Covirh^ifH p <3^4 vaq.vviod« I --ni Jj w»u

COURTSHIP
AND

MARRIAGE

Seventy-fifth Thousand

THE AMERICA PRESS
461 Eighth Avenue

NEW YORK, N. Y.

Price

25 cents



|

What Are YOU Doing?
j

The world is hungry for truth, very hungry.

4
Men’s souls have been so starved that they cry out

|
now for food.

I What are you doing to feed them?

( Learn the truth and tell it.

J
Read Catholic periodicals and pass them on.

|
Pamphlets are short, and hence entice to reading. The

|
America Press has many worthwhile pamphlets.

I

j

f
Then there is the weekly

j

AMERICA

|

The bi-monthly

\ CATHOLIC MIND

j The quarterly

\ THOUGHT

Be a harbinger of the “Gospel”—the “Good-news” that
men are longing to hear.

WG* We shall gladly send sample copies for inspection.

THE AMERICA PRESS. 461 Eighth Avenue, New York, N. Y.



COURTSHIP and

MARRIAGE

PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS

BY PRIESTS OF THE

SOCIETY OF JESUS

ASSOCIATE EDITORS of "AMERICA”

SEVENTY-FIFTH THOUSAND

PRICE, 25 CENTS

THE AMERICA PRESS

461 Eighth Avenue

New York, N. Y.

1931



^tnprinu patast:

Anthony J. Maas, S.J.,
Prcep. Prov. Maryl.—Neo-Ebor.

Jftlfil (SHistat:

Arthur J. Scanlan, S.T.D.,

Censor Librorum.

imprimatur:

John Cardinal Farley,

Archie piscopus Neo-Ebor.

January 30, 1918.

Copyright, 1918-1919-1920

by

THE AMERICA PRESS

All Rights Reserved

Printed in U. S. A.



TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE

Chapter I. Courtship

Joseph Husslein, S.J.

5

Chapter II. The Modern Galahad

Joseph Husslein, S.J.

. 13

Chapter III. The Dawn of Womanhood

Joseph Husslein, S.J.

20

Chapter IV. A Great Sacrament

J. Harding Fisher, S.J.

28

Chapter V. The Bride in the Sanctuary .

.

J. Harding Fisher, S.J.

41

Chapter VI. Mixed Marriages

Walter Dwight, S.J.

47

Chapter VII. The Catholic Home

J.
Harding Fisher, S.J.

56

Chapter VIII. Dedicated Motherhood

John C. Reville, S.J.

64

Chapter IX. The Fourth Commandment ....

John C. Reville, S.J.

82

Chapter X. The Father’s Sacred Trust ...

Paul L. Blakely, S.J.

99

Chapter XI. The Call of Christ

John C. Reville, S.J.

106

Chapter XII. At the Journey’s End

J. Harding Fisher, S.J.

124

Chapter XIII. The Armory of Faith

Walter Dwight, S.J.

128



.

,

.

'

.



Chapter I

COURTSHIP

JOSEPH HUSSLEIN, S.J.

T
HE time of courtship is a season of joy. Sacred and
pure is that affection which in the love of God draws

together two young hearts that they may be united

into one by the power and grace of a Sacrament. Matri-

mony, as celebrated in the Church, is indeed a “great Sac-

rament,” and courtship is the natural approach to it. The

Church has never been an enemy of human joy, and in her

motherly tenderness she delights with the young in their

happiness.

But courtship must have God’s blessing upon it. It is

more than a mere sentimental holiday. There is question

of a great choice, of a momentous, contract to be made for

life. At such a time, if ever, there is need of prayer, pru-

dence and caution. Implicit obedience must be given at

this period to the ruling of the Church. Thoughtlessly, and

at times indignantly, the young may be tempted to sweep

aside the Church’s wisdom of twenty centuries and the Di-

vine authority bestowed upon her by Christ. Naturally,

they will desire to follow their own inclination. Neverthe-

less they should convince themselves that whatever the

Church has ordained in this important matter is best for the

temporal as well as the spiritual welfare of mankind, and

of themselves in particular.

Approaching the Choice

In this attitude of mind and with God’s blessing, they

may safely approach that choice upon which their happiness

5



6 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

for life depends. Though the promptings of nature may be

strong, they should not permit themselves to be
carried

away by them to the neglect of reason, or the dictates of re-

ligion; nor should they be deaf to the prudent advice of

those placed over them by God.

Beauty in woman and strength in man are gifts of a

bountiful Creator. But they are not the greatest of His

gifts, nor should they be allowed to determine the
choice

of a mate for life. Riches and rank and education open

up long, alluring vistas of worldly prospects, but they hold

no guarantee of happiness. Mutual attraction might seem

a safer guide, but often it is founded upon mere external

qualities. Only when a hasty marriage has been concluded

and the first tide of mutual affection slowly subsides, will

the hidden rocks of adverse and contrary traits of charac-

ter appear, on which love and happiness will both make

shipwreck.

Length of Courtship

The first object of courtship is to test one’s knowledge

and love of the person with whom one contemplates mar-

riage. A year’s time, if properly used, should be sufficient

for this purpose. To protract its duration beyond measure

is not merely unreasonable, but may be exceedingly danger-

ous or wrong. It is utterly base and unjust for a young

man heedlessly to prolong a courtship and then disappoint

the girl. It is no less detestable when a jilt of a woman

plays with the affections of a sincere young man.

The ideal age of matrimony, which will indicate the

ideal age of courtship, is said to be the twentieth year for

the bride, but the man should be some years older. Eco-

nomic conditions must naturally be taken into account. If

statistics are reliable there would seem to be less danger for

the first-born child, if the mother is about twenty years of



COURTSHIP 7

age. If both the parents are young, they will retain their

youthfulness as they develop with their children, and their

lives can more readily blend in perfect harmony.

Quality of the Bride

In discussing the considerations that should determine

the choice of a partner for life each of the two parties will

be dealt with separately.

What then, in the first place, is to determine the young

man in the selection of his future wife? Evidently those

qualities which secure for him a religious and a happy home.

Some of the principal points to be considered in regard to

the prospective bride are the following: How does she act
towards parents, brothers and sisters? Is she helpful in the

home, considerate of the needs and solicitous for the happi-

ness of others? Or is she sweet indeed to him, but ill-tem-

pered towards others? Does she obey her parents? Is she

wanting in filial gratitude and piety? Does she fail to value

highly her holy religion? Is she but feebly imbued with

the spirit of Divine faith? If she has the deep-seated faults

suggested here she is most unlikely to bring happiness into

his future home, or properly to rear the children God may
bestow. Grace of person, charm of manner, education, and

whatever other qualities she may possess will not counter-
balance these radical defects. Foolish the young man who
would wed her!

Is She a Home-Maker?

That she is skilful at the keys of the piano, that she can

delicately paint china, make “fudge” or cleverly charm a
circle of acquaintances is all very well; but these accom-

plishments are only the condiments of life. They are not
the substantials. What is of importance is her ability to



8 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

take a mother’s place in the household and to do the thou-

sand needful things that may be required of her according

to her station in life. Will the table be properly set, the

food well prepared, the house tidy, and the children brought

up in the love of God? Is she a woman who will comfort

and support her husband in suffering and trial and lift up

to Heaven the thoughts of both husband and children, draw-

ing them ever closer to God? Such are the things that

count for time and for eternity.

It is in the home of th*e intended bride that the suitor

must acquaint himself with these facts, and they will be best

revealed when his visits come unexpectedly. It is in every-

day life that the future bride and bridegroom must learn to

know each other, since it is here that they must later work

and save and pray together. Each, therefore, should make

it a point to study the other not only when on parade, but

particularly when off guard.

Not expensive garments, which make thrift impossible,

but modesty and virtue should be the true ornaments of the

woman whom a Catholic young man would wed. Not bril-

liancy at parties and dances, but love of home is the jewel

of the wife. To an inordinate desire for amusement on the

part of the bride will correspond a cold hearth and a neg-

lected home. These warnings are especially necessary in our

time, since never before was the Christian home so greatly

endangered.

The Woman’s Choice

But the young woman, too, must be prudent in the choice

which she makes. The same watchfulness is demanded of

her, that she may be able to realize the fulfilment of her

hopes. Fine clothes, smooth words, and skill in dancing are

in themselves no marital recommendations. They are likely

to prove a snare and a deception to the girl that makes her



COURTSHIP 9

choice because of them. Popularity, too, on the part of the

young man may have been bought by easy spending and by

habits that will prove destructive of all home life. The girl

that looks no further, as is so often the case, will live to

mourn her folly.

Here, then, are some of the considerations that call for

her serious reflection and inquiry. What are the prospects

of her intended husband? What are his ideals and pur-

poses in life? Is he a true Christian man, faithful to his re-

ligious duties? Is he thrifty, steady, reliable in his work

and his habits? Can he support a family? Is his charac-

ter such that it gives reasonably assured promise of the fu-

ture? Is he a man of principle, honest and honorable?

It is not sufficient to trust his words, as is too often

done, in spite of the advice of parents and friends. Is his

family record completely known to his future bride? There

may be hereditary traits, sickness, insanity, into which she

or her parents must carefully inquire. Not her own happi-

ness and welfare alone are to be considered, but likewise the

consequences which will come upon her children. She should

understand, at all events, what the chances and conditions

are before she binds herself for life.

Inveterate Habits

Under no circumstances let her trust a drunkard, an ad-

dict to drugs and similar evil habits. Let her not count

upon a promise of reform. There is no reasonable hope

that he will ever permanently change his ways, no matter

how amiable he may be. Let her not imagine that her in-

tended will surely prove an exception. If addicted to evil

habits he is not to be trusted, and it is worse than folly for

her to yoke herself with him for life. Here again she must

remember that there are other than mere personal consid-



10 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

erations to be taken into account. She is not merely throw-

ing away her own life, but she will bring the children God

may give her into a home filled with misery and unhappi-

ness.

Rightly to take the measure of a young man, let her as-

sure herself of his devotion in church, and of his regularity

and earnestness in the performance of all his religious duties.

No excuse is to be admitted for absence from Mass unless it

is plainly impossible for him to attend. For the young man

of character and religious instincts will never miss Mass for

a trifle, and he will find time to frequent the Sacraments.

Avoid Secrecy

Everything in courtship should be above board. Noth-

ing should be kept secret from parents and those who have

the right to know. The parents’ counsel should be asked in

all things, who in performing this sacred duty must them-

selves be guided by right reason and religion, seeking truly

the best interests, spiritual no less than temporal, of the

child they love. Recourse, in fine, should be had to the con-

fessor when moral difficulties or doubts arise on any side.

The place for a girl to receive visits is her own home.

Secret meetings should not be indulged in. The young man

who desires them cannot be trusted with the reputation of

an honorable girl.

There are men who, with adroit flatteries and apparently

honest promises, will carry on a courtship with no intention

of marriage. The girl’s virtue, or her chances of marriage

are endangered by such courtship.

On going out with a male companion the parents’ con-

sent should be obtained. Thus the girl will be protected

and the young man himself will have good reason to hope

for a happy marriage, if he himself is worthy. He, too,



COURTSHIP II

must protect himself in a similar manner that he may not in

his own turn be caught in the toils of a designing woman.

The parents, we need not repeat, must be influenced only by

the high motives already set forth.

Making the Choice

In the earlier stages of courtship several young men may

properly call on the girl. The parents may consent that she

go out in the company of such as are known to be honest

and honorable. As soon, however, as she decides to exclude

a suitor she should immediately, with gentleness but with

determination, let him understand that his company is not

desired.

Let her accept no presents from any one during this

time, but keep her freedom unimpaired until her final choice

is made. She will be respected the more for insisting that

she be addressed by her family name during all this period.

The youth who is truly worthy of her will best know how

to value her firmness.

Girls often fail to appreciate the serious consequences

likely to follow from familiarities permitted by them and

from secret meetings with those of the other sex. Familiar-

ities are always dangerous, and the more intimate or objec-

tionable they are, the greater is the temptation to which

they expose both parties. This holds true even should the

suitor be well-intentioned. Familiarities, as experience has

shown in countless instances, may unexpectedly lead to the

most dangerous results. It is rashness and folly to permit

them. Firmness from the first and a sacred regard at all

times for the virtues of womanhood will prevent humilia-

tions for the Catholic girl, and a possible fall that would

cast its shadow over all her life.

Woman is always the great sufferer from such sins. Yet



12 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

often she is directly to blame for the consequences that so

terribly react upon herself. Indecency in dress is a con-

stant invitation to sensuality. It not merely arouses sinful

thoughts and passions, but breaks down the bars of restraint

that should safeguard the sacredness of womanhood and

protect her virtue. It is easy for a girl to forfeit a man’s

high esteem. She cannot be too watchful. Yet many of our

Catholic girls who are doubtless innocent themselves do not

seem even to advert to the dangers to which they are ex-

posing themselves and others.

The Engagement

When finally the girl’s choice has been made, she must

no longer permit the attentions of other suitors. The en-

gagement should be made with the consent and blessing of

the parents. When the engagement has taken place, the

marriage should follow without much delay, or at least as

soon as, all circumstances considered, is reasonably con-

venient. Special prayer is needed for this purpose and the

frequent and fervent reception of the Sacraments. To the

Immaculate Virgin Mother of God and to her Spouse St.

Joseph let them have recourse, and find a home together in

the Heart of Christ. Occasions of privacy that would prove

a danger to them should be avoided, and they should bear

in mind the protecting presence of their Guardian Angels.

Lavish expenditures on the bride should at no time be en-

couraged by her. Money should not be squandered, but

saved to build up the home.

If the positive counsels given here are duly observed,

all improprieties, follies, lavishness and, in particular, all

offenses against the Divine Majesty will readily be avoided,

the joy of courtship will not be lessened, but it will rather

be increased a hundredfold. Its fruits will be holiness and

happiness through all the days of married life.



Chapter II

THE MODERN GALAHAD

JOSEPH HUSSLEIN, S.J.

L
IFE, we are told, is a warfare. This is particularly

true of the Catholic young man who strives to be

true to his Catholic principles. He is cast into the

midst of an irreligious world. Blasphemous language and

immoral words assail his ears. A literature filled with un-

sound social and religious thought is likely to be thrust into

his hands. In addition he must bravely fight the struggle

with his own strong passions that always seek to gain the

upper hand. Yet he has no reason for despair. Christ is

with him and his victory is assured if' only he will strive to

follow his Divine Leader with firm confidence and a knightly

heart.

Christian Character

Character is the first quality needed in the Catholic

young man.- There must be no half-heartedness in his ad-

herence to his religion. He must be prepared to defend the

Faith and be eager to advance its interests. A positive

Christianity is demanded of him. The restless activity

wherewith the enemies of the Church seek for her destruc-

tion should serve as an incentive to urge him not to be out-

done in his zeal and energy for the cause of Christ.

If he is a man of character he will not permit himself

to be influenced by the example of those about him who

are not of the Faith, nor will he be misled by the lives of

lukewarm Catholics who are a shame and disgrace to the

13



14 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

holy Church. His confidence is not in himself, but in the

strength of his Redeemer.

Should he nevertheless have the misfortune to fall, he

can still show his manhood by rising at once with the help

of God. An act of perfect contrition, together with the

purpose of a humble Confession, at once places him again

erect upon his feet, resolved by the grace of God to fall no

more. The man who is thrown and remains upon the

ground is despicable, but he who leaps up to renew the

combat is terrible to his foe. Where occasions of sin lie in

wait his prudence will teach him to escape the danger by

avoiding it. So the wise men eluded the guile of Herod

by taking another route than that by which they had come.

The Foremost Enemy

The greatest danger which everywhere besets the Cath-

olic young man is the temptation to impurity, whether in

thought, desire, word or action. Original sin has left its

taint in the concupiscence of fallen nature. Fortitude and

perseverance are required, and above all the grace of God,

to combat this successfully. In some the struggle will be

greater than in others, but all must arm themselves against

this first and most persistent enemy. Defeat may mean

physical as well as spiritual ruin. It means unhappiness,

the destruction of self-respect, the lowering of all man’s

noblest ideals, and finally, it may mean the loss of faith.

The struggle against purity begins within the heart and

mind of man. Here are the outermost trenches, the first

defenses. If they are taken the victory is already won by

the ever-watchful foe. The state of grace has been lost and

the soul itself has surrendered to the inveterate enemy of

our human nature. It can only be a question now of com-

pleting the ruin, unless God’s love is regained. We are not

responsible for thoughts or images that come unbidden,



THE MODERN GALAHAD 15

from which we seek to turn the mind, and in which we take

no pleasure. Full knowledge and complete consent are re-

quired, as we know, to commit a mortal sin. By God’s

grace, therefore, it lies within the power of every one to

keep his soul pure in the sight of his Creator.

You cannot be surprised into a mortal sin before you

are aware. But an ignominious surrender to impure

thoughts and imaginations, an indulgence in them, will lead

to desires, and these to secret acts, and thence the way lies

open to every form of shameless immorality, to foul words

and fouler deeds.

Guarding the Senses

The first tactics necessary, therefore, in this spiritual

warfare which we know to be of far greater consequences

than any mere earthly conflict can ever be, are to keep a

strict guard upon our senses. The eye must not be per-

mitted to rest with pleasure upon objects that will fill the

mind with impure images, nor the ear to listen with satis-

faction to immoral conversation, or the tongue to partici-

pate in it. So, too, must the sense of touch be sacredly

guarded, while we know that excess in food or drink adds

fuel to the fires of sensuality.

Indecent amusements of every kind, dances and fa-

miliarities with those of the other sex that are unbecoming

in a Christian, theatres and places of pleasure that incite

to sin, must be avoided as the flames of hell. Above all,

the Catholic young man should keep far from him all un-

clean company, as he would flee from contagion itself. A

foul-mouthed, impure comrade is worse than a garment in-

fected with the pest. His presence breathes corruption and

death. Should the Catholic young man himself unfortu-

nately have contracted habits of impurity, his certain



16 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

remedy is frequent Confession and Communion, with the

firm determination to conquer, by the grace of God. Let

him instantly pray for this victory to his Immaculate Queen

and Mother.

Clean of heart, clean of mind, clean of soul and body,

the Catholic young man feels within him the dignity of

his Christian manhood. Not for all the world would he

sacrifice this virtue. He is a true member of Christ and

his body is the unprofaned temple of the Holy Ghost. The

poet’s words are no exaggeration as applied to him: his

strength is as the strength of ten, because his heart is pure.

Respect for Woman

Particularly important is the respect which he must

have for womankind. Neither in his thoughts nor in his

actions should he allow himself the least license in this

regard. No undue familiarities may ever be taken. If

woman herself forgets the sacredness and modesty that

should encompass her and plays the temptress to his soul,

he can do one thing only, and that is avoid her as he loves

his manhood and the grace of God. If Catholic young men

were severely to discourage by their disapproval the prev-

alent immodesties of dress, in which Catholic women not

seldom foolishly indulge after the fashions of the day, there

would be a higher standard set for the Catholic life of our

time.

Vile and debasing is the habit of swearing and blas-

pheming. Better that the tongue should shrivel and cling

to the palate than that it ever should deliberately utter a

single profanity. As a guard against this evil and a repa-

ration for it the Holy Name Society has been instituted,

that Christ may be honored in the lives of true Catholic

men.



THE MODERN GALAHAD 17

Radicalism

One of the greatest perils to which the Catholic young

man can be exposed in industrial life, is false radicalism.

While the wealthy are apt to disregard their Christian prin-

ciples for the sake of gain, and so drift from the Church,

the religion of the workers is no less imperiled by extreme

radical and Socialistic influences. They are told not to

heed the Church or the priest, and that economic questions

have no bearing on religion. Every cunning attempt is

made to destroy their loyalty to their pastors. Doctrines,

which no Catholic can hold, are common in the literature

often scattered broadcast among them. Even tho|e who are

opposed to Socialism may frequently be deeply infected

with its unsound views.

The Catholic young man should learn that the Church

is equally opposed to a system of greed and profiteering,

and demands for the laboring man the full measure of jus-

tice to which he is entitled. He should familiarize himself

with Catholic social principles. He must not only be deeply

grounded in his religion so as to be able to give reasons for

the faith that is in him, but he should be conversant also

with the Church’s teaching upon the questions of the day.

For this purpose it is indispensable that he should acquaint

himself with the Catholic literature upon these subjects,

and indeed upon every point of consequence in life. Other-

wise his ignorance may make of him an easy prey for any

demagogue, and he will find himself involved in hopeless

confusion when striving to defend his Catholic principles.

Catholic journals, Catholic books, Catholic literature

are a strict necessity for the Catholic young man. It is

of the utmost importance that he render himself conversant

with them. As the Socialist is immersed in his own papers,

periodicals and books, so the Catholic young man must



18 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

absorb his own splendid literature. There is no other way

in which he can fittingly prepare himself for the battle of

life, and become an intelligent and zealous champion of his

Faith.

The Lay Apostolate

As was said in the beginning, there is Catholic work of

every kind to be done by him in the cause of Christ, and

for the temporal and spiritual welfare of mankind. The

interests of the Church are not to be promoted by bishops

and priests exclusively. They are the common concern of

the laity as well. The latter, no less than the Pope himself,

are members of that mystical body, the Church, whereof

Christ is the Head. Everything, therefore, that concerns

her development or her interests, in parish* city, country,

or in the foreign missions, is a matter of earnest solicitude

for every loyal Catholic, whether man or woman. Vast is

the variety of enterprises in which the Catholic laity can

interest themselves, while they should not forget their civic

and social duties.

Militant, zealous, enterprising Catholic young men,

thoroughly trained in their holy religion, are the crying

need of the times. Slackers there are in abundance who

imagine that they have done their duty when they have

carelessly assisted at Sunday Mass. We need men who will

defend the Church intelligently and loyally. We have po-

litical Catholics enough, who advertise their religion for

what it can pay them in votes or money, and who represent

the Church upon public occasions for the glory and in-

fluence that it brings them. We want none of these.

We are Catholics not for what the Church can give us

in the material order, but for what we ourselves can give

to her in our labors and our sacrifices. Sufficient, and

more than sufficient for us are the spiritual gifts that



THE MODERN GALAHAD 19

Christ will bestow in overwhelming abundance, beyond all

that eye has seen, or ear heard, or tongue can utter, in

return for the use we make of our means, our strength and

our talents in His service.

Filial Piety

Finally, to bring down God’s blessing upon all his

work and upon the entire course of his life, the Catholic

young man should never forget or neglect the honor and

respect he owes his parents and the obedience due to them.

He should delight in the fact that he is able in some

measure to repay them for the good that they have done

to him. With advancing years his tenderness and love for

them should constantly increase.

Nor will the Catholic young man forget the love and

devotion towards his heavenly Queen and Mother. He

can truly show himself a son by his beautiful obedience in

all things to her loving will in his regard, which is ever one

with the will of Christ and the desires of the Sacred Heart.

In devotion to her he possesses a sure means of preserving

his purity inviolate, or in regaining it should he have lapsed

into sin.

In particular will he show his spirit of faith and obedi-

ence by the most frequent reception of the Holy Eucharist.

Here is the final means of overcoming his faults and fail-

ings. It is a practice that should particularly appeal to

the Catholic young man and is especially needed by him.

There is no way of retaining his purity except by prayer

and the Sacraments. The Holy Eucharist, too, will inflame

his heart with the love of Christ and with zeal for His

holy Church. It is the bread of the strong and the wine

that begets virgins.



Chapter III

THE DAWN OF WOMANHOOD

JOSEPH HUSSLEIN, S.J.

T
HE Catholic young woman is in a special sense the

hope of the Church. To her guardianship are com-

mitted the purity, the virtue and the piety of the

human race. Should the young man fail to rise to the

full stature of his Christian ideals, regrettable as this

must always be, yet the hope still remains that woman, by

her strength of inspiration and her loyalty to God, may

lift him up with her. But if woman herself, and in par-

ticular Catholic woman, for whose welfare the Church has

done so much, should fail, the earth indeed would be a

darksome place and pitiable the prospect for the children

who in the future will depend upon her for their guidance

and instruction.

In a world that is mad for pleasure and regardless of

moral restraints, we look to the Catholic young woman for

the preservation of the noblest Christian standards of life.

Never was womanhood on trial as it is today. The Cath-

olic young woman, in particular, is called upon to maintain

before a godless world the honor of her Catholic Faith. It

is of the dangers to which she is exposed that the present

chapter mainly deals.

The Shield of Modesty

Christian modesty, in the first place, is her safeguard.

It will manifest itself in her voice, her gait, her whole de-

meanor. It is the keynote of the Catholic life in woman.

20



THE DAWN OF WOMANHOOD 21

The standards of the modern world are in too many in-

stances based upon a pagan code of morals. The Catholic

young woman must therefore set an example of that true

Christian womanhood which is a thousand times more

charming than all the glitter of an empty world, devoid of

charity and faith.

Modesty will show itself particularly in her choice of

dress. This, in a manner, is an index to her mind. Does

she dress simply and becoming? Is she vested according

to the dignity which God has given her? Redeemed by the

Precious Blood of Christ, she is called to be a living temple

of the Holy Ghost. Sacred is her body. Least of all may

it be made an invitation to licentious thoughts. The evil

effect of such conduct would return tenfold upon her own

head. Catholic young girls and women should set the

world at defiance by the strict observance of the least de-

mand of Christian modesty. They will thus win the ad-

miration of all whose esteem they rightly value.

At the feet of Mary Immaculate let the Catholic

maiden learn whether her apparel indeed finds favor in the

eyes of her Queen, her Mother and her true Model. So

will she be certain to meet with approval in the sight of

God and of- His holy Angels, and no less in the sight of all

true Christian men. So will her joy abound and invest her

with a beauty that no art of man can give.

Dealing With Strangers

Modesty will teach her to place a guard upon her senses

through which death enters into the soul. Modesty will

be the protection of her womanly virtue. But there are

special perils against which she must be warned, lest

temptation may come upon her unawares. Particular watch-

fulness is required in her conduct towards strangers of



22 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

the other sex. A few directions in this regard are

necessary.

Prudence forbids that she should trust herself to a

stranger whose interest she may seem to have inspired. To

take presents, to accept invitations, or, finally, to admit

familiarities, might be the beginning of her downfall. A

girl’s instinct will tell her that she must stand upon her

guard. Her own self-respect should be her protection. She

cannot afford to disregard the reasonably established con-

ventions. The more adroit a stranger may be in his flat-

teries, the more he is to be distrusted. Seeming innocence

is no safeguard. Let her heed the counsel of her parents

and keep nothing secret from them. The highways of the

world are thickly strewn with blasted lives of girls who

once, perhaps, were innocent as she.

Not morbidity, but Christian wisdom is counseled her,

which would leave her days the richer with the true joys

that last, not for a brief passion, but through the long years

of life.

In Shop or Office

Most exposed is the girl who must earn her livelihood

in shop or office. Attentions from her “boss” or foreman,

with evil designs, are not uncommon. Again there is but

one natural safeguard, and that is an immediate and full

disclosure to parents or guardians of whatever may be said

or done aside from matters pertaining to her work. Such

attention is often paid by married men. The pity is that

Catholic girls, on realizing that their virtue is exposed, may

nevertheless fear to put an end to these familiarities lest

they lose their position.

In all cases of doubt let the confessor be consulted and

his advice followed absolutely. The obedient man, the

Scripture tells us, shall speak of victory. Such dangers may



THE DAWN OF WOMANHOOD 23

often also exist in domestic service. Whatever comes to

pass, the surest means of safety for the girl are her mighty

supernatural aids and her prompt avoidance of all occa-

sions of sin, together with an instant disclosure of all doubt-

ful conditions to those whom she can trust. Should she

have neither parents nor guardians, she can still have re-

course to the confessor.

There is here no question of prudishness on her part,

or of repelling the respectable Catholic young man who

from worthy motives seeks to make her acquaintance, un-

less, indeed, she should wish to make the nobler choice of

dedicating her life entirely to the Divine Spouse of her soul.

But under all circumstances her Catholic instinct must tell

her when the bounds of decorum are transgressed. Men

who are deserving of her consideration will respect her the

more for the high value she herself sets upon her own vir-

tue. Prayer and the frequentation of the Holy Table should

be her source of light and strength. So will she fill her days

with happiness and with the delight of serving her race.

Girl Friends

In this connection the choice of girl friends must be

considered. There are those who are ever ready to teach

her the ways of sin, who themselves have lost all modesty,

and whose conversation reeks of things that should not so

much as be mentioned by the lips of Christians. The girl

in shop and factory may often be exposed to such company.

There are those who boast of their many young men friends

and of the money lavishly spent upon them by their male

companions. Flirtation is their highest aim in life, until,

poor moths! their wings are singed.

They will urge secrecy upon her and disregard for her

parents. They will insist upon her casting off the restraints

of home, and will seek to lead her along the way of perdi-



24 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

tion which they themselves have chosen. Of what concern

is it to them that their own virtue has gone? They have

long ago cast modesty to the winds. Their purity was sure

to share the same fate.

Let the “chums” of Catholic girls be found among those

of their own Faith, and especially among their friends of

the sodality. Under no consideration should they enter into

companionship with such as disregard the Fourth and Sixth

Commandments.

Amusements and Dances

Of particular importance is the character of the places

of amusement which they visit. The Church does not for-

bid any reasonable enjoyment needed for our recreation,

but she cannot allow what will lead us into sin. Indecent

theatres or moving-pictures and dangerous places of pleas-

ure must evidently be avoided without fail.

Public dance-halls, where vice is likely to be encoun-

tered in many forms, are not fit places for a self-respect-

ing Catholic young woman. It was here that the down-

ward path began for many an unfortunate girl. Objection-

able dances are always to be excluded, no matter where they

may be held. Nor should a girl tolerate liberties in danc-

ing which would not be permitted at other times. Let her

avoid this pastime altogether if it is an occasion of sin to

her. All are aware of the pagan degradation to which the

passion for immodest dances has led the modem world.

Why should Catholics follow after it in that broad way

which leads to eternal perdition? Yet the Church would

lay no ban upon innocent recreation.

Her Reading

Of no less consequence may be the nature of the read-

ing selected by the Catholic young woman. The popularity



THE DAWN OF WOMANHOOD 25

of a book is often determined by its salaciousness and total

disregard for Christian modesty, purity and morality. Is

she wasting her time and besmirching her soul with perusal

of such literature? Is she unfitting herself for her real

duties in after-life by dwelling in a false, imaginary world

of sensational romance, which her novel-reading habit has

created for her? There are good novels she may read in

moderation, and much splendid Catholic literature of every

kind with which she should become familiar. Above all she

is to acquaint herself better with her holy Faith that she

may be prepared to defend and promote it with all her

energy.

Besides the literature which can serve this purpose, she

should have at hand some spiritual books, whence she can

draw light and consolation for her inner life. Possibly she

has a parish or sodality library to consult. Her means,

even though small, will enable her to subscribe to one or

more excellent Catholic publications, such as may best an-

swer her own wants. For advice on this important question

she can turn to her pastor, confessor, or some trustworthy

friend; but she must be certain that her confidence is not

misplaced.

Making Home Homelike

Helpfulness in the home is another virtue to be su-

premely cultivated. Not only does the spirit of charity

and filial piety suggest that every opportunity be taken to

relieve the mother at her work, but every girl should learn

in her turn to make a home homelike. This is woman’s

first and most necessary knowledge and must take pre-

cedence over every other accomplishment. No matter what

her state of life may be later, she will never have reason

to regret the skill and knowledge acquired in the faithful

performance of all the household duties.



26 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

Not only must she learn to care for her household in

all its details, great and small, but she must also possess

the important art of thrift and saving if later she is ever

to preside over a happy home. The extravagance of dress,

in which girls indulge beyond their state or income, offers

a poor inducement for an honest and reasonable young man

to foster their acquaintance. He will naturally shrink from

the burden of providing, especially in his early days of

struggle, for such expenditures. If he is wise he will look

elsewhere for his mate. Nor will such girls ever be happy,

for there will always be others who can outdo them and so

a rankling jealousy will be left to fester in their hearts.

Her Work in the World

Not such is the true Christian maiden who realizes to

the full her immense possibilities for good. Neither is she

an idler, whether rich or poor. There is work in the house

to do, or a livelihood she must gain; but over and above

this there are endless occupations for the temporal and

spiritual welfare of mankind in which the Catholic young

woman can engage whenever her time and her duties permit

it. There is no place in this world for the idle poor or the

idle rich. Works of zeal and charity are everywhere de-

manding the cooperation of Catholics. Let Catholic young

women unite and do their part for the salvation of the

world. There are settlement houses, catechism centers, va-

cation schools, mission and parish works of every kind, not

to speak of all the obvious needs round about them and of

the special opportunities for doing good that God may send

each one in particular. Their prayer as well as their work

should be filled with apostolic fervor, directed to the salva-

tion of souls and united with the intentions of the Sacred

Heart.



THE DAWN OF WOMANHOOD 27

Aping Man

The Catholic woman should, in fine, guard against the

false doctrines of those who believe that to ape man is the

supreme vocation of woman. Such views are entirely un-

worthy. Woman is not “lesser man,” as imitation would

imply. She has received her own beauty, virtue and gifts

from the Almighty Creator. In developing these, according

to the will of God, lies her strength and perfection, and not

in making herself a poor and pitiable counterfeit of what

she was never intended to be. In peeking to eliminate the

differences of sex she is only degrading herself. “Beware

of imitations” is especially true in her regard.

The Catholic woman must be a true woman, a woman

after the heart of God and not after the debased concep-

tion of modern paganism. Her sublime ideal is the Virgin

Mother of God. To this let her always return. So will she

retain perennially, even unto wrinkles and gray hair, all her

sweetness and purity, and the world will be saved with her.

For how can woman be prepared for her great calling if all

her maiden days were spent in mere frivolity or worldliness,

in seeking to make herself other than the model shown to

her upon the mount, Mary Immaculate? The path of Mary

is the shortest road to Christ, the highway to His Sacred

Heart.



Chapter IV

A GREAT SACRAMENT

J. HARDING FISHER, S.J.

NE of the strongest forces in human nature is love,

love of God, love of self, love of the neighbor. And

among these stands out with special prominence

that love, made up of a number of elements, which impels

man and woman in the flower of their youth to single out

a member of the other sex as the object of so overwhelm-

ing an affection that it makes them leave their father’s

home and unite their destinies in a new home of their own,

consecrating and perpetuating their love by passing on to

others the precious spark of life which they themselves have

received. This love finds its justification and crown in that

holy state, blessed by God, replete with happiness of a most

sacred kind, conferring on individuals a new dignity as

husband and wife and a new relation to society by their

membership in the family.

This state of life arises from an agreement by which

two persons, a man and a woman, bind themselves to live

together in a stable union until death, and is called the

married state. Its main purpose is to raise a family in a

manner befitting the dignity of human nature; its secondary

ends are to enable husband and wife by mutual love and

assistance, rendered not merely as a free gift but as a strict

obligation of conscience to bear the burdens of life more

easily, to obtain a fuller measure of its legitimate joys, and

to work out with greater security their eternal salvation.

The rearing of children to the honor and service of God,

28



A GREAT SACRAMENT 29

mutual aid and comfort, and the
avoidance of temptation

to which those living in the world in
celibacy are subject

these are the ends of marriage; and
the promise to take

each other as husband and wife signifies
the transfer, be-

tween the two persons who make the
promise, of all the

rights and the undertaking of all the duties
which are im-

plied in the attaining of these three
ends.

Obligations of Marriage

Marriage is not something invented by man;
it is the

institution of nature, and, as such,
its character is made

clear to all men by the natural law. Men and
women are

free to enter the married state or
not, just as they please.

There is no obligation of taking a wife or
a husband. Any

individual may remain single if he so desires.
But when

a man and a woman promise to take each other
for husband

and wife, they must accept all the conditions
and duties of

matrimony, which have been prescribed by
God. If they

accept its privileges, they must accept its
obligations. They

cannot reject any of its essential qualities,
they cannot de-

termine what its nature shall be according
to their own

pleasure; they must submit to the laws
which God has

made for it.

Any act, therefore, by which married people,
while

availing themselves of the privileges and rights
of matri-

mony, strive to defeat the law of nature and
render futile

God’s purpose in instituting matrimony, is a
mortal sin and

a crime of such grievous nature that it is
calculated to bring

down upon them Divine punishment in this life and
in the

world to come. Ignorance on this matter is
inexcusable,

since both husband and wife are bound in
conscience to

have recourse in cases of doubt to the advice
and direction

of a prudent confessor.



30 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

The Unity of Marriage

One of the characteristics of marriage determined by

the natural law is its unity. According to the designs of

God, manifested by reason quite independently of revela-

tion, the family, as far as the parents are concerned, is to

be made up of one husband and one wife. That this is

so is clear from the consideration of the ends of marriage.

The rearing of children would be very precarious if the

affection of the parents was not concentrated on their com-

mon offspring. What frequently happens in the case of

stepchildren is quite sufficient to show that the hearts of

parents are divided and the hearts of children are lacerated,

when there are half-brothers and half-sisters in the same

household. The mutual love and comfort of the husband

and wife would not be secured if there were room for odious

and unjust comparisons and preferences, jealousies and ri-

valries, such as would be inevitable if a man might have

several wives. Were such a state of things permissible,

there would be an end to that equality between husband

and wife which is the basis and the only guarantee of per-

manent conjugal joy.

The Dissolubility of Marriage

That indissolubility is also an attribute of marriage Is

likewise clear from the natural law, for divorce would work,

and actually does work, where it is practiced, to the detri-

ment of the child, the family, the parents, society and the

race in general. The possibility of divorce would act, and

does act, as a strong deterrent to raising a family, for par-

ents, and especially wives, would be afraid to bring children

into the world, if there were no absolute guarantee of per-

manency in their union, and if they knew that it would not



A GREAT SACRAMENT 31

be difficult for the other parent of the child to go off and

marry again.

The spectacle of the utterly disastrous results of actual

divorce on the children is too patent to need proof. To

say nothing of the lack of material care, there is the de-

moralizing effect on the child’s character and development,

which is inevitable, when the child sees itself forced to

choose between father and mother, and often is brought up

to hate either the one or the other. There is an end also

to that security and confidence in parental affection which

is essential for the proper moral growth of the normal child.

Divorce Forbidden

With divorce as a possibility, marriage is lightly con-

tracted, and ill-assorted unions result. If marriage is only

an experiment that may be terminated at will, little or no

care will be exercised in the choice of a partner; little for-

bearance will be shown in disagreements arising from un-

avoidable differences of character and disposition; the af-

fections, instead of being restrained, will be allowed to

wander to other persons, with illicit desires and cooling of

love as a consequence.

Marriage, contracted under such conditions, instead of

being a sacred union tending to uplift its participants to

higher things, becomes debased; and, being regarded as a

mere temporary arrangement, easily degenerates into a

school of passion, in which the prospect of divorce only too

often provides incentives to gross sin, to callous selfishness

and to crying injustice.

Divorce logically leads to free love and is only another

form of legalized adultery; it frustrates the primary and

often the secondary end of marriage; it breaks down stand-

ards of morality
;

it deprives the State of citizens and stands



32 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

in the way of their proper education. The State is power-

less to break the marriage bond, notwithstanding it claims

to have the right to do so; the Church likewise is powerless

to dissolve it; only in those three cases explicitly provided

for by the revelation of God can she declare that the

marriage bond is dissolved.*

The Sacred Character of Marriage

The natural law demands of two persons who desire to

enter the conjugal state nothing more than what is required

for contracts in general, namely, that the persons who are

parties to it should be capable, physically and morally, of

performing its obligations, and willing and free to do so.

But the religious sense of mankind has differentiated the

matrimonial contract from other contracts and invested it

with a sacred character. Hence both barbarous and civi-

lized peoples have generally been of the opinion that mar-

riage is not fittingly entered into, unless the transfer of

marital rights is attended by more or less solemn religious

ceremonies. The reason for this practically universal atti-

tude arises from the fact, more or less dimly perceived by

man, that marriage, by its very nature, is destined to multi-

ply Divine worshipers, to people heaven and earth with

friends of God and to enable the human race to fulfil more

effectually its obligations towards the Supreme Master.

The State’s Attitude

Civil law, as a rule, has not concerned itself particu-

larly about the religious celebration, although for the most

part it has extended to it either its approval or its toleration.

*Yet for grave reasons, though the marriage has been consum-

mated, the Church may permit a separation which does not imply
any severance of the marriage bond, nor the possibility of contract-
ing a new marriage so long as both parties are still alive.



A GREAT SACRAMENT 33

The State’s interest in matrimony is restricted to the civil

aspects of the contract. This contract, however, even legis-

lators have placed in a class by itself by surrounding it with

conditions, not required of other contracts but which must

be observed in the case of marriage if it is to have a legal

status and legal rights. From this it appears that both the

religious sense of mankind and the legislative bodies of

civilized countries have agreed to regard matrimony as a

thing apart in the realm of contracts.

The Church’s Attitude

The Church has gone further. She declares not merely

that marriage, at all times and in all places, is a contract

of a very special kind, but that it is also, when contracted by

two Christians, a Sacrament.

God instituted marriage as a natural contract by the

very fact that He created human nature with the aptitude

and desire for matrimony: He reinforced His creative act

by the blessing given in Paradise to marriage when He said:

“Increase and multiply”; He, also, in the person of Jesus

Christ, elevated the natural contract to the dignity of a

visible sign of inward grace. As a consequence, when a man

and a woman, provided they are Christians, take each other

for husband and wife, in the manner prescribed by the

Church, by that very act they receive the Sacrament, and

all those supernatural helps are given them, or will be given

them when required, which are necessary for them in order

to live their married life in a manner worthy of Christians.

The Church therefore holds that every contract of mar-

riage, made by Christians, is at the same time a Sacrament;

that in the case of Christian marriage the contract and the

Sacrament are one and the same thing: so that if there is

no Sacrament, there is no valid contract; and conversely,



34 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

if there is no valid contract, there is no Sacrament. It

should be carefully noted, however, that this doctrine ap-

plies only to Christian marriage and not to marriage be-

tween non-Christians.

Christian Marriage

A very important consequence follows from this. Since

between Christians there can be no contract of marriage

which is not at the same time a Sacrament
;
and since, more-

over, the Church is the Divinely appointed custodian of the

Sacraments; it follows that the Church has the right and

the duty to determine what is necessary for the licit and

valid reception of the Sacrament, or in other words, under

what circumstances Christians may or can contract mar-

riage. The Church does not legislate for marriages which

are not sacramental in character: she concedes to the State

the right to lay down certain regulations to be observed, if

the marriage is to have civil effects; nevertheless she has

her own independent code of law on the subject, and in all

questions touching Christian wedlock she reserves to herself

the final judgment as to the conditions under which her

subjects can contract valid and licit matrimony.

The Church’s Control of Marriage

The question arises: Whence does the Church derive

the right to legislate on the matter of Christian marriage?

The answer is clear. She derives it from Jesus Christ.

Christ has the indisputable right to determine when and

under what circumstances He permits the sacramental bond

of matrimony to be contracted. This right is founded first

on His absolute dominion over the living and the dead,

which He possesses in virtue of His Godhead; it also has



A GREAT SACRAMENT 35

its roots in the fact that it was God who created Adam and
formed Eve to be his helpmate; furthermore, it was Christ

who made matrimony a Sacrament. No one, therefore, can
question His right to legislate for the Sacrament of matri-

mony.

Now Christ has shared with the Church His own au-
thority in this matter. This is a matter of Faith, which all

Catholics are bound to believe. The Church, therefore, acts

within her rights and according to the terms of the charter

she has received from God Himself, when she promulgates

and interprets the wishes of her Founder. She does not

derive her power from her subjects, but from Him alone
who says, “He that heareth you heareth Me, and he that
despiseth you despiseth Me” (Luke x. 16). Therefore
Catholics are bound to submit to the Church’s laws on

matrimony.

Nor has the Church shown herself concerned to have
the approval of the world at large on her matrimonial legis-

lation. In point of fact, fair-minded, intelligent criticism

of her attitude freely admits that she has exercised, by

her control over wedlock, untold influence for the better-

ment of the human race and especially for the happiness of
the weaker sex. • But when all is said it still remains true
that the Church does not solicit such criticism, she is not

disturbed by it when hostile, nor elated by it when favor-
able. She relies for her support on the unimpeachable au-

thority of the God-Man. She simply commands, and Cath-
olics are bound to obey.

The Question of Impediments

It is necessary for valid matrimony that the persons
contracting it should be capable, physically and morally, of
assuming its obligations. This is only another way of say<



36 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

ing that the prospective husband and wife must be free

from impediments. Some of these impediments, while not

invalidating matrimony, render it illicit; other impediments

make marriage not merely illicit, but invalid.

Formerly it was possible, though illicit, for Catholics

to be married without having a priest perform the cere-

mony; but, as it frequently happened that they were igno-

rant of existing impediments and took no steps to procure

dispensations, a number of marriages were also invalid and

had to be revalidated. Nowadays the Church has taken

effective means to prevent the occurrence* of such catastro-

phies. Practically no marriage of a Catholic is valid un-

less a priest officiates, and as no priest is allowed to officiate

unless he has made sure that no impediment stands in the

way, or at least has procured a dispensation, sufficient

precautions will be taken by the very fact that the persons

desirous of contracting marriage present themselves to the

priest for examination, and make no attempt to conceal

any impediment that may exist.

Kinds of Impediments

Some impediments are set up by the primary precepts

of the natural law. An example is the impediment which

absolutely forbids marriage between parents and their chil-

dren.

Other impediments are established by the secondary

precepts of the natural law or by positive Divine legisla-

tion. God can dispense from such impediments; but the

Church, only as far as, and in the way He might permit.

An example is the bar which stands in the way of contract-

ing a second marriage while the parties to the first marriage

are both alive. Once a marriage, therefore, has been rati-

fied and consummated the marriage bond can be dissolved



A GREAT SACRAMENT 37

only by the death of either husband or wife, except in the

case of the Pauline Privilege. If the marriage has been

ratified but not consummated, the marriage bond can be

dissolved only by the Religious Profession of one of the

married persons, or by an annulment given by the Pope for

grave reasons.

Other impediments are of a purely ecclesiastical origin,

for example, most of the impediments arising from for-

bidden degrees of kinships, from legal or 'spiritual affinity,

from the duty of chastity assumed with Holy Orders,

and the solemn vow of chastity taken at the time of pro-

fession in an approved Religious Order, from the lack of

publicity demanded by the Church, from difference of re-

ligion, or from the fact that one of the persons desiring to

marry is unbaptized.

The above enumeration does not include all the impedi-

ments, but it shows the general classes. All of them alike,

as well as those not here included, are far from being

arbitrary; they are founded either on the demands of rea-

son or the nature of the marriage contract, the laws of life

itself or the laws which safeguard social relations. They

have for their purpose to maintain the conventions taught

by nature itself,' to promote the security of the family, and

to advance the moral and religious interests of husband and

wife and children. From some of them dispensations can

be obtained, from others dispensations cannot be obtained.

An Important Warning

It is important, therefore, that those who contemplate

entering the state of wedlock should consult their pastor

in good time and be very frank and truthful in answering

his questions. Nor should they resent such questions.

They are not prompted by curiosity, but are a strict ful-



38 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

filment of duty, for it is enjoined on the conscience of

every priest to make careful investigation before proceeding

to the celebration of marriage and to satisfy himself that

there is no reason why the persons desiring it should not be

joined in holy matrimony.

The Church is very solicitous that there shall be no

mistakes, and that the two persons who propose to take

each other as husband and wife shall really do so and not

find out later, to their grief and humiliation, that an un-

suspected impediment acted as a bar to their marriage, and

that, in spite of appearances, they were not married at all.

The desire to prevent such misfortunes underlies the

Church’s insistence on the proclamation of the banns.

The Publication of the Banns

Catholics sometimes shrink from the publicity attach-

ing to the banns. The modesty which prompts the feel-

ing is commendable, but should not be indulged in to the

possible detriment of life-long happiness. The object of the

Church in calling the attention of the parish to the fact that

a marriage is about to take place is not to invade the sacred

privacy of personal concerns, but to safeguard the happiness

of her children and to shield the man and the woman from

the possibility of entering unlawfully into the marital re-

lations and so of building their wedded joys on foundations

of sand.

Following the practice of centuries, therefore, the

Church demands that after she has herself made every en-

deavor to ascertain whether or not a hidden impediment

exists, a last effort shall be made in the same direction in

order to render assurance doubly sure. With a view, then, to

removing any vestige of doubt, announcement is made for

three successive festivals, usually Sundays, at High Mass,



A GREAT SACRAMENT 39

to the effect that such and such persons contemplate mar-

riage, and that any one knowing reasons why their marriage

should not take place, should manifest them to the proper

authorities.

To submit to ecclesiastical discipline in this regard is

the mark of a good Catholic, an act of ordinary prudence,

and an effective means of preventing serious mistakes.

Bashfulness, however natural, should not* be allowed to

stand in the ways of the laws of the Church, especially

where it is of immense importance that no mistake should

take place.

When making arrangements, therefore, for matrimony
Catholics should leave time for the publication of the

banns. As this ordinarily takes place at the High Mass on

Sundays, at least a month’s notice should be given to the

pastor before the date planned for the wedding. It may be
left to the parish priest of the bride to see that the banns

are published wherever it may be necessary to satisfy eccle-
siastical requirements. In cases which call for an excep-

tion, a dispensation from the publication of the banns may
be obtained from the proper authorities; but this takes time.

If distressing delays and interference with plans result, the

prospective bride and groom will have only themselves to
blame.

Valid and Licit Matrimony

Some years ago, that is, before Easter of 1908, Cath-
olics could be validly married in the United States, with

the exception of a very few places, by a magistrate, a city
clerk, or by a Protestant minister. It was sinful to have
a civil officer perform the ceremony; to have a Protestant

minister perform it was not only sinful, but the Catholic
married by him was excommunicated. Nevertheless the



40 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

Church recognized such marriages to be valid. Marriages

of this kind would not be valid now.

It may be stated as a general rule that since April 11,

1909, in China, and since April 19, 1908, in other parts of

the world, no marriage in which one or both of the persons

are Latin Catholics or have been baptized in the Latin

Church, is valid unless a priest asks and receives from both

bride and groom the marriage promises. There are several

exceptions allowed in the legislation of the Church, but they

are of so infrequent occurrence that they need not be men-

tioned. Nor will any chance priest suffice. For valid matri-

mony this priest must be either the pastor of the parish

where the marriage is performed, or the Ordinary, that is,

the Bishop of the diocese in which it is performed, or a

priest delegated to perform the marriage either by the

pastor of the parish where it takes place or the Ordinary

of the diocese in which the parish is situated. In addition

there must be present two witnesses.

An example will make the law clear. Suppose the mar-

riage is to take place in the parish of St. Vincent’s in Mad-

ras. In that case it is essential that the pastor of St. Vin-

cent’s or the Bishop of Madras should be present at the

marriage and ask and receive the marriage consent; or

should some other priest be desired, that this priest should

be delegated to perform the marriage either by the pastor

of St. Vincent’s or by the Bishop of Madras.

Ordinarily the marriage should be performed by the pas-

tor of the bride. This rule should not be deviated from

without the pastor’s permission. A person is said to belong

to a parish if he has lived for at least a month within its

limits or has taken up his residence there with the inten-

tion of remaining permanently.



Chapter V

THE BRIDE IN THE SANCTUARY

J. HARDING FISHER, S.J.

S
INCE the Sacrament of Matrimony is nothing more

than the natural contract of marriage elevated to the

supernatural order, and since, whenever Catholics

make the contract, they at the same time receive the Sacra-

ment; it is clear that nothing more is required for the ad-

ministration of the Sacrament than the making of the con-

tract, and that the ministers of the Sacrament are, not the

priest, but the contracting parties themselves.

Essentials of the Ceremony

At the present time, as has already been explained, for

the valid celebration of marriage, nothing more is required

by the Church than that the two persons who enter the con-

jugal state should be asked by a duly authorized priest if

they take each other for husband and wife, and that they

should signify their mutual consent in presence of two wit-

nesses and the priest.

The important part of the ceremony, therefore, is con-

tained in the brief answer, “I will,” spoken by the man and

the woman in answer to the questions addressed by the

priest to each in turn, usually in the following formula:

“N., wilt thou take N., here present, for thy lawful wife

(thy lawful husband), according to the rite of our Holy

Mother Church?” When this question has been asked by
the priest and answered affirmatively by the man and wom-
an, the contract and the Sacrament are complete, and the

41



42 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

man and woman are husband and wife. What follows,

though it is a very beautiful part of the ceremony, is not

essential.

Non-Essentials of the Ceremony

The time-honored words that follow, in which the nature

of the conjugal consent is amplified and insisted on and

which are spoken after the priest has joined the hands of

the newly-married couple, are consecrated by long-estab-

lished custom, and express the lasting and heroic character

of the contract. When the Church makes both husband and

wife say calmly and deliberately: “I, N. N., take thee, N.

N., for my lawful wife (my lawful husband) to have and to

hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer,

for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part,”

she bids them pledge themselves before all the world to the

unity and indissolubility that are characteristics of true

marriage to mutual fidelity and love, and to whole-hearted

comfort and support, in spite of trials and difficulties, and

to the repudiation of the modern bane of society, the hope

of divorce.

It is only after they have thus bound themselves over to

the observance of the Catholic ideal of marriage, that the

Church bids her priest to give the marriage the approval of

the Church: “I join you in marriage in the name of the

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen,” and

to sprinkle the husband and wife with holy water, in token

of the purity that marks their nuptials and the holiness that

should be in their lives.

The Blessing of the Ring

And then, with that solicitude for woman which has al-

ways characterized the Church, the priest blesses the ring



THE BRIDE IN THE SANCTUARY 43

with a special blessing for the bride: “Bless, 0 Lord, this

ring, which we bless in Thy name, that she who is to wear

it, keeping true faith unto her husband, may abide in Thy

peace and in obedience to Thy will, and ever live with him

in mutual love. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

There is a mystical significance in the form of the cross

with which the priest then sprinkles the ring with holy wa-

ter, which is at the same time a silent admonition to a life

of holiness, and a warning that marriage does not consist

merely in the sharing of joys, but also in the sharing of sor-

rows.

Once more, with tender concern for the weaker member

of the union, the Church, as if she would leave nothing un-

done to insure the happiness of the wife, makes the husband

renew his solemn promises, as he puts the ring on the finger

of the bride, saying: “With this ring I thee wed, and I

plight unto thee my troth.” The Church wishes the ring to

be a constant reminder to the husband that he has taken

on himself the keeping of his wife’s health and happiness

and holiness; and to both alike, an external acceptance of

the fact that their marriage made on earth, has been rati-

fied in heaven,’ the fragile band of gold signifying the strong

bond of love, both of which are to be guarded intact till

death. Other prayers follow, which complete the ceremony

and invoke the Divine assistance and protection on the new-

ly-wedded couple.

The Nuptial Mass

It is a noteworthy fact, not perhaps universally recog-

nized by Catholics, that the marriage ceremony, properly

so called, does not include that blessing of blessings on Cath-

olic wedlock, which is known as the “nuptial blessing.”



44 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

Those who would have the fullest benediction of God on

their marriage, who would have the Church implore her

spouse, Jesus Christ, to open the flood-gates of Divine graces

on their wedded life, with all that these graces imply for

happiness and holiness, for length of years in which to see

their children’s children to the third and fourth generation,

and after fullness of joyous days here on earth an eternity

of beatific bliss in heaven, must be present at the Nuptial

Mass which follows the marriage ceremony.

The nuptial blessing in which the Church pours out, in

the presence of God and of the Blessed Sacrament, her lov-

ing desires for her children, just joined in marriage, is re-

served for those for whom she celebrates the Nuptial Mass.

It is given only during the Holy Sacrifice. Those who will

not have the Mass, cannot have the blessing.

No Catholic celebrates his marriage in full conformity

with the spirit and desires of the Church without this Mass,

just as no Catholic is buried with all the prayers reserved

for the Church’s dear dead except at a Requiem Mass. This

being the case, the wonder is that more Catholics do not in-

sist on a Nuptial Mass when they are married.

A Beautiful Function

Certainly the Nuptial Mass is one of the most beautiful

and touching functions that could be imagined. In it are

blended to a remarkable degree the poetry and the piety,

the solemnity and the sacredness, that should appeal to every

Catholic’s heart. At the altar-rail the bride meets the man

of her choice and with his hand in hers goes into the sanc-

tuary. Only on this occasion does the Church invite her of-

ficially to participate in the Holy Sacrifice, so close to the

Holy of Holies. Everything in Mass has its application to

the marriage. The versicles and the prayers, the Epistle,



THE BRIDE IN THE SANCTUARY 45

the Gradual and the Gospel have their special fitness; and

the Church concentrates all her wisdom on making the oc-

casion memorable for its sacred beauty.

Husband and wife kneel so near the tabernacle that

they can almost touch the paten and the chalice, as they

are offered with the bread and wine so soon to be changed

into the Adorable Body and Precious Blood of Jesus Christ;

and they know that the offering is for them. They can al-

most hear, perhaps actually hear, the august word of con-

secration that brings down the Divine Victim from heaven

to earth; and they know that His coming is for them.

After the Our Father they go to the steps of the altar

and there, within a few feet of the Sacramental Christ, so

close that He can hear their heart-beats, they are hallowed

with that special blessing, which is so precious that it may

be given but once; so sacred that it may be bestowed only

between the Consecration and the Communion of the Holy

Sacrifice; so filled with tokens of joy that ordinarily it is

bestowed solely during the periods when the Church and her

children are rejoicing and not when they are in penance;

and so extraordinary that according to the words of the

Church, it was the only one of the blessings given by God

in the beginning not taken away in the punishment of

original sin and the wrath of the flood.

Turning towards the husband and wife, just after the

Pater Noster, the celebrant says:

O God, who by Thy might hast out of nothing made all things,

who, in the beginning, didst create the world, and having made

man, to Thy image, didst give him woman to be his constant help-

mate, fashioning her body from his very flesh and thereby teaching

us that it is never lawful to put asunder what it has pleased Thee

to make of one substance; O God, who hast consecrated wedlock

by a surpassing mystery, since in holy matrimony is shown forth

the Sacrament of Christ and His Church; O God, who dost join
woman to man, that theirs may be the blessing given by Thee in

the beginning, and which was the only one not taken away as part



46 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

of the punishment inflicted for the sin of our first parents, the only

one left untouched by Thy wrath at the time of the flood; look

down in mercy on this Thy handmaid, who is about to enter upon

her wedded life, and who seeks to be strengthened by Thy pro-

tection.

May the yoke she has to bear be one of love and peace; faith-

ful and chaste, may she marry in Christ; may her whole life be

modeled on that of the holy women; may she be pleasing to her

husband as was Rachel; may she be wise as was Rebecca; may she

be long-lived and true as was Sara; may he who is the author of

all evil have no part in her actions; all the days of her life, may

she be true to the troth she has plighted, faithful in obedience, inno-

cent and pure, strengthened against weakness by wholesome dis-

cipline; may she be respected for her seriousness, venerated for her

modesty, schooled in Divine wisdom, rich in children, worthy of all

praise and above reproach, and in the end may she enter into a

blessed rest and have a place in heaven. And may she and her hus-

band see their children’s children to the third and fourth generation,

and come to the good old age to which they look forward.

When the time for Communion arrives, they again ap-

proach the altar, and receive their Lord, not with the con-

gregation at the altar-rail, but by themselves, where the

priest of God stands as he offers the Holy Sacrifice. Later

they again kneel at the steps of the altar to receive a last

blessing, not the blessing given to all the people, but to

themselves alone.

Such is the Nuptial Mass. It is so strangely beautiful

that it is no wonder the Church urges on all her children

not to fail to have it said at their marriage; the wonder

is that foolish Catholics, wanting in faith or touched by

the spirit of the world, prefer to conform to the demands

of non-Catholic fashion rather than to the counsel of the

Church. The proper way for Catholics to be married is at

a Nuptial Mass. Wedded life has so many responsibilities,

it involves such sacrifices, it entails such trials, it calls for

such courage, that no one can afford to forego the special

helps which God is ready to give, but only to those who

have a Catholic marriage in the fullest sense of the word.



Chapter VI

MIXED MARRIAGES

WALTER DWIGHT, S.J.

LL our readers are doubtless familiar with that

striking painting called “Diana or Christ?” Its

central figure is a beautiful Roman maiden, charged

with being a Christian, whom a magistrate is examining.

Her wealthy, high-born pagan suitor is at her side and

seems to be whispering, “Just offer a grain of incense to

that statue of Diana there to show you do not believe in

Christ. That simple act will restore you to liberty, and

then we’ll be happily married.”

We do not know whether that girl chose life with a

pagan husband rather than death for Christ, but at any

rate she realized fully that choose she must. But too many

of our Catholic youths and maidens today do not realize

that marrying a non-Catholic amounts practically to en-

dangering so seriously their faith and that of their children,

that on the choice they make rest consequences quite as

momentous and far-reaching as were those that followed

that Roman maiden’s decision. Yet a little serious reflection

should make it clear to all true Catholics how sternly the

Church has always opposed such unions, and how perilous

and unholy she considers them. Moreover, facts and sta-

tistics prove but too well that the mixed marriage is often

followed by the Catholic person’s loss of faith, and more

often still by the loss of the children’s.

Mixed Marriages Opposed by the Patriarchs

Even in the Old Testament striking instances abound

of the evil results of mixed marriages and of Almighty

47



48 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

God’s abhorrence of them. We read in the sixth chapter

of Genesis, for example, how “the sons of God” that is, the

sons of Seth, who represented the children of faith, married

“the daughters of men” who were Cain’s descendants and

represented the children of unbelief, and from these “mixed

marriages” resulted so great a corruption of the human race

that the deluge was required to cleanse the world.

Warned perhaps by that disaster, the Patriarchs op-

posed mixed marriages. Abraham for example made his

servant swear by the God of heaven and earth that he

would not take a wife for Isaac “of the daughters of the

Chanaanites” (Gen. xxiv, 3), but from Abraham’s own

country and kindred. Isaac in turn laid the same com-

mand on his son Jacob saying, “Take not a wife of the

stock of Chanaan” (Gen. xxvii, 1). And when God gave

Moses the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai He solemnly

forbade any of the Chosen People to “take of their [the

surrounding pagan nations’] daughters a wife for thy son”

lest he should fall into idolatry.

Josue, too, warned the Israelites: “If you will em-

brace the errors of these nations that dwell among you, and

make marriages with them . . . they shall be a pit and a

snare in your way and a stumbling-block at your side and

stakes in your eyes till He [God] take you away and de-

stroy you” (Josue xxiii, 12, 13), and in the seventh chap-

ter of Deuteronomy, we have the following rigorous prohi-

bition of mixed marriages and the unanswerable reason for

it: “Neither shalt thou make marriages with them [the un-

believing peoples] . Thou shalt not give thy daughter to his

son, nor take his daughter for thy son: for they will turn

away thy son from following me, that he may rather serve

strange gods, and the wrath of the Lord will be kindled and

will quickly destroy thee.”

Samson’s blindness, captivity and death resulted from



MIXED MARRIAGES 49

his having relations with a Philistine woman instead of

marrying a Jewish maiden; Solomon, who, though his youth

had promised so well, in later life turned away to follow

strange gods through his love for the pagan women he had

married; and the wicked King Achab chose as his wife

Jezabel, a Sidonian woman, and then set up an altar to

Baal: these are such well-known instances of how unions

with unbelievers were punished during the Old Dispensation

that they need only be mentioned as a warning for the

Catholics of today.

The Church’s Attitude Toward Mixed Marriages

With regard to the teaching of the New Testament

about mixed marriages, it is clear from the rules St. Paul

lays down in the seventh chapter of his First Epistle to the

Corinthians that Christians were never meant to be the

wives or husbands of unbelievers. Down through the ages

the mind of the Church on this subject has always been the

same. In the year 305, for instance, the Council of Elvira

decreed: “If heretics are unwilling to enter the Church, let

not the daughters of Catholics be given to them. It pleases

not the Church. of God to give them to Jews or to heretics.”

About 365 the Council of Laodicea decreed: “It behooveth

not that members of the Church should join their sons in-

discriminately in marriage with heretics”; and in 506 the

Council of Agatho declared: “It is not befitting for Cath-

olics to join in marriage with all sorts of heretics, or to give

their sons or daughters to them: only should they accept of

them if they become Christians and Catholics.”

Coming to more modern times we see that the doctrine

and discipline of the Church regarding mixed marriages has

not grown milder. Pope Benedict XIV, who lived in the

eighteenth century, affirms in his Constitution to the Bishops



50 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

of Poland, the antiquity of that discipline with which the

Holy See has ever reprobated the marriage of Catholics with

heretics,” and then expresses his extreme grief that “Cath-

olics can be found who disgracefully deluded by an un-

healthy affection, neither abhor these hateful marriages nor

abstain from them, even though the Catholic Church has

always condemned and forbidden them.”

In the following century Pope Pius IX, in an Encycli-

cal he sent in the year 1858 to all the Bishops of the

Church, exhorts them zealously to turn away the Catholics

entrusted to them from their mixed marriages, and ob-

serves: “All know what the Catholic Church has always

felt about these marriages between Catholics and non-Cath-

olics, as she has always reprobated them because of the dis-

graceful communication in Divine worship [with non-Cath-

olics], the peril of apostasy impending over the Catholic

and the perverse training of the children.”

How the Church Celebrates “Parlor Marriages”

In this connection nothing better indicates the Church’s

attitude toward mixed marriages than the way she behaves

when there is question of such a marriage. First of all the

Church does her best to dissuade the Catholic party from

contracting the marriage. If there is no hope of succeed-

ing in that, she reluctantly grants the dispensation that will

make the marriage lawful.

But this permission to wed a non-Catholic the Church

will not give her children until the non-Catholic party to

the marriage has made a solemn promise that the Catholic

party will be allowed the free exercise of his or her religion

and that the children born of the union will be brought up

Catholics. The Catholic party also is required to promise



MIXED MARRIAGES 51

to do all that is prudently possible to bring about the con-

version of the non-Catholic party.

None but the Catholic marriage ceremony is of course

permitted; no banns are published, and the wedding in-

stead of taking place in church must, as a rule, be celebrated

elsewhere. The priest, without any sacred vestment on,

merely acts as the Church’s authorized witness of the con-

tract, but pronounces no blessing on the union and a Nup-

tial Mass cannot of course be said. Indeed nothing em-

phasizes more strikingly the Church’s attitude toward her

children who marry non-Catholics than the coldness, brevity

and bareness of the ceremonial used as a “parlor marriage”

compared with the warmth, beauty and magnificence with

which she celebrates the nuptials of those who are married

at Mass.

Why the Church Abhors Mixed Marriages

But why, it may be asked, does the Church regard

mixed marriages with such marked disfavor?

In the first place, because as the Heaven-commissioned

guardian of Christ’s Sacraments she must do her utmost to

keep them from being received by the unfit or the un-

worthy. In the second place because she feels, tender

mother that she is, the deepest concern for the spiritual

welfare of her children. The Catholic man or woman who

marries a baptized Protestant confers in all probability a

holy Sacrament on one unworthy to receive it, and receives

the same from one unfit to confer it, and therefore makes

an unbecoming use of a holy thing. If even a marriage

contracted by devout Catholics, with all the blessings of the

Church and with all the graces conferred by the worthy

reception of the Sacrament, sometimes turns out unhappily,



52 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

what can that Catholic expect who marries one not of his

faith?

Her Opposition Most Reasonable

Moreover, the Church has sadly learned from her long

centuries of experience that the Catholic party in these

marriages is in constant danger, as a rule, of perversion,

and should the Church show herself indifferent to this grave

spiritual peril of her children, she would not be a true

mother at all. If Holy Church can possibly prevent it, she

will not allow a single one of her communicants to lose his

faith. But mixed marriages, as she knows but too well,

have caused millions and millions to lose their faith. Hence

her strong opposition to such unions.

Indeed, what else can the Catholic party expect but

violent temptations to become perverts? Though solemn

promises have of course been exacted, the Protestant is

quite incapable of understanding the Catholic’s religious

needs or obligations. The Protestant husband, for instance,

is quite willing perhaps to go to Vespers now and then with

his wife, and quarrels arise because she in turn will not ac-

company him to prayer-meeting. The upshot may be that

for peace at any price she will go “just once” to her hus-

band’s church, and finds there so many superior social ad-

vantages that before long she hears Mass no more, and the

minister is called in to baptize her babies.

If mothers do not come to such a sad pass as this, the

children grow up to see parents whom they love equally

well, become divided in opinion and in practice on ques-

tions which the children are taught at church and Sun-

day School to be of prime importance. What is the result?

At best lukewarm Catholics, soon passing as they grow

older into indifference in religion. “Father was a Presby-



MIXED MARRIAGES 53

terian, and a better man than most Catholics I know,”

grown-up children will argue, “so it can’t make such dif-

ference after all what one believes.” Then they end, per-

haps, by giving up Mass altogether and contracting a Prot-

estant marriage themselves.

Or perhaps the Catholic father or mother of the family

meets a sudden and untimely death and leaves behind a

flock of little children who soon come wholly under the in-

fluence of the Protestant party to the marriage, of Prot-

estant aunts and uncles, or even of a new Protestant step-

parent. It is not hard then to see what will become of those

boys’ and girls’ Catholic faith.

Little Hope of Happiness

Seldom, moreover, is there true and lasting domestic

peace in the home that a mixed marriage has established.

Husband and wife, no matter how perfectly they may agree

on all other subjects, differ widely on the one thing that the

Catholic is bound to believe to be the most important of

all, namely, the fact that the Catholic religion is the only

true one, together with the innumerable practical questions,

that that belief involves. Sunday Mass, Friday abstinence,

Baptism, Holy Communion, Confirmation, Catholic educa-

tion and Catholic marriages, things which the Catholic party

is bound in conscience to insist on as the children grow up

are likely to be regarded, if not with hostility, at best with

indifference by the non-Catholic party, and the result is con-

stant wrangling and quarreling which often end no doubt in

the Catholic’s yielding the point for the sake of peace, or

else making some miserable compromise which will be a

practical betrayal of the Church’s cause.

Then, too, the fact that the Catholic party at these

unions is indissolubly married until the non-Catholic party



54 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

dies, whereas the non-Catholic party, on growing tired of his

or her spouse, can easily find some way of procuring a di-

vorce in order to marry someone else, is a consideration that

should give pause, it would seem, to any Catholic youth or

maiden who is contemplating a mixed marriage. Moreover,

that serious abuse and perversion of the marriage relation,

euphemistically styled “birth-control,” now so deplorably

prevalent outside the Church, is likely to be so severe a

temptation to the Catholic party of a mixed marriage, that

he or she will doubtless find it practically impossible to re-

sist it.

Some of our readers will perhaps object that the fore-

going strictures on mixed marriages are too severe and

sweeping, for all such unions do not end unhappily, and

are not always followed by perversion and loss of faith.

Indeed many instances can be cited of Catholics who have

brought about the conversion of their non-Catholic spouses,

and even if one parent remains a Protestant the children of

the marriage are sometimes so well brought up that they

actually become priests or Sisters. Granted. But does not

the very rarity of such cases and the astonishment they

cause prove most strikingly the rule?

Some Statistics

Perhaps the following statistics will have weight: One

of our Bishops asserts that out of 450 cases of mixed mar-

riages which fell under his notice “Four hundred proved

fatal to faith and ninety per cent of the offspring of these

marriages were lost to the Church,” and if lost to the Church

they were probably lost to God.

According to statistics quoted by Father John A.

Schmitt in his valuable pamphlet, “How to Get Married,”

we find that “When one parent is Catholic and the other



MIXED MARRIAGES 55

Protestant, sixty-six out of every one hundred young men

have no religion; that is two-thirds are lost to the Faith.

As to the moral dangers which threaten the offspring of

mixed marriages let the following fact be considered: The

superior of one of our Houses of the Good Shepherd learned

on questioning a number of young girls whom the courts

found it necessary to commit to the Sisters’ care, that 90

out of 120 were the fruit of mixed marriages. Comment

here is surely needless.

Conversion Before the Wedding

Yet nothing better than that is to be expected as long

as Catholics meditating matrimony have an eye to the at-

tractiveness, income or social standing of the one they

choose as a life-partner, while they pass over as a matter

of quite minor importance what is really the chiefest ques-

tion of all to be considered: “Is my intended a good Cath-

olic?” If a Catholic girl is so unfortunate as to find her-

self engaged to a non-Catholic suitor she must make him a

Catholic before she marries him. If she is a woman of char-

acter she will insist that he take a course of instructions on

the teaching of the Church and thus learn that if there is a

true church, it must be the Catholic Church.

Finally her prayers and example can win for him the

gift of faith. This is the only sensible way of proceeding.

It is folly to hope for his conversion after the wedding. If

out of love for his bride-to-be he will not seriously consider

the claims of Catholicism before he has made her his wife,

he certainly will not do so after the wedding. When the

non-Catholic party of the contemplated marriage is a

woman, the necessity of conversion is of course all the

greater, for in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the chil-

dren will embrace the religion of the mother.



Chapter VII

THE CATHOLIC HOME

J. HARDING FISHER, S.J.

T
HE home of homes was Nazareth, and the family

of families was the Holy Family, and the reason

for both one and the other was simply this, that

Nazareth was the home of the Sacred Heart. Evil stopped

at the door of the little white house where Jesus and Mary

and Joseph lived; from it all unkindness and bitterness

were banished; over its lintel was written, invisibly but

unmistakably, a welcome to all that was good. Not wealth,

nor influence, nor even friends were its treasure; yet it was

rich beyond compare, because it sheltered the Heart of the

Divine Son of Man. God not only crossed its portals, He

lived within its lowly walls; Satan and his wiles were for-

bidden an entrance; angel wings fluttered about it; the Lily

of Israel, the Foster-father of Christ, the Boy Jesus dwelt

there in peace; and the blessing of the Most High was

on it.

The Model Home

The Holy Family was the first shrine of the Sacred

Heart, it is the type of all holy families. Those who would

form their domestic life on a sure model, should make the

mystical pilgrimage that wends its way during the hours of

prayer over the waters of the Mediterranean and up through

the valleys of Galilee to the obscure village that clings to

the rocky slope of the northernmost of Nazareth’s many

hills. But they must not look for the home of the Sacred

56



THE CATHOLIC HOME 57

Heart among the wealthy dwellings; for it is humble, and

unpretentious, and it shelters humble folk: a laboring man,

still in the prime of life but worn by toiling for a daily

wage; a woman, scarcely yet in the full maturity of her

growth, poorly clad, but fair beyond the power of words

to describe; and a Boy, the most winsome that ever knelt

by a mother’s side.

Here were passed the wondrous years when Jesus was

growing from boyhood to youth, and from youth to man-

hood; here was given that marvelous example of obedience

and of labor that has been the strength of the poor, and

the consolation of the subject; here were wrought out in

detail those lessons of domestic conduct that have been the

constant direction of fathers and mothers, and the unfailing

inspiration of sons and daughters; here was shown the pat-

tern of the ideal life.

All of us have bowed in sorrow as we knelt before the

Pieta and watched the Blessed Mother gazing in speechless

anguish on the blood-stained, mangled, murdered body of

her Son; we have fixed our thoughts upon her, as the tear-

drops glistened on her pallid cheeks and she looked upon the

dying Christ upon the Cross; we have wondered at the

mystery of the manger and have marveled at the faith and

tenderness of the young Madonna, lost in adoration of the

Babe upon the niggard straw.

These scenes the artists and the preachers and the poets

have kept before us. And they do well. For on Calvary

and at Bethlehem there are lessons to be learned, of which

,we shall all sometime have dire need. But for most of us

Ihe place of more homely, though not less necessary, in-

struction, the scene of what should be the subject of our

more frequent contemplation, is not the hill of skulls nor

the wind-swept cave, but the worshipful and ever memorable

cottage in the least of all cities of forgotten Galilee, a spot



58 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

from which even the guileless Nathaniel doubted that good

could come.

The Holy Family

The trial of faith now and again sears the soul of every

Christian, sometimes in their life all men find themselves

near the Cross
;
but there is never a child so lowly and never

a man so great, that does not have to spend a large portion,

if not the entirety, of his days in that sacred place to which

we have given the name of home.

All of us are what our homes have made us. The chief

formative influence in the shaping of character is that first

fashioning of manners and of thought that is given near

the hearthstone when the child is increasing, as all must do,

in age, and, as all thought to do, in wisdom and grace with

God and man. It was in His home that Jesus garnered the

strength to face the public ministry and to crown it by

climbing the hill of crucifixion; it was at Nazareth that He

schooled His Heart to its all-forgiving love of man; it was

in the Holy House of Loretto that He waxed strong, full of

wisdom and the grace of God. So it is with us all. Happy

the man, and happy the woman whose childhood has been

passed in a home like that where for so many years dwelt

the Sacred Heart of Our Lord.

In the Holy Family—and all other families are holy
only so far as they approximate to it—there was insight into
things supernatural. The Holy Family did not regard itself

as an isolated thing set in the midst of no higher ambition

than the gratification of self, no loftier pleasure than the

tingling of sense or the thrill of power or the exultation of

pride. The Holy Family recognized that naught on earth

is of value if it leads not to God. Mary and Joseph, and of

course, Our Lord, pierced the veil that blinded their fellows,



THE CATHOLIC HOME 59

their minds went soaring up to the Creator of all, from

whom has come down all that we have, and to whom must

be brought all that we do and all that we are. And the

pity of it is that more homes are not like it.

Mary and Joseph

Mary took Jesus’ hand in the morning of His life, when

He was mysteriously increasing in wisdom, and pointed out

to Him the fathomless blue of the heavens, and spoke with

Him of the mansions in the home of His Father. Joseph

set Him an example, though Christ, of course, needed it

not, of purity and courage and devotion to duty.

If Catholic homes are to be homes of the Sacred Heart,

homes where the spirit of Christ is in honor, homes to which

the Saviour turns for comfort, as to Martha’s home in the

days of old, fathers and mothers must train the hearts of

their children, as Mary and Joseph, be it said in all rever-

ence, trained the Heart of the growing Christ. Who is to

teach baby lips the holy names but the parent? Who is to

accustom faltering steps to walk in the ways that lead unto

life, and accustom him to bear for his Lord the day’s burden

and heat, and to recognize His yoke for what it is, a yoke

that is sweet and light? Who indeed but the parent?

Worldly Parents

If Catholic homes were more like the home at Nazareth,

if Catholic parents were more like Mary and Joseph, Cath-

olic children would be more like the Child Jesus, and would

live in subjection and increase in the only true wisdom and

in the only true grace, the grace and the wisdom of the

Holy Ghost; fewer children would be a judgment on their

parents, fewer hearts would be in ashes, fewer hopes would

be in vain.



60 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

Catholic men of wealth, to their shame be it said, are

striving to make their children the slaves of gold. Cath-

olic women of fashion are bartering their children’s eternal

interests for the smile of a social set. It was not so at

Nazareth. Catholic men of honest toil are giving the sweat

of their brows and the blood of their hearts that their chil-

dren may rise by their labors and be better off than them-

selves
;
Catholic women of humble means have their needles

ever at work that their children may wear the clothes of

a decent respectability and move with people of modest

competence. This is not wrong. St. Joseph toiled for the

Boy Jesus, and Mary wove His seamless robe. The shame

is in this, that, though poor, many parents are thoroughly

worldly, no less so in fact than the rich, for they fix their

thoughts on the things of time, and have scarcely a thought

for the things that endure, the things of worth, the things

of eternity. It was not so at Nazareth. It was not so in

the home of the Sacred Heart.

The Source of Happiness

No family can hope for happiness except in the meas-

ure of its likeness to the Holy Family; and no family can

be like the Holy Family unless it knows and loves Jesus

Christ, unless it makes Him the center of its hopes, the

framer of its laws, the teacher of its ideals, and the model

of its virtues.

But oh, the joy that is in store for those homes in which

the Sacred Heart is in honor! They will not indeed see the

blood mantling with pleasure in the cheeks of the Boy of

twelve, as He turns His face homewards after His brief

exile in the Temple; but they will experience a joy like

His, as they close the door on a world whose law is self and

enter a sanctuary where all is love. They will not have the



THE CATHOLIC HOME 61

privilege of sitting down to table with the Son of God and

ministering to His needs; but they will feel His benign

presence and will have the consolation of knowing that He

takes as done to Himself what they do for His friends.

They will not have Christ in the full flower of His man-

hood to take the instruments of toil from their hands as He

did from the hands of St. Joseph when he was tired and old;

but they will have other helpers to relieve them, generous

with filial love that they have learned from the example of

the most devoted of sons. Christ will not be there in visi-

ble forms to smooth their pillows and ease their pain, and

to light up the passage that leads to death; but they will

have the Sacrament of His love within their breasts, and

they will see Him with the eye of faith, beckoning from be-

yond the grave and calling them home.

Who would fear to go hand in hand with Christ up to

the white throne of God, to go from a home where Christ

has been King here on earth to a home where He is King

in His Father’s Kingdom? Yet strange though it seems

and almost passing belief, such is the happiness that awaits

all those who make their homes, homes of the Sacred Heart.

• The Mother’s Part

The making of the home depends first and above all

on the mother; her influence is the all important element in

the fashioning of the ways of her little ones after the Divine

Model; from the mother’s Catholic heart, guided by nat-

ural prudence and inspired by Christian faith, must come

the dominant influence which lifts the thoughts of her house-

hold, husband, children and servants beyond the skies to the

mansions prepared by Christ for those He loves in His

Heavenly Father’s home. The father, too, has his part, and

the sons and daughters.



62 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

Catholic Atmosphere

And yet there are other elements, which go to the mak-

ing of a Catholic home, which, although only secondary, are

very important and are neglected only with great loss. Ma-

terial objects help very effectively to the creation of a

proper atmosphere. In the Catholic home, wherever the

eye turns, it should meet with Catholic objects, pictures and

statues of Christ, the Blessed Mother, and the Saints. Ques-

tionable things, in bad taste and bordering on the illicit,

which have little or no artistic value and serve no other

purpose than to suggest unholy thoughts and fan into flame

the smouldering embers of concupiscence, which lie in the

depths of every heart, should be rigorously banished.

There should be nothing in the home from which Our

Lady, should she deign to pay a. visit, would turn away

her gaze; nothing on which eyes looking on the Sacred Host

exposed at Benediction, might blush to remember; nothing

that would trouble the white thoughts of the most innocent

child. The world is filled today with such shocking repre-

sentations and public taste has become so debased, that our

own views on the matter of indecency are in danger of being

distorted. There were no such objects in the Holy House

of Nazareth, there should be none in Catholic homes.

Catholic Literature

Nor should there be in the Catholic home books or

magazines or newspapers, in which the reading matter is

pagan and demoralizing, and the illustrations are as daring

and impure as the law will allow. Such things are only too

common, and the priest is often amazed and horrified to

find lying on the family table periodicals and novels and

daily journals which are a direct menace to morality and



THE CATHOLIC HOME 63

should be taken, not with pure fingers, but with tongs and

dropped in the fire. They taint the principles, they weaken

faith, they obscure the vision of God, they destroy the love

of holy things, they banish the Angels, they are an invita-

tion to the devils of hell.

When the child enters the Catholic home, it should find

there an atmosphere of piety, purity and love, a correc-

tive for the evil it has seen in the streets, an inspiration to

higher thoughts, an antidote for the corrupting influence of

the world. Catholic books should be there, lives of the

Saints who have lived up to Catholic ideals and fought the

good fight and won their way to eternal life through many

tribulations; from these the child will learn something of its

glorious Catholic ancestry and model its life on Catholic

ideals. Catholic magazines should be there, the weekly of

the diocese, a review which defends Catholic principles, a

monthly which is devoted to piety.

Above all, the crucifix should be there, in every room

if possible, where it will meet the gaze of the child at its

first waking moment and remain in its thoughts as its eyes

close in sleep. The crucifix is the most eloquent book in

the world, it has a marvelous power to instil lessons of

Christian piety and fortitude. The Catholic home is not a

proper home unless the crucifix is largely in evidence, and

has the place of honor, and is the crown and the strength

and the inspiration of the household.



Chapter VIII

DEDICATED MOTHERHOOD

JOHN C. REVILLE, S.J.

I

N the Catholic family the father rules by authority,
the mother by love. The duties of the former bring

him directly in contact with the outside world. Indi-

rectly they link his household with the life and the activi-

ties around it. The father is the breadwinner of the family.

By toil of head or hand he must support his wife and

children. He must go down into the arena of life and

fight there to safeguard the interests of his loved ones.

Every morning he is obliged to leave the sanctuary of his

home for his day’s work whether it be that of motorman or

millionaire.

The Mother’s Sphere

But the mother’s sphere is the home. Here it is that

her influence is felt. Here she is mistress and queen.

In the home she comes in constant, permanent contact

with her children. While the father is absent for his daily

toil, she remains to watch over them and to protect them.

At certain stages in the life of the child, the mother is its

sole companion. She guards his helpless infancy. Her

sweet voice teaches him the first words he speaks, the name

of the great Father in heaven, and of that earthly father,

whose face bends down together with her own over his little

cot. Her hands smooth his fevered brow, rock him to

sleep, shield him from danger, dry his tears. Then the

mother is a wonderful and mysterious being to the child,

his idol, his fairy, his play-fellow, his queen. The child

64



DEDICATED MOTHERHOOD 65

turns to her in all his joys, in all his fears and needs. The

one word most often on his lips is “Mother.”

The Mother’s Influence Lasting

Although that intimate and rare companionship of the

mother and the child diminishes, or to be more correct,

changes in its manifestations as the child grows stronger and

more self-reliant, it substanially persists through life. Even

the strong man cannot free himself from its holy influences.

Though the mother may no more be near him, it is to her

he instinctively turns, in thought at least, to share with her

his rewards or tell her of his trials. The young man looks

to her for guidance. She it is who tells him of life’s pit-

falls and self-control. She teaches him where to find

strength and courage against himself. He is not ashamed

to kneel at her feet and unfold his temptations and faults.

The union of the mother and the son, of the mother

and the daughter shows us authority vested with grace and

tenderness guiding the children of future generations, mold-

ing them into noble men and women, shaping their destinies

for time and eternity.

The influence- of the mother on her children is also most

decisive. The mother’s face is the one into which the child

constantly looks, the mother’s voice the one that rings most

often in his ears. Her ways, her conduct are the factors

which at every moment enter unconsciously into his life,

his habits, his very fiber and being. It is the mother that

the child takes for his model. In that mold his character

is formed.

The Children’s Model

It is of the highest importance, therefore, for the Cath-

olic mother that in her conduct, in her daily acts, even the



66 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

least and apparently the most insignificant, she should be a

model to her children. Children are essentially imitators.

They have a wonderful faculty of reproducing the traits

which they perceive in others. Their natures are impres-

sionable, devoid as yet of all artificiality and self-conscious-

ness. They are easily led by the emotion of the present

and almost unconsciously yield to it.

Artists tell us that the artistic taste can be developed

by contact with perfect models, with beautiful things, by

the sublime views which nature presents, mountains clothed

with verdure or helmeted with snow, silver lakes shimmer-

ing under the rays of the sinking sun, noble cathedrals, a

ravishing piece of music, a magnificent painting, a majestic

statue. Spiritual writers tell us also that the sense of vir-

tue, the love of the true and the good can be fostered in the

hearth by the influence of a noble model. Our Lord Him-

self understood this and to make virtue more easy of imita-

tion clothed Himself in the vesture of our frail humanity to

be the pattern on which we might fashion our lives.

The Catholic mother must become a living model of vir-

tue to her children. She can do so in two ways: positively

and negatively. Positively, by actually practicing herself

and then teaching her children the virtues which should be

the ornament of a Catholic household; negatively, by avoid-

ing those defects which, however insignificant, may have

the greatest influence for evil on the lives of her children.

It is of the latter that we speak here.

Her Personal Life

The most serious defect which the Catholic mother must

avoid is the neglect of her own spiritual life. This, it is

true, directly concerns herself alone. But though she is the

first and the greatest sufferer from this defect, it is one that



DEDICATED MOTHERHOOD 67

will surely, though perhaps slowly, affect her children. If

the mother is not in all things guided by the spirit of faith,

so that the inner life remains unwarmed by the love of God

;

if she has not the holy fear of the Creator in her heart;

if the great truths of religion, the necessity of the salvation

of the soul, the dread of sin and its punishments have not

made a deep and lasting impression on her heart, she cannot

impress these truths in a vital and striking manner on the

hearts of her children.

The household of the mother whose faith is weak, whose

heart is not inflamed by prayer and union with God, is not

the one in which the noblest virtues bloom. The cold and

chilling atmosphere which the indifferent mother carries

around her cannot foster the growth of those delicate flowers

of holiness, of self-control, of purity, of Christian mortifica-

tion, of mutual love and forbearance which are the signs

of the presence of God in the heart.

Results of Such Neglect

How can the mother make her little one love the religion

in which they have been baptized, if she feels only a

dwindling enthusiasm for its mysteries? With what suc-

cess can she tell them of the life, the sufferings and the

death of the Man-God, if her heart does not thrill with

sorrow over His agony, His abandonment, His betrayal

and His shame? Is it possible that she can instill into the

minds of her children the horror of sin, if she harbors any

unhallowed passion or gives ear to suggestions of the

tempter that would make her false to her essential duties

of wife and mother?

If she does not hate sin above all the evils of life, she

will not impress its hideousness on the minds of her daugh-

ters and her sons. If she does not love prayer she will not



68 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

teach its beauty to her little flock. If her soul is essentially

worldly and her ideals and standards those, not of the

Catholic mother, but of the misguided semi-pagans about

her, even though she may make a pretence at teaching her

children the lessons of the Faith, her words will lack unc-

tion and power. They will not have a lasting effect. Her

children will grow up, familiar with the forms of Catholic

devotion, but their lives will not be thoroughly molded by

the principles of Catholicism, because their mother’s heart

and soul were out of touch with them.

The first lesson, therefore, the mother must learn is to

free her soul from the influence of that spiritual malady,

indifference to the great principles of her religion. She must

deepen her spiritual life. She must be united to God by

faith, prayer, by the reception of the Sacraments, the spirit

of devotion, of mortification and self-sacrifice.

The Force of Example

If the atmosphere which the mother carries with her

unconsciously in her conduct must be thoroughly unworldly,

spiritual and Catholic, she must also take care that in the

acts which directly concern the spiritual life, she be an ex-

ample to her children. If the mother does not give the

example of fidelity she cannot enforce the observance of

religious duties. She cannot neglect the duty of prayer and

at the same time ask her children to be attentive to it. The

observant eyes of her little ones will notice that mother does

not join them in the task she imposes. If she bids them

kneel morning and night to offer their labors to God and to

thank Him for His protection, and never joins them in that

duty, her words will lose their authority. If she is never

seen at prayer together with them, the children will begin to

suspect that they may omit it with impunity and will finally



DEDICATED MOTHERHOOD 69

neglect it altogether. It is from the mother that they must

learn the beauty of prayer, its necessity for them in the

hour of danger and temptation, the obligation incumbent

upon them all through life to keep their hearts united to

God by that golden link.

A Prayerful Mother

A prayerful mother carries about her in the household

something of the peace, the calm, the beauty and sweetness

of another world, something of that ineffable grace and

charm of Our Lady herself, as she went about her duties

in the humble house of Nazareth. By her own prayerful

life, by the insistence with which she inculcates the duty of

prayer on her offspring, and the regularity with which she

gives the example of its daily practice, she will become a

source of blessings to her household.

The memory to her children of her sweet presence as

she knelt with them at home morning and night, at Our

Lady’s shrine in the parish church, before the little red

light burning in front of the tabernacle; her care to teach

them the sign of the Cross and the prayers dear to the

heart of Catholics; her words of encouragement as they

prepared for Confession and Holy Communion, the little

ejaculations she taught them to say in the hour of danger

and temptation: these can never be forgotten. In later

years, when his mother will have long ago gone to her re-

ward, the gray-haired man will lovingly remember and re-

peat again the prayers which she taught him and which,

when a little child, his hands clasped in hers, he repeated

at her knees.

Holy Conversation

The mother not only must not forget to pray and to

teach this duty to her little ones, but she must not forget



70 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

to speak to them of God, of His goodness, His power, His

magnificence, His beauty and above all of His love. She

can commit no greater fault than to be silent about Him,

and the duty of love and obedience we owe Him above all

things. The neglect of such a duty cannot be too much de-

plored.

Yet there are unfortunately Catholic mothers who fre-

quently hold long conversations before their children on

worldly subjects, on the topics that engross the attention

of the public, the frivolous subjects of dress and fashion,

their neighbors’ faults, the novels and the plays popular

for the moment, but who never speak of God, of His

Church, its history, its sufferings, its glories, its saints, its

martyrs, the dangers it is subjected to from its own chil-

dren and its enemies. What can we think of the Catholic

mother who never tells her children of the struggles of the

martyrs, of the glorious days of the early Church, when to

be a Christian was to be a saint; who never speaks of the

catacombs, of the heroism of boys like Tarcisius and Pan-

cratius who gave up their lives for Christ, and of the glo-

rious deaths of those virgins, Agnes, Cecilia, Lucy, Anasta-

sia and their companions and imitators?

Can a Catholic mother who delights her children and

rightly, with the fairy tales that come from the East, be

silent on that Divine story, the birth of the Man-God in

lowliness and poverty in the little manger of Bethlehem,

His life, His sufferings, His death? If she wants to interest,

instruct and ennoble them, can she do anything better than

to tell them those stories from the Old Testament, the trag-

edy of our First Parents’ fall, the fratricidal jealousy of

Cain, the death of Abel, the story of the deluge, of Joseph

and his brethren, of Judith, of Esther, of Gideon and his

brave men, of the conquest of the Holy Land, with its splen-

dors, the passage of the Jordan and the Red Sea, the warlike



DEDICATED MOTHERHOOD 71

prowess of David, the wisdom and the weakness of Solomon

and the heroism of the Machabees?

Spiritual Reading

The Catholic mother neglects her duty if she does not

now and then read a spiritual book to her children, one in

keeping with their knowledge and their years. She is un-

faithful to her duties if she does not thus from childhood

teach them all the beauty that may be found in a Gospel

parable, such as that of the Prodigal Son or the Wedding

Feast; or in a chapter from the Imitation of Christ.

It is a general complaint that Catholics are not ac-

quainted with Catholic literature. Are not Catholic moth-

ers in some measure responsible? If they accustom their

children to love what is truly and genuinely Catholic, they

give them something that will be of the greatest spiritual

yalue for the rest of their lives, a sense of what is noble and

true, an intellectual and spiritual disrelish for all that is

commonplace and coarse. Their children in future years

will not be tempted to fritter away their time and their

energies in reading the cheap magazine or the trashy novel,

which, if they do not always corrupt the heart, necessarily

lower Catholic standards of life and substitute for them the

viewpoint of the worldling.

Unworldliness

There should be no room in the heart of the Catholic

mother for anything that savors of the love of the world.

If she and her children occupy a position in life of some

dignity and importance, she has the right to see that they

maintain it within the bounds of reason. She must see that

by their education her children be prepared worthily to take

their place in the rank in which God has placed them. But,



72 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

if she is wise and has at heart their real good, she will set

their soul’s welfare above anything and everything that the

world can give. She must impress upon their hearts and

minds the essential vanity, the fleeting and unsubstantial

character, of social rank and position. She must not train

them to luxury and ease, by pampering them and fostering

their fondness for pleasure and self-indulgence, their inor-

dinate love of display, amusement and dress; she must

rather bring them up in a certain rugged simplicity, bene-

ficial alike to both body and soul. She should, of course,

ever remember that they are children and treat them with

motherly tenderness and indulgence, but she must not make

of them weaklings or worldlings.

Worldliness is cultivated in the homes of the poor as

well as of the rich. Working-girls frequently spend every

cent on clothes and the mother encourages them, or has

taught them to be extravagant.

She must not allow that love of the world to develop in

her children, nor its manifestations to go uncorrected. She

can easily detect them. They are usually disobedience, self-

ishness, and pride. She should correct them by placing the

example of Our Lord and Our Lady before her children and

by seeing that they practise acts of the opposite virtues of

subjection and humility. One of the best means to over-

come this inborn tendency to worldliness in the hearts of

her children, and their constant companion, selfishness, is to

remind them that the rich are the stewards of the poor, that

out of their wealth and abundance it is their duty to help

their less favored brethren in the struggles and the trials of

life.

As the children grow older and their minds open more

and more, the Catholic mother must teach them the dan-

gers of worldliness, must show them that as long as they

are favored with the world’s goods, the world will smile



DEDICATED MOTHERHOOD 73

upon them, but as soon as their fortune and their rank are

lost, the world will coldly and contemptuously turn its back

upon them. She must teach them that the world is essen-

tially false and hypocritical. This will render them nobly

independent of its favor and frown, and will teach them to

put their trust in their own good and generous endeavors

and the grace of God.

Social distinction, too, sought for at the expense of Cath-

olic principles, by sacrificing personal integrity and honesty

and by offering incense to those idols which the world wor-

ships—success, wealth, pleasure—never brings peace to the
Catholic household. It produces unrest. It causes too often

the loss of the grace of God. A Catholic mother should

think seriously before she launches her children on that dan-

gerous path. There are too many pitfalls lurking there.

Too many others have fallen victims of the snares and the

dangers in the way. Their tragic stories should be a

warning.

Channels of Grace

In all this the views of the Catholic mother must be

thoroughly supernatural. In order to foster them, she must

have recourse to those channels of grace which the Church

puts at her disposal. Her strength must come from God.

She needs it for herself in the hard but noble duties thrust

upon her. She needs it for her husband in order that she

may be to him in all things a loving and tender helpmate,

sharing his burdens, encouraging him with her smile, her

words, and far more so by the radiance of her high purpose,

the nobility of her character, her devotion and love. She

needs it for her children and household. Where is she to

find it? Principally in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and

in the Sacraments.



74 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

Attendance at Holy Mass may be considered the spir-

itual thermometer that registers the degree of fervor in a

Catholic community. If attendance at Mass is regular, con-

stant, fervent and general, it may be said that, although

neither sin nor scandal may be entirely absent, the spiritual

condition of the community is substantially sound. Where,

on the contrary, the Mass is in little honor, the spiritual

condition leaves much to be desired. Where Mass is neg-

lected by the people, faith dies away. Where it is loved,

and where men and women crowd about the Altar as the

Holy Sacrifice is offered, faith is still of a stout and vigorous

growth.

Fidelity to Holy Mass has been for centuries the devo-

tion of the sons and daughters of Ireland. That fidelity

and devotion have undoubtedly been the means which, un-

der God’s Providence, has kept the Faith so strong in the

Isle of Saints, in spite of war, hunger and persecution.

The Mother and the Mass

Devotion to Holy Mass will work marvels in the heart

of the Catholic mother. If she wishes to give a lasting

example to her husband and her children, she must under

no pretext, except in the case of real necessity, neglect it.

Yet at times Catholic mothers may be found who with

scanty reasons fail to comply with that essential duty of

Catholics, which obliges them under pain of mortal sin to

hear Mass on Sundays and holydays of obligation.

They pretend that the duties of the household, the care

of their children, the fatigue undergone during the week,

their health, and countless other reasons, which self-love is

so skilful in trumping up, will not allow them to perform

this duty. But they will find ample time on that very day

on which they have failed to go to Mass, for parties and



DEDICATED MOTHERHOOD 75

entertainments, for idle reading and uncharitable gossip,

for tasks far more arduous and exacting- than the fatigue of

walking a few blocks to the parish church and spending a

brief half-hour in the presence of God. By this neglect they

cause untold harm to their own souls and those of their

children.

Spiritual Losses

The Catholic mother that neglects Mass blocks up the

channels of grace in her soul. Deprived of the supernatural

strength to be found at the altar, weakened by her sloth

and her lack of mortification, she is left to her unaided ef-

forts. Her spiritual life becomes soulless and commonplace.

Should this neglect be frequent and habitual, her faith de-

cays. She no longer has the light and the strength needed

for her labors, her trials and temptations. She will find out,

sooner or later, if she does not amend, that she may expose

herself to some real spiritual disaster. God will not treat

her as His child if she openly violates His positive com-

mands. Her household will not be blessed with those

extraordinary favors which, it has been so often remarked

in the history of the Church, are showered upon those fam-

ilies which love the Holy Sacrifice. Her carelessness dis-

edifies her children. It has an evil influence upon her hus-

band, and will but too easily lead him to neglect his duty.

It becomes a scandal to the parish, for the parish has a cer-

tain right to the edification and the good example which she

can and should give.

On the other hand there can be no more edifying sight

in a Catholic community than the presence of the mother,

the father and their little ones, their grown-up sons and

daughters regularly and devoutly assisting at this great offi-

cial act of Catholic worship. It is the family’s open pro-



76 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

fession of faith. It unites the household in the bonds of the

holiest union and love before God’s altar. It is a sign, al-

most certain and infallible, of the union, the harmony, the

spirit of obedience, of mutual respect and love that reign in

the home.

Use of the Sacraments

If the mother should frequently neglect Mass it often

happens that she will, by an easy and natural step, neglect

the Sacraments. If she does this what will become of her?

No one needs the Sacraments more than she does, for her

duties constantly demand of her the most painful sacrifices.

She needs strength to make them generously. Glorious as

are the privileges of motherhood, they entail the gravest re-

sponsibilities. At a time when so many shirk them, and

when emancipation from their yoke is openly preached by

those who neither fear God, nor reverence womanhood, the

use of the means of grace is absolutely necessary. The Sac-

rament of Penance is needed, if she would keep her heart

pure. She must frequently, daily, if possible, approach the

Holy Table if she would keep it strong.

The Sacrament of Penance

We associate motherhood with all that is purest and

fairest. We render to it the unconscious tribute of our

hearts. There is something sacred about its very name.

The Catholic mother, living under a dispensation in which

the natural dignity of the marriage contract has been raised

by God to the still nobler rank of a Sacrament, should em-

body the highest ideals of those virtues which we associate

with her office.

The heart of the Catholic mother should become the

sanctuary of the noblest virtues. Her purity, her patience,



DEDICATED MOTHERHOOD 77

her spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice should be without

the slightest shadow or stain. She must watch over her

heart. She may not allow any love or affection to enter

there that may diminish her loyalty to her husband or her

devotion and tenderness to her children. Self-indulgence,

jealousy, harshness of manner and bitterness of words,

flashes of ill-temper, petty spite, resentment, the spirit of

criticism, peevishness, the neglect of the temporal or spir-

itual welfare and needs of her household, not to speak of

grosser violations of the essential duties of her state of life,

may mar the beauty of her soul.

The frequent reception of that Sacrament which has

been given to cleanse the heart from all sin and imperfec-

tion, the examination of conscience necessary for its worthy

reception, will make her know herself, her own weaknesses,

and put her on guard. They will purify her soul and give

her a peace and happiness which will shed its beams over

the whole family.

If, on the contrary, the Sacrament of Penance is neg-

lected, her soul will gradually lose its fervor and its purity.

Weak and unaided nature will soon reassert itself. Small

and venial defects will at first diminish her devotion. They

will accumulate and grow more serious from day to day.

As the burdens of motherhood, the cares of the household,

worries and solicitude about the temporal welfare of the

family increase; when trials test her mettle and adversities

crowd upon her; when her duties become painful and her

responsibilities irksome she may begin to murmur against

the restraints of her state of life and yearn for that liberty,

in which she sees many of her sex indulging; then she may

be tempted to hearken to the world, the flesh and the devil

as they tell her to emancipate herself and live out her own

independent life.

Should such a state of soul come upon her and should



78 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

she neglect the Sacrament of Penance, and no longer have

the faith, the humility and the courage to kneel at the feet

of the priest to ask advice, and unfold the story of her weak-

nesses, she is on the brink of the precipice. As in the case

of neglect of Holy Mass, the evil is not confined to her alone.

The family is disedified, the scandal spreads from the mother

to the father, and from him to the children. Too often the

whole household is lost to the Faith. It is not uncommon

to see that if its members lose the Faith, they lose also,

honor, prosperity, happiness and peace.

The Holy Eucharist

If the mother may not neglect the Sacrament of Penance

she may not neglect that still nobler Sacrament for which it

is the normal preparation.

The mother’s life is a life of sacrifice. In the Blessed

Eucharist she has the source of strength. Her life is one of

pure and unselfish love. In Holy Communion, she receives

in her heart Him who is Love personified, and its source.

She needs strength for her duties and her labors. In Holy

Communion the Divine Guest that deigns to visit her, is the

strength of the virgins, the confessors and the martyrs.

Coming into her soul, He will bring with Him comfort,

courage, power. Sanctified by His sacred presence she will

return to her family ready for the labors and trials of the

day. No suffering can daunt her. No sacrifice, which she

is called upon to make as mother or wife, as the guardian

angel of her children, the adviser and co-worker of her hus-

band, will appal her. Her God is in her heart. He labors

and toils with her in the household. He guides her.

Through Him, her husband and children are blessed. What

can she fear?

The petty burdens and annoyances of the household, the



DEDICATED MOTHERHOOD 79

more severe trials that may come upon her, sickness, finan-

cial worries, loss of social position and prestige, the death

even of her loved ones, will not disturb the calm and the

peace of her soul. She will feel the sorrow and the pang.

She will mourn like Rachel over her dead, the husband whom

God gave her in the pride and beauty of her young life, and

the little darling whom He has taken away to be the com-

panion of the Angels. But great as may be her sorrows,

they will not be without their balm. She will have in Holy

Communion the consolation and the strength needed in this

dark hour. God Himself will be her Comforter. He has

promised that He will in heaven, with His own sacred hands,

wipe away the tears from our eyes. He will, in a mysterious

way in Holy Communion, fulfill in anticipation that sacred

pledge, and in the radiance of His coming in to her sorrow-

smitten soul, give her the assurance that all the trials and

partings borne for His sweet Name, will have one day their

reward exceeding great. She is but human and as such she

cannot but mourn. But He is God and her mourning will

be turned into joy.

Contrast with her the mother who neglects Holy Com-

munion, is seen at the Sacred Table only at rare intervals,

or even fails to fulfill her solemn duty of the Paschal time.

She is weakening her soul, sapping her spiritual strength,

and giving the worst possible example to her husband, to her

children, to her friends, to the Catholics of the parish.

If it be true that peace, concord, mutual deference and

love, joy, innocence, purity, the spirit of prayer, love of Our

Lady, of the Saints and of the Adorable Heart of Christ,

reign in the household of the mother who finds her greatest

happiness in frequent and fervent Communion; so, on the

other hand, as a punishment and a sign of God’s displeasure,

are these blessings often absent from the home of the mother

who is seldom or never seen at the Holy Table. In the in-



80 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

ner circle of the household it is the mother who determines

its spirit and its atmosphere. What is the result if she has

little or no love for the Blessed Sacrament?

Effects of This Neglect

The spiritual tone is lowered. Prayer is neglected. The

mother whose heart is estranged from God by her neglect

and coldness, seldom speaks to her children of God, of holy

things. She gradually loses that irresistible influence over

her husband which comes from a life in union with God.

How can she urge him, if he is negligent, to a duty which

she shows by her own conduct she but little esteems? What

must be his grief, if he is fervent, to see that the woman to

whom he has pledged and faithfully kept the solemn prom-

ise of his love, and whose real happiness is the one object

of his desires, is unfaithful to the noblest practices of her

religion? For he knows well that only in them can she find

the strength to fulfill her tasks and bear her burdens. She

loses control over her children. She loses control over her-

self. She becomes peevish, harsh, uncharitable, impatient,

irritable, selfish, proud. The peace of God does not reign

in her heart. Peace soon departs from her home. Ill-tem-

per, quarrels, jealousies disturb its harmony. Vanity, world-

liness, the love of pleasure, of amusement, of the forbidden

fruit tempt her. She has not God’s grace and strength to

resist.

Can we wonder then that at times there is a fall, a dis-

taste, a spiritual tragedy, too often terminated by ruin and

disgrace in the eyes of a scandalized world? The tragedy

and the fall would have been avoided if that Catholic mother

had frequently approached the Holy Table.



DEDICATED MOTHERHOOD 81

A Consoling Picture

Amid all the beauty and the grandeur that the Catholic

Church can show to the world, there are few sights more

consoling or nobler than that of the Catholic mother side by

side with her husband, and surrounded by her little ones,

her grown-up sons and daughters, kneeling at the altar to

receive her God. United in their mutual love at home in all

life’s trials, in wealth and poverty, in sorrow or in joy, hus-

band and wife here give a solemn pledge that they are still

more united in the love of God. Their hearts have been

cleansed by a sincere and contrite Confession for the recep-

tion of this great Sacrament. A solemn peace and a holy

calm are in their soul. They are signed and sealed with the

grace of God. In a moment God Himself, hidden under the

sacramental veils, but really, truly and substantially present

there, will deign to descend into their hearts. Now, more

than ever, husband and wife feel that they tenderly and

nobly love each other, for God Himself hallows their love

by His coming. The children, united together in their puri-

fied affections, feel a deeper respect, a greater reverence for

their parents and one another. All are strengthened, puri-

fied, consoled.’

Let them not fear now. If God be with them, who shall

be against them? The father may, without fear, go to his

day’s work. His hands and his heart have been strength-

ened. God will bless his toil. The mother may now take

up the duties of the home. In her heart she still feels the

sacred presence of the Virgin’s Son, the Divine Child of

Nazareth, who was obedient to Mary and Joseph. She need

not fear. He will protect her loved ones. In their study,

their work, their play, the children have a Divine Compan-

ion, a Fellow-worker and a Friend.



Chapter IX

THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT

JOHN C. REVILLE, S.J.

*+ A ND He went down with them, and came to Naz-
areth, and was subject to them. . . . And Jesus

advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with

God and men.”

These words of St. Luke sum up the hidden life of Our

Lord as a child and a young man in the home of Mary and

Joseph at Nazareth. Few words in the Gospel are so full

of meaning. They bring before us a wonderful picture and

teach the most important and necessary lessons. They

carry our minds and hearts back to those days of peace,

holiness and happiness spent by the Holy Family under a

humble roof. They give us in the three persons of that

earthly trinity the model of all the virtues which should

flourish in the Christian household.

The chaste and holy patriarch, Joseph, is the head of the

household in Nazareth and there represents God’s authority.

As such he is the model of the Christian father. Our

Blessed Lady, the Virgin Spouse of the holy patriarch, is at

the same time the Virgin Mother of her God, the model of

virginity and motherhood. Our Blessed Lord, who in His

life gave examples of virtue suited to all classes of society,

wished by the years of childhood spent at Nazareth, to be

the model of children for all time to come.

The Holy House at Nazareth

Children love pictures. There should be no picture

dearer and fairer to them than that of the Holy House

82



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 83

in that little town of Galilee, just as it was when the Holy

Family dwelt there.

Nazareth, the White City, the city of purity and holi-

ness, as the name would seem to imply, was situated in a

smiling valley in Galilee. The valley was so beautiful that

it was compared to Paradise. Its orchards and groves of

palm, and olive, its vineyards creeping up the slopes of the

hills, produced the richest and the rarest fruits. But its

people were of the humbler and poorer class.

Nazareth could boast of no great leader, no great cap-

tain. It was despised and looked down upon by the rest of

the Jews. A proverb was common among them that no good

could come out of Nazareth. Yet Our Lord dwelt there in

one of the humblest and poorest cottages that crowned its

hillsides. The people little realized that out of the humil-

ity and the poverty of the home where Joseph and Jesus

and Mary lived, the world was to derive the noblest lessons,

and that He who is all power, goodness, greatness and love

remained hidden there for many years teaching as much by

His obedience and humility, as by the splendid miracles

which He wrought when He walked upon the waves of the

Sea of Galilee or summoned the dead back to life.

The Lessons of Nazareth

In His life Our Blessed Lord gives us the example of

every virtue. There is not a single virtue which He asks us

to practise which He did not practise Himself in an eminent

degree. More than this, He practised it as a God-man, that

is, in an infinitely perfect manner. Every page of the Gos-

pel tells us in language which the simplest can understand,

how He loved God, His Father, and the sinful men whom

He came to redeem. They show us how His Divine Heart

was touched with compassion for the suffering and the poor,



84 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

how He listened to their appeal. They describe in words,

which even now, after two thousand years, touch the hard-

est hearts, how He forgave the sinner, how he prayed for

His enemies on the Cross. We can read in those beautiful

words of the four Evangelists of His meekness, of the pa-

tience with which He bore His sufferings, of His cruel agony,

and His death. He is in all things our model. In the imita-

tion of His virtues consists all our perfection. In following

the path which He marked out, we cannot go astray. He

is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He that followeth

Him walketh not in darkness. For He is the Way, by His

example; the Truth, by His teaching; the Life, by His holy

grace.

The Child of Nazareth

What lessons does Our Lord teach us from the solitude

and the silence of the Holy House at Nazareth? Our Lord

came on earth to win it back to obedience and submission to

His heavenly Father from whose authority and rule it had

strayed. He wished in His own Divine Person to give an

example of the perfect fulfillment of those Commandments,

which men had so long neglected and despised. At Naz-

areth, as a child and as a young man, He wished to give us

a perfect model of submission to that Commandment which

children are bound in a special manner to observe: “Honor

thy father and mother.” The perfect observance of this law

is absolutely necessary for the individual, the family and

society. By His life in the humble home of Mary and Jo-

seph, by His labors there, Our Lord wished to restore filial

obedience to the place of honor it had lost among His own

people and in the pagan world.



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 85

The Honor Due to Parents

“Honor thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest be

long-lived upon the land” (Exod. xx, 12). In the list of the

Ten Commandments, the Fourth stands at the head of those

which directly concern our duties toward our fellow-men.

By this Commandment children are ordered to honor, love

and obey their parents in all that is not sin.

No commandment is so reasonable and so natural. Rea-

son and nature tell us that old age is to be respected. Scrip-

ture adds its voice and bids us “Rise before the hoary head

and honor the person of the aged man.” It is quite evi-

dent, then, that on this score alone children should respect

their father and mother, on account namely, of their age

and their greater experience.

But there is a still nobler reason. Under God and after

Him, children owe everything to their parents. They are

the authors of the children’s being. With anxiety, with love

and unceasing sacrifices, they have toiled for them. The

father has spent his talents and his energy in their behalf,

the mother for their sakes has faced and generously borne

the severest trials and suffering. Their parents are the no-

blest benefactors of their children. They deserve, there-

fore, their gratitude and love. The venerable Tobias, in

touching words, teaches his son this great lesson: “Hear, my

son, the words of my mouth, and lay them as a foundation

in thy heart, . . . thou shalt honor thy mother all the days of

thy life, for thou must be mindful what and how great perils

she suffered for thee.”

Finally, children must honor their parents because they

take God’s place here below, because they are the represen-

tatives of God and are clothed with His authority to guide

and rule them. And if all authority is from God, that of

the master over his servant, that of the ruler over the coun-



86 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

try, with still greater reason must we admit that the author-

ity of the mother and the father over their sons and daugh-

ters is in a special manner derived from God, has His spe-

cial sanction and is held sacred in His eyes.

Irreverence in Thought

Yet too often children fail in the honor and respect due

to their parents. They fail in thought, by thinking little of

them, and in their hearts despising them. Their parents

may not be perfect, they may even have serious defects.

They may not have the education which they sought, with

so much suffering, to give to their sons and daughters. They

may not have the polish of manner and the refinement which

they had to forego in their hard struggle to bring up their

family in comfort and which they were anxious their chil-

dren should receive. If in their heart their children look

with displeasure or contempt upon their parents because of

their defects and shortcomings, they are in a way casting a

slur upon themselves and injuring their own character. For

parents and children are, so to speak, one, and what dis-

graces the father and the mother is, in a certain sense, a dis-

grace also to the child. The Holy Ghost tells us in the

Scriptures: “Glory not in the dishonor of thy father; for his

shame is no glory to thee. If his understanding fail, have

patience with him and despise him not when thou art in thy

strength” (Ecclus. iii, 12-15). And in the Book of Prov-

erbs we read: “Despise not thy mother when she is old.”

Irreverence in Word and Act

Children can grievously offend against the Fourth Com-

mandment, against the respect and the honor they owe to

their parents, by the unkind words they speak about them.



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 87

If we cannot, without offending God and the great law of

charity, speak evil of the least among us, of the stranger, of

the outcast or the fallen, what must be the sins of the child

who speaks of the faults of his parents, who reveals their

weaknesses, their sins perhaps? Children should be the first

to protect the honor of their parents, to shield their reputa-

tion, to make any sacrifices to hide their shortcomings.

What can we think of a child’s heartlessness and cruelty

when he gossips about his parents’ faults, exaggerates them,

or makes fun of them? God hates such conduct and pun-

ishes it severely. “He that shall curse father and mother,”

He warns us in Holy Writ, “dying, let him die.” And if not

satisfied with criticizing parents in private and in the family

circle, children do so publicly, and are rude and insulting to-

ward them, break out into outbursts of temper, are stub-

born, surly, openly disobedient and rebellious, God is still

more angered. Holy Scripture sternly rebukes such con-

duct: “The eye that mocketh at his father, let the ravens of

the brook pick it out.” The child that dares to strike the

father or the mother who gave him life, called him by the en-

dearing name of child, and bore for his sake the most pain-

ful labors and sacrifices, sinks to the depths of degradation.

There can be no punishment severe enough for such a

wretch.

The Model of Obedience

The simple passage of the Gospel which describes Our

Lord’s life as a child begins with the startling words “And

He was subject to them.” He who is the Creator of heaven

and earth, who flung the sun and the stars into space,

clothed the earth with verdure, carved the columns of the

mountains and the hills, poured out the rivers from the hol-

low of His hands, who orders the falling of the snows and



88 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

the dews, the rising of the sun and the sinking thereof, who

gives life and being to all things, is subject to His own crea-

tures. He honors and obeys them.

To whom does He thus subject Himself? To a humble

artisan, a village carpenter, His adopted father; to a simple

village maiden, His Mother; both His creatures, who exist

only through His power, and His love, both infinitely infe-

rior to Him in wisdom, in power, in knowledge, in holiness.

He is subject to them in all things. He submits to them His

will, His intellect, His faculties of mind and heart. He

wishes all that they wish, He deems that which they com-

mand to be the will of God, to be the best for Him, the one

thing which He has to do. He is convinced that in obeying

their commands, He is fulfilling God’s will just as much as

if He were teaching the multitudes, healing the sick, or rais-

ing the dead.

He is subject to them at all times. There is not a mo-

ment of the day when He is not fulfilling to the letter that

which they have asked or ordered Him to do. He is subject

in all things. Our Blessed Lady asks Him to go and fetch

water from the well. Without a murmur, the Divine Child

fills the pitcher and bears it home. The holy patriarch, St.

Joseph, summons Him to the workshop, and the Child, the

same God who built this mighty universe out of nothing,

puts His hands in the strong grasp of the humble workman

and learns from him how to handle the axe and the saw.

And Mary and Joseph wonder at this subjection, at this

humility, this obedience. For that Child is their Creator

and their God.

A Model of Love

But Our Blessed Lord is not only a model of perfect obe-

dience. He is a model of the most tender love. He sub-



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 89

jects His human understanding, will and faculties to His

foster-father and His Virgin-Mother. But He does far more

than that. He loves them strongly, tenderly. He shows

them the deepest affection. In every thought and aspiration,

in every action, He seeks their happiness. He cannot do

enough for them.

Morning, noon and night, He is their delight,, their joy.

He comforts them in their sorrows, shares their burdens, tries

to lighten their poverty, watches over them, protects them

from danger and harm. He is never absent from the hum-

ble home. He is its light, its treasure. No son could be

more loving. The hearts of Mary and Joseph must have

been filled with holy joy as every morning the Divine Child

knelt at their feet to receive their blessing and pronounced

those words which must have sounded so sweetly in their

ears: “Hail Mary,” and “My Father.” No human words

could describe the joy and the happiness of Mary and Jo-

seph, as they felt that at morn and noon and eve, in the

midst of their labor and in the lonely hours of the night,

Jesus was with them still.

Our Lord and Obedience

The first duty of the child is to obey. For that reason

Our Lord gave the example of obedience and subjection to

Mary and Joseph. He was the embodiment of the Fourth

Commandment. He was so purposely, for the fulfilment of

that Commandment is a duty which falls to the lot of every

man and woman. No one can escape it. There is a time

in the life of everyone when it becomes the main duty. The

fulfilment of the Commandment is necessary for the happi-

ness of the individual, the welfare of the family, the very

existence of well-regulated society.

“Honor thy father and thy mother.” No command is



90 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

so deeply engraven in the human heart. To honor the au-

thors of our existence, those who are toiling for us, watch-

ing over our needs, who are making untold sacrifices in or-

der that we may be happy, that our minds and hearts may

be enlightened, strengthened and purified, who in all that

they do are constantly thinking of us and giving us every

proof of love and affection, is a strong impulse of our na-

ture. There is not a nation on earth where this is not con-

sidered the first duty of childhood. Among the Jews, this

Commandment was ever in honor and a special blessing, the

blessing of a long, happy and peaceful old age was promised

to those who faithfully observed it. Among the followers of

Christ, this Commandment should be in still greater honor.

In the Catholic family, the children should reproduce and

imitate as far as possible the example of obedience to His

Blessed Mother and His foster-father, which Our Lord gave

in Nazareth,

How Children Should Obey

Without the spirit of obedience in the Catholic family

peace, harmony and happiness are impossible. Children

should obey as Our Lord Himself obeyed. Their obedience

should be prompt, ready, entire, cheerful. They should obey

quickly, without delay, not merely in the things they like

but in all things doing just what they are told. They should

obey, not moodily and sulkily but joyfully, cheerfully, there-

by showing to their parents that they think it a privilege

and an honor to fulfill their commands. Their obedience

should be prompted by a tender love, a great reverence, a

deep gratitude and affection. By this obedience, they will

prove that they are trying to repay them for all their good-

ness. Their obedience will be for themselves and these loved

ones a source of untold favors. God’s blessing will rest on



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 91

the household where the father and the mother are thus

obeyed and loved. A wonderful peace will abide there.

Obedient children make a happy household. For when

this great Commandment is perfectly observed, the children

are united to one another, and the parents more closely

bound to their children, and the goodness and the virtue of

their sons and daughters link the father and the mother to

each other in a tenderer and a purer love.

Results of Disobedience

On the contrary, if the children are disobedient and con-

stantly murmur against the commands of their parents, if

they criticize their orders, or still worse, if they make their

defects the subject of their conversation; if they ridicule

them or laugh at them, either among themselves or among

strangers, if they speak disrespectfully to them, contradict

them, show resentment because they have been punished,

reproved, corrected or ordered to do that which is distaste-

ful or difficult, such conduct is sure to produce the most

disastrous results.

Disobedient children easily fall victims to their own

weaknesses and sinful inclinations. Children need the advice

and warnings of their elders, of those who know the dangers

of the world, and whose experience entitles them to guide

and command.

The growing boy needs his father’s advice to keep him

straight in the path of duty. He must obey him at all

costs, if he would learn that lesson of discipline and self-

control so necessary even for worldly success in life, but

still more so for the happiness, peace and purity of his soul.

The young girl, grownig up in the midst of a corrupt

world, is courting danger if she does not heed her mother’s



92 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

warning when she tells her what she must do in order to

keep her heart untainted by sinful pleasures. She is toy-

ing with pitch and will be defiled if she does not avoid that

company whose dangers her mother has pointed out, and in-

sists on going where she has been forbidden to be seen.

She is giving proof of her own folly if she imagines that her

mother is old-fashioned and behind the times, that her

words of warning may be overlooked with impunity, that

she can emancipate herself from her control and the re-

straints of a Catholic household, read what she pleases, dress

as her vanity and worldliness incline her, see what everyone

is seeing, go where she likes and with whom she likes. The

young girl that acts thus will find a precipice in her path

into which she may be plunged.

The disobedient son, the disobedient daughter are made

the toys of their own passions. They fill the hearts of father

and mother, of their more dutiful brothers and sisters,

with sorrow and shame. The disobedient son, the wayward

daughter break the heart of their parents. Countless

fathers and mothers are today mourning in disgrace and

sorrow over the wrecked lives of young boys and girls,

youths and maidens, ruined in health, in honor, perhaps

lost forever to their Faith and to God, because they never

learned to practice that great Commandment, “Honor thy

father and thy mother,” because they never realized that

its observance was for them the path of honor, liberty and

happiness.

The Lesson of Work

But Our Lord in Nazareth teaches another lesson, the

necessity and dignity of work. He knew that in one form

or other the law of work presses upon every man. That

task no one can shirk. The man or woman who does not



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 93

contribute by work of head, heart or hand to the welfare

of society is a drone and should not be tolerated in the

community. At every stage of our existence, in every con-

dition of life, we are bound by that law. Children are not

exempt from it, and according to the measure of their

forces, their capacity and their knowledge they must con-

tribute their share to the welfare of those about them.

They are especially bound to contribute by their work

to the welfare and the happiness of their own family. No

matter what be the social rank of the family of which they

are members, the Catholic boy and girl should deem it a

privilege to labor for its well-being. Wealth and social

prestige should even be an incentive to hard work. For it

is to those who enjoy these advantages that the poor and

the less favored by this world’s goods look for example. If

the family be in need of the strength and the help which its

younger members can lend, this is a powerful reason for the

children to exert their energies to lessen its burdens.

The unceasing efforts of the children of a pious and

fervent Catholic family should be to lessen the labors of the

father who has so long toiled and suffered for them, to add

to the little joys and comforts of the mother who has spent

her whole life and energies for their welfare, and gradually

to lift from their shoulders the weight of all responsi-

bility and care in order that the evening of their days may

be spent in peace and happiness.

The Idle Child

At one stage of its life the child can do very little to

accomplish this end in a practical and direct way. The child

must first pass through a period of preparation for the strug-

gles and battles of the future. At such a time it can con-



94 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

tribute little toward the immediate welfare of the family.

But even then the boy and the girl must fulfill the great

law of work. They must prepare for the vocation and the

tasks which later they will be called on to shoulder.

The precious hours which they spend in the classroom

in the parochial school, the academy, or the college must not

be wasted and fritted away. In those years the duty of

labor and work binds them just as much as it does the

grown man who has to labor to support his family. If they

waste their time in idle and frivolous amusements, in a con-

stant neglect of the duties of their state of life, make little

of the sacrifices which their parents are making for them,

and while these parents at home are perhaps stinting them-

selves to give them an education, wilfully throw away their

time and their talents during six or seven of the most

precious years of life, they are guilty of the greatest in-

gratitude toward their parents and of an act of injustice

toward them, their family and themselves.

The idle boy and girl ruin their own lives. For them no

hope of success, no chance for the rewards and the prizes

that fall to the diligent and the persevering. Success is the

reward of those alone who do something to win it. It never

comes to the trifler and the sluggard. These never rise

above the commonplace. They are failures. They waste

their lives. They accomplish nothing for their own good,

or that of others. They add nothing to the happiness of

those about them. The sluggards, the idlers, the men and

the women without grit or the sprit of self-control, never give

to mankind a Columbus to discover a new world, an Edison

to invent the incandescent light, a Marconi or an Orville

Wright to conquer space with the wireless and the aero-

plane. Idleness never made a statesman like Lincoln, a

scientist like Pasteur, saints like St. Paul or St. Francis

Xavier.



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 95

Dangers of Idleness

“The idle brain is the devil’s workshop.” If the idle

boy and the idle girl, the lazy, shiftless, listless triflers of

both sexes never accomplish anything worth while, they

frequently foster in their hearts and inject into the hearts

of others the worst defects and vices. They spread bad ex-

ample around them. They breed discontent. They are a

source of constant worry and anxiety to their parents and

their superiors. The work which they shirk has to be placed

on the shoulders of others. They thus become guilty of sel-

fishness and injustice.

While they shirk the duty which is theirs, they seek out

something to fill their time, to occupy in some way or other

their foolish heads and their wayward hearts. The idle boy

lets his imagination control and master him. He thus ex-

poses himself to the attacks of temptation. The temptation

finds him with his character already weakened and he be-

comes the victim of his own folly. Hard work would have

saved him.

The ranks of the vain, giddy, thoughtless butterflies of

fashion, who are to be seen at every worldly amusement,

where modesty, reserve and self-respect are thrown to the

winds, are made up of the idle daughters of the family, of

young women, nominally Catholic, who have forgotten the

meaning of work and who laugh at the restrictions and the

sacrifices it imposes. Their father, their mother, their

younger brothers and sisters at home, the poor, the outcast

orphaned children, the sick, the infirm need their help.

They stretch out to them trembling hands to beg relief in

their physical or spiritual maladies but these spoiled natures

have no ears, no heart to listen to their appeal. They must

not be disturbed in their round of pleasure and self-in-

dulgence, nor distracted from the circle of their silly and



96 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

sinful amusements. Idleness makes them selfish and cruel.

The Catholic child must learn well the lesson of work given

him in the house of Nazareth, if he would avoid these evils

later on.

Our Lord's Progress

After telling us that Our Lord was subject to Mary and

Joseph, the Gospel adds that He “advanced in wisdom and

age and grace with God and men.” He advanced in grace

with God, not that His soul could internally increase in

beauty in the eyes of His Father, for it was filled with the

plentitude of grace from the first instant of His conception,

but that the outward acts which He performed were every

day more pleasing to God. He advanced with men be-

cause, as He advanced in the years of boyhood and man-

hood, His acts won Him more and more love and admiration

from all those with whom He came in contact. He ad-

vanced in wisdom, in knowledge, not in the knowledge and

science of the things of the Godhead which were His from

all eternity, but in the knowledge which as man He fur-

thered by experience and through the gradual development

of His human senses and intellect.

The Catholic Child's Progress

Children like their model, Our Lord, must also increase

as they grow older in age and their physical being develops,

in wisdom, in grace before God and men. Their progress in

virtue must be evident to all. Their virtues must become

more solid, their character stronger, their obedience more

sturdy, their love toward their parents and one another more

tender and affectionate. As they advance in years their de-

fects and weaknesses must disappear, they must already be-

gin to show that the responsibilities and the weightier duties



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT 97

of life are beginning to make them more steady, more con-

stant, more generous, ready for any call of duty, for any

sacrifice it may impose.

How to Advance

Progress is the law of nature. It is seen in the birth of

day growing into the beauties and the splendors of noon, in

the growth of the human body from the feebleness of child-

hood to the strength of manhood, in the trees, the plants,

the flowers. It is also the law of the spiritual life.

Our souls must grow. The soul of the child must grow,

not with the growth of the tree or the plant, for the soul

has not a material growth like that of a sturdy pine. It

should grow interiorly in grace and beauty in the eyes of

God. It will grow in this manner if the heart of the child

is kept free from sin and all that offends God. The Catholic

boy and girl will surely grow in the grace of God if they

strengthen their souls with the frequent reception of the

Body and the Blood of Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist,

if they prepare for the reception of this great Sacrament by

purifying themselves of all stain by the humble, sincere, and

contrite confession of their sins never neglect the solemn

duty of hearing Mass on holydays and Sundays, and love to

assist at the Holy Sacrifice, if they are faithful members

of Our Lady’s Sodality, if they try to imitate her purity and

goodness and the virtues of the holy patriarch her Spouse, if

in all things they endeavor to be the friends of that Divine

Child who, in order to redeem us and to curb our pride and

our spirit of rebellion, was subject to Joseph and Mary in

the humble home of Nazareth.



98 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

Blessings of Obedience

But they have one great Commandment to fulfill. One

law is especially binding upon them. Then must honor their

father and mother. To the authors of their lives they owe

reverence, obedience and love. To show them gratitude,

to help them, to support them, to console them in their sor-

rows, their sickness, their needs, to surround their old age

with every mark of affection and veneration, should be in

their eyes not only a duty, but a privilege and their glory.

The obedient child makes the loving child, the strong, in-

nocent son and daughter. Such children become a benefit

and a blessing to the State. They are the guardians of that

principle of authority which today is so much despised and

outraged. They are the pride of the Catholic Church. For

the obedient child grows up into the high-minded and noble-

hearted mother and father. The obedient child is the child

who, no matter what the vocation to which God calls him,

knows what duty means and how to make the sacrifices

which the fulfillment of that duty entails. The obedient

child has a right to God’s special blessing and favors. God

Himself has promised this, and His word will not fail.

The solemn words of the Old Law: “Honor thy father

and thy mother, that thou mayest be long-lived upon the

land” (Exod. xx, 12), have been renewed in the New:

“Honor thy father and thy mother, which is the first Com-

mandment with a promise
;
that it may be well with thee, and

thou mayest be long-lived upon the earth” (Ephes. vi, 2, 3).

This is a great Commandment. It was so dear to the heart

of Christ that His life was spent in its perfect observance.

God severely punishes the cold, selfish and cruel heart that

neglects it. In time and in eternity, He showers his choicest

blessings on those who faithfully observe it.



Chapter X

THE FATHER’S SACRED TRUST

PAUL L. BLAKELY, S.J\

T
HE duties which flow from paternal authority are

shared by both father and mother. Each has a

part to play in the family and each must contribute

to its happiness. To the mother falls the task for which

woman is so well fitted by nature and so richly dowered by

grace, of creating its atmosphere of piety, of infusing into it

the spirit of religion, and of making it a sanctuary of happi-

ness, in which all its members may take refuge from the

coldness of the world, and shut out its chilling selfishness.

In order to accomplish this work, the importance of which

cannot be exaggerated, the mother is given by God authority

to command, and to her voice obedience must be rendered

under pain of sin. Nevertheless, the father is the head of

the home, in him is vested the chief authority, and on him

rests the ultimate responsibility for its well-being. He has

very definite duties, and for the fulfillment of them he will

be held to a strict account. One of the most important of

these duties is to give his children a Catholic education.

The Need of Catholic Schools

“Why are Catholics so anxious,’’ a priest was once

asked, “to see that their children are educated in Catholic

schools?”

The answer to this question is really very easy. Every

Catholic knows that the Church is a good, watchful mother,

and when she tells him that his children ought to be in a

Catholic school he knows that he is safe in obeying her.

99



100 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

Of course, there may be times when Catholic parents, not

rich in the things of this world, may be tempted to send the

children to the public school “where everything is free.”

But only those parents yield to this temptation who do not

fully understand what they are doing in depriving the child

of his right to a Catholic education, or who in reality are not

very good Catholics. For the Faith is the greatest gift that

Almighty God can bestow upon any human being. Good

Catholics value it above everything else, and they wish,

therefore, to do all that they can to preserve it in their

children.

Catholics know that, ordinarily speaking, their children

can obtain the religious training which today is needed more

than ever before, only in the Catholic school. They know

too, that a strict account of the care which they have exer-

cised over the souls of their children will be exacted from

them at the judgment seat of God. They remember the

terrible words of our dear Lord, who pronounced so fearful

a condemnation upon all who were the occasion of exposing

the little ones to evil. “He that shall scandalize one of these

little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a

millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he

should be drowned in the depths of the sea.” Does this con-

demnation fall upon parents who freely send their children

to schools in which God has no part, schools which Our

Lord Jesus Christ would not be allowed to enter to talk to

the children, to bless them, to receive their love and adora-

tion? Unquestionably.

The Child's Destiny

By the law of nature, father and mother are strictly

bound to care for their children. This obligation is by no

means fulfilled by providing for the child’s physical and



THE FATHER’S SACRED TRUST 101

mental welfare. Entrusted by the Creator to the guardian-

ship of father and mother, the child is no mere entity of

time, capable of a mental and physical development only,

but a being truly made to the image of God. He has an

immortal soul which makes him essentially different from a

mere animal, and his destiny reaches far beyond the bounds

of time and space. He comes from the hand of God; he

must, after the period of his earthly existence, go back to

God, to live through an eternity of happiness or pain. The

choice between good and evil is within the power of his free-

will, cooperating with the grace of God, but the actual line

of his choice is deeply influenced by his early surroundings.

In the intentions of the Church, every home should, there-

fore, be a sanctuary, and every father and mother a minister

of grace, turning the unfolding mind of the child to thoughts

of its eternal destiny.

Parental Obligations

As the world now is, the parent’s duty toward his child

is delegated in part to the school. For the time being, the

teacher shares the duty and the authority of father and

mother. Now the parents are bound in conscience not to

delegate any part of their duty or authority to those who

are either unable or unwilling to watch over the spiritual as

well as the physical and mental welfare of their children.

It is clear, then, that except for very grave reasons, ap-

proved by the proper ecclesiastical authority, a Catholic

parent may not send his child to a school which by a law is

obliged to exclude all training in supernatural religion.

“Their angels in Heaven always see the face of my

Father,” said Our Lord of the children He had gathered

about him. But in the public school, the poor child will

never hear a word of instruction on his religious duties,



102 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

on his obligation to love and serve God, and thereby to save

his soul. In many cases it may even happen that the child

will learn to look upon religion with a kind of indifference.

The Defects of the Public Schools

Truth can never come to terms with error. It is a fact,

which even the many non-Catholics today are recognizing,

that it is dangerous in the extreme to exclude religious train-

ing from the school. It is also a fact that the public

school, as we have it today, is absolutely forbidden to give

any instruction in religion.

Where, then, will the children obtain the training in their

religious duties, so essential, if they are to become good

citizens of this world, and after this life, citizens of the

kingdom of God? In the Sunday school? That is, at best,

only a makeshift. It is better than nothing, but an hour

once a week is certainly not enough. Can this religious

training be given in the home? True, the home must do its

part in the education of the child. Not even the parochial

school can have its full effect unless father and mother do

their share. But ordinarily not even the home can do all

that is necessary; and experience shows that, as a rule, pre-

cisely those fathers and mothers who send their children to

the public, when they could easily send them to the Catholic

school, do the least for the religious instruction of their

children at home. The truth is that many factors must

unite to give the child the Catholic education which it needs,

and the principal factors are the home and the parochial

school.

The Voice of the Bishops

Our Bishops are constantly reminding parents of their

duty to send their children to the Catholic school. We



THE FATHER’S SACRED TRUST 103

must remember that the Bishops, men of prudence and

learning, would not do this unless the necessity of a Catholic

education were indeed great. We must also remember that

the Bishop, who, as St. Paul says, is sent by the Holy Ghost

to rule us in the Church of God, has a right to command

us in this matter. Some Bishops have issued very severe

but thoroughly justified regulations on this subject, even ex-

cluding from the Sacraments parents who insist upon send-

ing their children to non-Catholic schools. Many years

ago Pius IX issued a condemnation of what many people

were saying, and still say, that “Catholics may approve of

the system of educating youth, unconnected with the

Catholic Faith.”

The Warning of the Councils

The American Bishops, gathered in the Second Plenary

Council of Baltimore, wrote that “Daily experience has

demonstrated beyond doubt how grave are the evils and how

deep-seated the dangers to which Catholic children are ex-

posed by attending the public school.” Since that day, as

everyone knows, the danger has become very much greater.

The Fathers of the Third Plenary Council warned the Faith-

ful that a purely secular education, that is, one from which

God is excluded, is “pernicious in the extreme to the faith

and morals of the young.” Surely these are grave warnings

which no Catholic parent can safely disregard. The same

Council says that the Church “can by no means permit

Catholic parents, to whom pertains by the natural and the

Divine law the right and duty of providing their children

with a Christian education, to give them a purely secular

education.”

A wise old priest, who had had many years of experience

in the work of saving souls, once remarked that in his opin-



104 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

ion, hardly any responsibility was so great as the responsi-

bility of a Catholic father who sent his children to non-

Catholic schools. “Think of standing before God to answer

for their souls,” he said. In fact, as every priest knows,

perhaps the greatest single reason why today there are so

many people who “believe in nothing,” and why, unfortu-

nately, there are many Catholics who have lost the Faith,

is the public school, the school from which Jesus Christ has

been excluded by law.

Parochial Schools the Best

So, then, the first reason why good Catholics wish their

children educated in Catholic schools is the desire of their

Mother, the Church, that it should be so. Of course, there

are also many other reasons. Many a non-Catholic mother

sends her daughter to the convent school because she knows

that the influence of the Sisters will make her daughter a

good, pure, sensible woman, and in more than one parochial

school in this country every year non-Catholic parents ask

admission for their boys and girls. The fact is that non-

Catholic educators in increasing numbers are realizing that

the parochial schools, free from “frills, fads and fancies,”

and in charge of devoted men and women, who make teach-

ing a religious duty, have far more time to devote to the

things that constitute a real education than the public

schools, and will, therefore, produce better results.

The Catholic parent will choose nothing but the best for

his little ones, made in the image of God, and bought by

Jesus Christ at the price of His most Precious Blood. One

school alone will teach the children to grow in deeper knowl-

edge of Jesus Christ, and in this knowledge to find new

motives for serving Him more faithfully and loving Him

ardently. It is the parochial school, the school which has



THE FATHER’S SACRED TRUST 105

a welcome for Christ in every classroom and in the heart

of every teacher and pupil; the school which alone is brave

enough to confess Him in the face of the world that hates

Him.

To the Catholic school alone may so holy a thing as the

soul of an innocent Catholic child be safely entrusted. You

may not be able to give your children the wealth of this

world, but you can easily give them that which is far more

precious, a Catholic education. “Do this and you shall live”

in the hearts of grateful children and in the heart of Jesus

Christ, your eternal reward, exceeding great.



Chapter XI

THE CALL OF CHRIST

JOHN C. REVILLE, S .J.

j
j'X /"AN was created to praise, reverence and serve

|^/| God and by this means to save his soul.”

Such is man’s destiny and end. That is the

first truth learned at our mother’s knee, the first lesson ex-

plained to us from the pages of the catechism. That truth is

the most important of all the principles that can be im-

pressed on our hearts. The fulfillment of this fundamental

duty secures our happiness in time and in eternity.

We are bound by every reason of justice, gratitude and

love to obey that law. Every motive of self-interest impels

us to keep it. If we do not observe it, we expose ourselves

to misery and unhappiness in this life and to the wrath of

God in the next. All men are bound by it. It binds the

Pope in the Vatican and the President in the White House,

the millionaire as well as the humblest toiler, the lady of

fashion as well as the artisan’s wife and the nun in the

peace of her convent home. That law binds all men, at all

times, in every condition and circumstance of life. No one

can escape its obligations. Everyone must fulfill them per-

sonally. No one can hire a substitute to do that work for

him. We are responsible each and every one of us, indi-

vidually and singly, for our own souls. We must save our

souls. No one can do that for us.

Different Walks of Life

It is a truth of Faith that God wants all men to be saved,

and that He gives them the means necessary to work out the

106



THE CALL OF CHRIST 107

salvation of their souls, and thus obtain eternal happiness.

But it is not God’s wish that all men should be saved in the

same way. He has appointed a different path for every

man. It is true that no man can be saved without the faith-

ful observance of the law of God, without the virtues of

faith, hope and charity. This is the only way to salvation

and to eternal happiness. But there are various ranks and

conditions of life, different and widely separated spheres, in

which men are to work out that salvation. Some will have

to do it in the midst of wealth, some in the straits of pover-

ty. One man will be summoned to work it out as a soldier

or a statesman, another as a humble artisan, a third as a

father in authority over his household, a fourth in the posi-

tion of a subject and a son. For all these the way of the

Commandments is the only way.

The Common and the Higher Way

But there are certain souls who are summoned to a higher

way than that of the Commandments alone. These of course

they must keep. For they are of the essence of Christianity,

the foundation on which their spiritual life must be built.

But in the service of God, there are two paths which open

out before the Christian, the path of the Commandments

and that of the Counsels. The story of the young man told

us in the nineteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew

will help us to understand what this means.

One day a young man came to Our Lord. From all that

the Gospel tells us of him, he must have been a young man

of high ideals and blameless life. He had evidently been

thinking of the various ways in which men may serve God.

He had been puzzling, as many in similiar circumstances are

doing today, about his vocation, the particular call which



108 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

God had for him, the special path in which God wanted

him to walk in order to obtain eternal life. He was not

satisfied with what he had so far done for God.

The question which he puts to Our Lord makes this

plain: “Good master, what good shall 1 do that I may have

life everlasting?” Our Lord answered: “ If thou wilt

enter into life, keep the Commandments.” And when the

young man, unconsciously painting the innocence and beauty

of his soul, had told Our Lord that he had kept all the

Commandments from his youth, and inquired what was yet

wanting to him, Our Lord spoke these memorable words:

“If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to

the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven; and

come, follow me.”

In these words Our Lord points out the two paths open

to all men; that of the Commandments alone, and that of

the Evangelical Counsels, in which, not content to keep the

essentials of the law, men are willing to dedicate themselves

to a closer following of Christ, to a life of poverty, abnega-

tion and self-sacrifice. Our Lord, in these words, teaches

that there is such a thing as a vocation.

What is a Vocation?

While of course there is such a thing as a vocation for a

life in the world, since it is undeniable that God wants cer-

tain individuals to live there and not in the cloister, or in

the ranks of the clergy, we are not speaking here of voca-

tion in such a sense, for that is the call given to the majority

of mankind. We speak of what Catholics generally mean

when they use the word. In that sense it is an invitation to

the religious or ecclesiastical state. In the Catholic Church

it is a gift conferred on certain individuals by God, in virtue



THE CALL OF CHRIST 109

of which they follow with a pure intention the ecclesiastical

profession in the priesthood or the Evangelical Counsels in

the religious state by the practice of the vows of poverty,

chastity and obedience.

A vocation as the word implies, for it is derived from a

Latin word meaning a calling, is a summons made to an in-

dividual to follow a certain path, and to assume certain re-

sponsibilities and obligations. It is a selection made by God

Himself of certain souls by which He makes known to them

that He wants them to do a special work, a work of higher

dignity and worth than the tasks imposed upon the rest of

men.

All men are destined by God to reverence, praise and

serve Him. It can be even said that they are called to per-

fection, for Our Lord addressed the appeal: “Be ye perfect

as your Heavenly Father is perfect,” to all men. But to

certain men, He addresses a special summons to live in a

state of perfection where they may more easily attain the

perfect life, where greater helps are given to reach it, and

where its highest manifestations are to be found.

The Existence of Vocations

It is evident from the life of Our Lord and the history

of the Church that such vocations exist. From the words

which Christ addressed to the young man we can see that a

higher way and a nobler state are pointed out to him than

the path of the Commandments which he had so nobly fol-

lowed. Our Lord in His conversation with him showed that

there is such a state as the state of perfection. In dealing

with other souls He actually called them to that state. Thus

when He called Andrew and Peter, and the sons of Zebedee

from their fishing nets, and Matthew from his money-

counter, He gave us to understand that He was calling them



110 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

for a special work and for a task and a duty of greater dig-

nity and responsibility than those which He imposed upon

others.

The vocation of Saul of Tarsus in the very beginning of

the Church is another example. And down the following

centuries even to the present day, God has spoken to the

chosen few and called them to be His helpers in the salva-

tion of souls in the solitude of the hermit’s cell and the

cloister, or in the ranks of the priesthood, in order that the

truths of His holy religion might be preached to the multi-

tudes and that His grace might be carried to their souls

through the golden channels of His Sacraments.

While undoubtedly, even in the world, the Church has

found and formed her Saints in great numbers, it is in the

ranks of those who have followed the path of the Counsels

that she has found those whose sanctity and virtues shine

with a more resplendent luster. Kings and queens have

been enrolled among her canonized saints. Saints are found

among soldiers and statesmen, artisans and serving girls.

Sts. Louis, of France, and Margaret, of Portugal, ruled king-

doms, St. Sebastian was a Roman officer, St. Melania a

Roman lady of immense wealth. St. Isidore was a farmer,

St. Crispin and Crispinian were shoemakers, St. Pantaleon

was a doctor, St. Zita a serving girl. These sanctified them-

selves in the world. But a still greater number attained to

holiness and perfection, not in the world, but in the religious

life and in the ranks of the priesthood. Their names are

dear to Catholic hearts, the names of Teresa of Jesus, the

Carmelite nun, of Berchmans, Aloysius and Stanislaus, the

patrons of Christian youth, of Dominic and Francis of

Assisi, those two giants of the Middle Ages whom Pope

Honorius in his prophetic dream beheld supporting the

Lateran Basilica with their mighty arms, the soldier-saint,

Ignatius, the gentle Bishop, Francis de Sales, and the Saint



THE CALL OF CHRIST 111

who was the friend of the outcast and the poor, Vincent de

Paul.

Dignity of the Priestly Vocation

There can be a vocation to observe the Counsels of per-

fection in the world, either with the vows usually made in

a Religious Order or without them. But this is not usual.

It is a vocation given to the comparatively few. Those who

follow it, however, may by the grace of God attain to the

greatest holiness and perfection. But when we speak of a

vocation, we generally speak of a call to the priestood or the

religious life.

The young man starting out in life dreams of a noble

future, a future of high achievements and stirring deeds.

He pictures himself as a soldier winning great battles, as a

statesman settling the most difficult problems of govern-

ment, as an inventor solving some intricate problem of

science and bestowing lasting benefits on the human race,

as an orator rousing vast multitudes with the eloquence of

his words. But in all his flights of fancy he can dream of no

higher destiny, of no grander vocation than when he pic-

tures himself at the altar, a priest of God.

There is no dignity to be compared with that of the

priesthood. No office of statesman or king can compare in

nobility with that of the humblest priest who in some palm-

thatched chapel on a lonely isle in the far-off seas, offers up

the Adorable Sacrifice of the Mass. No power can compare

to that which the priest exercises when by his word, he

brings God Himself from the height of Heaven to the altar

or lifts his hands over the head of the repentant sinner and

pronounces those words: “I absolve thee from thy sins.”

“The priest,” says a great spiritual writer, “has the primacy

of Abel, the patriarchate of Abraham, the dignity of Aaron,



112 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

the authority of Moses, the perfection of Samuel, the power

of Peter, the unction of Christ.” The priest’s dignity con-

sists mainly in this, that he has the power to offer the

Adorable Sacrifice of the Mass for the living and the dead,

and of forgiving sins.

The Priest’s Power

“The priest,” says Cardinal Manning, “is called to the

nearest approach to Our Divine Redeemer, since he is called

to be a fellow-worker with Him in gathering out the elect

from this evil world. In him are summed up all the tokens

of acceptance which God ever gave to man. The words he

speaks are not human but Divine. ‘This is my Body’ has

no equal except ‘Let the light be.’ In these words as in the

other, there is omnipotence.” The priest is God’s steward.

He is set over the household of the Church and the flock of

Christ, to guide it to salvation. He is the herald of the

Gospel, to preach its truths to all men. He is God’s am-

bassador to communicate His will to His people. He is the

physician of souls, to heal them of their spiritual maladies.

In the priest are combined the noblest offices than man can

fulfill, for he is the representative of Christ, at one and the

same time, father, physician, teacher, guide, meditator, con-

soler, adviser, friend. His powers are not of earth, and

men need not be afraid or jealous of them. They do not

threaten any legitimate authority here below. They are

given him only to draw men more and more to God and to

one another.

In the exercise of those powers weak man is exalted in

a certain sense above the Angels, for noble as are the natures

and gifts of these bright spirits, they have not the power of

the humblest priest. They cannot consecrate the Body and

the Blood of Christ, nor pardon the sinner with a single



THE CALL OF CHRIST 113

sentence and bring back peace and innocence to the remorse-

smitten and sin-stained soul. “Speak not of royal purple,”

says St. John Chrysostom, “of diadems, or vesture of gold.

These are but shadows, more transitory and fleeting than

the flowers of spring, when compared with the powers and

the privileges of the priesthood.”

At some time or other the boy who has been brought up

under Catholic influences, in a truly Catholic household,

his heart still retaining, in all the buoyancy of its innocence

and high ideals, dreams of being a priest, pictures himself

at the altar. He thinks it would be the happiest moment of

his life, if he could one day, with his consecrated hands

bring the Bread of the strong to his mother and his father

on the morning of his first Mass. The priesthood is such a

lofty vocation that the pure and innocent boy, even though

he may not finally be called to enter its ranks, looks upon

it as the very pinnacle and crown of high achievement. The

true Catholic in life has an instinctive reverence for the

priest. Even the enemies of the Faith recognize that there

is something mysterious in the manifestations and power of

the Catholic priesthood.

The Religious Life

But besides a call to the priesthood, there is the vocation

to the religious life. By that we mean a call from God

given to both men and women to leave the world, to bid

farewell to its joys and pleasures, to the happiness that

reigns in the family circle, to father and mother, to give

up one’s independence and to consecrate liberty and life

to God by the vow of obedience, to yield up the earthly

possessions which a man might own or reasonably amass

and embrace religious poverty, to consecrate heart and body

to God by the vow of chastity.



114 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

In His answer to the young man Our Lord gave the

general outline of such a life. If the young man to whom

the call was addressed did not have the courage to heed it,

others later on took Our Saviour’s words to heart, and

while millions were sanctifying themselves in the ordinary

path of the Commandments, followed the more arduous

path of the Evangelical Counsels and attained to holiness

and perfection in their perfect observance. Thousands

heard the call which the young man rejected.

The hermits of the deserts of Egypt listened to it, and

by their piety, purity and courage made the desert blossom

like the rose. It was heard in the last days of the Roman

Empire, in the midst of a corrupt society, amid the crash of

arms and the falling ruins of a world rushing to its destruc-

tion. Then the sons of Benedict rebuilt the civilization

that without them would have entirely perished. In the

centuries of faith, when Dominic and Francis of Assisi came

to add new luster to the splendors of Catholic Europe, the

religious life claimed from the world thousands of men and

women to the cloisters of France, Italy and Spain. Later

on Ignatius, Teresa, John Baptist de La Salle showed that

it could still work wonders for souls, for the Church and

for God.

It can do the same today, and even now the religious

life calls to its hard, but noble, discipline the bravest of our

youths and the purest and the fairest of our maidens. It is

a call to sacrifice, to battle, sometimes to death. But it is

a call which the brave and the generous should not fail to

answer.

The Beauty of the Religious Life

Religious life consists essentially in the observance of

the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. These are



THE CALL OF CHRIST 115

the elements and the features common to all religious bodies.

But every Religious Order has its own special spirit, end

and purpose.

The Franciscans assume the responsibility, so to say, of

showing to the world the virtues of simplicity and humility,

and the strictest poverty. They have been for that reason

one of the most beloved and popular of the great Orders

of the Church. The Benedictine, the Trappist and the

Carthusian wish to bring before the world the spirit of

prayer, contemplation and solitude. The Carmelites and

the Poor Clares unite the severest penitential spirit to the

highest forms of contemplation. The Sons of St. Dominic

are by their vocation preachers and heralds of the word of

God. The priests of the Society of Jesus are missionaries,

teachers and directors of souls. The Sisters of Charity, of

Mercy and of the Good Shepherd bend over the bed of

suffering and pain and minister to the outcast and the

poor. The disciples of St. John Baptist de La Salle form

our boys and young men in the ways of true piety and

science.

There is scarcely a condition in life, a need of society

which is not met and filled by some Congregation of men

or women, with the special authorization, sanction and

blessing of the Catholic Church. While attending to all

this, the members of these Orders and Congregations

solemnly profess before the world that they intend by their

piety, devotion and self-abnegation to follow more closely

in the footsteps of Christ and to reproduce as far as possible

in their lives the virtues of their Divine Model. A blessed

state surely, for, as St. Bernard says, in the religious life,

man lives with more purity, falls more rarely, rises more

promptly from his falls, walks with greater security, is

more frequently bedewed with heavenly graces, dies with

more confidence in the mercy of God, passes more quickly



116 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

through the fires of Purgatory and is more richly rewarded.

While the religious life requires greater courage and im-

poses more painful sacrifices than a life in the world, a

vocation to that holy state is also a special sign and proof

of God’s love.

The Signs of a Vocation

But how can I tell, many ask, that I have a vocation?

Men cannot expect that God will call them in an extraor-

dinary way to the priesthood or the religious life. We

cannot expect that our vocation will be as explicit and as

compelling as the vocation of Peter or his brother Apostles,

as startling as that of the knight Tancred. As Tancred was

riding on his charger in all the splendor of a wealthy lord

of the thirteenth century, he was met by St. Francis of

Assisi and some of his brethren. Approaching the knight,

the Saint said but one word, “Follow me.” Dismounting

from his horse, Tancred there and then bade farewell to the

world and its vanities and following Francis became one of

his most devoted and pious sons.

Such vocations are extraordinary. We must not expect

that God will work miracles or wonders in our favor. We

must not even expect any extraordinary inspirations of

motions of grace, at least normally and as a rule. A vo-

cation may exist even when the individual feels a certain

reluctance to embrace it. In the case of the priesthood, a

special Commission of Cardinals appointed by Pius X has
approved the following propositions with regard to the

priestly vocation:

(1) No one ever has any right to ordination antecedently to the

free choice of the bishop. (2) The condition which ought to be

regarded in the candidate for ordination and which is called a priestly

vocation, by no means consists, at least necessarily and ordinarily, in



THE CALL OF CHRIST 117

a certain aspiration of the subject or invitation of the Holy Ghost to

enter the priesthood. (3) But, on the contrary, in order that he may

be rightly called by the bishop, nothing more is required in the

candidate than a right intention, together with a fitness, consisting

of those gifts of nature and grace, confirmed by that probity of

life and sufficiency of learning, which furnish a well-founded hope

that he may be able to discharge properly the duties of the priest-

hood and fulfill its holy obligations.

With regard to the priesthood, these views of the

Cardinals, approved by the Holy Father, should set all

scruples at rest in the case of those who have reached the

moment of ordination. At that stage it is the Bishop who

is to decide the candidate’s vocation. The candidate has

no right to the gift of the priesthood until the Bishop

freely and of his own accord elects him to that state. And in

choosing him, the Bishop need only look to the candi-

date’s intention and to his mental and moral fitness.

If the candidate really and truly wishes to become a

good priest, not for his own selfish ends, in order to lead

an easy life and enjoy a certain amount of social prestige,

or to further his ambitious schemes, but to have the honor

of celebrating the Adorable Sacrifice of the Mass, the

consolation and the privilege of forgiving the sinner and

helping him to serve God; if he has the will to fulfill all

the obligations of his state of life, and is gifted with suffi-

cient intellectual culture and learning to do credit to his

holy calling, if he has strength of will sufficient to enable

him to lead a pure, chaste and continent life in the midst

of the dangers which surround him, and wishes in all

things to be what men mean when they say “a good priest,”

his vocation is sure and certain, provided the Bishop calls

and chooses him. But this is the last stage of the vocation,

its approval by legitimate authority. Let us examine the

first intimations of vocation, when its voice begins to be

heard in the heart.



118 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

Negative Signs of Vocation

U
By negative signs of vocation we mean the absence of

any obstacle or impediment that might stand in the way

of its fulfilment. Such obstacles are for instance the

financial condition of a family. If a son or daughter is

needed for the support of father, or mother, of brothers

and sisters, too young to take care of themselves, it may

be taken for granted that God does not at present call.

Another obstacle would be the lack of the physical, mental

or moral qualities necessary for this high calling whether

to the priesthood alone or the religious life.

A certain amount of physical strength is necessary for

the priest. He has before his ordination a long period of

hard and taxing studies. As a priest he must be ready to

spend long hours in the confessional, in the sick-room, at

the Divine Office. If he is weak in body, he will not be

able to fulfill his arduous duties with satisfaction to himself

or to others. The religious Sister who is devoted to the

work of the hospital, to the care of the orphans, of the

sick, those religious who spend their lives in the instruction

of the young, and the priest in the Religious Order which

requires long hours of study and sends its members to the

missions at home or abroad, need to be of a vigorous con-

stitution.

What is said of the body applies with still greater force

to the qualities of mind and heart. The world expects that

the Sister, the religious and the priest shall be intelligently

equipped for their work. It exacts a great deal more now

in this respect than it did some years ago. The Church

requires that her priests be men of culture, that they be

acquainted with the great questions of the day, that they

be able to represent their people worthily before the edu-



THE CALL OF CHRIST 119

cated and the learned. If the man or woman who feels the

call to the priesthood in the first case, and to the religious

life in the second, is deficient in mental gifts, especially in

that golden gift of a right judgment and the uncommon

gift of commonsense, such a one is not called to serve God

in the ranks of the clergy or in religion.

But where moral qualities are wanting, where the char-

acter is feeble and shifty, where there is a lack of piety and

of faith, a reluctance to obey and to conquer oneself, a love

of the pleasures of the world, especially of its grosser

pleasures; if there is in the soul no love of the poor, cold-

ness and indifference to suffering, and but little zeal for

God’s glory; if the aspirants to a vocation are not simple,

truthful, sincere, humble and upright in all things, espe-

cially with God and His representatives, His priests; if

worldly views are uppermost in the so-called attraction felt

for the priestly and the religious life, it can be said that the

signs of vocation are extremely weak or absent altogether.

Until these obstacles are removed and these defects cor-

rected it is not safe to proceed further.

Positive Signs

We have seen that with regard to the priesthood the

free election by the Bishop of the candidates, deemed to

have the right intention and the mental and moral fitness

for the priesthood, finally puts the seal of the Church’s

approbation on a vocation to that holy life. Within its

proper sphere the same may be said of the candidates who

present themselves for the religious life. A pure intention,

mental and moral fitness, and the approval of the Superior

of the Order or Congregation to which they aspire can

settle for them the matter of their vocation. As was said



120 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

in the decision of the Cardinals, above referred to and

approved by the great Pius X, the condition to be regarded

in the candidate for ordination, and within its sphere also

in the candidate for religious life, does not necessarily and

ordinarily consist in a certain interior aspiration of the

subject or invitation of the Holy Ghost to enter the priest-

hood.

Such is the teaching of the Pope who has done so much

to foster the religious and priestly vocation. In rendering

this decision he has done a splendid service to the Church

in giving both to superiors and subjects a luminous verdict

by which he makes the settlement of the difficult question

of vocation far more easy than it seems to have been in the

past.

But the Holy Father does not intend that men should

not look to certain other signs by which to help themselves

in this difficult question. These are as many as there are

individual vocations. The tender-hearted and the self-

sacrificing daughter of a true Catholic family who has

practiced in her home the virtues of the Sister of Charity

towards her aged father and mother, will be drawn to those

Congregations where the poor and the outcasts are the ob-

ject of special love and care. The young man with high

ideals, of strong will and character will be drawn to those

Orders where men work in the arduous tasks of the pulpit

and the classroom for the building of the spiritual edifice.

The Catholic girl who loves the solitude of the little sodality

chapel, where she offered herself to Our Lady, who loves to

spend her leisure hours in presence of her Eucharistic God,

who has no taste for the hollow joys of the world, and

thirsts for solitude and prayer, gives a fair sign that God

wants her in those more secluded and cloistered Orders,

whose members live the life of angels more than that of

frail and weak mortals.



THE CALL OF CHRIST 121

Guarding the Treasure

A vocation is a treasure entrusted to us by God. The

young man or woman to whom it is given, must jealously

guard it. It may easily be lost. If, once given, it is re-

jected, it may not come a second time. It is not told us

in the Gospel that Our Lord addressed a second call to the

young man whose story began these words on the subject

of vocation.

The treasure of a vocation must be safeguarded by the

avoidance of sin in every shape and form, and its proximate

occasions. A vocation must be fostered in its growth by

prayer and especially by the frequent reception of the Sac-

raments of Penance and of the Holy Eucharist. It must

not be tainted in its luster by contact with the sinful amuse-

ments of the world. The young man preparing himself for

the priesthood, the young woman who intends to dedicate

her life to her Divine Spouse and her Heavenly Bride-

groom, must guard their hearts, keep their affections under

control, preserve their souls from the taint of sin, look for

no other crown but that which Christ Himself will place

upon their brow. To make themselves worthy of their high

calling, the boy and the maid must be brave, generous and,

above all things, pure.

Lift Up Your Hearts

Such is the call which everywhere is sounding in the

ears of Catholic young men and women. The call is ever

addressed to young, generous and brave hearts. It is the

call of Christ Himself. It is a summons to the highest and

the noblest kind of life which man can embrace here be-

low, an appeal from the Master of the Vineyard for fel-

low-laborers in the great task of gathering the harvest of



122 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

souls. The world needs priests and ^religious to do God’s

work, to lead men to know and serve Him better. Souls

are perishing in our own country at our own doors, perhaps

in our own family. They need to be taught the truths of

salvation. Our countrymen, with all their splendid virtues,

do not know the truths of our holy religion. Often they

have no religion of their own to lift them above the things

of sense and to direct their gaze on the things of the soul,

the great questions of salvation, the mighty problems of

time and eternity. Men, women, children are stretching

out their hands for guidance. The workers are few.

We need priests and religious. We need the example of

our gentle Sisters to lead our children to the knowledge of

their holy religion and to make them pure and noble men

and women. We need the priest to preach the word of God,

to help the people in their spiritual wants, to prepare the

dying for the great journey from time to eternity, to bless

the union of man and wife, to offer the Adorable Sacrifice

of the Mass, and thus bring down the blessing of God

upon His people; to baptize the newly-born babe and for-

give the penitent sinner. The religious is needed in the

world to glorify God, to imitate more closely the virtues

and the life of Our Lord; to show that the Catholic Church

is ever the mother of a generous and high-souled race.

God speaks now as He has spoken in the. past, and calls

the generous and the brave to follow Him. If any one

should hear that call, let him listen. In following it, he

cannot go astray. He will glorify God, sanctify and perfect

his own soul. He will become the instrument through

which God will call countless others to His service.

When the King of kings calls, can a coward be found

who will turn a deaf ear to the summons? A vocation is

a sign of God’s special favor and love towards a soul.

Fidelity to it and to the sacrifices which it may impose, is



THE CALL OF CHRIST 123

one of the greatest proofs that the soul loves God above

all things. For such a soul, God has in store His choicest

rewards: “And every one that hath left house, or brethren,

or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands,

for My name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold and shall

possess life everlasting.” (St. Matt, xix, 20.)



r

Chapter XII

AT THE JOURNEY’S END

J. HARDING FISHER, S.J.

I

NTO every family there comes at times sickness and

death. It is important that Catholics should know and

fulfill their duty on such occasions. If the illness is

serious, if it is such that it constitutes a real though re-

mote danger of death, the priest should be notified at once,

for then, if ever, the Catholic has the right and the obliga-

tion to avail himself of the consolations and helps of re-;

ligion. Those who fail, through their own deliberate neg-

lect, to send for the priest until the patient has become un-

conscious, or has entered into his agony, are guilty of

grievous sin, for which they are strictly accountable to God.

A Foolish Impression

There is, unfortunately, a reluctance among certain

Catholics to call in the priest, for in their superstitious ig-

norance they look on his visit as a sort of warning of death.

They think that the sick person will be frightened out of

making a struggle for life by receiving the Last Sacra-

ments, and that in some way or other they will seal his

doom.

The consequence is that, at times, the priest is called

to the sick-bed, only when the patient is actually dying, has

lost the use of his senses, cannot make his Confession or

elicit the acts necessary for gaining the plenary indulgence

at the moment of death. This is a serious and irreparable

124



AT THE JOURNEY’S END 125

wrong. This unchristian way of acting involves the addi-

tional injustice of depriving the sick man of those further

effects of Extreme Unction, by which he is strengthened

against temptation, comforted in his depression, roused

from torpor of soul, relieved from anxiety and fear, stimu-

lated to encouraging and holy thoughts, and given assist-

ance to enter his agony in the spirit of Christian fortitude,

resignation and faith.

Extreme Unction, of its very nature, is intended to re-

store health of body, if this be profitable for the soul; but

ordinarily this effect will not be produced, if the administra-

tion of that Sacrament is delayed until only a miracle can

avert death. To put off receiving that Sacrament, there-

fore, until death, naturally speaking, is inevitable, is to rob

the sick person of a powerful means of recovery provided

by the merciful Providence of God.

Catholics should not be so un-Catholic as to let their

misguided affections stand in the way of the spiritual and

corporal profit of those whom they love. On the contrary,

they should be eager to give them every opportunity to be

restored to health of soul and body. As soon, therefore,

as the illness begins to be dangerous, they should send

word to their pastor.

Catholic Doctors and Hospitals

Too much insistence cannot be laid on this point, which

suggests another matter of prudence. Catholic nurses and

doctors appreciate the necessity of telling the unwelcome

truth about the approach of death. It would be well, there-

fore, for Catholics to employ only those nurses and doctors

who are of the Faith. If, for some reason or other, a non-

Catholic physician has charge of the case, he should be

given clearly to understand that he is expected to warn his



126 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

patients as soon as the illness takes on a dangerous aspect.

The same principle applies to hospitals.

Catholics should not go to non-Catholic hospitals when

they can avoid doing so. Those in charge of such hospitals

do not share our views as to the importance of the Last

Sacraments; they often fail to realize that the ministrations

of the priest have a tranquilizing rather than a disturbing

effect on the patient; they sometimes conceal the serious

character of the illness; and not infrequently they make

difficulties about admitting the priest. Things are better in

this regard than they were some years ago; but there is

still enough of prejudice to justify the general statement,

to which there may be exceptions, that non-Catholic hos-

pitals constitute a serious moral danger for Catholics, a

danger of dying without the Sacraments.

The moment of death is the most important in life.

On it depends a whole eternity of happiness. Then, if ever,

the person should be surrounded by Catholic influences

and be given every chance of dying with all the helps and

consolations of the Faith. Neglect in this matter some-

times results in catastrophies, and gives cause for lifelong

but unavailing regret.

The right Catholic attitude in the presence of danger-

ous illness is summed up in the words of the Apostle, St.

James: “Is any man sick among you? Let them bring

in the priests of the church, and let them pray over him,

anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the

prayer of faith shall save the sick man: and the Lord

shall rise him up: and if he be in sins, they shall be for-

given him.” (James v. 14, 15.) In other illnesses, also,

even though they are not unto death, the sick have a right

to the Sacraments and to the ministrations of the priest,

who will be found most ready to afford every consolation

and help, if only he is informed of the sickness.



AT THE JOURNEY’S END 127

Preparations For Sick Calls

It is one of the blessings of sickness that it brings, not

only the priest, but the Lord Himself into the home. For

other visitors much preparation has to be made; for the

coming of the Blessed Sacrament, only a few things are

necessary, things, however, required by the rubrics of the

Church. When the sick person is to receive the Last Sac-

raments or Holy Communion, a small table should be made

ready in the sick-room, covered with a scrupulously clean

white cloth, and placed near the bed-side. On it there

should be two lighted blessed candles of wax, a crucifix,

some holy water, not Lourdes water, a glass filled with

fresh water and a clean spoon. The front part of the table

should be left free for the holy oils and the Blessed Sacra-

ment. Nothing but the articles mentioned should be placed

on the table.

If the priest desires to speak with the sick person in

private, or to hear his Confession, the rest of the family

should withdraw; but if the person is to receive Holy Com-

munion or is to be anointed, the entire family should be in

waiting to return as soon as the Confession is over, and then

should be present, kneeling in reverence and united in

prayer, while the Last Sacraments are administered and

the prayers for the dying are read.



Chapter XIII

THE ARMORY OF FAITH

WALTER DWIGHT, S .J.

HOSE who worthily receive the Sacrament of Matri-

mony are given a special grace, as we have seen,

which enables them to bear patiently the burdens

of their state, to love and to be faithful to each other, to

bring up their children in the fear of God. This special

Sacramental grace, which Catholic husbands and wives re-

ceive on their wedding day, is not only actively operative

as long as they keep free from mortal sin, but it is wonder-

fully strengthened and augmented by Confession, Holy

Communion, prayer, penance, almsgiving, and other prac-

tices of piety. So the more devout a Catholic couple are,

the happier will be their married life and the lighter its

burdens.

It is important, therefore, to know what devotions are

best calculated to keep in God’s grace and love those who

have been married, and what pious practices will effectively

enable them to show always that joyful readiness in doing

the Divine will, which is the root and heart of true devo-

tion. But, as those who are married, engrossed as they

commonly must be, in the cares and responsibilities of their

state and in the labor of maintaining and rearing a family,

have little time for prayer, they cannot be expected to take

up many pious practices. So a recipe for becoming truly

devout is wanted that will be short, simple and easy;

prayers, too, that will not take long to say, and practices

that will hallow and supernaturalize every thought, word,

128



THE ARMORY OF FAITH 129

deed, trial and affliction that make up the ordinary daily

life of married people.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart

There seems to be nothing that better meets these needs

than membership in the League of the Sacred Hart of

Jesus. This devotion is, of course, only a special way of

manifesting love for Our Blessed Lord Himself. His un-

bounded love for us is symbolized by His Sacred Heart,

surrounded by a crown of thorns and surmounted by a cross

that rises from the midst of flames. It is as the seat of

love despised and outraged, especially in the Sacrament of

the Altar, and calling, therefore, for atonement and repara-

tion on the part of the Faithful, that the Sacred Heart of

Jesus is the particular object of this devotion.

The League of the Sacred Heart is a world-wide union

of Catholics pledged to spread devotion to the Sacred Heart

of Jesus, to promote His interests by prayer and sacrifice,

and to make reparation for sin. Its members are in every

walk of life. For one and all find the League a stimulus

to solid piety. The organization of the League is singu-

larly free from red tape; for just by handing in his name

to a priest, and by engaging to say every morning a short

prayer, any Catholic can become an associate.

The advantages of membership in the League are many

and great. For instance, becoming a member increases the

merit of all his actions, and secures him the prayers of

millions of his fellow-associates; it gives him a share in the

good works of nearly all the Religious Orders, and obtains

for him rich indulgences; and best of all, it makes Our

Blessed Lord so grateful that He has promised zealous

Leaguers that their names will be written in His Heart

never to be blotted out.



130 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

What wonder, then, that the Popes have given the

League numerous approbations. Leo XII, for example,

wrote: ‘‘This Apostleship is so beautiful a work and

unites so much fruitfulness with so much simplicity that it

assuredly deserves all the favor of ecclesiastical authority.”

The salvation of souls is a wholly supernatural work,

depending on God’s grace; and this grace is commonly

granted in response to prayer. Now, if the prayer of one

just man is strong with God, what must be the power for

saving souls of the united prayers of more than twenty-

five million Leaguers! What makes these prayers yet

stronger is the fact that they are all explicitly offered in

union with those which Jesus is always saying in unnum-

bered tabernacles. Thousands of associates ask Our Lady

to present their prayers to her Blessed Son; and, finally,

lest the sins of the petitioners should keep the Sacred

Heart from heeding their prayers, multitudes offer Our

Lord, on every First Friday, the Communion of Repara-

tion.

Duties of Leaguers

The one essential obligation assumed by the League’s

associates is to make the morning offering, which runs

thus: “O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary,

I offer Thee my prayers, works and sufferings of this day,

for all the intentions of Thy Sacred Heart in union with

the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world, in

reparation for my sins, for the intentions of all our Asso-

ciates, and in particular for [the intention recommended

each month].”

By offering this prayer the first thing every morning,

the entire day can be consecrated to Our Blessed Lord,

and every thought, word or action, of the Leaguers that is



THE ARMORY OF FAITH 131

not bad becomes an apostolic prayer. Every step, for in-

stance, that the head of the family takes on his way to

work, every stroke of the hammer or of the pen he makes,

every kind and loving thought his wife entertains, every

little action she performs while busy with the housework

or her children, is changed by virtue of the morning offer-

ing to fine gold and brings comfort to the Heart of Christ.

All who engage to make the morning offering belong

to the League’s first degree, but many will, of course,

aspire to the second degree, which involves saying in Our

Lady’s honor every day, one Our Father and ten Hail

Marys. But the Leaguer is not full-fledged until he en-

gages by entering the third degree to go to Holy Com-

munion at least once a month, with the object not only

of “appeasing the Sacred Heart of Jesus provoked to wrath

by the sins of men,” but also of repairing the insults of-

fered daily to Himself and to His Vicar on earth.

Nothing will sooner disarm God’s anger than a fer-

vent Communion; for this method of making amends to

Him for man’s ingratitude is the one which Our Lord

Himself ordered His handmaid, Blessed Margaret Mary,

to adopt and propagate. To induce as many as possible

to practice the Communion of Reparation, He promised

to all who receive Communion on nine successive First

Fridays the grace of final repentance. The First Friday,

accordingly, has become the usual day for the Communion

of Reparation, but it may be made at any time, and the

oftener the better.

Frequent Communion

For it can safely be said that since the promulgation on

December 20, 1905, of Pope Pius’s renowned Degree on

Daily Communion, going often to the altar has been



132 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

steadily growing a holy commonplace in the lives of. ordi-

nary Christians. As the Decree makes very plain, all are

worthy to receive Our Lord frequently and even every

day, who are free from grave sin and who go to the altar

with a right intention, that is to say, “Not out of routine

or vainglory or human respect, but for the purpose of

pleasing God, of being more closely united with Him by

charity and of seeking this Divine remedy for weakness

and defects.”

The Holy Eucharist, as it was instituted under the

form of bread, is clearly meant by Our Divine Lord to be

the common soul-food of Christians. Just as bread, which

is a substantial of every meal, banishes hunger, renews

the worn out tissues of the body and promotes its health

and growth, in like manner the Supersubstantial Bread of

the Holy Eucharist satisfies the hungry soul, repairs the

losses that it suffers and makes it robust and strong.

But the Holy Eucharist seems particularly well adapted

for helping husbands and wives to be faithful and true to

one another. As it is in a special way the Sacrament of

Union, there is nothing that will keep more abundant and

efficacious the graces received on the wedding day than

going often to Holy Communion. Holy writers discern

in the miracle wrought at the marriage feast of Cana, when

Our Lord, at His Mother’s petition, changed water into

wine, a mystical relationship between the Sacrament of

Matrimony and that of the Holy Eucharist. For the

miracle worked on that wedding day prefigured the Blessed

Sacrament in which is perpetuated the Incarnation, or the

marriage of Christ’s Divinity with our humanity. The

miracle also symbolizes the effects of Holy Communion, the

most striking of which is the union or marriage of Christ

to the soul of the worthy receiver.

Nothing will better help husband and wife to be loving



THE ARMORY OF FAITH 133

and forebearing than going often to Holy Communion.

They should never remain away from the altar longer

than a month; weekly Communion should be their ordinary

practice, and the habit of receiving several times a week,

or even every day, should be cultivated by those who can

conveniently take it up. For frequent communicants, fort-

nightly Confession is sufficient. Mass-time will suffice for

the immediate preparation for receiving worthily, and we

can make ourselves fitter still by reciting, just before going

to the altar, an act of perfect contrition, by which we ex-

press sorrow for all our sins, not merely because by them

we lose Heaven and deserve Hell, but because they offend

God, who is so good in Himself and has been so good to

us. As an orderly thanksgiving after receiving the acts

suggested in the couplet:

“Believe and grieve and hope, thank, love, adore,

Show thy soul’s wounds and holy gifts implore,”

will perhaps be found useful, but the thanksgiving for Our

Lord’s coming should last through the entire day or week,

and should find expression in the greater self-control,

patience, kindness, industry and affectionateness which hus-

bands and wives manifest after they have received Our

Blessed Lord in Holy Communion.

Children’s Communion

Not only should parents go to Holy Communion fre-

quently but so should their children, and that, too, from

the dawn of reason, for in the Decree issued by Pope Pius

X, on August 8, 1910, he laid it down that “The proper

time for First Communion is when the child begins to

reason, that is about, whether under or over, the seventh

year.” That means that the precept of Easter Communion

is just as binding on such children as on their elders.



134 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

As to the child’s necessary dispositions, the Holy Father

explains that “The knowledge of religion required in the

child to prepare himself suitably for First Communion is

that by which he grasps according to his ability the mys-

teries of Faith, which are absolutely necessary for salvation

and distinguishes the Eucharistic from the common and

material bread, so that he can approach the most Holy

Eucharist with the devotion which is most in keeping with

his age.”

In another portion of the Degree, the Pope urges that

after their First Communion the little ones should “often

approach the Holy Table and, if possible, even daily, as

Christ Jesus and Mother Church desire.” Suffer the little

children to come very early in life to the Shepherd of their

souls. And once their First Communion is made, let them

go frequently to the altar thereafter. As a precocious

knowledge of evil too often supplies in children the defect

of age, innocence of heart will make up for a seeming lack

of maturity in years, and going often to the Holy Table

will keep their young hearts clean and pure and will be a

wonderful help in making the little ones gentle, truthful

and obedient.

Devotion to Our Lady

After the devotion to the Sacred Heart and to the Holy

Eucharist, no doubt the most profitable devotion that the

married can practice is devotion to Our Lady. “Behold all

generations shall call me blessed,” she prophesied, and hus-

bands and wives, by modeling their lives on that Mary led

with St. Joseph in the holy house of Nazareth will best do

their part in keeping her prophecy fulfilled.

As a large portion of her life was passed in the marriage

state, she feels, now that she is Queen of Heaven, a keen

interest in those who are holily married, and just as she



THE ARMORY OF FAITH 135

went with haste over the hills to bring joy and sanctity to

her married cousin, Elizabeth, and as she had her Divine

Son work a wondrous miracle at the marriage feast of Cana

just to spare her newly wedded friends a little embarrass-

ment, she will now secure for married people, who try to

imitate her virtues and who humbly implore her interces-

sion, all the graces they need for living happily and holily

together. Mary now bears in heaven, where charity is per-

fect, the triple title of Virgin, Mother and Queen, and be-

cause her Divine Son can never forget all that she is to

Him, whatever she asks for those who strive to make their

married life like hers, Our Blessed Lord will surely grant.

What Prayers to Say

Therefore, let the Hail Mary, preceded by the Our

Father, be said by husband and wife every night and every

morning. Better still, if in addition to those prayers the

Angelus were said thrice daily, in thanksgiving for the In-

carnation. If the rosary were also thoughtfully and rever-

ently recited every day as a household prayer, if graces

were said before and after each meal, and if the prayer used

on going to bed were an act of perfect contrition, preceded

by a short examination of conscience, these excellent prac-

tices would doubtless bring rich blessings on the home and

keep husband and wife, parents and children, closely

united with one another.

Sodalities

With the object of availing themselves of the spiritual

advantages which canonically instituted and richly indul-

genced confraternities and sodalities offer, all the mem-

bers of a Catholic family ought to belong to one or more



136 COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

of the pious associations in their parish. Let wives and

mothers become members of the married women’s sodality,

let the girls of the family join the young ladies’ sodality,

the boys, the sodality organized for them, and let the head

of the house become a zealous member of the Holy Name

Society and perhaps also of the local Conference of St.

Vincent de Paul.

Regular attendance at the meetings of these societies

and the faithful observance of the practices of piety that

membership entails, besides being a source of edification

and good example in the parish, will prove of incalculable

spiritual advantage to the members of the family them-

selves, for where many are gathered together in Christ’s

name, there His Divine spirit is most powerful. Married

women, who are banded together in Our Lady’s Sodality,

will find the problems of married life easier to solve, and

husbands, who pledge their fealty to Our Blessed Lord in

the Society of the Holy Name, will be more faithful spouses

and better providers. For wives can draw profit from the

experience, counsel and good example of their fellow-sodal-

ists, and husbands who promise to avoid all profanity and

foul language and to go to Communion regularly with the

members of the Holy Name Society, are not likely to bring

disgrace, unhappiness or penury upon their wives and little

ones.

How full of holiness and happiness will be the Catholic

home in which such practices of piety as those described

and counseled in the foregoing pages are kept vigorously

flourishing! The Angel of Peace will always abide there,

and husband and wife, surrounded by a flock of loving

children, will joyfully proceed, hand in hand, to a serene

old age, and then, because they have, by the beauty of

their lives instructed many to justice, when their summons

to Heaven comes, they will shine like stars for all eternity.



Catholic Evidence
s.j. 1Can Anglicanism Unite With Rome?—W. H. McClellan,

—5c
Why I Am a Catholic—J. H. Fasy, S.J.—5c
What Catholics Do Not Believe—T. J. McGrath, S.J.—5c
New Morality and the National Life—J. I. Corrigan. S.J.—5c
Christ and Mankind—M. J. Scott, S.J.—5c
What Is a Catholic Attitude?—F. P. LeBuffe, S.J.—5c
Why Apologize?—W. I. Lonergan, S.J.—5c
The Souls in Purgatory—J. Husslein, S.J.—10c
What, Then, Must I Believe? 1. God the Cosmos, Man

—

W. I. Lonergan, S.J.—5c
The Unending Sacrifice—J. C. Reville, S.J.—10c
The Church and Tolerance—M. Riquet. S.J.—5c
Christ Suffering—P. H. Burkett, S.J.—10c
The Modem Indictment of Catholicism—W. I. Lonergan,

S.J.—Five Pamphlets:
I. IS THE CHURCH INTOLERANT?—5c

II. IS THE CHURCH ARROGANT?—5c
III. IS THE CHURCH UN-AMERICAN?—5c
IV. IS THE CHURCH OFFICIOUS?—5c
V. IS THE CHURCH A NATIONAL ASSET?—5c

Four Great Converts—J. LaFarge, S.J.—5c
Man’s Destiny—T. Brosnahan, S.J.—5c
Use and Misuse—T. Brosnahan, S.J.—5c
Temples, Polluted and Ruined—T. Brosnahan, S.J.—5c
The Word Made Flesh—T. Brosnahan, S.J.—5c
The Catholic • Doctrine of Matrimony—F. J. Connell,

C.SS.R., S.T.D.—10c

Catholicism True as God—M. J. Scott, S.J.—5c
Stumbling Blocks to Catholicism—W. I. Lonergan, S.J.—Five

Pamphlets:

1.

A MAN WHO IS GOD—5c
II. THE CONFESSIONAL BOGEY!—5c

III. THE “WORSHIP” OF MARY—5c
IV. THE “MYTH” OF HELL—5c
V. THE SHACKLES OF WEDLOCK—5c

Christ True God—M. J. Scott, S.J.—5c
God and Caesar—J. Husslein, S.J.—10c
The Church and the State—W. Parsons, S.J.—10c
The School of Christ—G. C. Treacy, S.J.—10c

THE AMERICA PRESS, 461 Eighth Avenue, New York, N. Y.



f

I

\

\

!

I

I

i

!

\

i

!

READINGS

MARRIED FOLK

Birth Control is Wrong!—I. W. Cox, S.J.—5c
The Church and the Sex Problem

—

R. H. Tierney, S.J.,

and M. J. Riordan—10c
The Catholic Doctrine of Matrimony

—

F.
J. Connell,

C.SS.R., S.T.D.—10c

Race-Suicide and Birth-Control— Revs. Dowling,
Blakely and Ryan—10c

Eugenics: Problems of Sex—W. I. Lonergan, S.J.

—

10c

“The Heart of a Holy Woman”

—

T. Brosnahan, S.J.

—

10c

Courtship and Marriage—25c
The Shackles of Wedlock—W. I. Lonergan, S.J.

—

5c

Modern Morality-Wreckers—5c
The Tangle of Marriage

—

A. Power, S.J.

—

5c

The Wedding Ring

—

J. Husslein, S.J.
—5c

Broken Homes

—

F. P. LeBuffe, S.J.

—

5c

The New Morality and the National Life—J. I. Corri-
gan, S.J.—5c

Helps to Self-Knowledge—5c

THE AMERICA PRESS

461 Eighth Avenue New York, N. Y.