THE POPE GIVES WATCHWORD FOR YOUNG CATHOLIC WOMEN

"Preserve and Defend Christian Marriage"
" The watchword we give to the Girls' Catholic Action for the next twenty-five years is that it should go forward with new energy to preserve and defend Christian marriage." The Holy Father set this task for young Catholic women in the course of an allocution to the young women's section of Italian Catholic Action on the occasion of its Silver Jubilee on Holy Saturday. The briefer reports of the allocution so far available have not brought out the scope of the Pope's words nor their remarkable balance on so discussed a topic as woman's place in the modern world.
The Holy Father states emphatically that a structure of society based on the idea that men and women are in all respects similar is false, but " the complication of life is not necessarily bad in itself." The question is whether the present social trend must not be corrected in respect to the functions of men and women.
In another part of the speech the Pope departs from the usual negative outlook on immodest dress and behaviour and asks for a positive outlook wherein dress and deportment can harmonise virtue, hygiene and energy.
In the course of history, the Pope said, it was rare that the Church ever had to call with such
urgency as she had to-day for young boys and girls freely to renounce worldly distractions and to devote themselves to education, charity and foreign missions. This was the high purpose of the Church deriving from her foundation by Christ, Son of God, and of the Virgin Mother. It was this that had aroused, against pagan Rome's dream of affluence, the desire and enthusiasm of martyrdom and of virginal sanctity, when, in the amphitheatres and the stadia, Christian virgins, intrepid before torments, kept to themselves that beauty' which flourished in their persons though they paid for it with their blood.
You know well, said the Pope, that families sacrifice their sons and daughters to seminaries, monasteries, and religious congregations, where the heart
expands to shape within its ambit the Christian and pagan world, that they may be fathers and mother, in virginity of body and soul, with but one purpose, the good and the salvation of the souls bought with the blood of Christ. From that you may ponder on the fact that to-day, amid so many dangers, so much spiritual ruin, we see celibacy and chastity held especially in honour, an urgently needed support for the work which the Church has to hand.
From consideration of this grave hour in which your jubilee falls we mug turn our thoughts to a phenomenon of social progress, intensified by the war, but which was, in fact, already developing, and which calls for the vigilant attention of the Church. it is the change that has come about in the life of woman.
WOMEN IN THE PROFESSIONS In earlier times a woman's life was inspired by her natural instincts, which assigned her, if she did not choose the life of Christian virginity. to the family centre as her proper realm. Secluded from public life and from all professions, a young girl-like a growing flower-was guarded. preserved and prepared for her role of wife and mother. To-day the ancient picture of woman's life is rapidly changing. We see the woman, and especially the young woman, leave her seclusion to go into nearly alt the professions which before were the monopoly of man. At first one saw a tentative beginning; 'then an (Continued on page 5)