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Walking_Home
Guest
Ditto.
- Status
Ditto.
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UbiCaritas
Guest
Right.
Also, I note that Catholic wives are seemingly caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to attractiveness and such. St. Josemarie Escriva wrote that if a husband had an affair, it could be his wife’s fault for not looking pretty enough for him. (Funny how aging a decade or two and having a half-dozen kids, no time to work out, and no money to buy clothes or have one’s hair done does often lead to a woman being less attractive than when she was a Sweet Young Thing with lots more time, no babies to wreak havoc on her body, and her own money to do as she wished as far as clothes and hair go!)
So if you dress attractively, you’re sinning, but if you don’t dress attractively, you’re sinning…
Methinks I shall both follow common sense in this and expect both my husband and myself to act like adults.
L
Lea101
Guest
Don’t really understand what you are trying to say, to be quite honest. They are people. Not meat. People just wanting to wear, idk, a crop top because they think it’s cute for a beach party or something. They are not trying to entice someone. I’m not talking about women who are trying to look hot and then start foaming at the mouth when a guy checks her out.
Anyway, they are not wrong by saying that a man should not try to justify his sin (ie “if she wanted me to not objectify her, she should have _______”) because we are all called to respect each other. Clothes or no clothes. But as Christians we are also called to help each other out and not stand out in such a way. Modesty is an issue tainted with sexism, it’s definitely more complex than just “covering up for the helpless boys or else you will be objectified” imo. Not many people have successfully explained it, and I’d rather them not try if they are going to come across as ignorant.
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MissRose73
Guest
I think the burden of modesty in dress and actions needs to be placed equally on both males and females. It is NOT just a female’s choice of clothing nor just a male issue with custody of the eyes.
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dangerousdyls
Guest
Well said
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BlueEyedLady
Guest
Kind of it is though. Let’s say you convinced every Catholic woman to wear a beekeeper suit. Great! Now as soon as man walks out the front door of church, what is he going to see everywhere he looks, from women in the park to the cover of a magazine in a grocery store?
Pushing modesty seems like more of a way to deflect responsibility than actually solve any sort of problem.
A
AnneElizabeth
Guest
There is a photo of Pope John Paul II giving communion to a native woman who is completely topless. Is she wanting to be a piece of meat? Is she shameless to receive holy communion bare breasted? If so, then why did the Pope give her Holy Communion?
Does modesty differ from culture to culture? If that is the case, who do we start preaching to? Which culture is right?
A
AnneElizabeth
Guest
Totally agree with you on this.
But I just wanted to thank you for the laugh- I was imagining a church full of women in beekeepers suits, mantilla head covering and don't forget the chastity belt equipped with spikes. In addition, with that get-up, how would anyone be able to tell if a man uses the church ladies room or not if he sinfully chooses to dress like a woman to gain access?
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AnneElizabeth
Guest
Not just sexism, jealousy and envy as well. And yes, its about as complex as humanity is.
I very much agree with what you wrote, Lea. I just wanted to add that little tidbit.
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dangerousdyls
Guest
Trying to follow your line of thought…You think by squarely putting responsibility on the man or woman who chooses to lust rather than sharing that responsibility with how a man or woman dresses, there is less responsibility deflected?
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AnneElizabeth
Guest
When a pedophile lusts, molests or rapes a child, no one in their right mind would even think somehow the child shares some of the guilt. We don’t say, the child wore sexy clothing or was showing too much skin, therefore they share responsibility to what happened to them. No, the child is innocent.
In the same way, its all too easy for someone to point the finger at another and say “they led me to sin in lust!” when the other party could be just innocent as that child, never meaning to do ANYTHING that would be irresponsible in matters of modesty. If that is truly the case, in what way should they share the responsibility?.. AND how could one judge for sure that they are not as innocent as they claim? How can you tell? Our perceptions of people can be based off a lot of things, and a lot of the time it can be erroneous.
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LightBound
Guest
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BlueEyedLady
Guest
It’s like an alcoholic trying to change the world. If you’re the one with a problem, or you’re the one with the goal of not lusting, then it has to on be on you.
Harping to the small percentage of women who attend Mass every week isn’t going to do a tiny bit of good when it comes to how much skin you see in your day to day world. All it does is making the person lusting feel a bit better because they can pass the responsibility on.
Not that modesty isn’t an admirable Christian virtue in it’s own right, but it’s silly to bill it as an even partial solution to lust. Take responsibility for your own thoughts.
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dangerousdyls
Guest
It sounds like your response to my question is a firm “yes” then
I’m not speaking of children, I’m speaking of men and women. A child obviously has less culpability than an adult.
It’s not for us to judge who can tell and who can’t tell. But there are clearly suggestive outfits (and actions since modesty is not limited to clothing) that incite “unhealthy curiosity”,as the Catechism puts it, in others, for both men and women alike.
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dangerousdyls
Guest
The question wasn’t directed specifically towards women (men can be the objects of lust as well) or for my own personal desire to see less skin. And I don’t know about harping as much as explaining.
But I do think that one person, even if the percentage of people attending mass compared to the general population is small, who values modestly makes a difference, and that can at least be a “tiny bit of good”…probably more…
E
EasterJoy
Guest
The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to meet the guests he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment. He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’ But he was reduced to silence. Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’ Many are invited, but few are chosen."Padre Pio’s attitude towards women has bugged me for years. Does anyone here really think that Our Lord would have turned away anyone for the manner in which they were dressed? Now that it has been discovered that Pio most likely had some mental illness, it makes a little more sense.
**Matt. 22:10-14
**
That parable is not literally about dress, because Our Lord was not describing a literal wedding feast. No, it is about disposition.
If we think our literal clothing and our willingness to use it to express humility instead of vanity has nothing to do with our disposition, however, we are fooling ourselves.
Of all the places in the wide world where it is inappropriate to show off, to draw attention to ourselves, it is the Mass.
Modesty, then, is not about whose fault it is when someone feels envy or lust. Modesty is about avoiding the center of attention, rather than seeking it. There is not a word in the Gospels that defends someone who makes his or her choices in order to be the center of attention. I’d argue that it could easily be just as immodest to show up at Mass in a beekeeper’s suit as in clothing that looked as if it was painted on. The point is that taking consideration of how we dress is part of taking our entire disposition into account. We should not defend the desire to show off our bodies any more than we’d defend any other kind of showing off. That is not the kind of “feeling good about ourselves” that leads to sainthood.
In that sense, immodesty isn’t really about sexuality. It is about cultivating a disposition that is pure in its single-minded attention to God. Vanity doesn’t belong in the Christian life at all, but it especially doesn’t have any place at Mass.
Taking it into our heads that those of us with no jurisdiction to judge the clothing of others somehow have the place to do it: that, too, can be a lack of humility. It does not come from a humble disposition. If we are asked about how someone else’s clothing affects us, we should be humble enough to answer frankly and to disclose our weakness rather than to pretend strength we do not have, but we have to remember that it is not humble to blame our spiritual faults on anyone else. Looking on another person as an object because we’ve judged that they’ve dressed beneath our standards is prideful, not humble.
T
The_Old_Maid
Guest
Modesty is a complicated issue. It includes self-respect, respect for others, socio-political mashups (note: blogger is liberal), and biology.
On the one hand, if your neighbor is singing sotto voce, I see London, I see France, I see someone’s underpants, fix yourself.
On the other hand, an Amish woman wandering in veiled places could be seen as a brazenly almost-naked temptress. Is she?
Yes, I have seen undies in church. Didn’t need to see that.
But I wonder when was the last time anyone really contemplated where we got our standards for “modesty.” Who decided that a farmer has to go to church dressed like a banker, but the banker gets to go to church dressed like himself? And who decided that women should wear heels (even if it hurts their bodies), but “sensible shoes” have become code for ahem-women-who-don’t-like-men-ahem? Those high heels make the bottom wiggle as she walks, which is why men like high heels. Sounds less modest to me than women wearing the flats.
So there’s genuine modesty (self-respect plus mutual respect), and there’s “modesty culture.” You might get a good sermon out of defining the difference.
On the one hand, if your neighbor is singing sotto voce, I see London, I see France, I see someone’s underpants, fix yourself.
On the other hand, an Amish woman wandering in veiled places could be seen as a brazenly almost-naked temptress. Is she?
Yes, I have seen undies in church. Didn’t need to see that.
But I wonder when was the last time anyone really contemplated where we got our standards for “modesty.” Who decided that a farmer has to go to church dressed like a banker, but the banker gets to go to church dressed like himself? And who decided that women should wear heels (even if it hurts their bodies), but “sensible shoes” have become code for ahem-women-who-don’t-like-men-ahem? Those high heels make the bottom wiggle as she walks, which is why men like high heels. Sounds less modest to me than women wearing the flats.
So there’s genuine modesty (self-respect plus mutual respect), and there’s “modesty culture.” You might get a good sermon out of defining the difference.
M
MissRose73
Guest
Children do learn from examples around them especially family members first then others they see around them that they may or may not know. My mother was less strict on church clothes compared to her older sister (and both women had 2 daughters each). My mother did allow me and my sister to sometimes wear jeans but pair it with a regular shirt not a tee when we were teenagers. But we would NEVER wear such an outfit when going to church with my aunt, uncle and their daughters as they dressed up in modest yet nice clothes. My aunt and her daughters wore a dress or skirt for Mass always, and my sister & I were held up to that same expectation when we went with them. To this day, my aunt still wants her 2 daughters, several nieces and granddaughters to wear a dress or skirt for Mass when attending alongside her.
But I was shocked with my cousin’s teenage daughter who wore a strapless short yet revealing dress for my grandma’s funeral last summer. My cousin had 5 days to get her daughter to a nearby mall for a more modest dress for the funeral Mass. My aunt probably was in no mood to tell her daughter to have her own child wear something more modest. Myself and a few others we wished we could have said something but we did not for the sake of family harmony. The girl’s dress could have certainly made men look at her and not for the right place and reasons.
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Allegra
Guest
Kinda what I was thinking.
C
ConfusedLucy
Guest
Thinking about it how would one go about finding the dress code for a parish because this seems to really vary by region.
- Status