fending
parents' goods "since in many cases even according to divine decree
children are punished in this world on account of their parents."[392]

[Sidenote: General attitude towards women at the present day]

The attitude of the Roman Catholic Church towards women's rights at the
present day is practically the same as it has been for eighteen
centuries. It still insists on the subjection of the woman to the man,
and it is bitterly hostile to woman suffrage. This position is so well
illustrated by an article of the Rev. David Barry in the Roman Catholic
paper, the Dublin _Irish Ecclesiastical Review_, that I cannot do better
than quote some of it. "It seems plain enough," he says, "that allowing
women the right of suffrage is incompatible with the high Catholic ideal
of the unity of domestic life. Even those who do not hold the high and
rigid ideal of the unity of the family that the Catholic Church clings
to must recognise some authority in the family, as in every other
society. Is this authority the conjoint privilege of husband and wife?
If so, which of them is to yield, if a difference of opinion arises?
Surely the most uncompromising suffragette must admit that the wife
ought to give way in such a case. That is to say, every one will admit
that the wife's domestic authority is subordinate to that of her
husband. But is she to be accorded an autonomy in outside affairs that
is denied her in the home? Her authority is subject to her husband's in
domestic matters--her special sphere; is it to be considered co-ordinate
with his in regulating the affairs of the State? Furthermore, there is
an argument that applies universally, even in the case of those women
who are not subject to the care and protection of a husband, and even, I
do not hesitate to say, where the matters to be decided on would come
specially within their cognisance, and where their judgment would,
therefore, be more reliable than that of men. It is this, that in the
noise and turmoil of party politics, or in the narrow, but rancorous
arena of local factions, it must needs fare ill with what may be called
the passive virtues of humility, patience, meekness, forbearance, and
self-repression. These are looked on by the Church as the special
prerogative and endowment of the female soul ... But these virtues would
soon become sullied and tarnished in the dust and turmoil of a contested
election; and their absence would soon be disagreeably in evidence in
t