Letters

Modesty of dress

Greg Byrne

Contents - Mar 2007 - Buy a copy now Editorial: How we can help young East Timorese - Peter Westmore WYDSYD08: Salesian provincial urges parishes to sponsor Timorese to World Youth Day 2008 - Peter Westmore News: The Church Around the World Sandhurst: Goddess worship at Victorian education conference? - Michael Gilchrist Formation: Continuing growth of Sydney's Catholic Adult Education Centre - AD2000 Report Catholicism flourishes in South Korea - Richard Stokes Leadership: The scandal of Australia's anti-life Catholic politicians - Marcel White 'Professional', a lá carte Catholicism and its papier màché schools - Andrew T. Kania Survey of Catholic teachers The changing panorama of Victoria's historic 'Rupertswood' - Michael Moore Catholic religion courses and the challenge of relativism - Audrey English Letters: Reform needed - T. Kalotas Letters: Catholic schools - Kevin McBride Letters: Null and void - Fr. G.H. Duggan SM Letters: Presumption - John H. Cooney Letters: Suitable wedding attire - Tom and Barbara Phillip Letters: Modesty of dress - Greg Byrne Letters: Ten Commandments - Arthur Hartwig Letters: Abortion counselling - Frank Bellet Letters: Leadership needed - Anne Lastman Letters: Human embryos - Rebecca Soares Letters: Ecumenism? - Peter Davidson Books: The Glory of These Forty Days, by Fr James Tolhurst - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) Books: LISTEN MY SON: St Benedict for Fathers, by Dwight Longenecker - Michael E. Daniel (reviewer) Books: SEEKING THE ABSOLUTE: The Founders of Christian Monasticism - Michael E. Daniel (reviewer) Media: The Rosary of the Virgin Mary - 4 DVD or 4 CD set - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) DOES YOUR PARISH STOCK AD2000? Books: Order Books from freedompublishing.com.au Reflection: The Holy Trinity - source of true Christian unity - Fr John O'Neill

I think that it's about time modesty of dress was an issue, especially modesty of dress at Mass and for Ministers of the Eucharist. Some women who receive Holy Communion or even distribute it would be a sensation down in Acland Street if they went there straight from Mass.

Priests, it seems, aren't game to say anything and probably think that that is how young women dress today. But they are wrong to think so because one can't judge what is appropriate from what is happening in a society in such moral decay as ours is. In fact it is only through Catholics behaving like Catholics that our society can be saved from itself.

I could go so far as to say that going to Mass in some churches amounts to entering an "occasion of sin" in the old terminology. This is a serious problem that should be raised at Mass. Modesty of dress is the first communication with people outside the home and if a woman is immodestly dressed the first message she's sending out (albeit unintentionally) to men is, "Would you like to have sex with me?". That is hardly an appropriate message for any Catholic woman to be sending out.

In earlier times women wore long loose dresses and were covered up almost as much as Muslim women except for the face. Now nobody seriously advocates that but the pendulum has swung much too far.

GREG BYRNE
Rowville, Vic

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 20 No 2 (March 2007), p. 15