« Catholic Carnival: Improving with Age | Main | Our Sins Torment Our Lord: A Poem »
August 03, 2006
Modesty and the Catholic Life
I was recently pointed to this excellent series of articles on modesty. Bishop John Yanta has the first, and key, article which I personally think does a great job of pointing out the importance of modesty to members of both sexes:
Dressing or putting on one’s clothes is a moral act and wearing them is a moral act. There are different appropriate modes of dress for different occasions, e.g. in the privacy of our home, with our spouse only or with our children in our home, at work or school, in mixed company, at the lake or swimming pool, grocery shopping, at church, etc.
In our culture, modesty seems to have gone by the wayside. Our entertainment stars have clearly shown us the alternate route: immodesty. However, as the Catechism points out:
Purity requires modesty, an integral part of temperance. Modesty protects the intimate center of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden (CCC 2521). “Modesty is decency. It inspires one’s choice of clothing. It is discreet (CCC 2522). “There is a modesty of the feelings as well as of the body. It protests, for example, against the voyeuristic explorations of the human body in certain advertisements, or against the solicitations of certain media that go too far in the exhibition of intimate things. Modesty inspires a way of life which makes it possible to resist the allurements of fashion and the pressures of prevailing ideologies (CCC 2523).
It is up to all of us to teach and be modest:
The key to all modesty is rooted in our mother and daddy who model modesty for their children, i.e. a strong, but tender St. Joseph-like husband and father who is blessed with a wonderful wife and mother for their children. “Happy the husband of a good wife…choicest of his blessings is a modest wife, priceless her chaste person” (Sirach 26: 1, 15).
Remember to teach your children modesty. I do recommend you read the whole article.
God bless,
Jay
Posted by jay at August 3, 2006 08:32 PM
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.livingcatholicism.com/mt-tb.cgi/248
Comments
Jay, glad you saw this and submitted to Catholic Carnival. We just don't hear messages about modesty much anymore, and personally I think it's a disservice to young men and women that we don't. It's not in their best interests to pretend that how people dress doesn't matter, or that we can't buck the popular culture. I blogged about Bishop Yanta's message over at Modesty Zone, it got some intersting comments:
http://blogs.modestlyyours.net/modestly_yours/2006/07/texas_bishop_sp.html
Posted by: misskelly at August 8, 2006 05:26 PM
