Christian Modesty
Note: This article was first published on Canada Fidèle website, on 17 January 2017.
The Church’s Standards for Modesty in Dress
We provide here several texts bearing on an all-but-forgotten topic: Christian modesty. Even in our pagan society, Christian men and woman must do what they can to set an example of modesty in dress. Nudity is the devil’s distinctive mark: was it not after having sinned that Adam and Eve realised they were naked?
The Church’s Standards for Modesty in Dress, given on the 23rd of August 1928 by the Sacred Congregation of the Council, and repeated in 1938 by His Eminence Cardinal Pompili, Cardinal Vicar of Rome:
“A dress cannot be called decent which is cut deeper than two fingers breadth under the pit of the throat; which does not cover the arms at least to the elbows; and scarcely reaches a bit beyond the knees. Furthermore, dresses of transparent materials, as well as “sheers”, are improper."
Cardinal Pompili
Timeless Rules of Dress - The Dominicans of Avrillé
Saint Paul wants women as well as men to be clothed in decent garments, adorning themselves with modesty and sobriety. (I Tm. 2: 9-10)
Saint Augustin: Do not try to please by your clothes but by your manners.
Saint Thomas Aquinas: Modesty in dress requires that we be content with what is necessary and that we do not become attached to what is beyond the ordinary. No vanity, luxury, or excesses in clothes; let it be known that they are more a sign of ignominy than a mark of honour.
To adornments of the body, let us prefer those of the soul.(Treatise on the Education of Princes, Book 5, ch. 17)
Our Lady of Fatima to Jacinta in 1917: The Church has no fashions; Our Lord does not change. The sins that lead most souls to hell are the sins of the flesh. Fashions will come which will greatly offend Our Lord.
What Does the Church Ask?
Rules that can never change, even today, and which are the last limit of what is conceded, whether you are on the street, at home or in a church ...
One cannot consider as being decent:
1 - A garment whose neckline exceeds the width of two fingers below the beginning of the neck.
2 - A garment whose sleeves do not go down to at least the elbow.
3 - A garment that barely goes below the knees.
Directives of the Holy See (Letter of 23 August, 1928)
Contemporary Illustration:
Padre Pio would get angry when he saw women in indecent clothes. If that happened in the church, he had them taken out immediately.
He demanded that all, both men and women, cover their arms in church with long sleeves, and that gentlemen and young men wear trousers. (Karl Wagner, Padre Pio, 1999, p 14)
Padre Pio hated mini-skirts. He demanded that the skirt of his penitents go down to eight inches below the knees, otherwise he would not confess them. In May 1966, he refused to receive a famous princess who did not want to follow these dress rules.
One day, a lady from Florence, wore the mini-skirt at home, at home, but had put on a long skirt to go to San Giovanni and confess to Padre Pio. The latter immediately chased her away, saying:
Are the fabrics too expensive for you not to be able to dress properly?
The astonished lady replied:
But, Father, my skirt is over the knees! Indeed, says Padre Pio, but you are cheating: at home, at home, you wear the mini-skirt and here you give yourself the air of a decent woman. Go away and come back when you have lengthened your skirts! (Fr Ami Décorte F. C., Padre Pio, Bierbeek, 1976, p 138.)
In summary, should be banned: clothing that is tight-fitting, transparent, slit above the knees, and all those which do not take into account the requirements mentioned above.
On the Subject of the Veil
According to the teaching of the Apostles, Saint Paul (I Cor. II, 10-16) and Tradition, women should have their heads covered before entering a church. (Code of Canon Law, 1262, §2)
Saint Charles Borromeus: Let women, whatever their state, their rank and their condition, under penalty of being prohibited from entering the church, come there with their heads veiled ... the head-covering should not be light but thick, it should completely hide the hair ...
Saint Paul: The woman ought to have authority over her head, for the angels’ sake. ... And if anyone is prepared to argue the matter, he must know that no such custom is found among us, or in any of God’s churches. (I Cor. 11, 10-16)
Illustration: Saint Vincent Ferrier o.p. (+ 1419) performed many miracles in Genoa, but the Genoese Taccheti reports : there he performed the greatest miracle he may have ever had, which was to uproot forever the abuse reigning among women to go to church with their head uncovered.
Tertullian wants women, through the veil, to put on an armour of modesty, to dig a retaining ditch around themselves, to shut themselves up behind a wall that does not let her eyes or those of others pass through ...
On the Subject of Trousers
It is written in Sacred Scripture that a woman should not wear a man's garment (Deuteronomy 22:5), a fortiori in the holy place.
Cardinal Siri, Archbishop of Genoa, sent his entire diocese and clergy a serious warning on 12 June, 1960:
The moral aspect of this use (wearing trousers) can only worry Us (...). Two things are necessary for the modesty of a garment: that it covers the body and that it conceals its shapes. Trousers cover the body less adequately than most skirts of our time, indeed, but this is not sufficient to exonerate them.
For by nature, trousers mould the body much more than a skirt. Wearing trousers by a woman is therefore immodest because of their narrowness (...) Without exaggerating it or considering it as the most serious aspect.
Indeed, it is another aspect of the wearing of trousers by women that strikes Us as the most serious. Here are three elements:
1 - Male clothing used by a woman alters the female mentality. (...) The dress has a very strong influence on the behaviour and on the state of mind; the change of clothing will modify gestures and attitudes, internal mentality will be aligned with the external behaviour (…).
2 - It tends to vitiate the relationship between men and women.
3 - Male clothing undermines the dignity of a mother in the eyes of her children. (...) The child ignores the definition of indecent assault, frivolity or infidelity; but he has an instinctive sixth sense which makes him guess all these things, which makes him suffer and which leaves his soul deeply hurt (...).
It is clear that in the long term the wearing of trousers by women degrades the human order. (...) There are limits that we may believe ourselves authorised to cross, but we will find death there. (…)
The result of violations of natural law is not a new human equilibrium, but rather disorder, the harmful instability, the frightful sterility of souls, and the bewildering increase in the number of human wrecks excluded from all life. social and sinking into disgust, sadness, abandonment.
Various Remarks:
A pious reminder, which was the rule of twenty centuries of Christianity, and the expression of elementary common sense:
It is desirable that men and women in churches be grouped separately, according to the old discipline. (Code of Canon Law 1262, §I)
Kneelers should be used only for the knees, as the name suggests.
It is not very suitable to put on or take off clothes in a church; it should be done discreetly before entering; if it is hot, teach children to endure. At the altar, the priest and those in choir are even hotter under the vestments.
May 1946 Canadian Bishops’ Pastoral Letter
The Bishops re-iterate Cardinal Pompili’s statement and add:
“If asked what is meant by a modest and truly decent dress for a Christian woman, one would surely understand it to mean a dress in non-transparent fabric which covers both the chest and the arms, going down to at least the knees, and ample enough to appease decency and dissimulate the figure of the body.
What shall tomorrow bring – calling to mind the rising wave in outlandish clothing made to showcase that which ought rather to be veiled, as Pius XII remarks?
Far too many young ladies easily accept indecent (sometimes provocative) hemlines, audacious necklines – above which they will insolently wear a cross, the cross of Our Lord, Master of purity! Too many among them go out in shorts – timidly, in the streets, but shamelessly, to play! Often too they will minimise further and further their beach attire. These clothes – immodest by their very nature – ought to be banished from our midst, and this even at sporting events.
Let us remember that wearing trousers readily (or, even worse, in a spirit of exhibitionism) is unsuitable for a truly Christian woman.
Yet that which seems far worse to us (not, of course, out of a desire to provoke others to evil, but rather out of a nefarious habit which, if continued, could go quite far) is little girls’ clothing consisting of shortened dresses which do not even reach the torso, leaving their arms and legs bare. These poor children, without realising it, often scandalise their younger brothers.
Men are in nowise exempt from this tendency to exhibitionism: they go about bare-chest in the streets, and wear inappropriate slacks or vests. These are all infractions against the virtue of modesty, if not occasions of sin – in thought or by desire – for one’s neighbour.”
