The Limits of Suffrage

Was this an apology? America threw up online a 2009 article about the errors it had published in its 100 year history. Among them, opposing suffrage in September 1920. James T. Keane, summarizes: “the editors fretted about the damage universal suffrage might do to so delicate a creature as woman.” He quotes, “‘Is the contest with men in the grimy ‘game’ of politics sure to vulgarize and coarsen woman’s fine nature, or will her love for purity and high ideals enable her to breathe without serious injury the air of the caucus-room and the polling-place? Time will tell.’” Only relevant in a pandemic, dear editors, though I recognize that 1918 was a recent memory for you; it’s something we are living through right now.

The 1920 editors also asked “how can women be taught to use the vote most wisely and effectively?” – insulting enough – and then Keane quotes book reviewer Myles Connolly who wrote “the truth remains that they will never be man’s equal. Aping him, they are inferiors. Cultivating their own natural aptitudes, they can be supreme.” Keane concludes, “For the record, this is no longer America’s editorial policy.” This is the kind of tongue-in-cheek non-apology that gives feminists our undeserved reputation as humorless. I don’t subscribe to America because of certain other elements of their editorial policy.

Moving on. A brief search of The New York Times, famously anti-suffrage and anti-Catholic in those days, reveals two articles about pro-suffrage Catholics.

In 1913, Father Joseph H. McMahon told the Catholic Library League: “The protest against woman suffrage on the ground of Catholic tradition is about as sensible as would be a protest against automobiles or the telephone.” He continues the metaphor in a talk apparently designed to entertain, and notes that as many “ecclesiastics” are for suffrage as against it. While he argues for what we would call today family values, he recalls that medieval women were “not excluded from voting on matters of communal affairs,” and even served on legislative councils. “Moreover, if you can prevent women from voting, you cannot prevent them from thinking.” He’s only identified as pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes parish. No doubt, this talk was during the vote for ratification in New York State. There’s a recent book about the Anti’s in this campaign: No Votes for Women by Susan Goodier.

In September 1920, Miss Helen P. McCormick, Assistant Brooklyn District Attorney, presiding at the National Conference of Catholic Charities, urged the 1000 delegates from women’s organizations to “exercise their Presidential franchise” and to join one of the two “dominant political parties.” She acknowledges that “some women may turn up their noses” at such a thought, but that it’s “the only practical way to accomplish results” – perhaps a controversial idea at a meeting including many female actors in social service organizations, or because it’s the moment when the suffrage movement transforms itself into the non-partisan League of Women Voters.

In any case, I assume that district attorneys were chosen politically even then, so Miss McCormick had succeeded in that arena. As a single professional woman, she uses the rhetoric of the day to justify women’s voting: “the urge of mother love that is experienced by every normal woman, whether married or unmarried,” leads each to concern for “the high cost of living,” “the school system,” “relief and protective agencies, child labor. Industrial conditions as they affect her job or that of her husband.”

I like Miss McCormick and wonder how many more like her there were. Of course there are many books that discuss the suffrage movement, but the only one that comes up when searching for Catholics and suffrage is Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women’s Suffrage Movement by Allison K. Lange. I will have to get it and see if there is a photo of Miss McCormick. And when did the Times changed its editorial policy about honorifics?

The two best articles I have found are by two of my favorite women authors, Jamie Manson and Kathleen Sprows Cummings. Both present the history and relate it to women’s current status in the church.

Manson, in NCR, will have you marching for Votes for Catholic Women as she concludes her discussion with the 2019 campaign for religious sisters to vote at Vatican synods. But there’s a lot more, connecting Pope Francis with the anti-suffragists of old and women’s ordination as the same kind of symbolic action as the vote. No matter how pure or powerful, that symbol of women’s equality is necessary. (Those are my words, not hers, and part of what I thought I was going to write about today.)

 In Commonweal, I am avoiding the Paul Baumann article about masculinity published on August 19, the day after the anniversary of the last state to ratify suffrage. His conclusion once again brings out the humorlessness in me.

Rather, I reach back again to 2009 to find Sprows Cummings writing the best article I have found, acknowledging my biases as a historian and Philadelphian. She writes about what I thought I was going to write about today when she says: “The racial and class biases of the suffragists are now readily acknowledged. But few have considered the significance of the fact that the majority of the uneducated and foreign ‘undesirables’ they worried about were Catholics. Indeed, many suffrage advocates implied or, in some cases, stated outright that enfranchising women would dilute the ‘immigrant vote’ and diminish growing Catholic influence over American politics.” Of course a lot of that vote was Jewish, too. And we’ve heard all week about the exclusion of black women in the South from voting until the 1960s, which I also was going to write about. The images of women of color in the Times August 16 special section, “How American Women Won the Right to Vote” will convince you that not everyone benefits from the causes they devote their lives to.

Sprows Cummings finds a quote from the editors of America in 1915 that pointed “to a host of female figures from the past that testified to the way Christianity had served as the historic emancipator of women.” Or specifically, Catholicism. She gives examples of apologists touting the endless opportunities for heroic Catholic women from the era of suffrage to the present day. Every example is a gem, as is her interpretation. If it was true then that “It is the Catholic Church, not secular feminism, that is the best protector of women’s rights and interests,” Sprows Cummings says: “This position was more defensible in the 1890s than it is now. When [1900s Boston Pilot editor Katherine] Conway noted that the church allowed women everywhere but the sanctuary and the pulpit, the same could have been said of all but a few Christian denominations. A century later, Roman Catholicism is one of the few denominations that do not ordain women.”

It always comes down to this. You’ll have to read the entire article to understand Sprows Cummings’ conclusion: “And at Notre Dame, I have only to mention The Vagina Monologues to observe how quick many religious people are to interpret feminist-inspired movements as antifamily and antireligion—claims that are as unfounded as the mythical debate over women’s souls, yet are still deeply resonant for many.” She deplores “the divide between feminists and Catholics, with each side needlessly convinced that the other undermines women’s ability to choose meaningful and fulfilling lives. Both Catholics and feminists will have to let go of their ‘preconceived antipathies’ if the gap is ever to be bridged.”

We occupy that Catholic feminist space. Sometimes I exercise my antipathy when male writers and editors trivialize women, subtly or not. I wait eagerly for them to stop doing that. At the same time, I rejoice that I have both the opportunity to raise my voice and the right to vote for the women and men who will lead our country, if not our church.