munchen, dated 23 June 1903, wrote: “It is quite painful to see how deeply and rapidly has the state of public decorum fallen during the last twenty years: books, images, cafe concerts, postcards, advertisements, humor newspapers, songs, in show windows and in the widespread and ornate reports of judicial debates, there is a widespread a kind of moral syphilis that horrifies; rottenness towers ever higher, and if it could, it would also thread underfoot heaven; no social class, no age is immune to it... Before this light all political contests should disappear! Catholic or protestant, Christian or atheist, radical or conservative, let each one think: the purity of domestic life, woman's chastity, man's faithfulness, youth's integrity, the healthy of generations, all these are in danger!” (cf. La Civiltà Cattolica 2 [1909] 439-454).
17 Daughter of Chilpericus, king of Burgundy, Clotilde (Lyon 475 - Tours 545) after the death of her parents, was educated in Christianity and towards the year 492 she became the bride of Clodovis, king of the Franks. On his conversion, she has had notable influence. (MM).
18 Anne (born in 1504?) was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, belonging to a modest and new noble family. She was a damsel in France, at the court of Francis I. Having returned to England (1526) and received in court, she was noticed by Henry VIII and fell in love with her. This love became the immediate cause of the English schism. Henry VIII was already married to Catherine of Aragon (daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic), whose daughter, Mary, should have been the legitimate heir of the throne. Henry asked for the recognition of the annulment of his marriage, but Pope Clement VII turned him down. Henry rebelled and had Thomas Cramer, Archbishop of Canterbury, declare his marriage null. Then he married Anne Boleyn who then became queen (1533).
19 Variation in the Italian original DA the name is Arrigo VIII.
20 Variation in the Italian DA: figlie - Piedmontese dialect for “ragazze” (girls) “giovani” (young women).