02-21-2021, 03:26 PM
Chapter 4 (Part 2)
What is really wrong today is that this sense of femininity is no longer there. As women put on men’s pants and went out into the work force so their femininity went out the door. They lost their true identity, their dignity. Modesty for women is intimately tied to their femininity. As these women became mothers – working mothers – they had no femininity to pass on to their children. It was lost. Generations of girls grew into women never knowing what femininity was or is. This is the greatest loss that pants and working women have caused to society. Modesty is not simply the wearing of dresses but also the femininity that the wearing of dresses helps to bring out in a woman. What do we think of when we think of our mothers but warmth, comfort and safety? Women cannot give that same comfort if they think and act like men. The intention of this book is not to get women to wear dresses, so that they are obeying the “letter of the law” – but that they will stop the wearing of pants so that they may lift their hearts toward the beauty of the femininity that is buried deep within them!
Is it not strange how in such a short period of time, the 2000+ years of feminine dressing for women has changed – that pants have become so commonplace today when they were all but unheard of just sixty or so years ago? This change to pants for women has caused a very quick slide into tight jeans, leggings and “hot pants,” not to mention all the mini and micro skirts and string bikinis. Once the floodgates were opened, all the rest simply followed. Just read the wonderful wisdom of Giuseppe Cardinal Siri in Genoa, Italy in 1960 addressing Men’s Dress Worn by Women. (See this important document in Appendix Three). He writes, “The wearing of men’s dress by women affects firstly, the woman herself, by changing the feminine psychology proper to women….show(ing) clearly that male dress is the visible aid to bringing about a mental attitude of being ‘like a man.’….since ever since men have been men the clothing a person wears, demands, imposes and modifies that person’s gesture’s attitudes and behavior, such that from merely being worn on the outside, clothing comes to imposes a particular frame of mind inside…….add(ing) that man’s dress always more or less indicates her reacting to her femininity as though it is inferiority when in fact it is only diversity. The perversion of her psychology is clear to be seen.” Is this not thought provoking coming from a member of the Church on the subject of women wearing men’s pants? His insight, was so clear and he hit the subject from an angle that we cannot dispute. Everywhere we look today we see the results of this loss of femininity in society. Femininity and motherhood go hand in hand and with the loss of femininity the natural instincts of motherhood all but disappeared too. Girls growing up in a defeminized culture have not developed the protective instincts natural to a mother and this has helped to endanger the life of the unborn. This diabolical anti-life mentality causes mothers to invade their own wombs and kill the life God placed within them! Regaining femininity may help to stem the tide of the high rate of abortions by helping women to see the beauty in motherhood and revive the protective instinct that most women would have had naturally. I’m not saying it will stop every abortion, but if it stops even one, is that one life not worth the small price?
Let us read some more… “Second, it (wearing of pants) affects the woman as wife of her husband, by tending to vitiate relationships between the sexes…The essential basis of this attraction…between the sexes…is a diversity…If then this ‘diversity’ becomes less obvious because one of its major external signs is eliminated and the normal psychological structure is weakened, what results is the alteration of a fundamental factor in the relationship.” As we know external signs are taken very seriously in the Church and have always been used to express our inner convictions and to help form our interior disposition. 9.
“The problem goes further still. Mutual attraction between the sexes is precedent naturally, and in order of time, by that sense of shame which holds the rising instincts in check, imposes upon them, and tends to lift to a higher level of mutual esteem and healthy fear everything that those instincts would push onwards to uncontrolled acts. To change that clothing which by its diversity reveals and upholds nature’s limits and defense works, is to flatten out the distinctions and to help pull down the vital defense-works of the sense of shame.” 9.
As we know, today shame has been turned inside out. Society is no longer ashamed of public nudity, promiscuity or scandalous clothing. What is shameful now are people who abuse animals, are over-religious, have too many children or live-in dire poverty. Should we be ashamed of living a visible faith shown in our practice of modesty, or ashamed of the public displays which are sending more souls to Hell than ever before?
“Thirdly, it affects the woman as mother of her children by harming her dignity in her children’s eyes…All children have the instinct for the sense of dignity and decorum of their mother…we would do well to recall the mind (to) the severe demands that children instinctively make of their own mother, and the deep and even terrible reactions roused in them by observation of their mother’s misbehavior. Many lines of later life are here traced out – and not for good – in these early inner dramas of infancy and childhood. The child may not know the definition of exposure, frivolity or infidelity, but he possesses an instinctive sixth sense to recognize them when they occur, to suffer from them, and be bitterly wounded in his soul….Changing the feminine psychology does fundamental and, in the long run, irreparable damage to the family, to conjugal fidelity, to human affections and to human society…To sum up, wherever women wear men’s dress, it is to be considered a factor in the long run tearing apart human order.” While working women don their pants each morning and head off to work, is it any wonder now that divorce rates are the highest they have ever been and common-law marriage is the norm? 9.
What eye opening ideas. This gives us a clue to the chaos of the world in which we live. Bishop de Castro Mayer said that trousers are worse than mini skirts because, “while the mini-skirt is sensual and attacks the senses, the trousers are ideological and attack man’s highest spiritual faculty, the mind…For indeed women’s trousers, as worn today, short or long, modest or immodest, tight or loose, open or disguised (like culottes), are an assault upon women’s womanhood and so they represent a deep lying revolt against the order willed by God…of course not every woman putting on a pair of shorts is consciously thinking of defying God or defying her menfolk. She is, however, conscious of something. She is clearly aware that divided shorts are not like an undivided skirt, and the difference is that abandoning the skirt gives her a vague feeling – surely of unease, or emancipation, or both…What is that feeling based on?” 9B.
I can say that I can personally relate to this statement and when I read it, it caused me to see things more clearly than I had before. Looking back now, I can clearly see the difference in my attitude. Most women would probably agree with me when I say that I accomplished more work in a day when I wore pants. Although, I never believed in the feminist movement, per se, I had a vague feeling of ‘control’ when I wore pants. A greater sense of self confidence, I would venture to say, a kind of pride. Some people may say that is good. But, this self confidence was from the world and not from God and so like a house of cards it could come tumbling down at any moment. For even the Bible tells us, “Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence thereof: but he that doth the will of God, abideth forever.” 1 John 2:15, 17. But more than that, when one feels on top of the world, full of himself, where is there room for God? It is only when we are humbled and needy that we seek Him out and reach out to Him. And wearing long dresses is one of the best acts of humility that a woman could practice. It is a wonderful opportunity for us to be humbled in an age of pride! I could firmly see this as I began to wear skirts and for the first time felt a sense of peace about me. Wearing pants may have helped me accomplish more work, but that work was done as a man would have done it. As I walked about the garden and felt the skirt around my legs I felt a great and overwhelming reverence for God, a great sense of gratitude for my life, for my womanhood. This feeling has never left me and my changing to dresses has done more to my spiritual life than all the years I spent in pants. I eventually learned to accomplish just as much in a skirt, but in a more feminine way, as perhaps Our Blessed Lady would have done, contemplatively. It is not something that is easy to put into words, so when I read Cardinal Siri’s writing I was amazed at how he managed to say it for me.
External practices in the Church are important and the many that we, as Catholics, practice such as, genuflecting, making the sign of the cross, or praying the rosary are all ways that we engage ourselves in an action that is supposed to be engaging our wills. Is it any wonder then that the wearing of long dresses as an external sign of our modesty will, in fact, benefit our interior life, our spiritual growth? You only need commit to the wearing of long dresses for, say, a month, all the while saying the rosary and wearing the brown scapular. You will soon learn that what you thought was a hindrance, was really a blessing in disguise!