On Christians In The World
From the so-called “Letter to Diognetus“:
Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign..
…Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body’s hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself.
Filed under: Catholicism
“Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs.”
To a point, of course. Christians do what they can to conform without compromising their faith. This letter dates to around 125 A.D. There were obviously many “customs” at that time in which the Christians did NOT participate. The blood sports of the arena, for example. Must’ve been hard to explain to their neighbors why they would be staying home when the whole city was gorging themselves on bloodlust. Likewise, the lasciviousness of the public baths and the temples.
Let’s imagine that they had television in those days and didn’t need to go to the arena or the temple to satisfy their lusts or sinful curiosities. Do you suppose the Christians would have approved of the electronic version?
“They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life.”
125 A.D. was 200 years before Constantine. The letter obviously takes no account of 1500 years of Christendom, during which time Christians did, indeed, inhabit their own cities and create their own enclaves in non-Christian lands. The letter does not take into account the Church’s subsequent theology of missions, in which Christian villages and towns were created not only to shield their residents from the degradations, temptations, and persecutions of the surrounding culture, but also to provide a base of evangelization and a model of Christian community life for the world to behold.
“With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign…”
Again, even a cursory review of patristic literature will reveal that there are limits to this conformity. You might start with St. Peter, the first pope, and his instructions to women (1 Pet 3:1-4):
“In like manner also let wives be subject to their husbands: that if any believe not the word, they may be won without the word, by the conversation of the wives. Considering your chaste conversation with fear. Whose adorning let it not be the outward plaiting of the hair, or the wearing of gold, or the putting on of apparel: But the hidden man of the heart in the incorruptibility of a quiet and a meek spirit, which is rich in the sight of God.”
Or St. Paul in 1 Tim 2:9:
“In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; but (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.”
But the Bible is for fundamentalists, right? So let’s move on to the saints and doctors of the Church. For example, St. John Chrysostom’s Homily on 1 Timothy is enough to make even the Amish squirm. Here’s the link:
http://www.piney.com/FathJohnChrysosHomVIII.html
St. Thomas Aquinas is nuanced and a little more lenient, but not by much:
http://www.fisheaters.com/modestyinsumma.html
Etc. Anyone who takes seriously the teachings of the fathers, doctors, and saints with respect to dress is going to stand out from the world these days. Now I grant that those who try take these teachings seriously will not always get everything right. As St. Thomas makes clear, there is no absolute prohibition on “adornment” in every circumstance. But I have yet to meet an “Amish Catholic” mom in a prairie skirt who would not put on a formal gown, some jewelry and a bit of make-up when circumstances called for it. Neither would she deny that other women in other circumstances might dress more fashionably on a regular basis without sin.
Where we live, standards have fallen so low that any woman in a skirt is considered to be dressed “formally”. The females in my household are often thought to be “dressing up” when they are really just wearing everyday clothes
If your women want to wear make up, jewelry, and fancy clothes all the time, in a modest way, go right ahead. We Amish Catholics promise not to shun you, talk smack about you, or whisper mean things when you leave the room. We think anyone who attempts to take Christian standards of dress seriously is to be commended. It would be nice if our fellow trads would return the sentiment.
If your women want to wear make up, jewelry, and fancy clothes all the time, in a modest way, go right ahead. We Amish Catholics promise not to shun you, talk smack about you, or whisper mean things when you leave the room. We think anyone who attempts to take Christian standards of dress seriously is to be commended. It would be nice if our fellow trads would return the sentiment.
What’s this all about? Is this a reaction to something specific, or a rejection of straightforward scrutiny?
The problem with creating an echo chamber is that those within it can start to get really sensitive about any criticism.
I’ve listened for a very long time to people who want to scold those of us who don’t think that cutting ourselves off from the world and adopting customs that, however well-intentioned, make us inaccessible to the people who most need conversion. Much of the scolding has been regarding externals.
I hold a contrary view, and find that with prudence, adopting those acceptable customs of our contemporaries without falling prey to excess gives us the opportunity to speak to those who ARE immersed in the culture. So much of the externals of dress and culture are a product of the times, and we suffer no more from immodesty or crude entertainment than the early Christians did in the Roman Empire.
Your arguments from scripture miss the mark, I’m afraid. They are not to be understood as proscriptions against dressing nicely, or even against modest (and not ostentatious decoration.) They are about not appropriating to ourselves what rightly belongs to God. Considering the cultural context of the passages you cite, one imagines that it was hardly common for gold, pearls, and costly array to belong to any but the wealthiest of Christians and those most prone to the sort of vanity that went along with societal status in those days. The emperor, after all, wanted people to believe he was a god. So did Herod.
Cardinal Newman argues this in his sermons, and speaks directly to the issue of fine garments and decorations:
“Does it not strike you, then, as extreme presumption, and a sort of sacrilege, to consecrate them to any one’s glory but God’s? If we saw things aright, could there be a more frightful spectacle, an instance of more complete self-worship, a more detestable idolatry, than men and women making themselves fine that others might admire them? keeping all these things for self, denying them to the rightful Owner? viewing them as if mere works of “nature,” as they are sometimes called, and incapable of any religious purpose? Recollect Herod; he was smitten by the Angel and eaten of worms, because he gave not God the glory; and how did he withhold it? By arraying himself in royal apparel, making an oration, and being patient of the cry, “It is the voice of a god and not of a man.” The royal apparel was imputed to him as a sin, because he used it, not to remind himself that he was God’s minister, but to impress upon the people that he was a god. And every one, high and low, who is in the practice of dressing ostentatiously, whether in silk or in cotton, that is, every one who dresses to be looked at and admired, is using God’s gifts for an idol’s service, and offering them up to self.
No; let us master this great and simple truth, that all rich materials and productions of this world, being God’s property, are intended for God’s service; and sin only, nothing but sin, turns them to a different purpose. {310} All things are His; He in His bounty has allowed us to take freely of all that is in the world, for food, clothing, and lodging; He allows us a large range, He afflicts us not by harsh restrictions; He gives us a discretionary use, for which we are answerable to Him alone.”
Making an attempt to look nice is not to be confused with trying to steal God’s glory for our own.
Further, your citation from Chrysostom reads as a warning to women not to engage in those customs which incite lust; he directs his criticism at the notion of adopting the style of a courtesan or an adulteress, particularly for those women who desire virtue. Again, however, judging this requires cultural context.
When my wife wears makeup, she’s not painted like a harlot. Most women who wear makeup with discretion do so in such a way that it merely enhances their natural beauty. The same goes for jewelry. To be ostentatious or lascivious is one thing, to attempt an appropriate and refined presentation is another (and to be commended, in my view, over an intentional affectation for plainness or homeliness.)
Thomas Aquinas, in the passage you cited, does little to bolster your argument either. He argues that “if a married woman adorn herself in order to please her husband she can do this without sin.” Of course, he too cautions that women should approach this modestly, and that the unmarried need to be particularly careful in this regard. I do not disagree.
What is modest now, however, is different than what was modest at another time. Modesty itself is largely a manifestation of the culture.
This is why we must attentively seek to observe what is objective from the teachings of the fathers, doctors and saints and not merely what is subjective, or, proper to the culture of the time. If modesty objectively seeks to avoid inciting lust and the appropriation of glory to self that belongs to God then we can draw our own conclusions about how to best accomplish that as regards the culture we live in.
Considering the general acceptance of immodesty we are surrounded with, showing a dedication to modesty without losing all reference to taste and style puts us in a better situation with which to address that culture.
A girl in a miniskirt may listen to fashion tips from a woman in an stylish but modest dress; however, if she is lectured by a woman wearing a shapeless, ugly jumper that does nothing to flatter and is unattractive on the surface, her opinion is more likely to be “that woman obviously knows nothing about good taste in fashion, so I can discount anything she says as obviously wrong.”
This is not distant from the argument Nicolosi makes regarding movies - “As with so many other mediocre Christian movies, the only “message” that Hollywood will get if Bella does well, is that the Christian audience has no idea what a good movie is and will rave about anything that remotely mirrors our world-view. ”
To speak to this world, we have to be believable. We can’t infiltrate a society we shun wholesale, we can only operate from the outside.
Then again, I don’t think everything in the modern culture is bad. Maybe much of it, even most of it is, but that really is nothing new.
I just wasted an hour typing an excruciatingly long reply which never made it past the server. Probably a chastisement for me, an act of divine Providence. This argument was not meant to continue. God bless.
Same thing happened to me the other day. Apparently God has infiltrated my site host.
I’ve attempted to post several long replies on this and the previous post on this subject, all of which suffered the same fate as both of your posts.
I think this argument has involved a great deal of “talking past” each other. When I read Mr. Skojec’s, and Hilary White’s, posts on the subject, I thought they were arguing for a kind of acquiescance to our culture.
I don’t believe either of them support that. I also know that I don’t support having all women wear shapeless ugly things. I react against rejecting anything from our rich, Catholic cultural tradition: as far as I’m concerned, if a Catholic wants to dress like people did in the fifteenth century, he or she has every right to it (social circumstances, of course, might render it inappropriate or ostentatious, but there is nothing intrinsically wrong with dressing “unfashionably.)
I think our criteria should not be “does this appeal to modern people” nor “is this what they did back in my grand/great grand/great great great great great grand/ parents day.” Rather, our criteria should be whether at thing is good and beneficial.