Hi Veronica!
Many posts on this thread have already dealt with the strawman about how ‘proper dress’ is anti poor people.
First: Nobody is saying by “proper attire” that men are to wear tuxedos and women ballgowns. Or even that men are to wear Brooks Brothers suits and women June Cleaver dress and pearls.
Proper attire is one’s ‘best’ clothing that is modest.
That means that if a homeless man has nothing but the dirty rags on his body, that IS his ‘best’ and most modest attire.
It ALSO means that when he comes into the church, as St. James tells us, that we should be ministering to him. It is up to us to gently take this man, and to give him the clean, modest clothing and the food and the shelter that he needs, so that at the next Mass, instead of being in rags, he will have clean whole clothing, have eaten, and will have a shelter. We may have to do this over and over with some. . .that’s all right.
If we just sit back and say, "Because some are poor and ragged, we had better not make any kind of ‘preparation’ of our selves and our appearance, lest we ‘humiliate’ others’. . .we are not helping ourselves and we are not helping others.
Let me see if I can put it a little more clearly (hopefully).
There is a big difference that I see between being ‘focused on God and not looking for faults in others’ (which is I think what you are saying you are trying to do by not ‘noticing’ or by ignoring improper and immodest clothes and behaviors by other people, yes?). . .
and thinking that to ‘focus on God’ means to ignore or set aside any notion that, as an individual, one should try to present oneself at one’s best. . .and that means that in addition to preparing one’s **inside **through prayer, penance, and sacrifice, also preparing one’s **outside **as well. The ‘outside’ does matter. God never told us to ‘dress down’ or not to care about how we dress or act (so long as we ‘think’ we are only 'caring about God).
Too many people today think that God doesn’t care for them to be anything other than ‘what they are’. Warts and all, He will ‘love us’ and not expect us to have to put ourselves out and to dress, or act, in ‘unaccustomed’ or ‘uncomfortable’ ways.
But reading Scripture shows us something very different. Any time that we really are trying to follow God, we are ‘taking up our cross’. By definition, we are ‘putting ourselves out’. We are acting in unaccustomed and uncomfortable ways.
If we are ‘comfortable’ in everything about our Christian faith–comfortable in our ‘dress’, comfortable in our habits, comfortable in our judgments, comfortable in our ‘relationship’ with God and people. . .
Again, you are missing the point, this isn’t about comfort, but you think it is and that is why you judge. You take the time to look at a person in church, think of a reason they are dressed the way they are and pass judgment. Perhaps the clothes they have are the “best and most appropriate” in their mind. Some day, they will be aghast at what they wore, but today they believe they are wearing the best and most appropriate to them. It is a knowledge that may come in time. They may never know that what they wore offended you (my wish would be that they would never know) but believe me, most have no idea you are judging them and if they did, they’d stop going. This is why it is sad to me. It’s more sad because you have no charity for them. Try reading Saint Therese’s book. There were many people who treated her badly and did things that she thought was annoying, but she looked at those things as God’s way of telling her she was loved.
We aren’t living our faith to the fullest. Some might argue we aren’t living it but ‘stagnating’ in a man-made faith in which we’ve picked what we ‘think’ Christianity is and go ‘thus far, and no further’ into its practice.
