Dear Abbey

No shoes, no shirts, no Communion.

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I don't know why I didn't think of this before - but when blogging becomes a problem I think I'll do a Dear Abbey column. Send me questions - as you always do - and this time I may answer some of them. The following is a variation on a frequently asked question concerning appropriate attire for Mass:

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Dear Terry - err Abbey,

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My friend and I go running every Sunday morning and stop at the Cathedral for the earliest Mass on our run by. During the summer my friend insists we wear t-shirts if we are stopping in - we have on running shorts of course - nevertheless people stare at us even though we sit off to the side and in the back. This is the best time for us to attend Mass - is our attire inappropriate? Should we skip Mass rather than attend in our running clothes? The Romans who converted to Christianity must have worn togas to Mass - that's kind of a joke - but I've seen photos of mountaineers in their gear assisting at Mass - isn't our condition similar?

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Signed,

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Don Sichspaque.

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Dear Don,

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I'm no authority so my comments are simply my POV - always ask your priest for direction and questions regarding the faith. Until you do however, let me say right off I think it is wonderful that you and your friend consider it so important to attend Mass on Sunday - in a time when so many people do not. Although to some it may seem you are squeezing it in, I suspect you attend Mass more out of devotion than a sense of obligation, which is also to be commended.

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That said, if you assist at Mass attentively and devoutly I personally see nothing wrong with how you are dressed, as long as you are covered, and the running clothes were an exception - not your regular habit. Of course many people will disagree with me on that one, and they really do have a point.

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I gotta say, I like your toga excuse though - I used it myself when I'd go to Mass wearing shorts - but it doesn't fly in our culture - even though everyone seems to wear shorts - they just don't cut it for formal occasions. Formal dress is not required at Mass of course, but being suitably covered is - for the sake of modesty and respect for the presence of God. In fact, even if one is just making a visit to the Blessed Sacrament or dropping in to light a candle, a runner or biker should always have a shirt on over his shorts - church is not clothing optional.

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In warmer climates and throughout the summer women and men do attend Mass wearing shorts in the US, and if they are modest, it doesn't bother me. But it is not up to me either - it is up to the priest to enforce dress code, albeit difficult to do with vacationing visitors. As many people know, raincoats are handed out to immodestly dressed tourists at St. Peter's in Rome, but Americans resent authority far too much to put up with that practice here.

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So anyway, to answer your main question while ignoring all the other issues it raises, it would be better for you and your friend to at least wear long pants and a shirt to Mass, and maybe postpone your run. Readjust your schedule - perhaps you could even attend Mass the evening before or later in the day on Sunday.

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Incidentally, I think I saw the two of you that one really hot Sunday when you weren't wearing shirts, outside doing your stretches on the Dayton side of the church - I'm glad you didn't go in undressed like that.

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Keep the faith buddy!

Status and class... kinda.

Oprah.

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I watched Oprah yesterday when I got home - I know! I'm low-class. Although I tell people I'm a pop-cultural anthropologist some days, and I must monitor television shows for my research - fact checking purposes and all of that you know. Mizz Oprah's show was on class, upper-class, middle-class, lower-class, and places in-between. (Such topics were the subject of many an acid trip when I was a very young man.)

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Oprah's discussion centered around the recession and the impact it is making upon the classes; lower-upper-class dropping to upper-middle-class, middle-class dropping to lower-class and so on.

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Two things apparently agreed upon which determine class are money and education, to be upper class one needs both, although one could make it with just education, or a profession, and not have to rely on money alone. That is why people like initials after their name. Money alone doesn't usually make someone upper-class however. Case in point, Rodney Dangerfield's character in Caddy Shack, although he did go back to school in another film I think.

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The recession and the subsequent unemployment of many, really is a wake up call for the pretentious. And who in the United States isn't pretentious? Probably a Carmelite nun, but very few others.

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Similar to a guest on Oprah, I have an acquaintance who owned a successful hair salon in an upscale part of town. (Not in Minnesota.) He is married with two children, living in an affluent suburb, in an over-sized house, 3 cars, well designed interiors, and so on. The family recently celebrated a wedding for one of the daughters, the price tag was in the 6 figure range. The family dressed in designer clothes, dined at the most fashionable restaurants, and entertained lavishly. Mr. X had arrived, all because he cut and styled the hair of the local elite. Indeed, the family considered themselves to be part of the upper class, until the business went bust due to the credit crunch and those wicked Wall Street losses. They had been living beyond maxed-out on credit cards, and they lost the house because they defaulted on their mortgage and home equity loans - the same story with the business.

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The hairdresser had imagined himself on the same level as his truly upper class clients who suddenly disappeared from his social calendar. Similar stories are coming out from many of the professions and classes.

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On the other hand, some people seem to be moving up. One of Oprah's guests was a Deli worker, who moved out of the ghetto into a middle class suburban apartment. Oprah really came off putting down the woman's under-class former neighborhood, and congratulating the woman for movin' on up. The woman's apartment was nicely furnished, but I had to wonder if she did it on credit, seeing that she was only able to get the apartment through Government subsidy. If she loses her deli job, I have to imagine she will lose the apartment as well.

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So what is my point? Very simple. Oprah likes that class differential. She contributed to the illusion by congratulating the deli employee for moving on up. She is perpetuating the myth.

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What we own, how much money we have, where we live, or how many degrees we posses mean nothing in the end. True riches are within, it is not what we have, but what we are that matters.

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Hopefully, the recession will help more people come to their senses. But do pray for those who are suffering the effects.

Friends through thick and thin.

Yesterday I had lunch with a couple of friends from my group - we have all been friends since grade school. I consider them to be my very close friends, closer than family: Married with children, Catholic, and Italian. Just a couple of us are single, and white. It was fun to get together with them, but the time went way too fast.

Marge

St. Margaret of Cortona

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After she got old and ugly from penance, her friends called her Marge, although when she was younger and living with her lover, friends called her Peg - short for Peggy.

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May 16 is the feast day of St. Margaret of Cortona. Margaret had a great appreciation for her own version of theology of the body, and lived with her lover without benefit of marriage. Her beloved was a dazzlingly good looking rich nobleman, to whom she bore a son. She and Romeo loved dogs, and when they weren't drunk or making love, or dressing up for parties, her boyfriend went hunting - at least that is what he told Peg.

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One day their dog, Mr. Giustini came home and told Margaret - Peg - to get her coat and come with him. Margaret was rather busy at the time doing a bikini wax, but she put on some clothes and followed Mr. Giustini, shouting at him, "Not so fast! Not so fast darling, I'm spilling my Prosecco all over myself." Finally she took one last gulp, threw her cigarette aside, and ran after the dog.

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Poor dog was crying and pacing in a clearing in the middle of the woods. Peg saw something that resembled a naked man and thought Romeo had sent for her to have a little tryst in the woods - just as foreplay of course. As she neared the body, she recoiled in horror and disgust, her lover had been beaten severely, almost beyond recognition... he had been brutally murdered... mafia style.

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Okay, so I made up some of the details, but Margaret really did discover her murdered lover's body, and this led to her repentance - which was sudden, although the process took several years. In fact, in her exile in Cortona, she sought admission to the Third Order of St. Francis, but the friars put her off for 3 years - to test the sincerity of her repentance and conversion. (Our Lord even spoke to her and instructed her to go to Cortona - Gosh! She was having visions and everything - yet the friars dared to make her wait - and wait she did. She didn't sue or protest or defiantly assert her right to be a secular Franciscan - nope - she just put up with it and was obedient. I know!)

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Interesting isn't it? The poor woman repented - she practiced severe penance - and she even renounced her former way of life. While going through months of anguish in her conversion, she found herself very nearly destitute, abandoned by former friends and family, yet she still had to wait three more years before being admitted just to the novitiate. Think of it - some Catholic bloggers, and on occasion, a few other converts in the news, haven't even been a Catholic that long, and yet they are preaching to the world and demanding the Church change Her teaching on this and that.

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Now to read an accurate account of the glorious penitent St. Margaret of Cortona, click here or here.

Women wearing pants.

Men dressing women.

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Since most fashion designers seem to be male, one can get the idea that men dictate what women should wear. This may be true on some level, but wearing pants has clearly become a woman's choice and often times a preferential option. (Thanks to women like Coco Chanel.) Fundamentalist Christians and Mormons, as well as some traditionally minded Catholics, consider women wearing pants to be wrong, some claiming it an abomination to the Lord, citing Biblical texts, especially Deuteronomy 22:5, and other passages elsewhere. "A woman shall not wear an article of clothing proper to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's dress..." - Deuteronomy 22:5

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Anyway. It is very difficult to use this text as an objection for the way men and women dress today - except in the case of drag queens perhaps - but I'm not going there. In ancient times both men and women wore tunics. Proper dress for a woman was a veil or some sort of head covering, and maybe a little pomegranate juice on her lips, with a little oil/wax and lapis powder mixture for eye shadow, along with a soft charcoal eyeliner. Seriously, I think - not sure though - proper dress for a woman was just more modest than for a man - yet they both wore 'dresses'. (Men in tunics or kilts were actually the only ones to wear short skirts.)

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Much later - this is for Catholics - nuns and monks wore exactly the same habits - only the monks did not wear veils. That said, Eastern Orthodox priests sometimes do wear a veil - I know! Of course, Canon Law instructed women to cover their heads in church, but it is no longer binding - although, once again, some say it is. When it was binding, women wore anything from a piece of Kleenex to a scarf, to a mantilla, or more often in WASP country, a hat. Of course, Hassidic Jewish women must have their head covered as well, and many wear stylish wigs to do so. I digress.

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Catholic Fundamentalism?

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So, do some men dictate what a woman should wear? I knew a young lady whose fiancee asked her to start wearing a chapel veil to church, I only found this out because I saw her shopping for one. Teasing her about it she said to me, "I know, but he wants me to try it." After getting married, they are pretty traddy - although I am sure she still wears pants and jeans - not to Mass of course. Some trad guys permit their wives to wear pants in certain circumstances. Some trad women just do so - if they want to. I honestly can't believe this is still an issue with people - but it is.

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What piqued my attention to this topic was the following comment I found on another blog discussing the difficulties some people may experience getting used to the TLM (Extraordinary Form of Mass). Responding to the writer expressing such difficulties, a commenter answered:

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"I love that she" (the writer with the problem) "has put so much time into this. And, her reaction is perfectly normal.

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My wife and I years ago had that reaction at first, but we also couldn’t stomach going to the novus ordo so we kept going. And now we cannot fathom life without it.

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And these reactions won’t stop here.

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Once she’s going regularly, she’ll have people suggest she covers her head for Mass and she may reject it. And there will be people suggest she wears a dress or skirt and not pants and she’ll possibly reject that as well. But, slowly, she’ll come to see the beauty behind both practices and lovingly accept them and urge new ladies just like her to do the same.

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Then, years down the road, if she marries, the traditional ladies will urge her to not work as mothers shouldn’t outside the home, to reject contraception, etc." (Further on, in another comment, the writer suggests women who attend the Ordinary Form of Mass practice contraception, "Yet most who attend Mass outside a TLM are contracepting. No need to debate it—facts are facts.")

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He continues, "She may struggle with that as well but the TLM and all the graces it provides will help her through that if she has struggles." - Source

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Another commenter - I think I know who she is - responded to this husband's remarks saying: "Working outside the home? Sorry, but in this economy, your mileage may vary. If it’s simply a question of adopting a simpler lifestyle maybe, but I know plenty of traditional couples where the wife works some hours outside the home. It’s not a “career choice” so that they can spend lavishly, it’s by necessity. It all depends on what your attitudes are toward marriage, children and work. Obviously what kind of work matters too. And women wearing pants? Give me a break! There are practical as well as aesthetic reasons for people’s dress choices. As long as modesty prevails who cares? We aren’t Amish or old church Quakers."

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(Actually, Quakers are quite liberal and most have no problem with these issues.)

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Last week I posted a video from a 1950's television show, Mr. and Mrs. North. In that episode, Mrs. North was signing up for modeling classes - just to improve her posture, hair, make-up, and fashion sense. As she was signing the paperwork Mrs. North was asked, "Will your husband permit you to do this?" I laughed because few people would ever ask a woman of today such a thing, except maybe in a church basement, while she and the other women were serving coffee and donuts to the men. (Which is why I titled that particular post, "Brick by brick" - LOL.)

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All of that said - I see nothing wrong with women wearing pants - anywhere - ever. As I said earlier, I cannot even believe it is an issue in this day and age.

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Art: An early example of women wearing pants. Women wearing pants really came into its own in the 20th century, especially during WWII when it became more practical for them to do so.

When they came for the Trads, I remained silent...

New World Order Stuff

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German authorities are raiding the homes of neo-Nazis, confiscating things like music and leather accessories (I made the accessory part up.). Sounds crazy? Read on:

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More than 60 years after World War Two and the Nazi Holocaust, right-wing radicalism is still a problem in Germany:

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German police have launched a nationwide search of more than 200 homes and businesses of people suspected of belonging to the country's extreme right, the Federal Crime Office (BKA) said Wednesday.

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"The primary aim of the concerted action by crime fighting authorities is to seize and confiscate prohibited items like music in order to move effectively and extensively against the spread of right wing extremism," the BKA said in a statement. - Source

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Yes, I realize what the issues are in Germany, I have relatives who have lived there for decades, I understand all things Nazi are pretty much illegal. Nevertheless, it occurred to me this type of control could easily happen to other groups - in Germany or elsewhere. What if the Government started raiding Life-care centers, or people's farms in Wisconsin? I have composed an updated version of the Niemoller poem to emphasize my point...

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When they came for the Communists,

I remained silent,

I was not a Democrat.

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When the they came for the Branch Davidians,

I remained silent;

I was not a Branch Davidian.

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When they locked up the the Mormon children,

I remained silent;

I was not a polygamist.

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When they came for the neo-Nazis,

I did not speak out;

I was not a into leather.

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When they came for the SSPX,

I did not speak out;

I was not a bishop.

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When they came for the women of The View,

I did not speak out;

I was not menopausal.

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When they came for the contestants of American Idol,

I did not speak out;

I just laughed.

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When they came for the Homeschoolers,

I remained silent;

I hate denim jumpers.

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When they came for me,

there was no one left to speak out;

That's just typical!

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Photo: Miami Gay Men's Chorus.

Wish I had said that.

Oh! I did!

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Our Word is a terribly respectable blog, usually found on highly esteemed blogrolls, written by genuinely ardent Catholics (unlike some people, they would never use that term themselves). In fact Our Word was once a strictly Catholic blog, but I suppose one could say the blog owners branched out, becoming even more catholic; in effect, offering a decidedly Catholic point of view and commentary upon contemporary culture, politics and the arts.

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The real life authors post well composed articles dealing with opera, popular culture, literary works, cinema, Broadway, news headlines, as well as Catholic interests, and sports stuff that I don't get. Omigosh! They write political commentary too. Their posts are frequently without pictures, so I haven't a clue as to what they are about unless I recognize names such as Ethel Merman or Fred Astair or Helena Rubenstein - I wonder what happened to her? Maybe that will be my next post if they ask me back. But be forewarned, some of their posts can be dense - I know because I count all the words - their word(s) - and quite honestly, there are usually more than I can handle. Except for when they do a post titled "Wish I'd said that" - it's usually a pithy quote from someone well known - really easy to read, and I sometimes get it too.

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Anyway. Judith's husband Mitchell asked me to contribute something to their wonderfully enjoyable, yet hi-brow blog, and I did. (They're slumming again!) Please check it out, it is all about Red Carpet Kulture - well sort of - the blog format contains lots of red. (I know, makes no sense.) Sorry - no photos, you will just have to read it.