College of St Marys of the Springs - Yearbook (Columbus, OH)

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wud 5 wud stung 1 mug 3 mug 5 :wif 5 :wc 5 :swf mmf ditions have made it simply a dispensary of manufactured commodities. and the modern woman finds that either she must go out into the world to look after her old interests or sink within the home into a state of idleness, frivolity and corrupting discontent. The best use of the released energies of woman has become a very vital problem of contemporary life. In that restless groping and striving known broadly as the Feminist Movement, we have in effect a whole generation of women looking for work-work not for the hands alone, but for the hungry mind and the yearning spirit, insufficiently occupied as the consequence of the industrial invasion of the proverbial woman's sphere. Personally, I believe this search for activity to be a much more wholesome and womanly attitude than that of those quite content to be left without itg and I should like to believe that the agitation for broadening the influence of woman is not left in the hands of leaders who forget the sources and secrets of her power. For though conditions of living change, the substance and end of life remain immutable. The home may have a broader hearthstone today than yesterday, but it must still be warmed with the same fires. Woman is always the custodian of the spiritual, the vestal who keeps burning the sacred flame on the altars of man's aspiration. Whether she is the mistress of the self-contained household of former times or of the socialized home of today, which to rule wisely she must be wisely free, her task remains the same. The world was never so much in need of women with wise heads and wise hearts. It was never so much in need of women trained in schools where the spiritual is not lost sight of in the development of the intellectual. The new times, in a word, demand women of the type of the convent-bred girl: and in addressing the alumnae and pupils of St. lVlary's-nurs- ery of all our best faiths and highest dreams-it may not be out of place to wonder what they are doing in the world to justify the exalted spirit in which they were sent out to meet it. In an age whose profession-more often than its practice-is service, there are so many ways in which they are fitted to serve. From all the open fields which invite their energies-not excluding what the stump speaker designates as as the arena of politics-I wish it might be permitted me to single out one which appeals to me as particularly needy, and almost pre- eminently worthy of cultivation. I believe that convent girlS. HS Part of their spiritual minis- try to the world, ought to feel a special responsibility for the encouragement of good current literature, especially of good Catholic literature. Now it may be objected by those who read much, and especially by those who read little, that current Catholic literature is not equal to the literature that is non-Catholic. While this objection is not so true as it seems--if it is true at all-let us admit for the sake of argu- ment that in the large and popular sense we have not a great contemporary Catholic litera- ture. Who is responsible for that? There can be no question that we had a great Catholic literature in the past. If we have not in the present, the chief reason is because we have not a great Catholic reading public. Until there is a large, a responsive, an intelligent body of Catholic readers, there will never be a representative Catholic literature. Why should any man of talent devote himself to producing something for which there is no demand? So far, all our expression on the subject has been negative. Ws say we don't want wishy-washy Sun- day school talesg we don't want endless volumes of poor sermons: we Cl0n't want flowery little manuals of devotiong we don't want gilded subscription atrocities on the glories of the Catholic Church. Now perhaps we might be much better employed reading poor sermons and subscription books illustrated with clamorously colored lithographs of the Holy Family and the Popes than in absorbing the 'crude appeals to sentiment in secular magazines, and feasting our eyes upon the pictures of actresses and chorus girls. That, of course, is a question 44

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--M ls '4 l1I ' '4 li 'L I1 -'X' '4 li '1 li '4 ls N 4 ls We A kc 4 L . 4 new :ru L. A A A as., 4. A A+asYu-PL. 4+m+m4+1sr.4+k?a4+Q.+m4+.Q-PL But like ourselves, doth own a soul Whose essence light cannot be merged in clay, And so doth wander through the air, And with our souls, doth sweet communion make. 'Tis then we most do feel sweet music's self, Its soft embrace doth lend a sweet enchantment everywhere. Efen now with l-lelen sweet. it doth abide, And she with us her treasure now shall share. S0ltg- LUdlllllQ mrs. Helen llawler Gallen Scent ll The scene doth change, and Anne, who now hath charge. Shall lead us far from childhood's happy hours Into the busy world at large. And she shall tell, how, in the noisy market place. Where men and women buy and sell Their very souls for golden gain, We, too, must take our places and must play our part: In marts of fashion and in haunts of pain: Enjoy the sunshine and endure the rain, Take up the burdens that do come with life, And by o'ercoming, end the strife. .Htl HPOSUOIMC FOI' tht ZOIIDQIII Girl . texpanaed bv requcsti ' mn. Halle oiliaff mCZOfmiCli ffffkiik'-9ffTe ?S T a time when women all over the world are seeking new modes of self-expression, when home-makers are realizing that in order E25 ' to attend to their traditional business of preparing food, pro- viding raiment, protecting children, their interest must extend far beyond the household: there iS growing up a new and wider sense of woman's responsibility to the world. There are some of us who believe that the woman of today needs larger respon- K M , 1 sibility to save her from a dangerous irresponsibility. Time was u -li f when the home drained all her energies, when it was mill and f v X loom, cannery and factory, school and theatre. ln those days she had all the domestic arts and industries in her own hands- and she found them an adequate reason against reaching out for any other activities. lf she stood for those cloistered graces and virtues which we lament today, it was perhaps because She had no time for anything but the seclusion that represented the home idea of yesterday. At present the home is neither secluded nor self-sufficient. New industrial and economic con- 43 W .. is . f fdx T '

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,+k.-wmv-,+L-+4.+L T+L- A+su+m+L MQ-PL. 1+w+.Q'l+L+.a+ 44+LJ2fLJ+L of taste. At any rate, if we desire something better than we get from Catholic writers and publishers, it might be more effective to ask for what we do want instead of repeating what we don't. Negative arguments never produce positive results. Let us say that we want strong fiction, human and vital and true, broad in its themes and sympathies as Catholic life itself. Let us say that we want real poetry, the kind that has eyes not only for the beauty of bud and flower, but that sees every bush aflame with God, the kind that looks upon the sunset and the stars as lamps lit from that Light that never was on land or sea, poetry varied in its inspiration as love and truth and beauty and hope and the high vision to which the lowest of us lift wistful eyes. Let us say that we want biography that shall charm and lure us with its literary grace to read of saints and scholars, great teachers and men of action. Give us history that shall tell truth as brilliantly as the history that has perpetuated falsehood. Give us books on every subject of human interest that shall stir and fill us with an appreciation of our educational achievements, of our artistic and architectural supremacy, of our music, of our charities, of those gripping social problems in the S0lUtl0l'l of which. if we do DOI lead the world, we shall inevitably follow it to an- archy, to infidelity and to destruction. There is no subject in the whole gamut of the interest or aspiration of men on which we do not need great and vital books. Where are they? They are waiting to be written until we are ready to read them. The importent question is whether we really and sin- cerely want them. . If we do, why is it that the Catholic writers who are producing real literature-and not only real literature but real Catholic literature-poets like the late Francis Thompson and Lionel Johnson, essayists like Bishop Spalding, Agnes Repplier, Alice Meynell and Louise Imogen Cuiney, historians like the Abbot Gasquer, even humorists like Mr. Dooley -why is it that writers like these, creators of the best literature of the day and generation, find their chief encouragement from the non-Catholic reading public? Do we reject Catholic literature in that knowledge of it, because we have heard once or twice thatit is feeble and pious? That word pious, strangely enough, is the most damn- mg if adjectives 50 a Catholic reader. Or is it because what we really want is something wea ers and cru er. than the weakest andicrudest output of Catholic writers at its worst? Is it because our literary tastes are fashioned by the English of the daily press by the popular magazine, by books-save the mark!-like the fiction of lVlacGrath aiid Mc- Cutcheon and the rest of the best sellers? Sometimes I think that is the true answer to the question. We might let it go at that if it were merely a question of literary taste. But it is a question of conscience, of the very survival of spiritual ideals. ln an age drenched in world- liness, intoxicated by its own pleasures and conquests, hideously self-sufficient, terribly satisfied with the present, every true Catholic is a voice crying in the wilderness. That speech of spiritual things which is the natural mother tongue of all humanity is almost a foreign lan- guage in the world today. The fostering of the literature of truth is not alone, therefore, for own self-expression. It is not alone that we may nourish the knowledge of our heritage of faith and culture, of sanctity and world-leadership, and that with this knowledge we may assume the erect and royal bearing among our fellows that befits the daughters of kings and scholars and saints, the children of those who have carried the truth of Christ uncorrupted through the centuries I It is for these reasons, and it is for a deeper reason still. It is because not in the pulpit or in the school or in the cloister, but in the world. in the mal'kCfPlHC6 and the shop and the 45