15 August 2023 Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady Dear Amanda, Your simple and direct questions reflect much of the confusion that abounds in today’s society. I will again try and answer in the way that I think may be of some help. Fashions in History First of all, let’s go back to that definition of modesty I gave last time. Modesty fixes the mode, the manner in which decency is protected. This of itself implies that there is a different measure for different people and different periods in history. But all these differences, when we look at everything we know from antiquity up until the middle of the last century, amounted to very little. If you compare a Roman matriarch of the first century with an English peasant of the tenth and a French queen of the fourteenth, you will notice a number of variants in the way dresses are made, but you will essentially observe the same care to hide the flesh and areas of the shape that inflame the male passions (the breasts and the posterior). The modes of dress always maintained feminine features such as the type of cloth used, the shape of the skirt and the details on the waist. After the French Revolution transparent fabrics become more common, and the cuts of the dresses start to expose and highlight bare flesh much more, especially that of the decolletage. Even though this last feature can be found in other periods as well, it Beyond fashion and its demands, there are higher and more pressing laws, principles superior to fashion, and unchangeable, which under no circumstances can be sacrificed to the whim of pleasure or fancy, and before which must bow the fleeting omnipotence of fashion. These principles have been proclaimed by God, by the Church, by the Saints, by reason, by Christian morality. Venerable Pope Pius XII 54
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