Posted on 05/30/2003 11:43:43 PM PDT by Theosis
I find this very implausible. My great-grandmother was still alive when I was young, and I assume I am roughly the same age as you. She was a farmer's wife and still lived on a farm where she had a coal stove, a small orchard and was raising several grandchildren into her nineties. She never wore pants until the day she died.
I grew up on swim teams, and yet I always felt uncomfortable about the suits. They always seemed very immodest, although it was something subliminal for me. But watching the Olympics were even worse. They always wore practically nothing, even compared to our normal Speedos.
Now it turns out that all the talk about how these immodest suits were necessary for competitive reasons was all a bunch of bunk. Instead the most modest suits are the most competitive. They've had to actually pass rules against the new all-body suits because they give such an advantage.
That swimmer from Ireland appeared out of nowhere and won a bunch of upset Olympic medals that made people suspect that she was cheating. But one of her advantages was that she was one of the first to go to the all-body bathing suit which is now known to be significantly faster.
This could be my mom exactly (although she's only 69). But she is the first to admit that she fell for quite a few "warped ideas" in the seventies. She followed the lead of the liberal church, and now she's paying for it by seeing several of her children married outside the church, etc. She has come back partially to a more traditional catholicism, but it's almost impossible to eliminate all the effects. One of them is terrible taste in styles. Most women look horrible in pants, especially ones with elastic waists. My mother, for all of her saintly qualities, is no exception.
I'm afraid you've picked a bad topic with which to bash the SSPX. These 3 priests from Winona were the ones who were welcomed with open arms into the diocese of Scranton where they intended to create a "medieval community." Instead they were found to be committing gross sexual imposition and almost trashed the good name of the FSSP because of their association in Scranton. The bishop of Scranton has suffered terribly over his imprudent decision to wlecome these renegades, and the only group that comes off smelling like a rose is the SSPX which kicked this guy out of the seminary twice.
Most men look horrible in pants, too, especially with 70% of us overweight.
Elastic is in the top five of the best inventions, ever.
This is mildly amusing, but actually you've hit the nail on the head. Traditional girls are where it's at! My daughters are beautiful and holy and pure in heart and in action. They have guys practically fainting all around them. Any real man wants to marry someone like this. Someone who has never slept around, someone who will create a home for himself and his children which is dedicated to the worship and the service of God, someone who is willing to sacrifice herself for the good of those around her. Someone who is chaste and modest. They are indeed worthy of a "price above rubies." And there are several other girls like that in our parish.
Any man or boy who could even look at skanky Brittney-wannabes without experiencing retching symptoms after meeting a few traditional girls is not worth trying to save.
This is presumption. The Church only prospers or withers because of grace, not due to the deeds of any members. It will neither rally nor concede defeat because of our activities, but only because of the holiness of all its members. And by the way, the Church is NOT rallying, it is sinking ever deeper. So I wouldn't consider it prudent to claim credit one way or another.
What Williamson said was that if you personally want to do something about abortion, make your own personal statement by not wearing un-feminine clothes. If you personally were to wear only skirts and dresses, you would be making a statement about femininity and your nature as a woman -- that it is intrinsically different from a man's. This is a positive step towards a culture where the murder of the unborn is unthinkable.
Cardinal Siri of Genoa (who twice was the leading candidate for pope) wrote the following excellent essay on the problem of women wearing men's clothes. He wrote this before abortion became widespread, which proves how prescient he was:
NOTIFICATION CONCERNING MEN'S DRESS WORN BY WOMEN
This reminds me of the story of the man who bought a defunct farm, overgrown with weeds and foliage. The man hoed and tilled, and brought in a huge crop.
When the pastor came to dinner, he commented "Well, the Lord and you have done a tremendous job with this farm."
To which the farmer replied, "Well, you shoulda seen it when the Lord had it all to Himself."
I think that their sexual misdeeds were limited to sleeping in the same bed as some of their students and young acquaintances. I am unfamiliar with any actual impropriety of a sexual nature, but there were certainly other types of inappropriate behavior as well as the sharing the bed.
Curious. Why do you know the details of this?
This is certainly interesting from a cultural perspective. Was this St. Louis and what decade would it be? If your recollection is from your childhood, and you're as young as you say, then it would have to be the eighties, by which time virtually everyone's great-grandmother might have been wearing pants.
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