It’s fine for men to prefer women in skirts (and even insist on it as the religious duty of women to be nothing more than eye-candy for men), but I’m committing the sin of lust if I prefer men in kilts?
The implied preference on your part was that you liked looking at men in kilts. If I mistook your wink, and your use of italics for emphasis on certain words like prefer, then I apologize.
What women wear while in the congregation at Mass or elsewhere is not part of this thread. The uniform of the minister is the same (alb and cincture) when women are performing the function as when male ministers are ministering. That I find aesthetically unnatural.
I’d rather not look at women serving as ministers at all, of course. In fact, I’d rather not pay much attention to ministers, and keep my focus on Christ in the Eucharist and in the priest. So it’s not like I’m saying they should dress provocatively or even more femininely. Just differently. But that would imply that they held a different office, so the radical feminists would chafe against it.
Once again, what is virtuous for men (telling women how to dress) is sinful in the extreme, for women.
If I were to tell a woman (not my wife) how to dress in order to arouse my sensual appetites, it would be lustful and grievously sinful, and confessible. In fact, I wouldn’t have to tell anyone how to dress, merely holding the preference would be enough. The Church and I both prefer that women wear modest clothing, for the opposite reason entirely, so that men won’t be tempted to lust.
According to one of the fine traditions of the Latin Church, whenever the priest reads the Gospel passage where the Pharisees accuse Jesus of being possessed by a devil, we strike our breasts. It is remarkable to me how often virtue and vice are mistaken for each other by our darkened intellects.
