Page:O'Donnell - Hail Holy Queen 04 - Why the Madonna?.djvu/5

, but only her power as a seductress. And yet, how fleeting is physical beauty! "The body, when you come to think of it, matters little. All the beauty in the world cannot endure more than its appointed span What has become of the beauty  of Bathsheba, for whom David of the Psalms fell from grace? And Balkis, Queen of Sheba, with her apes, ivory, and peacocks? Dust and ashes, dust and ashes!  Beauty increases and wanes like the moon. A little shadow around the eyes, a little crinkle in the neck, the backs of the hands stiffening like parchment. Dust and ashes, dust and ashes."

In the Garden of Eden, Eve seduced Adam into eating the forbidden fruit. Led on by the serpent who tempted her, she in turn pursued Adam until he too yielded to temptation. Such was a woman's power of seduction and this power has often been compelling through all the ages. Yet another Eve, Mary, the spiritual mother of mankind, was to crush the tempter's head. Eve was the seducer. Mary is the inducer—to Christ. She leads women to an appreciation of their vocation, to the sanctification of their bodies as temples of the Holy Ghost.

Contrast this appreciation and sanctification with the current vogue for the "pin-up girl," the painting or photograph that through lack of clothing, the immodest posture, and the enticing look portrays an animal charm that seems to crave a partner to satisfy lust. The vogue was strong during the war; it shows no sign of abating now. Too many newspapers and magazines are competing with one another in publishing pictures as risque as possible, to the seduction of men both young and old, first in their thoughts and desires, and then in such acts as had better be left untold.

The importance of the press is one of those things which it is impossible to exaggerate. The press sways public opinion with the same ease that the wind swirls away a dead leaf. The multiplication of newsprint is a veritable multiplication of loaves, but unhappily poisons as well as loaves are multiplied. Newspapers and magazines carry life or death to the souls of innumerable people; and too many seem no longer to realize that spiritual death has discovered a way of entering our homes without ceremony. It slips in quietly under the guise of newsprint. _____