Church/saint Teaching And Modesty

[KnightofChrist]

We must be careful in how we are critical of the Saints. Name calling, insulting, or otherwise disparagement of God's Saints could be blasphemy.

OF THE SIN OF BLASPHEMY.

Article I.—Is blasphemy the opposite of confession of the faith?

R. The name of blasphemy implies some disparagement of the goodness of God. If this is done in the heart only, it is blasphemy of the heart, but if it come out in speech, it is blasphemy of the mouth. And thus blasphemy is the opposite of confession of the faith.

§ 2. As God is praised in His saints, by praise of the works that He accomplishes in His saints, so also blasphemy against the saints redounds consequently upon God.

Article II.—Is blasphemy always a mortal sin?

R. That is a mortal sin by which man is separated from the first principle of spiritual life, which is the charity of God. Hence whatever acts are inconsistent with charity are mortal sins of their kind. Now blasphemy of its kind is opposed to divine charity, because it is a disparagement of divine goodness, which is the object of charity: and therefore blasphemy is a mortal sin of its kind.1

§ 3. Blasphemy may fall from the lips by surprise without deliberation in two ways. Either it is that the person does not notice that what he says is a blasphemy, as may happen in a movement of sudden passion, when a man breaks out into any words that he happens to fancy, without consideration of their meaning: and then it is a venial sin, and does not properly come under the idea of blasphemy; or it may be that he does consider the meaning of his words, and notice that what he says is blasphemous: and then he is not excused from mortal sin, any more than the man is excused who in a sudden fit of anger kills the person sitting next to him.

 

Summa Theologica - Prima Secundae, Secunda Secundae Pt.1

 

 

Jerk

 

4

a : an annoyingly stupid or foolish person

b : an unlikable person; especially one who is cruel, rude, or small-minded

 

Edited April 9, 2013 by KnightofChrist

[beatitude]

St Teresa was dancing for joy, she didn't attend discos.

 

St John Vianney was also against dances because they can invite sin.

 

I see. So you accept going to dances as sinful because a couple of saints have said so.

 

I have referred a few times to St Augustine's derogatory comments on women. Here they are in full:

 

"What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman...I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children."

 

This is the opinion of a saint and a doctor of the Church, one of Christianity's foremost theologians and scholars. Would you recommend that husbands on Phatmass use this as a guide to how they should view their wives? That they are dangerous temptresses and their only worth is determined by the fact they have a womb? After all, it was written by a saint, so it must be right.

 

"Women should not be enlightened in any way. They should, in fact, be segregated as they are the cause of hideous and involuntary erections in holy men."

 

Do you attend school? If so, you need to stop. As a woman you shouldn't be educated. And I hope that you are planning to start gently encouraging a segregation policy at your church. In a non-judgmental way, of course. A saint and a prominent church figure has spoken, so it must be so. If you give such authority and weight to an unsubstantiated quotation from the Cardinal Vicar of Pius XII, how much more to St Augustine?

 

"Woman was merely man's helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God."

 

Again, the words of a saint and a scholar. We're only here to help and serve men. We don't reflect God's image.

 

Do you support these ideas? And if not, why not? If your answer is no, then you must realise that 'But St Padre Pio said so' is perhaps not a good enough reason for turning a woman away from your confessional, and 'St John Vianney thought dances were sinful' is not on its own a reason to stop going to dances.

 

If we start treating saints as though they never get it wrong, we verge on the idolatrous. No matter how holy they were, they were still human, and they had their fair share of human errors.

Edited April 9, 2013 by beatitude

[Tufsoles]

Indeed. Don't hear, "You should be ashamed of yourself" much at all. I heard it on a daily basis back in elementary school.

 

 

The only way to be modest at a nude beach is to not be at a nude beach. 

 

My point exactly.

[Papist]

Now we're dissing Saint Augustine :(

[beatitude]

I'm saying that St Augustine wasn't perfect and that we don't have to accept verbatim everything that a saint ever wrote just because they were saints. He was wrong to write that women aren't made in the image of God, thereby 'dissing' half of the divine creation. This doesn't make him bad and I still read his work and learn from him and use prayers that he wrote. One of the most beautiful things about the canonisation process is that it shows us how people are made new in Christ in spite of their weaknesses and errors. I respect St Augustine and St Padre Pio, and I ask them to pray for me, but I will not pretend that they never had any such errors.

[Lil Red]

I'm saying that St Augustine wasn't perfect and that we don't have to accept verbatim everything that a saint ever wrote just because they were saints. He was wrong to write that women aren't made in the image of God, thereby 'dissing' half of the divine creation. This doesn't make him bad and I still read his work and learn from him and use prayers that he wrote. One of the most beautiful things about the canonisation process is that it shows us how people are made new in Christ in spite of their weaknesses and errors. I respect St Augustine and St Padre Pio, and I ask them to pray for me, but I will not pretend that they never had any such errors.

You say things good.

[KnightofChrist]

I see. So you accept going to dances as sinful because a couple of saints have said so.

 

I have referred a few times to St Augustine's derogatory comments on women. Here they are in full:

 

"What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman...I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children."

 

This is the opinion of a saint and a doctor of the Church, one of Christianity's foremost theologians and scholars. Would you recommend that husbands on Phatmass use this as a guide to how they should view their wives? That they are dangerous temptresses and their only worth is determined by the fact they have a womb? After all, it was written by a saint, so it must be right.

 

"Women should not be enlightened in any way. They should, in fact, be segregated as they are the cause of hideous and involuntary erections in holy men."

 

Do you attend school? If so, you need to stop. As a woman you shouldn't be educated. And I hope that you are planning to start gently encouraging a segregation policy at your church. In a non-judgmental way, of course. A saint and a prominent church figure has spoken, so it must be so. If you give such authority and weight to an unsubstantiated quotation from the Cardinal Vicar of Pius XII, how much more to St Augustine?

 

"Woman was merely man's helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God."

 

Again, the words of a saint and a scholar. We're only here to help and serve men. We don't reflect God's image.

 

Do you support these ideas? And if not, why not? If your answer is no, then you must realise that 'But St Padre Pio said so' is perhaps not a good enough reason for turning a woman away from your confessional, and 'St John Vianney thought dances were sinful' is not on its own a reason to stop going to dances.

 

If we start treating saints as though they never get it wrong, we verge on the idolatrous. No matter how holy they were, they were still human, and they had their fair share of human errors.

 

I'm about to head out the door so I cannot address all the quotes but some seem to be fake or sourceless.

 

http://www.tektonics.org/af/bogusq.html

[MarysLittleFlower]

That's because he WAS a total jerk especially to women.  Where were the special guidelines for men in line for confession? No button down shirt and tie? 

 

Saint =/= free from sin or imperfections or other privations of virtue. 

Like I said, he said that if he didn't give someone absolution, it hurt him, because he wanted to but God showed him they weren't truly repentant. We need to be truly repentant.

 

I'm not sure how this sounds like a "jerk" to me.

 

As for men, actually there was a sign on the church saying:

 

"The Church is the house of God. 
 

It is forbidden for men to enter with bare arms or in shorts.  It is forbidden for women to enter in trousers, without a veil on their head, in short clothing, low necklines, sleeveless or immodest dresses."

 

http://www.catholicmodesty.com/PadrePio.html

MarysLittleFlower,

 

As I said before, saints can be wrong. Personally I think that Padre Pio did a terrible thing by policing the dress of women who entered his confessional. I know one church in a bad area of London where all kinds of people have arrived for confession, including prostituted women, people who are absorbed in a very party lifestyle, etc. What would it be like if the priest were to turn these people away? The whole point of confession is that we are welcomed as we are, where we are. There is no minimum standard of holiness that you should have to meet before you can set foot in a confessional. Suppose a lapsed Catholic woman felt moved to go to confession one day, and was sent away by Padre Pio before she had a chance to confess before God what was on her heart? Suppose a woman who didn't actually own skirts to Padre Pio's specifications showed up, and was told to go away - even though she might have been too poor to buy any new clothes? A confessional is a good place for a priest to give advice and counsel, and if he had felt they needed guidance on modesty, he could have mentioned it there. But denying someone that sacrament is wrong. I once saw a banner outside a local church - "A saint is a sinner who keeps on trying". Padre Pio was a good man and a holy man, but like everyone else he was also a broken man, and not everything he did was perfect. I could show you quotations from saints like Augustine who argued that women are not really made in the image of God, not how men are. Are you going to argue that this is true too, because a saint said it?

 

If you hold that modesty is something objective, then it follows that women who do not abide by your modesty standard must be objectively wrong. Prefiguring these statements with things like 'Of course, I am not worthy to preach' does not necessarily make it sound any less judgmental - in fact, it sounds like theatrics, especially when you repeat these sentiments multiple times in a post. To be honest, when I read your modesty thread in VS - in which you wondered at length how it can be that all the good women around you don't seem to dress in the modest way that you do, even though you know you are so much more sinful than they are (repeated about ten times) - my initial reaction is, "Here is someone who wants to be told what a good humble Catholic she is being." I will be quite frank: you will know you are modest (insofar as any of us can know that) when it is not preoccupying your thoughts in the way it seems to be, and you no longer feel any need to compare your clothes with those of other women.

St Padre Pio could see when someone was being repentant and when they are not. You are speaking as if he just used his own opinion... but actually, St Padre Pio said this:

 "Don't you know," he asked, "what pain it costs me to shut the door on anyone?  The Lord has forced me to do so.  I do not call anyone, nor do I refuse anyone either.  There is someone else who calls and refuses them.  I am His useless tool."

 

If a person comes into confession dressed immodestly, St Padre Pio wanted them to first repent, because we can see that we need repentance for Confession. He just helped them to make a good Confession, that is all. If a person was in ignorance about modesty, St Padre Pio helped them to see and accept it and make a change in their life, to help them advance in perfection and avoid any sin.

 

Regarding your second paragraph: if you think that I have sinned, please say a prayer for me. I don't know if we can know our own intentions fully, and I'm not going to defend myself here. Do I believe that modesty is objective, yes. The reason I said that I don't want to judge other women in this is because our times are confusing and people grow up wearing these fashions and maybe this decreases their culpability, who know. that's why I said it, because I don't know what people are thinking.

 

You said that I want to be told what a good humble Catholic I am being. But I don't consider myself a good or humble Catholic. Nor do I consider myself modest or humble at heart. I'm not asking anyone to contradict me and say that I am, what would the use of this be, if I realize this about myself already. I was making a disclaimer because in saying that modesty is objective, I don't want people to feel like I'm talking about what's in their heart, but rather about our culture.. and God can judge the heart.
 

 

Modesty is so much more than "is my skirt below my knees?"

 

Yes, it is. But would you not agree that the length of a skirt does determine whether the skirt is modest or not?

 

I don't really think calling Saint Padre Pio a jerk especially to women is fair. This implies misogyny, which is obviously bad and a very big claim on a Saint. He certainly wasn't free from sin, but he is an outstanding Saint, and before we throw his image in the fire perhaps we should hold back judgement on him. He had modesty rules. So does the Vatican. The Vatican has quite strict modesty rules, in fact. If you try to go in and you don't fulfill the requirements, the Swiss Guard will tell you to take a hike and buy a skirt. I don't think he really had rules for men because men didn't really wear immodest clothing at the time (That I know of).

St Padre Pio did have rules for men, which I posted above :)

 

He also said:

 

 "Don't you know," he asked, "what pain it costs me to shut the door on anyone?  The Lord has forced me to do so.  I do not call anyone, nor do I refuse anyone either.  There is someone else who calls and refuses them.  I am His useless tool."

 

This quote helps a lot to see his point of view in this :)
 

 

 
You talk about misogyny as though it's a rare thing. It's extremely common. Trying to make out that it's rare and the preserve only of horrible people makes it that much harder to deal with. Nice guys fall into it too. Even saints. See my earlier point about St Augustine, who was far worse than Padre Pio - unless you don't consider it misogynistic to claim that women aren't made in God's image?
 
No one is suggesting that we throw Padre Pio's image in the fire. He's still a saint. But here he was wrong and he said and did things that were hurtful.
 
Having a dress code in place for the Vatican is not the same as denying someone access to a sacrament. The Vatican's situation is also slightly different in that many people go there just as tourists, and they also need to be told not to use flash photography or to be bellowing into their mobile phones. There have to be some rules in place to help people understand that this is not just any tourist attraction. Those rules are also not specific to women - and they aren't all that strict. Nor are they particularly precise. No one goes on about fingers' widths from the throat, for example.
 
There is also a right way and a wrong way to implement a dress code. At the Taize community, for example, they respectfully ask that no one come in to prayers with bare shoulders - and they provide baskets of cotton strips at all the entrances to the church, so that people who don't happen to be wearing the right kind of shirt don't need to go away again. You just take a piece of cotton and wrap it round your shoulders. That is a sensitive way to do it. No one is going to feel judged by that.
 
Men's clothing never ever has been scrutinised in the same way that women's has and this is why you don't hear of men being chastised for immodest dress in Padre Pio's day. It wasn't that all men dressed perfectly until 1968.

I disagree that what St Padre Pio did was hurtful. He did it to help souls. Sometimes it hurts to repent.. people came back and thanked him.

 

Yeah, it's a claim I'm making.   :)  You don't have to run around killing women and thinking they're the same as animals to be a misogynist.  I'm not throwing him in the fire, either.  It's just as bad to throw away a great saint because he had flaws as it is to ignore all the flaws he had.  Like Beatitude said, the modesty rules at the Vatican are different, it's a different situation.  I find it ESPECIALLY problematic (and ironic) that St.Pio would deny women the sacrament concerned with contrition and forgiveness of sin because he made a judgment about their personal conviction based solely on their clothing...And this is coming from a guy who supposedly could READ SOULS.  WHY bother with judging a woman's contrition based solely on her skirt length (or wearing a skirt at all) when you HAVE THE ABILITY to see what their true state of contrition is?  

 

If he had made all the men come to confession wearing a button down shirt and tie, then I wouldn't have as big of a problem with it, because THEN it would be clear he's trying to foster a respect for the sacrament in all people.  

He didn't make a decision solely based on their clothing, as he could read souls. Even if in their soul they had no malice, he just wanted to help them to grow in modesty.

 

The Sacrament is about forgiveness but we need repentance.. he helped souls find that repentance. 

 

He didn't judge their contrition based on the clothing, he just wanted the clothing to be modest, to help the person avoid sin.

 

And yes like I posted above, he had a rule for men too. http://www.catholicmodesty.com/PadrePio.html

[Slappo]

mi·sog·y·ny /mɪˈsɒdʒəni, maɪ-/ Show Spelled [mi-soj-uh-nee, mahy-] Show IPA

noun

hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women.

 

I have a really hard time with someone saying St. Augistine, St. Pio, or any other saint hates or dislikes women. They may

not have had complete insight on the goodness of woman, but to say their misunderstanding, harsher treatment, ec, was hatred or dislike rather than misunderstanding or ignorance? Harsh...

[MarysLittleFlower]

There is no record of Padre Pio turning anyone away from confession except women who weren't dressed according to his standard.

 

By this logic, everyone else whose confession he ever heard (and he heard thousands) must have had a spirit of contrition - except these trollops. Who all just happened to be female.

 

Our souls are sacred and only God ever knows them fully. He's the only one who can; He made them. No matter what mystical insight and wisdom Padre Pio might have had, he could not know people 'through and through', as is said in Psalm 139. I believe that Padre Pio 'read souls', but I also think that his cult has attracted many superstitious anecdotes (some of the unverified stories told about him make it sound like a low budget movie with a telepathic main character) that don't really illustrate what is meant by that term. And to give him credit, he himself never claimed that he could know the quality of a person's repentance.

 

If he said that he didn't know the quality of a person's repentance, then he didn't. But he could read souls too. He turned various people away from Confession without absolution, not just women, but people who lied or who weren't repentant. With the women who were not dressed in this way, he wanted them to be modest because he saw and believed it's an important thing. He did this out of love... why are we assuming that he did this out of something negative? It's an act of mercy to inform the ignorant and that's what he did, to help them, cause he cares for souls.

And women who wear skirts less than eight inches below the knee are automatically not penitent?

Maybe he wanted to inform them if they didn't know, to help them. And if they did know, he wanted to help them see the importance of modesty.

 

that's amesome that he helps you, and you feel a connection with him. I don't, and I don't have to have a connection with him. I'm not saying that the Church made a mistake in making him a saint, just that from many accounts that I've read of him, he acted like a jerk, especially to women. I won't apologize for my impressions. 

 

We don't have to have a special devotion to every Saint. I disagree with calling any Saint names, I'm sorry.

I see. So you accept going to dances as sinful because a couple of saints have said so.

 

I have referred a few times to St Augustine's derogatory comments on women. Here they are in full:

 

"What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman...I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children."

 

This is the opinion of a saint and a doctor of the Church, one of Christianity's foremost theologians and scholars. Would you recommend that husbands on Phatmass use this as a guide to how they should view their wives? That they are dangerous temptresses and their only worth is determined by the fact they have a womb? After all, it was written by a saint, so it must be right.

 

"Women should not be enlightened in any way. They should, in fact, be segregated as they are the cause of hideous and involuntary erections in holy men."

 

Do you attend school? If so, you need to stop. As a woman you shouldn't be educated. And I hope that you are planning to start gently encouraging a segregation policy at your church. In a non-judgmental way, of course. A saint and a prominent church figure has spoken, so it must be so. If you give such authority and weight to an unsubstantiated quotation from the Cardinal Vicar of Pius XII, how much more to St Augustine?

 

"Woman was merely man's helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God."

 

Again, the words of a saint and a scholar. We're only here to help and serve men. We don't reflect God's image.

 

Do you support these ideas? And if not, why not? If your answer is no, then you must realise that 'But St Padre Pio said so' is perhaps not a good enough reason for turning a woman away from your confessional, and 'St John Vianney thought dances were sinful' is not on its own a reason to stop going to dances.

 

If we start treating saints as though they never get it wrong, we verge on the idolatrous. No matter how holy they were, they were still human, and they had their fair share of human errors.

I don't know enough about St Augustine. I'm not going to say anything about him because I don't know. All I know about him is his conversion story which I like.

 

As for St Padre Pio, I posted the quote about what he said about turning people away. So I have only good reason to suppose that he did this for an important reason. I also have no reason to doubt St John Vianney because he was a great priest who could also read souls.. I can't preach about dances, but I can simply use his counsel in my own life.

 

I know Saints are human. I just trust the counsel of these two good priests for myself.

[the171]

I don't trust websites with bad graphic design.

[Basilisa Marie]

The quote about man being made in the image of God is real.  I just covered it in my Augustine class.  And on that note, I think it's important to point out that EVERYONE had the idea that women were subordinate to men insofar as being in the image of God back then.  Augustine did make some good "progress" on the issue.  He writes how women image god in their humanity, but not their femininity, while men image God in their humanity and their masculinity.  I still find that statement problematic, but not as "zomg I hate teh wimmins" as he often comes off to be.  

 

Welp, like I said before, if he made clothing requirements for men as well as women, I don't see it as being as much of a problem.  And seeing as he did (though obviously not to the same degree, but whatever), alright - it's not as bad as I originally thought. 

 

For me, the difference between me calling a saint a jerk and getting after people who "question" some of what the pope does is that I'm not insinuating that the saint isn't a saint because of what he did.  I know he's a saint.  It's no different than people criticizing Mother Theresa for maybe not helping the poor in ways that people thought she should have.  That's fine to hold that opinion, but no one isn't saying she's not a saint because of it.  You can criticize someone without denying them their place in the Church.  

 

Catholic v Catholic debate? I could say the same thing about Negative Criticism of other religions in ways that are harmful to ecumenical dialogue.  I trust mods to know where the line is, and enforce it when necessary - I'm not a mod, so that's not my call, and I hope the Mods take the time to educate me if something I say crosses the line, especially because like you said, sometimes it's not clear.  

Edited April 9, 2013 by Basilisa Marie

[Lil Red]

mi·sog·y·ny/mɪˈsɒdʒəni, maɪ-/ Show Spelled [mi-soj-uh-nee, mahy-] Show IPA

noun
hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women.

I have a really hard time with someone saying St. Augistine, St. Pio, or any other saint hates or dislikes women. They may
not have had complete insight on the goodness of woman, but to say their misunderstanding, harsher treatment, ec, was hatred or dislike rather than misunderstanding or ignorance? Harsh...

The problem is when men throughout history have "not had complete insight on the goodness of women", women have suffered badly for it and still do.

And yes I have heard irl, people use St. Pio's and St. Augustine's opinions as a means to put down women and be misogynistic. That has colored my perception of both of them.

Note that I never doubted or denied that either men shouldn't be saints of the Church.

[beatitude]

Misogyny refers to treatment of women as less than equal. Unpicking the etymology of the term is typically what happens when people want to sidestep an accusation of unequal treatment. "It is misogynistic when women are only judged to have worth because they can bear children..." And bam, instead of focusing on the problematic belief concerning worth, we end up homing in on the word 'misogyny'. "Well, he didn't say he HATED women, that's not fair!" Taking refuge behind semantics is not a defence and it doesn't negate the gravity of what was said about women. Saying that this saint or that saint just wasn't fully aware of 'women's goodness' trivialises all the damage and abuse that has been meted out to women over the years in the name of beliefs like this one, and it also serves to propagate the notion that misogyny is this very rare thing - not a serious widespread problem at all...

 

KoC, that website only questions the authenticity of one quotation (the one calling for segregation). Scrolling through many of the other unsavoury quotations listed, the justifications range from weak calls for context to accusations of poor translation. I think good apologetics requires being honest, especially when it comes to human frailty. A new translation of St Augustine isn't suddenly going to make him a champion of women's equality.

 

As for the reference to the discussions of the pope's foot-washing ritual and his shoes (in which I did not participate), I have this to say...it seems that some people around here find the pope's refusal of the red footwear an awful lot more disturbing and worthy of debate than the idea that women are just brood mares. Which is a little concerning.

Edited April 9, 2013 by beatitude

[Basilisa Marie]

what beatitude said. 

Edited April 9, 2013 by Basilisa Marie