We note your letter Catholic Moral Dress Code from a Fr Chris Vaillancourt. We would like to make some comments on it and all others who espouse such views and would appreciate it if you could forward it on. We fully realize that we are beating a dead horse but will endeavour to put a point of view.
Thank you.
Devonia and Heather Mildenhall.
Dear Fr Vaillancourt,
This is in reply to your sermon on the fifth Sunday after Pentecost entitled CATHOLIC MORAL DRESS CODE.
Yes, today fashions have gone beyond decency and modesty. While agreeing with you on broad grounds we find disagreement in the detail.
You quote the Bible "Whoever shall look on a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matt. 5:28) Fair enough; pretty straightforward. You then impute to Christ that He joins in the woman who is being lusted after. How can you say this? Do you know what she was wearing? Was she wearing immodest clothes at all, or was she just a beautiful woman going about her lawful business? We are not told and it is not our place to add words or thoughts to God Almighty.
You quote re men/woman cross dressing (Deut. we believe). We would imagine that if you wished to pass yourself as a person of the opposite sex in a deceitful manner by cross dressing you could be guilty of sin as it could lead to a lot of conflict to say the least. How can you equate this with women wearing trousers. There is no trickery here - no deceit.. In Christ's day, both men and women wore gowns - dresses if you like but as you yourself say, there was no confusion. The type of interpretation you place on Deuteronomy is bizarre - your presumption is that a woman causes men to sin by nature of her being a woman - then surely one might be tempted to argue that it would be better to have no dress to distinguish her from men - and that then most men would never commit sin.
You now set yourself up as an arbiter of fashion; skirts, sleeves, necklines to be a certain length. However, if you lived in the 19th century, any leg shown was sinful, even ankles, so where does this leave your calf length skirts? Will it change in 50 years time? You say not wear beige. What if one has brown skin? By setting hard and fast rules you make a mockery of the whole affair, you lose any credibility you may have.
We will now quote from the Bible
When Martha and Mary received Our Lord, Martha complained about Mary's lack of housewifery she was sitting at His feet.
"And the Lord answering said to her: Martha, Martha thou art careful and troubled over many things.
But one thing is necessary, Mary hath chosen the best part Which shall not be taken away from her" Luke 10 . 41,42
We don't interpret this as meaning that woman's place is in the home doing housework.
In the parable of the talents we are told to develop our talents which are given to us by God Himself. According to you a girl must train to be a wife and mother. What about if she has a talent to be a brain surgeon or any other profession?
As far as we can remember the Church has NEVER pushed marriage as the desired state, in fact according to St Paul who is always quoted, it should be only for those not able to live a chaste life outside marriage. What about all our nuns? Many of the female saints were single women, not necessarily nuns.
According to your article we should all stay at home and practise housewifely duties in case a man may come along and be so overcome by lust, despite our modest clothes, that he will marry us. This is very protestant. It is the thinking of John Knox in fact, who was the original dirty old man and married his ward who was a teenager. It is even worse than Muslims who at the very least tell BOTH sexes to dress and behave properly.
You only mention women. So what happens if a man is tempted to another sin, like murder, theft, pride greed etc; we should remove all temptation from his way? In fact, make this earth a heaven and not a time of overcoming temptations. It's the same thing. If a man is such a deviant that he cannot look at a woman reasonably dressed then he will sin even looking at a pre 1958 nun, as he will imagine what he can't see. So this nun would be inciting him to sin?
One of the Popes of the 20th Century said dress must be modest in time and place - what is modest for one occasion is immodest for another.
You now bring in politics - surely a no no in a universal church
What's this about learning decent patriotic songs. What did you have in mind here. Songs eulogising good old USA? We could understand if you said learn church music. But patriotic songs - what if we are Iraqi Catholics (even if the good old USA has bombed the oldest Catholic Church in the Middle East in Bagdhad) If we are Irish can we learn patriotic songs that are anti- England after all the USA finances the IRA and its terrorism so that would be all right.
As far as we can see you have opened up a can of worms in your sermon and we know it is hard in these times when priests have no guidance from a bishop, but surely you can stick to broad generalities. As we said in the beginning we agree fashions are not modest but please keep a sense of proportion or you will loose a lot of the younger generation, perhaps even drive them to do the very things you preach against and lose credibility of the older ones.