Well, Veronica, what has happened in the last 40 years or so is a ‘sea change’ that affects not only what people wear ‘at Mass’ but the entire attitude of society about not only ‘dress’ but every other societal ‘standard’ as well.
People are not concerned with putting ‘their personal standard’ onto everybody else. . .people are (and quite rightly) cognizant that the whole relativistic idea that ‘standards’ and ‘appropriate dress’ should not be 'put forth for ‘the people’ as each person is ‘different’ and therefore what “I” find appropriate is not what “John” or “Mary” find appropriate. . . is itself a ‘new’ idea that was a byproduct of the 1960s ‘deconstructionism’ and 'equality means not striving to be the best an individual can be, but dumbing down, dressing down, and acting down to the lowest possible level, lest the ‘lowest’ feel ‘ashamed’ and the higher ‘guilty’."
In a culture which has lived with 40 years of this reversal, the mere idea that appropriate dress not only exists as an absolute, but indeed it–and indeed a type of ‘absolute’ standard–has existed for millennia, seems to be the ‘newfangled’ or ‘wrong’ notion.
It isn’t.
The twisting around though is a tactic used by the relativist-minded persons to help maintain the current status quo. Rather than having people stop to think, "Wait a minute. If I actually bother to read history, I can see that all cultures had ritual and specific standards and attitudes and attire and this was human and good --and then suddenly, in a period of ‘upheaval’, all this was ‘changed’ by a vocal element of society – then maybe I should start wondering why it was changed. Maybe I should look at ‘the fruits’ of society and see if this dressing down and dumbing down has had positive effects or not. Maybe I should start to ask why, if ‘casual’ dressing and ‘not thinking about one’s appearance’ are supposed to be so good and healthy. . .why are the casual dressers so all fired concerned about people wanting to dress up?
You see, if ‘we aren’t supposed to consider our appearance or the appearance of others’. . .then the ‘casual’ dressers shouldn’t even be responding to those who urge 'more respectful dressing, for two reasons:
- IF we aren’t supposed to ‘pay attention to what we wear’ then the ‘casual dresser’ shouldn’t be paying attention to the ‘dressier dresser’ or getting concerned about what the dressier dresser wears, should he?
- If the ‘casual’ dressing is really so great, then no amount of ‘modeling’ of ‘dressier dress’ will work in getting the majority of the people to ‘change’. If the casual dresser is so sure he is right, all he needs do is sit back as he has done for the last 40 years.
It appears that the casual dresser is not really concerned about being ‘forced’ into something (judging by all the posters who post variants of "it won’t happen and if it does I won’t be coming to church), but rather, is more worried about people actually ‘choosing’ the dressier dress freely, now that more people are actually talking about it, and choosing to ‘dress’ that way. Because then the casual dresser is in a pickle. It is one thing to play the martyr role of “you people are just trying to humiliate the poor or paying more attention to what people wear, how unChristian.” But what if all the poor, and all the people the casual ones are trying to ‘protect’ start wanting to dress ‘better?’ What then? And that, I think, is what some (not all) of the casual crowd are really worried about. Not ‘the poor’. . .but themselves, and that they might actually have to do something that they don’t want to do. . .‘dress dressier.’
