Be Modest at Church in Four Easy Steps

This topic has been in my head for a while, and I was waiting for fall so no one would be embarrassed.  But this article here got my attention, courtesy of I think maybe Fr. Z or the Pulp.it or maybe both — primarily thanks to my being wound up late at night and goofing off.

What I see at Mass — and of course out in the wider world — is that a lot of really good Catholics don’t have a clue about modesty.  These are super wonderful people. Kind, pious, regular mass-goers who are living out the Christian life day after day.  And honestly?  They are trying to be modest.

–> My experience is that the people who struggle most in the two-few-clothes department are the more pure among us. It doesn’t occur to them just how weak their fellows can be.  It’s like putting out giant trays of brownies because it just never occurs to you that some people will be tempted to eat too many.  (But some of us?  Yes we will be.)

***

But our culture’s at the point where vendors of athletic clothing think nothing of mailing out catalogs with ladies in their bras on the cover.  And not a sports bra.  I mean, underwear-underwear, done pin-up style.

[Hint to businesses:  If my son has to carry in a picture of a seductively-posed almost-naked lady from the mailbox, I am never buying your products again.  Did I say that clearly enough?]

And that was the event today that made me decide it was time to share the Four Easy Steps.  Because when you live in a world where everybody everywhere is forgetting to put their clothes on, it’s really hard to know what’s modest and what’s not.  And all the great essays about “Put on your clothes! But it’s really about internal holiness and don’t be judgmental!” don’t really help, if no one will tell you which clothes you are missing.

So here you go, Four Easy Steps for Dressing Modestly at Mass:

1. Cover your shoulders.
2. Cover your knees.
3. Don’t show any cleavage.
4. Tailored is good, tight is bad.

And that’s it.  Follow those rules, and you will have to really goof it up to not be wearing enough clothes.

Now for some clarifications.  Consider this the advanced course:

1.  Actually I don’t think bare shoulders are always and everywhere a near occasion to sin.  Witness what I wore to my dad’s wedding, and what my own daughters wore last May for the crowning of the Blessed Mother.  This can be done modestly, or modestly-enough.  Lots of not-immodest sleeveless outfits at my church.  But it is so, so easy to go wrong.  And it’s just not worth agonizing over.  Put on a little sweater and you know you’re good.  Buy something with sleeves, you’re good.  Why argue about strap thickness when it so, so easy to just be sure?

UPDATED to point you to a quote in the combox.  A reader asked about sleeve length.  I gave it my guess, and then asked the guys for an opinion.  Christian LeBlanc came to the rescue with his usual no-nonsense analysis:

Short or long sleeves, either is ok.

No sleeves starts to distract. Thin straps/ bare shoulders/ bare backs distract more.

It has to do with the amount of skin, I think, even though the skin exposed is basically mundane.

–> So there you go.  Not just me makin’ things up to repress the masses.  Guys notice this stuff.  Be kind to them.  They are trying to pray.

(And anway, you know you are freezing at church. They set the A/C so that poor man saying Mass in all those vestments on a 105 degree day doesn’t fall over.)

2.  Ditto for knees.  I did a quick look-around the last couple weeks, and sure enough, there are tons of ladies at my parish wearing just-above-the-knee skirts that were perfectly modest.  The trouble is this:  It’s really hard for the modern-media-saturated brain to distinguish between the skirt that is long enough, and the one that is not.  Who runs around with a ruler in hand, figuring out the perfect modesty formula?  Knees, on the other hand . . . almost everyone has knees.  They are easy to identify, so you can tell right away whether they are visible or not.

–> Once again, this is a rule I don’t always follow.  (See “Dad’s wedding” above.  Plus of course in regular outside-of-Mass life, I wear shorts.  It’s summer.  Shorts.  Summer. Shorts.  They go together.)  But you know, I’d be willing to sacrifice an outfit or two, in my fictional world where parishes made dress codes, if it meant my son doesn’t have to look at swimsuit models at church.   Cover the knees at Mass and it’s hard to go wrong.

3.  Cleavage.  Cover. The. Cleavage.  Do you know what that part of your body is for?  It is for feeding your baby.  Do you know that when you walk into Mass with those girls on display, it makes nursing babies and toddlers hungry?  And it attracts other attention as well.  Do you honestly want people salivating at the sight of you? As in, actual drool?  Are you ready to feed the masses to whom you are advertising?  No.  Save it for your own baby.

This is a rule for 100% of the time, everywhere you go.  Fabric is your friend.  Cover the cleavage.

[Perfectly fine to be actually feeding a person during Mass.  If that person if your offspring, not yet to the age of reason.  Good, holy, necessary thing to do.  With the cleavage covered.]

4.  Tailored yes, tight, no.  This is another pretty firm rule.  Okay, so my daughters were telling me today that my t-shirt was tight, and I promise it was not, but, you know there’s a few decades there where the ol’ body stockpiles emergency calories just in case, and so yeah, there is a certain subgroup for whom staying ahead of the fitted-versus-tight curve is kind of a challenge.  I suppose we need to fast more.  But even with that allowance made, yes there should be some measurable amount of air between your body and your outer garments.

These aren’t rules for all time.  These are rules that work for 2011 in most parishes in the United States.  They err on the conservative side, not because I think you need to be extra-conservative, but just to make things really silly easy.

If you are currently wearing not that many clothes to Mass, give them a try.  You can say some lady on the internet dared you do it.

You’ll be more comfortable indoors when the A/C is set too high, but you won’t be too hot standing outside on the patio after Mass, chatting with your friends.  You’ll attract the attention of the kinds of men and boys you actually want to meet.  The ones who care about you, and see you as a real live person, not just as a pin-up model or an underwear catalog.  Mothers of teenage sons will thank you.

Try it.  What can it hurt?