Help me understand what's wrong with this reasoning

[oldburkes]

It can be definitely said that we are losing our ability to be shocked by anything we see, and that’s true all over the world. In my mind, anyone who professes to be Christian will know what modesty means, even if they don’t practice it.
Within that context, another Christian will know if what they see is offensive or provocative to them and decide for themselves how to assess that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, and using all due charity towards that person.

 

[oldburkes]

Ahhhh, those were examples of what is out of balance! I’m so sorry I misunderstood your post.

Each exhibits a situation in which there is no boundary. The first, modesty, is not just about protecting men from sexual temptation or we women would all be wearing space suits year-round. Modesty is more about maintaining one’s own dignity, which includes but is by no means limited to not turning oneself into a advertisement for sex. Going too far in the opposite direction of masking one’s gender altogether would be going too far in the opposite direction for inadequate cause.

Old-time Protestant theology (Calvinism) kind of has behind it a hatred for the physical, which is seen as tainted. And certainly anything from fallen humanity is totally worthless. So women are not only not allowed to be overly sexy, they must be frumpy.

This leads to a denial of the inherent dignity of a woman as a child of God. Her essence, her gender, must be covered up as inherently evil.

I heard a speaker whose name I forget explain the difference between a teetotaller and a person who gives up drinking for God: the teetotaller believes alcohol is evil and so stays away; the giver-upper acknowledges that alcohol is a good, but gives it up for something better (mortification).

Thus the Catholics you met were able to say it’s a question of balance but not able to explain further. There are many areas in which the Church must teach boundaries *on each side *so that we do not give in either to excess or insufficiency. So there is a boundary against looking like an advertisement, and there is a boundart on the opposite side, against looking like one is obliterating what one is. Going too far in the frumpiness direction leads to a rebellion as well.

 

[oldburkes]

This is a very good thread. As a parent of 2 teenage boys and since coming back to the catholic church I’m having great difficulty trying to determine where to draw the line in terms of occasions of sin without having to isolate them from their peers.

I live in Ireland and values here have changed. Modesty is gone out the window in terms of the way teenage girls often dress. However I feel that it would be totally wrong to try to isolate my sons completely from their peers.

Also most Irish families go abroad on holidays e.g to Spain where beaches are top optional. Last year as part of a sightseeing and beach holiday we went to Barcelona. We spent 1 day on the beach and as common sense parenting sat in the area of the beach with the least amount of temptation and did not draw attention to or dwell on any immodesty. It this all I need to be doing to avoid occasions of sin for my boys or do we need to avoid sun holidays altogether.

We are not going to the beach intending to sin. We can’t afford to travel to america where the beaches have higher standards of modesty. We’ve already holidayed in the rain in Ireland and

I don’t mean to take over this thread but I just wanted to say to backtocatholic, No! The sun is there for all of us, and you are doing the right thing.

 

[backtocatholic]

Thanks for your opinion on this. Its difficult to know where to draw the line between a temptation and an occasion of sin. This is most likely a temptation that we can minimize but not avoid without denying the family a good holiday. I find many of the posts regarding modesty really difficult to apply in modern times. I can ensure I dress modestly and I do. However in the course of everyday life it is impossible to protect your teens against the immodest dressing of others. In ALL teenage discos for example the girls dress immodestly but it is normal and healthy for teens to associate and socialise in age appropriate supervised settings. I think it is essential to teach them good values so that we can trust them.
What does worry me though is as a catholic how far you have to go to avoid occasions of sin. I hope and presume that common sense and good parenting prevails.

 

[DarkLight]

It can be definitely said that we are losing our ability to be shocked by anything we see, and that’s true all over the world. In my mind, anyone who professes to be Christian will know what modesty means, even if they don’t practice it.
Within that context, another Christian will know if what they see is offensive or provocative to them and decide for themselves how to assess that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, and using all due charity towards that person.

I think part of the difficulty is that we can also train ourselves to be offended by what you ought not. That’s been one of the criticisms of the hypermodesty sort of movements women like me grew up with - that they also trained the guys to be much more sensitive to a woman’s body than was normal for the culture. (And I’ve commented in other threads that it has interesting effects on those of us who are more gifted in certain areas than the women held up as examples.)

Yes, I understand what you mean. To that, I would defer to JRKH’s post. I like the point of view of not drawing attention. That would be, perhaps, a workable model in any culture or part of the world.

It can be hard with other things too. So, say, finances can be a struggle for me, because any money I spend on something that I don’t need is money that could either be saved up in case of a rainy day or given to someone who needs it. Even though that’s probably out of balance too, feeling like nothing should ever be spent on things we simply desire.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I’ve been struggling a lot with the theological reason behind balance. I often hear that we should try to have some balance in our lives, but I can never find why this is so theologically. Most of the arguments I’ve seen have just amounted to “but of course we don’t want to go to that extreme”, which seems like the right conclusion but isn’t an argument by itself.

So here’s a common enough argument from when I was growing up. Women ought to do whatever they can to help keep their brothers from stumbling. This means any outfit that can be made more modest ought to be so. Clothing should be as loose as possible without looking like it is going to fall off, so as to minimize the risk of tempting someone.

First of all, many men find looser outfits more attractive, since they are sometimes more revealing, or because they leave more to the imagination – consider that some men find a woman in a habit attractive.

Second, the fact that something could tempt another person need not have an effect on our actions unless we know that such a result is likely. “It’s possible” isn’t enough to prompt a moral duty. This might mean that wearing a two-piece bikini on the beach (or a speedo, if you’re a guy) is generally wrong, but wearing a reasonably tight dress is not wrong. If there’s some man so sexually obsessed that your tight dress prompts him to sin, let’s be honest: he was going to sin anyway.