What Christ Did For Women
The journalism of his day credited the late Florenz Ziegfeld with "glorifying the American girl," and the tag has stuck. One can easily see why. Mr. Ziegfeld selected from young American womanhood the loveliest blooms he could find, placed them in the finest settings his stagecraft could devise, packed their shows with music, drama, dancing, gaiety, and got them enormous audiences. He won them national fame.
It is true that only the superb few have had a chance to grace the old Follies, or any of the rival aristocracies of beauty and talent. Considered an unfit subject for glorifying, the more typical American girl has season after season been left out. For which she may be better off than she knows. An evil law of gravity pulls hard at beauty so flatteringly put on exhibition, as the later history of a disquieting percentage of the chosen paragons shows. Edward J. Doherty's book Gall and Honey supplies the proof in sad abundance. It tells of the deaths known to the author among Broadway's beauty queens over a given decade. It does not pretend to have rounded up all the victims in that period; how many more there were is anybody's guess. As it stands, however, the list is sufficiently long to underline the fact that the pitfalls are there, peculiar and insidious.
Of the thirteen loveliest of the lovely of whom he writes, one burned to death on board a yacht, another ended as a charity patient in a Chicago hospital, a third just missed burial in potter's field, while nine committed suicide. That would leave one out of the thirteen whose life closed with anything resembling dignity. The ratio is an eloquent comment on the world's idea of glorification. Not that the founder of the Follies was to blame; it is no secret that he grieved over the tragedies, and habitually warned against just such danger. But if words have any meaning, how in the name of etymology did a theatrical producer come to be called a "glorifier"?
The True Glorifier
The title belongs to Jesus Christ, and it is about time we checked the historicity of His exclusive right to it. To call any other the glorifier of the American girl is to cheapen the word; to call our Lord that, on the contrary, is not to say enough. The title, applied to Him, is not even a tenth of the truth. Our Lord does not confine His glorifying influence to the select few of a single nationality. It touches the whole race of women, for Christianity does not reduce their importance to the chance possession of physical excellence, of whatever national standard. Christianity discovered to the world woman's spiritual prerogatives as her inalienable claim to respect, and these she may enjoy anywhere since the soul has no nationality.
Discovery it truly was, at the time, since mankind had been strangely blind to those prerogatives. "But," writes John Ruskin, sensing the great change, "from the moment the spirit of Christianity had been entirely interpreted to the Western races, the sanctity of womanhood revered in the Madonna, and the sanctity of childhood revered in unity with that of Christ, became the light of every honest hearth, and the joy of every pure and chastened soul." That is straight, undiluted history. It was our blessed Lord, and no one else, who brought to the female sex the dignity of being persons, the dignity of possessing spiritual rights: a dignity the old pagan world had lost sight of. In the very centers of pagan culture, as you may learn by reading the classics, a woman was allowed no rights that conflicted with man's pleasure. She was at the mercy of his baser self and was judged, even by herself, to be his inferior. Until Jesus came to set His divinity against the error, it was taken for granted.
We in turn, who take His principles for granted, are not surprised that the Greek and Roman orgies died out. Rather, it surprises us that they were ever permitted to exist.
Paganism Return
Yet, amid the encroachments of returning paganism, surprise is losing the element of shock. A generation inured to its daily report on sex crimes, luridly described in the press, and then, if sensational enough, fictionalized for the screen, is not likely to be jarred by the fact that young women were once rounded up like cattle for the debaucheries of the pagan nature festivals, and had no redress. Law and the established religion were all on the other side; were against women's right to their own virtue. The subject is not one to be lingered over; yet, as a reminder and a warning, neither should it be ignored.
The children fared still worse. There was no law to guarantee a mother from having her infant snatched away and strangled, or tied in a sack and dropped from a pinnacle, or fed alive to some monstrous, bloodthirsty idol. Too often, it is true the mother consented or, for that matter, took the initiative. "I see," says Minucius Felix to the parents of his day, "you expose your children to beasts and birds of prey or horribly choke to death your own offspring." Nor does Lactantius sugar-coat his words to the type of mother who throws out her own flesh and blood like so much garbage, to be fought over by dogs, or picked up by the law and consigned to eventual prostitution or slavery.
But the father held a legal right to prevent the death of his child, whereas the mother had no legal say at all. The disposal of children depended on his whims, and universal sentiment backed up the law in supporting those whims as his prerogative. Let anyone who doubts it consult Juvenal (Satires, No. 6), who coolly advocates an abortion without the slightest trace of concern for the mother's wishes; Tacitus (Histories, Book 5, Par. 5), who dismisses the Jews as cranks for regarding the killing of an unwanted child as sinful; Aristotle (Politics. Book 7), who argues the validity of a man's doing away with any burdensome offspring; Pliny (Letters, Book 4, No. 15), who puts Asinius Rufus down as a rare husband, among the elite, in that he refuses to consider one child as family enough, and none at all the ideal; and, to the same accumulative effect, the testimony of Ovid, Suetonius, Seneca, Varro, Horace and Martial.
Eyewitnesses
These authors know. They were there. And by the very tone of their account — a kind of fatalistic, stoical acceptance, as of a routine weather report — one cannot but conclude that the inhuman horrors aroused neither public indignation nor private resentment. Profiteers went unmolested in forcing women into the slave market, and pricing them according to their ability to incite concupiscence or their ability to serve in such menial utilities as the treadmills. Women were not treated as persons at all. Did not the most popular orator of the times vociferously declare that, while men had immortal souls, women had not? Nor did Cicero, in so declaiming, show any fear of being heckled. There apparently was no risk. His audience accepted the outrageous heresy, as the public accepted the outrageous orgies. The low status of womankind was simply taken for granted.
Then, into this world that had grown to believe that women were men's inferiors, and that children possessed no claim to life, God presently appeared, an Infant, in a Virgin's arms. What a magnificent, breathtaking rebuke!
But it was more. It was a divine challenge besides, and a challenge that would shake the pagan philosophies to their foundation. It was such as would of necessity, wherever the Christmas story held sway, revolutionize the old pagan concept of womanhood. To believe that from a mother alone God's own Divine Son took human form was not only to ascribe the highest dignity to that blessed Mother but to see in a new light, reflected from the splendor of her super-angelic purity, her whole sex. The effect must follow from its cause.
And it did. As soon as the great truth of the Incarnation won credence through the world, it became only a matter of time before the full flowering of chivalry should have materialized. But it did require time. It was a long process. Our Lord's treatment of women took even the Apostles by surprise. We have the record.
When did Christ ever speak harshly to women? Though you search the Gospels through, I doubt whether you will locate one instance. Yet speak with women He often did; sometimes at considerable length; always, however, with a courtesy, a benignity, a grandeur of condescension. He could and did drive the money-changers from the Temple, flinging over their tables, scattering their coins; He lashed out at the Scribes and Pharisees with the thongs of His words; but where or when did He ever so much as utter an unkind word to the widow, the mother, the maid, or, for that matter, the adulteress? There was, whenever our Lord engaged women in conversation, an affability on His part, and on theirs a blend of reverence and ease. They felt the encouragement of His divine Presence.
Women Like To Talk
It has become a standing jest that the Gospel of the Mass is longer on those days when a woman has her say in it. Certainly it takes St. John a full page and a half, in the copy of the New Testament lying open before me, to relate the beautiful dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. The setting was Jacob's Well; and the two were alone, for the disciples had gone into town to buy food. "Give Me to drink," Jesus had said, sitting there at the well. That was all the incentive the woman required. She began to talk; there was something about our Lord that made her words flow easily. For the first thing one notices about this woman who had come to draw water is, she was in no hurry to do it. Yet, in spite of her inquisitive candor of speech, she tried to slip in a lie — and was checked. "I have no husband," she glibly told our Lord.
Caught In A Lie
"Thou hast said well, 'I have no husband,' " was the divine reply; "for thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband. In this, thou hast spoken truly."
Straightforward, magnanimously gentle, omniscient, our Lord nailed her lie; and I should like to have a snapshot of the look on her face as she heard His words. It would be worth a dozen art galleries to have, in a frame, her chagrin, changing instantaneously to admiration.
"I see that Thou art a prophet," she said. She had been found out, and she knew it. But could reprimand have been more indulgent and still be reprimand? Our Lord might have called her a liar. He did not hesitate to call others that, as well as "vipers," "hypocrites," "blind fools," "whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones." Yet not her. A rebuke she did indeed receive, for Infinite Truth could not condone a lie, but she received it under cover of a compliment. It was one of those electrifying instances when, by the very ingenuity of His wisdom, the casualness of His manner, Jesus reveals a wit not of this world, and His divinity shows through His simplest word.
The episode invites lingering. Here was a woman of a race despised by Jews, who had expressed her surprise that a Jew had spoken to her at all; a veritable slave in a land that belittled her sex, a woman weak of nature, not bad of heart, a victim of circumstances who needed compassion as much as correction: and for once she was facing Someone who understood. He was telling her of herself, not arguing, not contradicting her lie, but turning it back upon her conscience as the literal truth, as her own confession of guilt: "Thou hast said well, 'I have no husband.'" And she knew on the instant that she had never in all her life been praised so winningly as she was now accused.
Her Curiosity Ran High
She responded magnificently. The magic of a new curiosity quickened her pulse. Was this Stranger who had divined her most secret follies, who sat there so calmly aware of the intricacies of her nature, whose Presence radiated such joy into her soul that she forgot all else in the consuming reality of being near Him — was He by any chance the Messias she had been hearing of? His answer took her breath:
"I who speak with thee am He."
There is no telling how long she might have tarried after that, had not the disciples returned. "They wondered that He was speaking with a woman," goes the text. As for her, it is easy to believe that she didn't mind what they thought. Every fiber of her being still vibrated to the impact of that last pronouncement; nothing else mattered. She turned and rushed back into the town, dominated by one single urge — to invite whomever she met to "come and see a Man who has told me all that I have ever done."
There was no withstanding her rousing ardor. It spread like wildfire, and a huge reception committee went forth to show Jesus a welcome second only to that of Palm Sunday. "They besought Him to stay there, and He stayed two days." A blessed experience for that little town of Sichar! and a triumph for the woman who had so predisposed its population! To read of her is to admire her, and to feel the humor that reinforces our admiration: who but a woman could get word around like that?
A Second Instance
There was another time when another woman, it occurs to me, carried word of the Christ of her longing. Our buried Savior had not long risen from the tomb, and wanted someone who could be relied upon to get the news quickly to His disciples, now in hiding. He found the right person, who had certainly not been afraid to venture forth.
It was a dramatic incident. Lingering at the empty tomb, a woman "turned round and beheld Jesus standing there." In her disconsolate grief she mistook Him for the gardener. "Sir," she pleaded in tears, "if thou hast removed Him, tell me where thou hast laid Him." Then came the swift magic of that single word: "Mary!"
Through her tears, through the shock of the incredible truth, she recognized Him. No other voice could speak her name like that.
"Go to My brethren," our Lord commissioned her, "and say to them. . . ."
This wildest, most stupendous news since the angels had sung their Merry Christmas over the world was all hers to spread through young Christendom. And whomever thinks she tarried along the way has plenty to learn about Mary Magdalene.
To understand fully the meaning of this episode, consider how she entered our Lord's life. She walked in on a banquet, and seeing her, the disciples put on their best frowns. Like the Samaritan woman, she didn't mind, of course, for Christ was there. But the air soon thickened with demands that she be unceremoniously ushered out. It was not the disciples who took the lead in this; but they did not protest the general attitude. It is likely they felt they must stand between the good name of the Master and the brazen impropriety of this public woman.
Now, the tables were turned. It was she who had been established as their Master's confidante, His swift messenger into Jerusalem, carrying victory to their buried hopes. For three years lesson by lesson, the disciples had been indoctrinated in a new concept of womanhood. This was the Master's finishing touch.
Heaven knows the disciples had been slow to catch on. In justice to them, however, let the blame fall where it belongs. The solid prejudice of centuries was their drawback, an ingrown obstacle they had inherited, and no more a fault of theirs than the shape of their heads. Our Lord could, by a miracle of violence, have opened their minds to an instantaneous recognition that in His world, women and children shall count. But it was not the Master's way. He did not force the issue. He preferred to watch their adamant pride crumble of its own accord under the encouragement of His infinite patience.
A Third Instance
Thus, on a later occasion than the dinner in the Pharisee's house, He startled His Apostles with a request that was nothing less than an innovation out of heaven: "Let the little children come to Me." The gentleness of the words carried the sting of an unexpected rebuke. It was a plea in favor of children against the universal practice of disregarding them; and at the same time, a vindication of the mothers who were defying the Apostolic blockade. It was a double shock: one of those divine utterances that, with perfect simplicity, drove home two points at once.
As an interesting experiment, one may check the number of times our Lord befriended women by the number of times they dared every obstacle to express their need. Was it because the oppressed have an instinctive quickness in recognizing their champion? At any rate, their consistency never broke down. Instead, it rose to the high level of desperate gratitude when, during the passion, the fury of evil threatened Christ. In that supreme chapter of the world's history, St. John must share the honor of his lonely courage with no other man — only with women.
It has always appealed to me as an argument for the divinity of the Gospels that their human authors — two of them Apostles, the other two intimates of the Apostles — did not play down or varnish over what, of themselves, they might have been expected even to withhold: the cowardice of the Apostolate on that occasion. There is something peculiarly nettling to a man in being pointed out as a coward. It goes against the masculine grain; it rasps; it hurts. And when, as here, you contrast it with the superlative bravery of a group of women, you have surely added insult to injury. That is what the Evangelists have done.
The Women Had Courage
It is precisely the women, in the fourfold record, who were not the cowards. Pilate proved to be the weakling, not his wife. She pleaded with him to resist the popular pressure, and to show the courage of his better judgment. Peter cursed and swore that he did not so much as know "this Man you are talking about"; and it was fear, nothing else, that swept him into this frenzy of denial, for in his heart he loved Jesus. No one has ever read that Mary Magdalene behaved so. No one has ever read that any woman who participated in the tragic proceedings of the passion failed to espouse the cause of the Divine Victim. Veronica, of authentic legend if not of Scripture, has left the world one of its treasured memories: a frail figure pushing her way through the mob, ignoring the soldiers, and stopping the procession to offer the service of her veil. Is Simon of Cyrene as worthy of esteem in having been forced to yield his service?
But the crowning proof of all, the apex that completes the mounting pyramid of evidence, is not the conduct of individuals, however noteworthy, nor even the ratio that has one solitary hero among the heroines at the foot of the cross. No, the incident that closes the argument is that strangest uprising in history when out of Jerusalem there moved in upon the scene a multitude of women to protest the crime. It was not the expedient thing for them to do. But "the weeping daughters of Jerusalem," as the Church affectionately calls them, were none of them afraid to manifest the unashamed defiance of their tears. Those tears, stronger than words, were the women's answer to Pilate and the Sanhedrin.
Between our Lord and the women whom the Gospels tell of, there was thus a deep and instant understanding. Nor should this throw an undue strain upon the credulity of any student of history. With what regularity did not one pagan ruler after the other turn Christian through a woman's influence! Have you never heard of Clothilda, Bertha, Helena, and a galaxy of others less publicized, who yet achieved as much? Have you never asked yourself whether St. Louis would have become so great a saint without St. Blanche, or St. Augustine a saint at all without St. Monica? History drives home the point every bit as hard as Scripture; that in her relation with Christ woman holds a proud record.
Daily Evidence
But history does not drive it home any harder than everyday life. Even among the unthinking and careless, it is rare for women to speak slightingly of our Lord; they seem to have an instinctive reverence for Him. And among the more serious, it would be a lesson in sociology to know how many men at a crowded Sunday Mass owe their attendance to their mother, wife or sister. Tell me. Have men anything to match the piety of women? "It is precisely because I have studied and reflected much," Louis Pasteur once said, "that I have preserved the faith of a Christian man of Brittany. And if I had studied and reflected more, I should have the faith of a Christian woman of Brittany."
The distinction is worthy of the eminent scientist; yet the most casual observer, and not only in Brittany, can test its validity. It is a matter of arithmetic. Step into any church that houses the Real Presence, anywhere, any time you please. Repeat your visit, the oftener the better, over a period of weeks. Say your prayers, to be sure, but then look around you. Note the predominance of covered heads in worship there, day in and day out; count them against the number of uncovered heads, and let the difference speak for itself.
The infidel woman affords an irrefutable test. Told of the incomparable story of Divinity in a mother's arms, she cannot look her part. You can tell in her face that she is fighting herself. Whatever pagan cult may have frozen her finer instincts, she cannot altogether hide her yearning for the Babe of Bethlehem. Keep your eyes open; watch her. Ask her if she would not at least wish it were true that Omnipotence had become as manageable as a baby. Quote her the Gospel from the Midnight Mass. Get her to imagine how she would have felt to have that adorable Child in her own arms; invite her to dream of herself as present at the crib, and taking from the Virgin Mother — yes, confront her with the tremendous possibility of one woman handing over God to another! The chances are she will laugh at you; but do not let that deceive you. Her true nature speaks in her eyes; she is laughing at the daring of the idea, not at the Baby. Her laughter is half a lie.
Woman's Great Strength
In denying God's Incarnation, she disowns the splendor of woman's greatest triumph. The two go together: she cannot reject the cause without denying the effect. Disbelief, once she has grasped the rich import of the doctrine, lowers her self-esteem. It somehow offends her. Something deeper in her soul than infidelity rebels, and that is her common sense. For, in the flattering truth of the dogma, did not the Almighty take human form from one of her sex alone? Did not the Annunciation invite a maid to offer herself as lodging to our Divine Visitor? Did not Christmas find the Infinite, small and content, in a mother's embrace? If God had left it to woman's ingenuity, could she herself have hit upon a deeper ennoblement to her sex?
Regardless, however, of who does or does not believe in the divine grandeur of Christmas, the historical fact stands, that wherever the dogma prevailed, woman was lifted to a new level. There she was no longer looked down upon as man's possession, as everywhere else she continued to be. In Mohammedan countries, for instance, it is still an accepted axiom that woman has not an immortal soul. Because the Empress Nur Jahan had the marble mosque of Spinagar erected, and personally, by the sale of her jeweled slipper, met its cost, the temple has never been used: it is considered desecrated. Again, no Moslem would ever think of mentioning any wife of his in public, unless for a reason very urgent, and then only with an apology. Much less would an outsider dare inquire, however casually, about the health of his women. That would be asking for trouble. That would be insulting his dignity. As Lawrence Gould, the eminent psychologist, explains: "It's not only that a man's wife or wives are strictly his private affair; women are regarded as unworthy to be discussed. They're even forbidden to attend religious services." And what can this mean but that women are no more, in such a system, than enslaved animals?
The Divine Glorifier
It was Jesus Christ who rescued womankind from such enslavement. Throughout Christendom, where the story of Christmas pervades the air, woman's exalted cousinship with heaven is promptly recognized. Not that our Lord need have come to us from a mother; but, to repeat, what truth could possibly be more ennobling to the sex, or dearer to all mankind, than that He did? And it was truly this, His choice, which conferred upon woman what she now possesses wherever the Faith retains its hold: it robes her in dignity. A little Child revolutionized public opinion; He taught the world respect. Chivalry was born on Christmas Day.
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