Organized Womanhood
632 THE COMMONWEAL October 0.3, 1929 piece of criticism, a number of discussion groups have been formed which may be attended instead of the chapel exercises. In them, doctrines and...
...It saw that a thousand and one aspects of social work were summoning the Catholic conscience, and more specifically the feminine conscience...
...The interests which women share in common are real inducements to thought and action in common...
...The vehicle through which they may be expressed is manifestly public opinion...
...How speed will ever become consistent with safety we do not know...
...No radio beam will keep a driver from crashing into a telephone pole, and no automatic device will stop him from trying to beat a train to the crossing...
...Indeed, there are practical reasons why it ought not to be expected of young men...
...Though what used to be called "feminism" is now commonly interpreted in the language of economics, enough of it spills over to color the main currents of civilization...
...He will drive too fast in fog and on slippery pavements, despite warnings...
...Part of this success is attributable to the circumstance that the Council has quite definitely circumscribed its activity...
...Finding engineers equal to it has long been a task of leading industrialists...
...Blessings which the Church has conferred upon women need to abide, but we have also October 23, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 633 a need for new blessings upon the conditions of the age...
...Nothing daunted, she set out to enlighten him--and incidentally the rest of the world...
...Doubtless such matters will take care of themselves in due time...
...It seems to us quite the finest response to the recent appeals of the Holy Father to the laity which has yet been given in America...
...Nevertheless the Council lived on because it was based upon a really vital idea...
...and since a goodly number of "strong personalities" happen to be smart, agnostic and suggestively epicurean, feminine audiences have been known to wax rampantly apostolic for ideas which, a generation ago, would have sent a lady to bed with a hot compress and a cup of sassafras tea...
...Even today, outside of stunt and experimental flying, the airplane is reasonably safe...
...It knew that several redemptive professions, dedicated to the salvage of the unfortunate and the upbuilding of disrupted families, were normally taking the place of older institutionalized endeavor...
...Interested in a program of social action, it has never drifted far away from such practical tasks as the fostering of the School of Social Service, which remains in a sense the nucleus of its activity...
...British commercial planes, for instance, have flown 4,458,ooo miles during the past five years, carried II3,OI2 passengers safely, had only two accidents and fifteen deaths...
...But the groups will at least be the gainers by having partaken in candid discussion under the direction of men who are cultured, honest and humane...
...No doubt the larger urges of civilization are independent of sex and other dividing factors...
...Let anybody who believes that short skirts, bobbed hair and "business" have ruined all femininity reflect...
...The recent convention in Washington was, perhaps, the most successful Catholic public meeting ever held in the United States...
...How then can public opinion be Christianized, or how can the habit of "thinking with the Church" be instilled...
...ORGANIZED WOMANHOOD F THE especial perils to which women are exposed, none is perhaps so impressive now as want of guidance...
...Often the very issues which men ignore are those which stir the feminine soul...
...but of course a social world basically agricultural in character could afford no such ventures in independence as are now normal in our urban universe...
...Limit the speed at which an automobile can travel to an absolutely safe mark, and you do away with all of its advantages...
...An anecdote to establish this point may not be out of place...
...When these things are finally perfected, and when all inland cities are provided with suitable landing fields, the plane should be approximately as safe as a ship at sea...
...There existed a real prejudice against the club woman, in whom thousands saw merely a creature with time on her hands--even a frightful gadabout whose ceilings bristled with cobwebs and whose Pomeranians were not even well trained...
...The right men have been found in other situations...
...632 THE COMMONWEAL October 0.3, 1929 piece of criticism, a number of discussion groups have been formed which may be attended instead of the chapel exercises...
...They represent a mere handful of easily stated principles, designed to carry a little further that endeavor to think with the Church which associates the Council with the larger purposes of Catholic Action...
...Catholicism has turned to it confidently, the papal plea for Catholic Action being fundamentally a conviction that to think with the Church---sentire cum ecclesia--is the source from which religious influence upon modern life must be derived...
...and that women themselves may, ultimately, see the world in distorted perspective...
...Christianity, which emancipated woman, set no arbitrary limits to her development...
...airplane accidents are on the increase, but they are increasing only one-tenth as rapidly as operations are expanding...
...Speed regulations which do not promise much in the first place are tried because nothing better offers...
...Since this tendency is rooted in varied social and individual necessities, it cannot well be dubbed deplorable...
...Adequate meteorological service must come first, of course, and devices along the lines of the autogiro which will obviate landing difficulties, and the danger consequent upon motor troubles...
...It is somehow easier, in these days, for a "strong personality" to leave an impression with women than with men...
...Beyond that were currents of experience and reflection which, mingling in a variety of meetings, became powerful agents of adult education...
...The task ahead of us, then, is to make this new freedom genuinely emancipatory--to see, on the one hand, that industrialized activity does not crush woman or treat her with poisonous injustice, and to curtail, on the other hand, the excesses of irresponsibility...
...How much essential religion will accrue to each student as a result cannot, of course, be determined beforehand...
...Bowing to the principle that retreat from the world is commendable only when it does not involve running away from the world, the Council came to grips with its first social program._ One is, however, astounded to notice the extent to which the organization has grown...
...that these are likely to regard definitely feminine problems with a shrug of the shoulders...
...The resolutions adopted by the convention are by no means an exhaustive formula for its achievement...
...There is a good reason for it: the seas are free of obstacles, and there is no congestion...
...And if he is not sufficiently impressed by the evidence supplied by the National Council of Catholic Women, he may be glad to know that incidents such as the one set forth, which might be multiplied ad infinitum, are the sources whence the energies of that Council are recruited...
...And yet one knows that, in the long run, a widening of aims and concerns must follow...
...The woman whom Christ once saved from the stoning rises perennially to thank Him for life, for labor and for love...
...It is refreshing to know that all was not a simple routine of statement and applause--that here, at last, one confronted minds sharpened and enlarged by the experience of working in common for important purposes...
...For the same reason, the airplane should some day be safer than any form of land travel, at least safer than the automobile...
...This, of course, is merely a confirmation of other surveys which have been made in the past twenty years...
...Of all this no better proof could be asked than the growth of the National Council of Catholic Women...
...All of us sincerely hope that nothing will dampen the ardor of the Council or hamper its remarkable progress...
...And here one may assert parenthetically that, regardless of the value of the repartee which Father Ryan's address on "equal rights" occasioned, it was immensely valuable because it showed that habits of discussion are forming in realms where all used to be either acceptance or sleep...
...It will probably prove to be a step beyond the alternative system, of trying to unite students of diverse forms of faith, and perhaps of none, in one type of religious service...
...No doubt they will be found in this...
...and he will charge full speed at a pedestrian trusting that Providence and his brakes will prevent a tragedy if the walker should stumble or fall...
...Now that women in the United States form the sounding-board toward which almost all cultural speech is directed, it is impossible to sever any hope for a distinctively Catholic ministry to our civilization from the feminine audience...
...an automatic pilot which will keep the plane level without any attention from the aviator, and a new altimeter which will show altitude above the ground instead of above sea-level, obviating the danger of flying into hilltops...
...The supreme ability of woman to reflect dominant trends and ideas is probably no greater than it ever was, but widening circles of activity carry her farther from the primordial influences of church and home...
...It is a problem for engineers...
...The extent to which the American Catholic woman is "reaching out" seems to us eminently remarkable...
...Three instruments will solve almost all of the airplane's problems, and they are now being developed: the radio beam, which willkeep a pilot true on his course, bring him to his destination through darkness and fog, and enable him to land safely even when he cannot see the ground...
...In them, doctrines and perplexities will be canvassed informally, under the leadership, respectively, of Dean Wicks, Professor H. Alexander Smith and Professor Paul Elmer More...
...Over here the record is not so remarkable...
...Humanity turns now to the corporate spirit for guidance...
...If the limit is high, nothing has been gained, if it is low enough for safety, it will be broken...
...SAFETY ALOFT ECENT statistics furnished by the British Board of Trade show that ships are safer than the railroad, the airplane or the automobile...
...But to a far greater extent than is usually realized, the effective marshaling of public opinion does depend upon recognition of sex...
...And even in the domain of religion, it seems apparent that practically all hope for a sturdier spiritual expression must rest upon the willingness of women to seek it out...
...Beginning modestly a decade ago, the organization had to appeal to very many who were sincerely in doubt as to whether anything beyond the fireside could properly be of feminine concern...
...Recently a young lady came to this office in quest of advice...
...But if it redounds to the credit of woman, it also adds to the responsibility of woman...
...Such effort is not to be expected of young men...
...It had, first of all, the advantage of a series of thoughtful addresses, some of which evoked lively comment...
...In some states the number of women enrolled is gradually pushing on toward a hundred thousand, and it has not been difficult to find aggressive leaders...
...It is fairly plain that political, educational and industrial leadership is destined to remain largely in the hands of men...
...Morality and belief cannot any longer be enjoined by force of any kind...
...It is a sad world, but it has its good points...
...The really encouraging promise for the future of aeronautics is that there is no longer any confusion about what must be done to insure the maximum safety...
...Though a thousand are killed each year in New York, and more than half as many in Chicago, nothing can be done about it...
...This is now everywhere the chief leverage of social betterment...
...There is no need for wild experimenting, for hit-ormiss innovations...
...She had begun to take a course in current social theories, and soon found that her professor was almost entirely ignorant of Catholic tendencies and opinions...
...and she wanted to come upon still other publications, in English and foreign languages, which would serve to increase her information...
...But it is otherwise with the automobile...
...No one has any clear idea of what can be done to keep the roads and streets safe for either the pedestrian or the motorist...
Vol. 10 • October 1929 • No. 25
