FROM THE ARCHIVES:In his Lenten pastoral letter in 1912 the Catholic bishop of Limerick, Edward Thomas O'Dwyer, was concerned about the growing demand for votes for women. – JOE JOYCE
HITHERTO THIS very grave question has been merely academic and provoked a smile of amusement, rather than serious consideration. Now it has come within the range of practical politics, and it is for every one to weigh well the consequences, immediate and remote, of so profound a change in our social conditions.
Many women who will hear this letter read will think that it is impossible that a measure for which none of them have ever asked, which most of them regard as an absurdity, which public opinion in Ireland has not demanded, should be suddenly imposed upon us. Yet, it is quite possible.
The game of parties in Parliament often leads to strange results, and it is well for us in Ireland to realise the danger that, without our consent, this measure may become law, and the women of Ireland be placed in a position from which all their instincts and habits of thought would shrink. The objection to giving votes to women is not that they would exercise the franchise with less judgement or honesty than men.
In intelligence, in conscientiousness, in genuine desire for the public good they are not inferior to men. That is not the objection. But it is the total change it would work in their whole domestic and social position. From the peace of their homes they would be drawn into the angry, and often squalid, strife of political parties.
Now they stand outside all such contentions. A man comes home from some turbulent scenes of an election contest, and finds in his home, under the influence of a good woman, the calm and quietness that are the one need of his soul at the time. But how would it be if his wife was an active participator in the same contest, and in his home in which he might look for some cessation of strife, he found the same, or even greater, bitterness?
Are we to contemplate the possibility of husband and wife taking opposite sides, and the peace and harmony of their family disturbed, and their children divided into opposite camps with their parents? The very thought is shocking to every sense of Christian propriety. Are women to attend public meetings, join clubs and leagues, and other such bodies and just as men do now take an active interest in all political developments? It is not easy to see how such a life is consistent with the care of home and children, and regard for the great and important interests that now depend entirely on the woman of the house.
Young women who have no home or children to mind may find time for such things, although not without grave damage to every feminine feeling. But for mothers of families, it would simply mean the neglect of their children, the abandonment of their homes, with all their duties and responsibilities, and the loss of the reverence and affection which they now receive from their husband and son.
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