To Educators intending truly to follow Christian Doctrine.1
I
The first signs of our late arriving
spring indicate that there is this year a certain increase in the use of men's
dress by girls and women, even family mothers. Up until 1959, in Genoa, such
dress usually meant the person was a tourist, but now it seems to be a
significant number of girls and women from Genoa itself who are choosing at
least on pleasure trips to wear men's dress (men's trousers).
The extension of this behavior obliges us
to take serious thought, and we ask those to whom this Notification is addressed
to kindly lend to the problem all the attention it deserves from anyone aware of
being in any way responsible before God.
We seek above all to give a balanced
moral judgment upon the wearing of men's dress by women. In fact Our thoughts
can only bear upon the moral question.2
Firstly, when it comes to covering of the
female body, the wearing of men's trousers by women cannot be said to constitute
AS SUCH A GRAVE OFFENSE AGAINST MODESTY, because trousers certainly cover more
of woman's body than do modern women's skirts.
Secondly, however, clothes to be modest need not only to
cover the body but also not to cling too closely to the body.3 Now
it is true that much feminine clothing today clings closer than do some
trousers, but trousers can be made to cling closer, in fact generally they do,
so the tight fit of such clothing gives us not less grounds for concern than
does exposure of the body. So the immodesty of men's trousers on women is an
aspect of the problem which is not to be left out of an over-all judgment upon
them, even if it is not to be artificially exaggerated either.
II
However, it is a different aspect of
women's wearing of men's trousers which seems to us the gravest.4
The wearing of men's dress by women
affects firstly the woman herself, by changing the feminine psychology proper to
women; secondly it affects the woman as wife of her husband, by tending to
vitiate relationships between the sexes; thirdly it affects the woman as mother
of her children by harming her dignity in her children's eyes. Each of these
points is to be carefully considered in turn:--
A. MALE DRESS CHANGES THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMAN.
In truth, the motive impelling women to
wear men's dress is always that of imitating, nay, of competing with, the man
who is considered stronger, less tied down, more independent. This motivation
shows clearly that male dress is the visible aid to bringing about a mental
attitude of being "like a man."5 Secondly, ever since men have been
men, the clothing a person wears, demands, imposes and modifies that person's
gestures, attitudes and behavior, such that from merely being worn outside,
clothing comes to impose a particular frame of mind inside.
Then let us add that woman wearing 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.6
These reasons, summing up many more, are
enough to warn us how wrongly women are made to think by the wearing of men's
dress.
B. MALE DRESS TENDS TO VITIATE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN
WOMEN AND MEN.
In truth when relationships between the
two sexes unfold with the coming of age, an instinct of mutual attraction is
predominant. The essential basis of this attraction is a diversity between the
two sexes which is made possible only by their complementing or completing one
another. If then this "diversity" becomes less obvious because one of its major
external signs is eliminated and because the normal psychological structure is
weakened, what results is the alteration of a fundamental factor in the
relationship.
The problem goes further still.
Mutual attraction between the sexes is preceded both naturally, and in order of
time, by that sense of shame which holds the rising instincts in check, imposes
respect 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.
It is at least to hinder that sense. And when the sense of
shame is hindered from putting on the brakes, then relationships between man and
women sink degradingly down to pure sensuality, devoid of all mutual respect or
esteem.
Experience is there to tell us that when
woman is de-feminized, then defenses are undermined and weakness increases.7
C. MALE DRESS HARMS THE DIGNITY OF THE MOTHER IN HER
CHILDREN'S EYES.
All children have an instinct for the
sense of dignity and decorum of their mother. Analysis of the first inner
crisis of children when they awaken to life around them even before they enter
upon adolescence, shows how much the sense of their mother counts. Children are
as sensitive as can be on this point. Adults have usually left all that behind
them and think no more on it. But we would do well to recall to mind 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
by them in his soul.
III
Let us think seriously on the import of
everything said so far, even if woman's appearing in man's dress does not
immediately give rise to all the upset caused by grave immodesty.
The changing of feminine psychology does
fundamental and, in the long run, irreparable damage to the family, to conjugal
fidelity, to human affections and to human society.8 True, the
effects of wearing unsuitable dress are not all to be seen within a short time.
But one must think of what is being slowly and insidiously worn down, torn
apart, perverted.
Is any satisfying reciprocity between
husband and wife imaginable, if feminine psychology be changed? Or is any true
education of children imaginable, which is so delicate in its procedure, so
woven of imponderable factors in which the mother's intuition and instinct play
the decisive part in those tender years? What will these women be able to give
their children when they will so long have worn trousers that their self-esteem
goes more by their competing with the men than by their functioning as women?
Why, we ask, ever since men have been
men, or rather since they became civilized -- why have men in all times and
places been irresistibly borne to make a differentiated division between the
functions of the two sexes? Do we not have here strict testimony to the
recognition by all mankind of a truth and a law above man?
To sum up, wherever women wear men's
dress, it is to be considered a factor in the long run tearing apart human
order.
IV
The logical consequence of everything
presented so far is that anyone in a position of responsibility should be
possessed by a SENSE of ALARM in the true and proper meaning of the word, a
severe and decisive ALARM.9
We address a grave warning to parish
priests, to all priests in general and to confessors in particular, to members
of every kind of association, to all religious, to all nuns, especially to
teaching Sisters.
We invite them to become clearly
conscious of the problem so that action will follow. This consciousness is what
matters. It will suggest the appropriate action in due time. But let it not
counsel us to give way in the face of inevitable change, as though we are
confronted by a natural evolution of mankind, and so on!
Men may come and men may go, because God
has left plenty of room for the to and fro of their free-will; but the
substantial lines of nature and the not less substantial lines of Eternal Law
have never changed, are not changing and never will change. There are bounds
beyond which one may stray as far as one sees fit, but to do so ends in death10;
there are limits which empty philosophical fantasizing may have one mock or not
take seriously, but they put together an alliance of hard facts and nature to
chastise anybody who steps over them. And history has sufficiently taught, with
frightening proof from the life and death of nations, that the reply to all
violators of the outline of "humanity" is always, sooner or later, catastrophe.
From the dialectic of Hegel onwards, we
have had dinned in our ears what are nothing but fables, and by dint of hearing
them so often, many people end up by getting used to them, if only passively.
But the truth of the matter is that Nature and Truth, and the Law bound up in
both, go their imperturbable way, and they cut to pieces the simpletons who upon
no grounds whatsoever believe in radical and far-reaching changes in the very
structure of man.11
The consequences of such violations are
not a new outline of man, but disorders, hurtful instability of all kinds, the
frightening dryness of human souls, the shattering increase in the number of
human castaways, driven long since out of people's sight and mind to live out
their decline in boredom, sadness and rejection. Aligned on the wrecking of the
eternal norms are to be found the broken families, lives cut short before their
time, hearths and homes gone cold, old people cast to one side, youngsters
willfully degenerate and -- at the end of the line -- souls in despair and
taking their own lives. All of which human wreckage gives witness to the fact
that the "line of God" does not give way, nor does it admit of any
adaptation to
the delirious dreams of the so-called philosophers! 12
V
We have said that those to whom the
present Notification is addressed are invited to take serious alarm at the
problem in hand. Accordingly they know what they have to say, starting with
little girls on their mother's knee.
They know that without exaggerating or
turning into fanatics, they will need to strictly limit how far they tolerate
women dressing like men, as a general rule.
They know they must never be so weak as
to let anyone believe that they turn a blind eye to a custom which is slipping
downhill and undermining the moral standing of all institutions.
They, the priests, know that the line
they have to take in the confessional, while not holding women dressing like men
to be automatically a grave fault, must be sharp and decisive.13
Everybody will kindly give thought to the
need for a united line of action, reinforced on every side by the cooperation of
all men of good will and all enlightened minds, so as to create a true dam to
hold back the flood.
Those of you responsible for souls in
whatever capacity understand how useful it is to have for allies in this
defensive campaign men of the arts, the media and the crafts. The position
taken by fashion design houses, their brilliant designers and the clothing
industry, is of crucial importance in this whole question. Artistic sense,
refinement and good taste meeting together can find suitable but dignified
solution as to the dress for women to wear when they must use a motorcycle or
engage in this or that exercise or work. What matters is to preserve modesty
together with the eternal sense of femininity, that femininity which more than
anything else all children will continue to associate with the face of their
mother.14
We do not deny that modern life sets
problems and makes requirements unknown to our grandparents. But we state that
there are values more needing to be protected than fleeting experiences, and
that for anybody of intelligence there are always good sense and good taste
enough to find acceptable and dignified solutions to problems as they come up.13
Out of charity we are fighting against
the flattening out of mankind, against the attack upon those differences on
which rests the complementarity of man and woman.
When we see a woman in trousers, we
should think not so much of her as of all mankind, of what it will be when women
will have masculinized themselves for good. Nobody stands to gain by helping to
bring about a future age of vagueness, ambiguity, imperfection and, in a word,
monstrosities.15
This letter of Ours is not addressed to
the public, but to those responsible for souls, for education, for Catholic
associations. Let them do their duty, and let them not be sentries caught
asleep at their post while evil crept in.