Cathologic IV part - IV. Erroneous Bodily and Material Forms of Our Culture Jan Moniak

 Autor: Jan Moniak

IV. Erroneous Bodily and Material Forms of Our Culture

“Bodily gesture, as such, is a bearer of spiritual meaning — of adoration, without which the gesture itself would be meaningless.
The spiritual act must, by its very nature and by the body–soul unity of the human person, necessarily express itself in a bodily gesture.”
— Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy

“A doctrine that detaches the moral act from its bodily dimensions contradicts the teaching of Scripture and Tradition. It revives, in new form, the old errors the Church has always fought, for in their view the human person is nothing but ‘spiritual’ freedom, purely formal. This reductionist vision ignores the moral significance of the body and of the acts connected with it (cf. 1 Cor 6:19).
Saint Paul declares that neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the licentious, nor men who lie with men, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven (cf. 1 Cor 6:9–10).
The Council of Trent confirms this condemnation, recognizing as ‘mortal sins’ and ‘wicked practices’ certain concrete acts whose voluntary commission deprives believers of their promised inheritance.
For body and soul are inseparable: within the human person, in the subject who acts voluntarily and in the deed consciously performed, they persevere together or perish together.”
— John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor

“The medium is the message.”
— Marshall McLuhan

For this reason, the popular saying
“what matters most is what’s in the heart — form doesn’t matter, only content”
is illegitimate.

To invent the dilemma “either form or content” is to distort the very essence of the Heart.
The heart expresses the unity of body and soul, form and content, the whole essence of the human being, the integrity of the person.
In the Old Testament, the heart is the seat not only of feelings and love, but also of reason.

The human being is material, and part of his earthly condition is that — bound to matter — he can transmit, remember, and read meaning only through material forms.
All creation is one great form.
It is from these structures — which are necessarily structures of matter — that we read meaning, that we perceive sense.

And the one Sense of all reality, and therefore of all its elements, is its Creator, who assigns each its proper order, its proper place within the structure of being.

It is precisely forms that educate us.

Everything is good, for everything is created by God.
But everything also has its proper place.
Proper place is purity.
Earth is dirt only when, for example, it ends up on a person’s clothing.
Purity is Order — the Order whose transgression is evil.

Free will, given to persons, made it possible to transgress the proper place.
This is what evil consists in: introducing good creatures into disorder.

Thus, the critique of customs, of states of matter intertwined with spirit, does not arise from considering matter evil (as moral critics are often accused), but quite the opposite.
Such critique is an attempt to defend the body and the elements of matter from being thrown into chaos, from being torn away from their proper place — from the sphere God assigned them in the Act of Creation.

This sphere has the character of relations within the structure of elements.
There are, no doubt, infinitely many good possibilities —
infinitely many, but not arbitrary.
Only those possibilities that fall within the criteria, within the boundaries God has designated as proper.

The Dispute Over Form and Content in the Church

Some members of the Church uncritically adopt entertainments, fashions, and behaviors popular in the world.
They justify this by saying: “God created the body, therefore it is good, and so we must praise Him using these convenient, widespread forms.”

But when you criticize a certain style of dress, or a dance, or a type of music, they accuse you of believing the human body is evil — of being a “Manichaean.”
And you cannot out‑argue them.
They will insist they know better than you what you think.

When you clarify that the moral value of the body obliges us to avoid some forms and preserve others, they suddenly leap to the claim that “what matters is not the outside but the heart,” that “form doesn’t matter, only content.”
I call this a sudden leap because moments earlier they were insisting on the opposite: that the body is good.

For if, according to them, material form — “what is on the outside” — did not matter, they could not claim it has no moral significance.

When you tell them to choose — either the body and matter have value, or they “do not matter” — they reply that one must keep moderation, the golden mean.

And then you notice that this is precisely what you are arguing.

So where is the problem?

The problem is that not all moderation is the same.
I dare suppose that those who eagerly embrace every fashion and entertainment understand moderation quantitatively: a little dancing, a little rosary, mix it all together, shake it, and voilà — a “balanced,” explosive cocktail.
No matter the relations between the elements, whether they are compatible, whether they are in their proper place.
What matters is that they are mixed “for balance.”
A kind of pluralism.

But if you mix bricks, cement, and sand haphazardly, you do not get a house — you get a pile of rubble.
If you buy expensive furniture, curtains, clothes, carpets, and scatter them randomly, you get an expensive trash heap.
If you handle a good stone or a piece of iron carelessly, you can kill someone.
If you mix fire with wood — “a bit of this, a bit of that” — you get a fire.

Everything has its place, and that place must be defended.

In one case we have chaos — a formless mass.
In the other, Cosmos — Order.
Cosmos is qualitative moderation: the proper place of everything.

The sacred in relation to the profane.
The body in relation to the spirit.
Body to body.
Sound to sound.
Clothing to the body.
Sound to the body.

But what is this proper place?

The “disorderists” assume that the moral value of the body and its acts entitles us to uncritically accept whatever material forms the world proposes.
This is faulty reasoning.
The moral value of the body entitles us to nothing of the sort.
On the contrary — it obliges us to protect the proper states of matter from distortion.

In practice (despite their declarations), the “disorderists” assign moral value to the mere requirement of conforming to whatever expressive forms and trends currently reach people — the “Spirit of the Age.”
Criticizing fashions, entertainments, or moral shifts seems to them wrong, improper.
They present — almost as a dogma, without argument — the conviction that certain changes cannot be avoided, that we must submit to them.

One could also say that in affirming the moral value of matter, they forget that matter can be disordered, impure; that actions and their material expressions have moral weight.

Uncritical acceptance of worldly forms could be justified only if we considered matter neither good nor evil, but morally neutral.
If we do not claim this, and yet we accept worldly fashions uncritically, we fall into contradiction.

Such inversion is, in essence, the claim that religion must submit uncritically to the forms approved by the world, and has no right to criticize or correct them.
But religion is a set of principles that tell us what is good and what is evil — what God wills and what He does not will.
These principles are given precisely because the world violates them, and therefore the world must conform to them.

Today, however, the world wants religion to conform to its principles.
Man wants to take God’s place, and give God his own place — to create God as he pleases, as convenient.
This is the ultimate contradiction.
A hellish one.

What we call religion ceases to be religion, and the religious function is taken over by the unarticulated proposals of the world.

For religion, by its very nature, sets the pattern to which the world as a whole must conform — rejecting what contradicts it and preserving what accords with it.

Today, however, whatever is convenient, whatever the world proposes, is defended uncritically with the argument that God created the world and matter.
And whatever does not fit is rejected with the claim that matter is good, but its shape “does not matter,” and therefore it cannot be required to change in the name of religious values.

Let us decide. [2011]

Does the Moral Value of Human Actions Depend on Cultural Context?

“(…) One cannot deny that the human being always exists within a particular culture, but it is equally true that he is not exhausted by that culture.
Indeed, the very fact that cultures develop shows that in man there is something that transcends culture.
This ‘something’ is precisely human nature: it is the measure of culture, and it is thanks to it that man does not become a prisoner of any of his cultures, but strengthens his personal dignity by living in accordance with the deep truth of his being.
To question the existence of stable structural elements of the human person, connected also with his bodily dimension, would not only contradict universal experience, but would render unintelligible the fact that Jesus appeals to ‘the beginning’ precisely in a dispute about certain moral norms whose original meaning and role had been distorted by the social and cultural conditions of the time (cf. Mt 19:1–9).
In this sense, ‘the Church maintains (…) that beneath all changes there are many things that do not change, and that have their ultimate foundation in Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.’
He is the ‘Beginning,’ who, having assumed human nature, definitively revealed its constitutive elements and its dynamism of love for God and neighbor.
Of course, one must seek and find ever more adequate formulations of universal and permanent moral norms, so that they correspond more fittingly to different cultural contexts, so that they can better express their unchanging relevance in every historical moment, and so that they allow the truth contained in them to be rightly understood and interpreted.
This truth of the moral law, like the truth of the ‘deposit of faith,’ unfolds gradually over the centuries: the norms expressing it remain in force in their essence, but must be clarified and defined eodem sensu eademque sententia in light of historical circumstances by the Magisterium of the Church, whose decisions are preceded and supported by the process of reading and formulating these norms in the minds of believers and within theological reflection.”
— John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor

One may speak of context as the whole that determines the meaning of particular cultural forms, but one may also speak of many contexts — concrete situations within a given culture.

There is that which transcends our earthly existence,
which we can symbolize,
that is, through the material, point toward a meaning that surpasses matter.

Yet there is also that which does not transcend us —
the material, the immanent —
and it too has value, it has meaning in itself.
This meaning arises from the fact that God created matter and foresaw for it
a particular order — a structure — a form.

He must therefore have foreseen for its elements
a particular place within that order —
a proper place —
which, by the very interconnectedness of all elements of the Cosmos,
consists in a particular relation to the other elements of that Order.

This “proper place of things” is what we call purity.
For earth becomes dirt only when it ends up on a person’s clothing.
Before that, it was not dirt, because it was in its proper place.

Therefore certain forms of material reality require criteria, stable principles indicating order and action in relation to other beings — that is, purity.

We may consider the elements of matter as arrangements of smaller elements — as relations and reactions occurring among them.
But we may also consider what we visibly distinguish as individual wholes.
Atoms are elements of matter and exist in relation to other atoms.
But atoms themselves consist of smaller elements.
The human body also enters into reactions and relations with other elements — with other bodies and things — and necessarily has a place in relation to the rest of the world of which it is a part.
Yet it too has elements, and those elements have elements… and so on without end.

Thus there exists a proper order — one arising from the Creator’s perspective — of relations (and within them, reactions) between bodies.

A child can always be taught contexts different from those currently fashionable, different cultural frameworks, different meanings.
For it is in necessarily relative — because environment‑dependent — upbringing that a child acquires its understanding of the world.
But even here human cognitive relativity is a limitation: it causes us to overlook the enduring, non‑relative morality — the stable truth about how reality ought to look, and therefore how concrete relations between people, clothing, and situations ought to look.

Our culture has unfortunately attached to whatever attracts us and requires no effort the label “natural need, free choice,” while to whatever requires effort it has attached the label “oppression by artificial law, constraint by rules.”
This applies also to other elements of culture and mentality, unfortunately embraced enthusiastically by many good Christians who, I trust, are rather victims — people I wish to help in achieving their own goals.
For what the culture presents to them as the realization of those goals is, in reality (though disguised), their negation.

We often do not know this.
And when we do learn it, we must warn others.
If I learn of some evil, I cannot remain silent.
I cannot refrain from examining, from creating a good alternative culture.
It does not matter that my efforts are a drop in the ocean.
In the end, the ocean is made of drops.
And if there are no drops, there will be no ocean.

I hope others will want to help me in seeking the paths to Truth.

By abandoning the shaping of the forms of our lives as manifestations of the Divine Order, we surrender them to unconscious “orderings” — very often exploited by ideologies and profit‑driven centers.
Through cultural forms — fashions, novelties, entertainments — which we mistakenly consider morally neutral, they can smuggle in meanings that gradually reshape our thinking so that we choose what benefits those promoting these ideologies, even when it contradicts our previous faith.

“For if someone does not live as he believes, he begins to believe as he lives.”
— Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen [2011]

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The division between anti‑ritualism and ritualism overlaps, to a large extent, with the division between ecstatic and controlled religions.
The former can, in a broad simplification, be described — following Nietzsche — as Dionysian, and the latter as Apollonian.
The Dionysian type rests, among other things, on the predominance of trance‑like experiences, on liberation from order‑form and from institution.

As Mary Douglas wrote, linking the role of trance with an anti‑ritualistic tendency (a tendency incompatible with Catholicism):

“Trance, as a form of separation, will be all the more accepted and embraced the weaker the structuring of the community.”[1]

Perhaps this is why cultural forms that fit into this trance‑orientation enjoy such wide acceptance today — for example, concerts built upon ecstatic musical experiences, which Cardinal Ratzinger explicitly recognized as incompatible with Christianity:

“Let us think, for example, of the Dionysian type of religion and its music, of which Plato spoke from his religious and philosophical point of view. In more than one form of religion, music serves intoxication, ecstasy. The liberation of humanity from all constraints — toward which man’s hunger for infinity tends — is to be achieved through sacred frenzy, through the madness of rhythm and instruments. Such music breaks down the barriers of individuality and personality; man frees himself in it from the burden of consciousness. Music becomes ecstasy, liberation from one’s own ‘I,’ union with the universe. A secularized return of this type is experienced today in rock and pop music, whose festivals are an anti‑cult moving in the same direction — a lust for destruction, the abolition of everyday boundaries, and the illusion of liberation from one’s ‘I’ in the wild ecstasy of noise and mass. These are forms of liberation akin to the effects of intoxicants and fundamentally opposed to the Christian faith in salvation.”[2]

Once we understand the mechanism of contrast and gradualism (resembling the well‑known “Overton Window”), we cease to be surprised that what was once rightly recognized as the beginning of the dissolution of traditional order — various rock, disco, or techno festivals — is today remembered with sentiment and treated by many as an expression of some “European civilization.”

A similar posture appears in Pentecostal and “charismatic” circles, and in certain Protestant communities, in the so‑called “outpourings of the Spirit,” where one encounters orgiastic scenes, convulsive bodily movements, and incoherent babbling.
Modern popular music was born precisely in such conditions:

“For Pentecostals, as the name itself suggests, the greatest gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of tongues, which enables understanding, the gift of seeing the future, and healing. Paradoxically, the gift of tongues manifests itself through completely unintelligible babble and shouts of ‘Alleluia.’ The less it can be understood, the clearer the proof that the speaker has lost consciousness and has no control over what is being transmitted. Lack of articulation is considered proof of divine inspiration. Likewise, ‘dancing in the Spirit,’ involuntary spinning and stomping without the involvement of the will, tics, spasms, tremors — these are signs of blessing.”[3]

Michael Ventura, in his study of the history of rock music, traces the genealogy of the term to the rituals of Black slaves in the American South.
The preacher’s rocking referred to ecstatic, rhythmic psalm‑singing in which the entire community participated.
Already at the turn of the century — and likely earlier — the term “rocking in church” existed.
When in church people sang or even shouted Black spirituals, clapped in rhythm, sweated profusely, fainted, spoke in tongues, rose up, and felt themselves “liberated,” this was understood as the presence of the Holy Spirit.
This was church‑rock.
This was the rock on which that church (the Protestant denominations of the American South) was built — more than on the rock of Peter.
The cries of enthusiasm that resounded were neither cries of pleasure nor cries of death, but fused into one…
The singing of Little Richard, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Bruce Springsteen — all these cries derive directly from those churches.
The Berlin theologian Rolf Fischer described in detail the occurrence of such “ecstasy‑like states akin to intoxication,” once present in liturgy and now sought in rock concerts.[4]

The connection between anti‑ritualism and various forms of ecstatic behavior is also visible in the acceptance of social dances that transgress the culturally established boundaries of bodily distance.
A hallmark of ecstatic experience is precisely the loss of sensual boundaries.

One may debate whether such behaviors fall under the category of “trance,” yet it is clear that criticism of them — just like criticism of immodest dress and conduct — has faded as anti‑ritualistic tendencies have strengthened within the Church.

We remember the criticism of the polka, the waltz, the tango, the “new Negro dances,” immodest clothing, beach culture, and so on.
The Church has always opposed Dionysian dances and rites, but as it lost control over culture, it was forced to confront a world shaped by an anti‑Catholic, autonomizing model — the model that produced the “Roaring Twenties” and the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Even within the Church these changes were accepted, as seen in the practical interpretation of so‑called inculturation.
In its name, elements of various folk cultures — including music and dance — are introduced into the Liturgy, even when they belong to ecstatic religious forms incompatible with Catholicism, while the very rules shared with traditional folk ritual (rules necessary for the proper reception of the Mass) are discarded.

Thus we witness a strange inversion:
rejecting from folk cultures what helps one believe, and embracing what contradicts the faith.
Alongside the adoption of “Dionysian” forms of worship, there is a simultaneous criticism of old folk piety as supposedly a disguised tangle of pagan beliefs.

What a harmful inconsistency. [2012]

Distorted Forms of Our Culture

The four maladies of the West mentioned earlier manifested themselves also in the gradual transformation of the forms of life — they were both their consequence and their cause. Each fed the other. Thus:

Autonomism justified secularism — the stripping of religion of its overarching, all‑permeating character in everyday reality.
Secularism, in turn, made it possible to contest everything that religion had previously generated in customs, actions, and practice.
Then a feedback loop emerged: the change in customs, to which people gradually became accustomed, made them cease to understand religion as a superior and all‑embracing system.
And so the wheel accelerated.
The idea fueled the action; the action justified and reinforced the idea.

Anti‑formalism, combined with anti‑traditionalism, pushed people still attached to religion to betray the established formulas that required effort, discipline, and the “ecclesiality” of religion — all under the influence of a perennial temptation, reinforced by the claim that “form does not matter,” that form is “relative.”
Institutionalization and the rituals imposed by tradition were increasingly perceived — under the mental schema of a falsely understood personal freedom — as a kind of enslavement.

This led people toward a religiosity of their own widzimisię — “everyone for himself,” “as my emotions tell me,” “unshackled by hierarchy and external forms.”
The result was both chaos and susceptibility to manipulation: it became easy to smuggle in emotionally attractive forms, to shape people’s feelings, which they then called “the depth of the heart.”
Easy — because by repeating that “form does not matter,” they ceased to control it.
They began to accept any random, mass‑propagated form as the expression of their inner depth.

This temptation had always existed, but it had been restrained precisely by tradition — by the forms that kept the content of faith in order.
People ceased to understand the logic of this hierarchy and the obedience tied to it.
Thus the subsequent commands of the Institution ceased to be taken seriously by increasingly broad circles of society.

Worse still: at a certain point the Institution itself began to absorb this anti‑institutionalism and anti‑ritualism — various configurations of the four Western maladies — and thus began, in effect, to fight against itself. [2020]

The elements that formed the foundation of the moral revolution were, in most cases, the dismantling of the foundations of various traditional cultures — both elite and folk.
Their destruction — carried out also by ideologies and by the new socio‑economic order — was meant to be one of the ways of overthrowing religion, which stood as an obstacle to making temporal pleasure and material gain ends in themselves.

And although these revolutionary transformations are the main subject of this reflection — as the most intensified manifestation of the struggle against that Church which we earlier recognized as a rational mode of integral existence — similar forms of negating religious principles have appeared throughout history.

For this reason the Church and her representatives sought to uproot from within their own fold those customs in which the four aforementioned maladies manifested themselves — maladies that struck at the three healthy principles opposed to them:
the systemic nature of the world and culture,
formality,
and traditionality (submission to the laws imposed upon the world by the Creator, and upon cultures and societies by the ancestors).

Thus the Church has always condemned those dances, entertainments, and forms of dress that contradicted the mystery of Form crowning the process of creation — the human body.
This applied especially to the body of the woman — the Crown of Creation.

What was the contradiction inherent in these forms?
It was like stubbornly pressing the button that closes the door and waiting for the door to open.
(I repeat myself because we are dealing with the same erroneous pattern of thought.)
It was the pursuit of the timeless Reality — the Holy — while simultaneously moving away from it through immodesty and trance‑like ecstasies that only seemed to liberate from time.
In reality they were a liberation from Order — from the Cosmos — from the proper place of things, by falling into indistinguishable chaos.
And chaos makes freedom impossible — for where there is no distinction, there is no choice.

One may say that the erroneous patterns described earlier — relativism, the ignoring of the value of material forms, pluralism, and the so‑called worldview neutrality that reduces religion to niches — began to develop after the turbulent transformations of the nineteenth century and during the moral revolutions of the twentieth.
One may observe that alongside these ideological shifts came moral transformations whose strength grew in parallel with the spread of those patterns.
One may even suspect a connection between the ideological background and the practical, moral realization of these new ways of life.

Anyone with even a modest knowledge of history will admit that these moral transformations included, for example:

• the change in the traditional role of the woman,
• the abandonment of her obedience to her husband and the consequences that followed,
• transformations in clothing, especially women’s clothing,
• the abandonment of classical artistic rules in favor of chaos and amorphism,
• the divorce of ethics from aesthetics,
• new dances,
• the loosening of beach customs,
• the rise and development of rock’n’roll and many other forms of twentieth‑century popular music.

I do not hesitate to state that between all these transformations and the ideological shifts criticized earlier there existed — and still exists — a feedback loop, a strict interdependence.

And how did these transformations unfold?
Like this:

At the beginning of the twentieth century, women had to take over the occupations of their husbands during the war.
The long duration of this substitution began to blur in their minds the need for the previous division of roles between the sexes.
As a result, the mystery of the woman — a mystery that expressed her extraordinary dignity, rooted in the fact that it is in her body that the Creation of a Person in the Image of God takes place — began to lose its significance.
Perhaps this is why the word niewiasta (a term expressing this dignity) began to be replaced by kobieta —In the 16th century, the Polish word kobieta was used in a pejorative sense.

One theory, presented by Aleksander Brückner, derives it from the words kob (“pigsty,” “trough”) or koby (“mare”), suggesting associations with domestic or animal-related tasks.

The distinction lost its meaning because the practice had changed.

(I add, in 2021, that just as the current “plandemic” is a pretext for the method of shock — so that later, by contrast, the boundary may be shifted slightly and gradually move toward greater tolerance of enslavement — so the wartime circumstances were a pretext for shifting the boundaries of morality.
Just as the alleged pandemic is a pretext for the supposedly temporary practice of giving Communion in the hand, so too it may be a pretext for accustoming people to a practice contrary to the previous norm — a practice they would not have accepted so easily without the creation of frightening circumstances.)

At the end of that war (1917), Our Lady of Fatima warned against fashions that greatly offend God and that, according to her words, were soon to come.

And indeed, immediately after the war came the so‑called “Roaring Twenties,” in which uncontrolled consumption was strongly linked to phenomena such as:

• the contestation of the traditional role of the woman,
• the gradual introduction of new fashions breaking the age‑old canons of women’s dress — shortening garments, women imitating men in manner and behavior,
• the spread of dances that violated long‑established norms of modesty and decorum,
• the spread of coeducation (the mixing of sexes) in schools, in the workplace, in church pews, and finally in immodest entertainments, on beaches and in bathing areas, along with increasingly bold swimwear.

The Church reacted to each of these developments, as will be shown later.

During this time, atheization and moral dissolution increased dramatically, especially among the upper classes.
A witness to this was St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe, who repeated the words given decades earlier to Wanda Malczewska, emphasizing the need for the separation of men and women:

“Let associations of women be formed — and separate ones for men — of various states, but of one spirit, under the protection of My Immaculate Mother, for the purpose of combating impurity and promoting the virtue of chastity and defending it. Whoever loves God and the fatherland, I implore him by My cruel scourging and crowning with thorns, let him become a member of this association — let him guard the virtue of chastity himself and combat impurity, encouraging others to do the same.”

Another wave of moral transformation came after the next war, after the complete collapse of moral order.
This time it affected the broader masses and instilled in the rest of society the transformations of the previous era.

Then came the turn of the New Music: “Beat’n’roll” (let us call it that, since the devotees of another name are so disturbed by its use that they cannot continue reading):

• carrying in its musical and kinetic structure the meaning contained in its name — licentiousness,
• acting through the combination of rhythm, harmony, and bass progression in a manner similar to intoxicants — disturbing consciousness and therefore moral judgment, which is a powerful aid to relativism,
• developing through the search for inspiration in shamanistic currents with similar effects,
• saturated with occult and satanic content hidden behind symbolic masks,
• diversified into numerous genres, obscuring their mutual connection and thus concealing the real effect of the music,
• complemented by studio techniques, lighting effects, and dances with similar impact.

The transformations listed above have become the principle of our life — something obvious and transparent like air.
They convey certain ideologies with extraordinary suggestiveness, but they themselves were permitted only because the seeds of those ideologies had already been sown in people’s minds.

And it is precisely these moral transformations — and their correction — that I will now focus on.
On several examples: the body, clothing, dance, beach culture, and music.
[2011]

The Bouillon‑Cube Effect

The new devices and stimuli characteristic of mass culture resemble the action of flavor‑enhancers in contemporary cooking.
Someone accustomed to artificial boosters — to excessive sugar, to unnaturally high amounts of glutamates and other “umami” activators — will perceive the taste of dishes lacking these additives as “weak.”
Unless, for a time, he forces himself to break his habits, denies himself, undertakes the effort of refusing all these things in a kind of detox or ascetic discipline.
Then part of his natural sense of taste may return.

The same happens in music: we are dealing with enhancers — synthetically boosted sound frequencies, but also carefully engineered rhythm and beat — through which traditional musical means appear bland and weak, treated merely as an interlude.

The idealization of the human body in crypto‑ and non‑crypto‑pornographic scenes in film and advertising functions as another such enhancer, dulling satisfaction with natural stimuli.

This bouillon‑cube mechanism can operate on other senses and domains as well:
in the case of narcotic substances, in party lighting effects and stroboscopy that mimic their action, in the perfume industry, or in the overwhelming overstimulation characteristic of modern advertising and film. [2020]

The Mystery of Holiness and Bodily Modesty

[2011–12]

“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? God forbid! Or do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot becomes one body with her? For ‘the two shall become one flesh.’ But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits fornication sins against his own body. Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a great price. Therefore glorify God and bear Him in your body.”
(1 Cor 6:15–18)

The Mystery of Holiness

Holiness, by virtue of its transcendence over all other beings, is always a Mystery.
A mystery experienced in awe, fear, humility, reverence, mortality.
These attitudes are proper toward that in which Holiness manifests its Mystery.
Proper, because they accord with the Divine Order — the Cosmos.

Man is no longer in Eden but on earth.
After original sin he is subject to the obligation of undergoing the earthly penalty, together with the sufferings that accompany it.
He is also subject to the deficiency and inclination to evil that arise from post‑lapsarian corruption — an inclination he must restrain through the labor of shaping the whole of reality: spatial order, temporal order, social order, and rational order.

This labor was given the name “culture.”
A very wise name, for the word originally means cultivation of the soil, respect, and the giving of worship.
Human life on earth is precisely such a struggle with the soil of temporality — the working off of “Adam’s corvée.”
And this struggle cannot be separated — “autonomized” — from the giving of worship to God.

Man, quite illegitimately, attempts to place himself back in Eden without first bearing the consequences he incurred through original sin.
He imagines he can live — here, on earth, already now — as if in paradise.
No, he cannot, for he is undergoing a penalty which — thanks to the Passion and Resurrection of Christ — has not been abolished, but has ceased to be eternal.

Earthly imperfection requires proper means — means that counteract it, that help make the earth fruitful with reverence and wonder, to the glory of God the Father.
Therefore life on earth has different rules than life in Eden, where wonder required no effort.

There man was untainted.
He did not need to restrain natural inclinations or “artificially” order them, for they were not internally contradictory.
The earth, in bearing fruit, did not simultaneously choke it with weeds, did not harden like stone, did not become barren.

On this vale of tears, corruption requires placing everything in its proper place — constant weeding, loosening of the soil, fertilizing, bringing it to order and purity.

Through original sin man disrupted the interconnectedness of nature, dislodging himself and matter from their proper places — introducing impurity, barrenness, destruction, death.
The return to the proper place is labor.
Remaining in disorder — sometimes deceptively called the “state of nature” — is what attracts by itself, what happens by itself: weeds grow on their own, the soil becomes barren on its own, and this requires no effort.

Not without reason do traditional cultures — occupied with the literal cultivation of the soil — attach such great importance to re‑enacting the Divine Order.
Rites and rituals express it, confirming the legitimacy of new social roles into which a person enters, and of objects that become part of life.
By this they are made fitting; they are assigned their place within the interconnectedness of the Cosmos.
This place has its archetype in the Eternal Design of the Creator.
Any other place would be a distortion of the structure, and therefore of the meaning that flows from it — the one true Meaning, because it is God’s.

These rites are meant to renew the earth, to return, to re‑connect with the time of Creation.
For the world, as temporal time passes, decays.
The farmer knows that soil, when used, becomes barren and must be enriched.

The first factor that straightened the curvature caused by sin in Eden was shame, which was confirmed by God’s clothing of the first humans in garments of skin.

The story of the first parents is worth studying in depth, to grasp its coherence and meaning — a meaning that justifies the necessity of wearing clothing of certain criteria, as an expression of shame and a regulator of human desires.
This necessity is bound to the meaning of the mystery that should accompany Holiness.

But why do I regard the body as a sacred object of mystery?
Where, within it, is the Transcendence mentioned above hidden?
[2010]

I must note that the matter discussed here belongs to the sphere of value judgments, and therefore cannot be demonstrated scientifically.
Nor are these boundary questions — the kind that are defined dogmatically.
They are matters whose understanding should arise from a kind of “Catholic sense,” which ought to be formed from the composite witness of centuries — not from the general population of Catholics, but from those recognized as exemplars: the Fathers of the Church, the saints.

Human susceptibility to inclination and to the pressure of the surrounding culture is a weakness of every age.
Therefore only from the teaching of Scripture, the Magisterium, the saints, the Fathers, and those recognized as authorities should one extract this composite understanding.
This is the method I shall follow.
(short paragraph from 2020)

The Mysterious Holiness of the Body

The body, as Sacred Scripture tells us, is the Temple of the Holy Spirit — the Temple of God.
Within it takes place something unfathomable to created minds: the Creation of human beings — beings who are themselves Images of God.

Here man becomes the witness of Divine Action — of the Creative Act — as directly as nowhere else.
He is not only a witness, but a conscious instrument which, by virtue of its personal nature, participates in this Creation (though it does not co‑create, for only God creates).
This is why the only institution in which such participation is rightly ordered is the Sacrament — the Divine Permission, the handing of the key that grants man access to this great Mystery: Marriage.

An element of this holiness is the attraction of bodies, which finds its fulfillment in fruitfulness, according to the command given in Eden.

What follows, then, from this understanding of the body’s holiness and of the bodily union between man and woman?
How must natural impulses be ordered so that this holiness may have its proper place in human life?

First, one must ensure that fragile human memory does not lose its sense of awe before God who manifests Himself in the creation of a human being.
Memory must know its place before this work — humility, reverence, and shame at the fact that fallen human nature, through sin, wounds this Divine Image, which in the moment of its creation becomes marked by human frailty.

Alongside shame, however, there appears something paradoxically opposite: pleasure, because the object created is also bodily.
This pleasure must be received in a spirit of humility and unworthiness.
Therefore it must be reserved exclusively for that act in which God’s presence is revealed — and that act may take place only with His permission, in the Sacrament.

Here the necessity of mystery becomes clear — the mystery proper to what is holy, and therefore to the body.
Bodily disorder consists in the body’s reaching for pleasures to which it has no right.
This disorder is removed when a person receives that right in marriage (though even that is not a sufficient justification by itself).

This mystery is also essential because human frailty knows such phenomena as satiation, routine, and indifference.
These can affect even the way spouses experience their union.
Yet this experience is the very instrument through which a human person is brought into being — and thus through which God manifests Himself anew in a creature endowed with Reason grounded in Divine Law, the Law of Love.
A beautiful love — ordered, harmonious — which demands the reverence due to God alone.

The veiling of the body, and the restraint from certain gestures that belong to the relation between the sexes, serves not only to prevent unlawful fulfillment of natural attraction.
It also protects that attraction from being weakened, from losing the sense of wonder it ought to evoke.
For this wonder is itself a duty — an act of reverence and loving awe owed to God who reveals Himself in the Image He creates.

We know that wonder (or simply pleasure, since given the body’s imperfection “wonder” may be too strong a word) weakens when it becomes everyday, obvious, transparent like air — routine.
And when idealized stimuli flood the senses, real experience becomes disappointing.
Mystery is meant to guard against this — the sacred veil that surrounds what is exceptional and awe‑inspiring, yet which human experience, weakened by time and bodily decay, may fail to perceive with due reverence.

For this reason the first union must imprint in memory a sense of awe strong enough to last a lifetime.
Only a unique Divine permission — the Sacrament — may admit a person to such an experience of Holiness, one that both grants and obliges, and in which others, by its very nature, cannot participate.

This permission must remain in memory as a counterweight to routine, which can arise even when one remains faithfully open to the Mystery of Marriage.

By nature, a man should be drawn to the body of a woman.
But the banalization of that body — idealized through images and fashions — weakens natural attraction and wonder, and thus diminishes the way God intended the marital mystery to be lived.
Consequently, the marital bond itself becomes weakened.

This is a serious problem.
It requires renewed explanation, because in our generation a new “plague” has become visible — a widespread indifference toward the Temple of the Holy Spirit, especially in women.
Existing writings on modesty rarely address this aspect.

This indifference is tied to a broader phenomenon: the loss of understanding of the relationship between the sacred and the profane.
It manifests in subordinating the sacred to secular norms — even in churches, even during the Holy Mass — whereas the opposite should be true.
The sacred should shape the secular; the secular should be subordinate to the sacred.

But how can this be understood when our generation falsely associates obedience with oppression or backwardness?
This is visible in the way children are raised: parents seek ways to please the child, a kind of service analogous to serving God.
Yet it should be the other way around.
The child, in a relationship of respect, obedience, trust, and reverence toward parents, should learn the pattern of its relationship to God.
The commandments speak clearly on this.

The errors of our generation are so widespread that those who rightly notice some of them often fail to see others that follow from the first, and thus fall into unintentional inconsistency.
Let us help one another in discernment, for none of us will reach everything alone.

Someone may say: “But the Holy Spirit can reveal everything to us.”
If each person were so self‑sufficient in seeking truth, the communal bond would be unnecessary.
Let us therefore seek communal verification of our errors.
For the Church is a community.
And let us not close ourselves to difficult insights that require self‑denial and the renunciation of ideas that seem obviously good simply because they are part of our worldview.
Sometimes one must cut off one’s own members…
So as not to scandalize future generations.

Sadly, the Temple of the female body is today profaned.
Not only through objectification, but also through the banalization described above — the erosion of mystery.
The loss of sacredness has diminished wonder, made the extraordinary ordinary.
This has distorted not only spiritual perception but also natural physical processes.

Men, after all, can often — when they have no desire — refrain from reacting to feminine beauty without much effort.
But when they do desire, they can indulge in the visible charms as they please.
Thus the natural network of reactions becomes distorted.

Mastery of passion is not about destroying natural attraction (which would lead to the extinction of the human race), but about preserving it.

This last word can be understood as concealment.
Does this mean absolute concealment?
No.
It means concealment from that which does not participate in Holiness, from what is everyday and profane.
Such concealment preserves not only mystery, but also — as a consequence — wonder, respect, reverence.

What, then, should be veiled, and how?

[2010]

The Mystery of the Temple

“I have made a covenant with my eyes, that I would not even think upon a maiden.” (Job 31:1)

“Do not look upon a maiden, lest you be scandalized by her beauty.
Do not give your soul to prostitutes, lest you destroy yourself and your inheritance.
Do not wander through the streets of the city, nor run about in its marketplaces.
Turn your face away from a woman beautifully adorned, and do not gaze upon another man’s beauty.” (Sir 9:5–8)

“Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain; the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” (Prov 31:30)

“Turn my eyes away, that they may not look upon vanity; give me life through Your word!” (Ps 119:37)

“You have heard that it was said: You shall not commit adultery.
But I say to you: whoever looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you.
For it is better for you that one of your members perish than that your whole body be thrown into hell.
And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you.
For it is better for you that one of your members perish than that your whole body go into hell.” (Mt 5:27–30)

“Instead of stoking the furnace and wondering whether one more step toward the cliff will make us fall or not, perhaps it would be wiser to stand several meters away from the edge, so that the first gust of wind does not blow us over.
Christian ascetics were not fools.
Unless, of course, it is one’s own wife who is the object of such admiration — but that is another matter.”
A certain Teotym

The direct action of God in creating a being like Himself does not take place in the body of the man, but in the body of the woman.
Therefore the woman’s body must be more carefully guarded from the profanation of the holiness that operates within it.
And for this reason it must be surrounded by mystery in a different and broader sense than in the case of the man.

This mystery is a necessary barrier — or rather a thread — linking
the human with the holy,
the imperfect with the perfect.

But what, then, should clothing actually conceal?

Such things are difficult to determine “scientifically.”
Man is far too limited to “deduce” them on his own.
One must rather sense what seems fitting when one immerses oneself in a culture that grew from the lives of the saints, from the blood of martyrs, from their teachings and their way of life.
The same applies to other elements of custom — dance, entertainment, music, or even “beach‑and‑sunbathing culture.”

Within this context — in which the body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit — the need to veil it was obvious.
To veil that which is mysterious, because it is holy.

What kind of veiling?

The Christian cultural context — before it began to be eroded by post‑Enlightenment movements and by the undermining of the value of forms as bearers of meaning — preserved certain stable elements that can be considered fundamental markers of modest dress.
At a certain point Christians forgot these markers.

Customs and fashions introduced by enemies of the Church as a means of overthrowing Christianity were later adopted by Catholics as good, or at least “morally neutral.”

The change in the markers of modesty came as part of a rebellion against Christian morality in everyday culture.
This fact speaks for itself.
Christians accepted it simply because they had been persuaded that everyday life, entertainment, and clothing were independent of religion or faith.

They did not live according to the faith (because they considered these two spheres “independent”), and so they began to believe according to their way of life.
They became like the culture they kept company with.

Thus their conscience lost the sense of which forms of dress are decent and which are not.

So what are these principles?

Again, I will not answer directly.
If these principles truly matter, then the Church must have spoken whenever they were violated or forgotten by Christians.

Indeed, it did speak. And its voice was preceded by the Fatima warning of 1917, delivered on the eve of the “Roaring Twenties.”
Our Lady said:

“A time will come when certain fashions will gravely offend Our Lord.
Those who serve God must not follow these fashions.”

Even earlier, at La Salette, she foretold the process that would prepare the spread of such fashions:

“In 1864 Lucifer, together with a great number of demons, will be released from hell.
They will gradually extinguish the faith, even in persons consecrated to God; these persons will be so blinded that, without a special grace, they will take on the spirit of these evil angels.
Many religious houses will lose the Faith entirely and will cause the ruin of many souls.
Evil books will be spread across the earth, and the spirits of darkness will everywhere relax discipline in all matters pertaining to the service of God.”

These words can be read as a warning against the intentions of the Church’s enemies:

“Catholicism fears the sharp sword no more than monarchies do.
Yet both pillars of social order can fall through corruption; let us never cease in our efforts to corrupt them.
Tertullian was right in saying that Christians are born from the blood of martyrs; therefore let us not create martyrs — let us spread corruption among the masses, let them absorb it with all five senses, let them drink it and become drunk on it.
Create wicked hearts, and there will be no more Catholics.
We have undertaken corruption on a grand scale (…) corruption which will one day allow us to lead the Church to the grave.
Recently I heard one of our friends laughing philosophically at our plans and saying: ‘To destroy Christianity, we should get rid of women.’
The idea is good to a point, but since we cannot eliminate women, let us corrupt them together with the Church.
Corruptio optimi pessima.
The most effective dagger against the Church is corruption.”
— Letter of Vindice to Nubius (pseudonyms of two leaders of the Italian Alta Vendita), 9 August 1838.

Of course, private revelations are not themselves normative; they are valuable only insofar as they align with the broader elements I previously described as the basis for discerning the “Catholic resultant,” and insofar as later events confirm them.

Is it a coincidence that the most dramatic revolution in European fashion began almost immediately after the Fatima warning?
And that this revolution struck precisely at what had been stable and unchanging in Christian culture — above all, at the dignity of women?
It shortened dresses, introduced slits, and made clothing tight.
It attacked a mystery difficult to define in decrees, yet intuitively understood within Christian spirituality.
This process initially affected mainly the elites, for the changes could not be too abrupt.

The Church reacted almost immediately.
A clear pattern emerges: the Church formulates strict principles when what was once obvious — requiring no explanation — begins to be questioned.
Dogmas, for example, were true even before they were formally defined.
The Church lives by many truths that were never verbalized until necessity demanded it.

So it was here.
The once‑obvious principles of modest behavior and dress began to be challenged, and therefore had to be articulated and established.
But before these principles were formally stated, the Church first condemned what contradicted Christian morality.

Before reading the citations from Church authorities, remember this principle:

“Although not an act of faith, a religious submission of intellect and will must be given to the doctrine which the Pope or the College of Bishops enunciate concerning faith or morals when they exercise their authentic teaching office, even if they do not intend to proclaim it with a definitive act.
Therefore, the faithful are to avoid whatever does not agree with such doctrine.”
— Code of Canon Law, can. 752.

In 1921, Pope Benedict XV wrote:

“In this regard we cannot sufficiently express Our sorrow over the blindness of so many women of various ages and conditions who, intoxicated by the desire to please, fail entirely to realize that their immodest dress not only disgusts every honorable man but also offends God.
Not content with appearing in public in such garments — from which many of them would once have turned away in disgust as being too contrary to Christian modesty — they do not fear to enter the very house of God dressed in this way, to take part in sacred rites, and even to approach the Eucharistic Banquet, thus spreading shameful sensual provocations in the very place where the Divine Author of purity is received.”

From the Pope’s words we may conclude that clothing in public settings can be immodest in itself — not merely as an object, but as an action, a situation — and can in itself offend God.
The church building, however, is a place where such immodesty is even more grievous (“Not only…”).

What kind of clothing?
Clothing common at the time, yet “immodest” — revealing the most (not only the color of the skin but the shape, which is even more relevant to modesty) in 1921, worn by “so many women of various ages and conditions” in public.

It is enough to examine what fashions were then considered “new” and widespread, and we will know what kinds of clothing we should not wear today.
If we look carefully, we will find that what was then considered “daring” would today be judged “excessively modest.”

The Pope clearly speaks of public situations in general — which includes, for example, beachgoing.
He makes no exception for unnecessary leisure activities.

This aligns with the “Regulations of the Bishops of Austria and Germany” (1925):

“Mixed bathing of the sexes must never be permitted.
If schools organize obligatory swimming, supervision must be by a person of the same sex.
Demonstration swims by girls and women should not take place.
At bathing sites with beaches (rivers, lakes), one must insist on complete separation of the sexes, separate changing facilities — which local authorities should be urged to provide — as well as modest bathing attire and constant supervision.
The same must be required for the numerous open‑air sun‑bathing facilities, both for adults and for children.”

The cultural changes of the 1920s fit perfectly with the words attributed to the Church’s opponents:

International Review of Freemasonry, 1928:
“Religion does not fear the dagger’s blade, but it may perish through corruption.
Let us continue to spread it: sport, hygiene, sanatoria.
The clothing of boys and girls must reveal more and more of the body.
To avoid too violent a reaction, proceed methodically:
first bare the elbows, then the knees, then the arms and legs entirely, then the upper parts of the body, the chest, etc., etc.”

Whether or not these plans were authentic, they clearly exploit the mechanisms of habit formation and gradualism.
And such mechanisms are visible in cultural change.
What shocked one generation becomes obvious, transparent, “like air” to the next.
What once scandalized now appears a model of morality compared to what scandalizes today.

For our grandmothers, the “acceptable” swimsuits of today were the equivalent of “topless.”
The next step will be complete nudity — for what remains?

This gradual shift continues today.
Examples abound: in many circles that display Catholic and patriotic slogans, the supposed alternative to LGBT ideology is the immodest dress of women — sometimes presented even with a “God bless you.”
Against Islamic burqas and hijabs, the proposed alternative is contemporary European permissiveness: short, tight clothing presented as “traditionally feminine.”

Thus, the extreme deviations of modern gender ideology make immodest clothing — until recently condemned by moral authorities — appear to many as a hallmark of “our civilization,” something to be defended.
In this way the cultural left achieves its goal: slowly shifting the boundary.

The gradualism of these changes is confirmed by the statements of the Church’s enemies, who inspired and encouraged them.
The same applies to clothing, as the history of moral and cultural transformations shows — a history against which the words of saints, Church authorities, and Our Lady of Fatima become strikingly understandable.

How are those times commonly described?

“In the early 1920s, a bold and innovative fashion canon from France, initiated by Coco Chanel, allowed women for the first time to reveal their legs. The ‘little black dress’ became popular — short, simple, and fitted, made of black crepe with long sleeves and a neckline at the neck. The evening version of the ‘little black dress,’ made of silk or chiffon, had shorter sleeves and a deeper neckline. Very short hairstyles — the ‘boyish cut’ — also became fashionable.”

The Church reacted in the very same year in which the previously cited warnings were published, issuing a precise and strict formulation of modesty norms, according to the principle I described earlier:

1928, Pius XI through his Vicar General:

“We remind you that a dress cannot be called decent if it has a neckline deeper than the width of two fingers measured from the neck, if it does not cover the shoulders at least to the elbows, and if it does not reach at least somewhat below the knees.”

Decree of the Congregation of the Council, issued at the command of Pius XI:

“Keep your daughters away from public gymnastic competitions and exhibitions; and if they are obliged to participate in such events, ensure that they are fully and modestly dressed. Parents must never allow their daughters to wear immodest clothing… If the scandal is serious, they may even be forbidden entry into the church.”

Pope Pius XII:

“As long as modesty is not practiced, society will continue to decline.”

Pius XII, July 17, 1954:

“O Christian mothers, if only you knew the future full of misery, dangers, and shame to which you expose your children by imprudently accustoming them to go about barely dressed, causing them to lose their sense of modesty, you would blush at your conduct and at the harm you inflict on the little ones whom God has entrusted to your care, to raise them in Christian dignity and culture.”

In the following years, the Church had to respond to new theories arising in the minds of people for whom moral relativism had already become a transparent, everyday assumption.

Pius XII, addressing the Congress of the Latin Union of Fashion, 1957:

“The strange opinion that links the sense of shame to this or that type of education, or even considers modesty a fabricated deformation of original innocence or a harmful product of civilization, an incentive to dishonesty and a source of hypocrisy, is supported by no reasonable evidence…
Natural decency in its moral sense, whatever its origins, is based on an innate and more or less conscious inclination of every person to defend his or her body from the desire of others, so that each may use it (…) according to the wise purposes assigned by the Creator, protecting it behind the veil of purity and modesty.
This second virtue, modesty — the word itself comes from modus, meaning moderate or restrained — better expresses the function of governing and mastering the passions, especially the sensual ones.
It is the natural bulwark of chastity and guarantees its effective defense; it regulates behaviors closely connected with its essence.
A person hears the warning voice of shame from the moment he begins to use reason, even before fully understanding the meaning of chastity.
It accompanies him throughout life and inclines him to actions that are good in themselves, because they arise from the Divine Order and must therefore be protected (…).
Modesty, then, as a collection of such precious values, must be regarded as more important than passing trends and whims — it must firmly govern fashion.”

The Pope here explicitly confirms what I wrote earlier: that certain material actions are modest and good in themselves, because they express the Divine Will regarding the Form — the Order of Matter — the “Divine Establishment.”
He also alludes to a view still promoted today, even within the Church, which was refuted with great clarity by Fr. Stanisław Proszak in his article “The Modern Culture of Nudity and Its Relation to Christian Modesty.”

Cardinal Ciraci, on behalf of Pius XII:

“We all know that especially in the summer months one can see clothing that offends anyone who still possesses even a little respect and understanding for Christian virtues and ordinary human modesty.
On beaches, in resorts — almost everywhere, in the streets of large and small cities, in private and public places, and not infrequently even in buildings dedicated to God — immodest and indecent clothing predominates.
For this reason, youth — particularly vulnerable to sensual temptations — is exposed to a grave danger of losing innocence, the most beautiful adornment of their soul and body.
Women’s clothing, if it can still be called clothing at all, sometimes seems designed more to provoke lust than to guard against it.
The problem we speak of is certainly one of the most serious, as it concerns not only Christian virtues but the moral health of the entire human community.
As the ancient poet rightly wrote: ‘Private dissoluteness always leads to the presence of nakedness in public life.’ (Ennius)”

1958, a Catholic moral theology manual:

“From the standpoint of Catholic ethics and simple decency, bathing should be separate for men and for women, and in appropriate bathing attire.”

Cardinal Pla y Daniel, Archbishop of Toledo, 1959:

“A special danger to morality is represented by mixed bathing on beaches… the joint bathing of men and women is almost always a near occasion of sin and scandal.”

St. Padre Pio:

“Padre Pio, sitting in the open confessional throughout the year, took great care that women and girls who came to him for confession did not approach in skirts that were too short.
Sometimes he even brought a penitent to tears after she had waited hours in line, only to be sent away for immodest dress…
People sometimes tried to help — lengthening skirts in a corner, lending coats.
Occasionally Padre Pio would allow the humbled penitent to confess.
One day his spiritual director reproached him for his severity. Padre Pio replied: ‘I can listen to you, but know that it is Jesus Himself who tells me each time how I must deal with souls.’
His severity was therefore inspired from above, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
‘Women whose clothing is marked by vanity will never clothe themselves in the life of Jesus Christ. Moreover, they lose the beauty of their soul when this idol enters their heart.’”

“At Padre Pio’s explicit request, women must come to confession in skirts reaching at least 20 cm below the knee. Borrowing skirts for confession is forbidden.”
“Men with bare shoulders or in shorts are forbidden entry. Women in trousers, without a veil, in short dresses, with deep necklines, without stockings, or otherwise immodestly dressed are forbidden entry.”
Padre Pio would also say: “Bare flesh burns.”
To a woman with bare shoulders he once said: “I would cut off your arms, for it would cause you less pain than what you will suffer in purgatory.”

It is therefore worth “turning back” to the moment when, in the name of progress or liberation from the chains of the Church and tradition, people first began to alter those stable elements which, throughout the history of Christianity, had remained unchanged.
One can safely say that although clothing styles evolved over the centuries of Christian culture, the basic criteria of modesty were always preserved — criteria independent of non‑essential situations such as entertainment.
And because male and female concupiscence differ, and because the roles and bodily structures of the sexes differ, these criteria were not identical for men and women once a certain threshold was crossed.

What were these criteria? I will not spell them out. Look for yourselves — observe what remained constant for centuries in women’s clothing, and what remained constant in men’s.
(I will only hint that for centuries women did not wear trousers — certainly not the kind worn today — nor short skirts. The rule was that a woman’s legs were covered together, not each separately, and that the covering extended below the knee.)

These criteria were abandoned on a larger scale in the twentieth century — among the elites in the interwar period, and among the common people in the 1960s.
This abandonment occurred only when members of the Church — not the Church herself — ceased examining cultural forms and instead followed the “spirit of the age.”
As a result, the context by which cultural products were judged ceased to be Christianity and became the ever‑shifting culture — the evangelical “world.”
Thus this world increasingly determined how Christians understood the meaning of their own faith.
Faith began to lose its identity, because it no longer served as the measure of principles; instead, it was itself judged according to criteria external to it — criteria unstable, ideological, and shaped by whatever worldview happened to dominate.
In this way, Christians who abandoned the command to “test everything” began allowing into their lives elements incompatible with their faith.

The statements quoted earlier — none of which have ever been retracted — clearly opposed these changes.

As I wrote before: the mysteriousness of the Temple of the Body requires a particular manner of conduct and forbids certain actions, forms of activity, and relations between people and between the sexes.
For this reason, during the period in question — the “Roaring Twenties,” the later rock revolution intertwined with the sexual revolution and the next stage of moral upheaval — the Church warned against mixed bathing of men and women.
Following the example of saints and earlier Church authorities, it also warned against the newly emerging social dances, which violated the normal standards of modesty in public life and, above all, infringed upon Mystery, and thus upon Holiness.
Women appearing without dresses, in tight trousers, with uncovered legs or shoulders, or attending balls, were criticized by figures such as St. Padre Pio, whose examples I have already cited.

There were also skeptical voices regarding the new rock music among devout Catholics, who perhaps foresaw the consequences it would bring.
Unfortunately, society was quickly subjected to the mechanism of contrast — the gradual escalation of immodesty.
Thus, for people who dislike metal or techno, big‑beat rock’n’roll or disco‑style music now appears “good” by comparison.
And for those who object to the lyrics or behavior of performers, the music itself seems to be “just a form,” which — so they claim — “cannot be bad in itself.”

By the same logic, dances and behaviors now widely considered immodest are treated by many as “just a form,” and therefore are often used for evangelization.
Yet the very name rock’n’roll reveals its original meaning.

We must therefore acknowledge a certain standard which, as long as Christianity remained the context of life, was considered obvious.
But we must also remember that even in those earlier times people were subject to temptation and post‑lapsarian weakness, and thus their culture could contain errors.
These errors, however, were — fortunately for us — recognized and corrected by those whom we now venerate as saints and authorities of the Church.

I owe you a clarification: I am not saying that women must never wear trousers.
I am saying that today modest cuts are rare, and that — in my view — women look more dignified in skirts or dresses.
A dress expresses the dignity of the woman’s body as a Temple, within which a human being made in the Image of God comes into existence.
Such things happen nowhere else in the universe.
Human beings recognize what is sacred by its mysteriousness.
Therefore the female body ought to be more mysterious.
It is difficult to define precisely how much.
If so, let us trust the intuition that endured for centuries, shaped by our “ancestors in the faith.”
Evidently these norms arose from that faith.
Why change them?
If someone misinterprets them as contempt for the body, that does not mean we must abandon what others understand correctly.
It is the mistaken person who must change, not the good custom.
For what would we receive in exchange?
A culture that drags everything into the open, stripping women of their enchanting reserve and dignity?
No, thank you. I prefer the old ways.

To quote a Catholic commentator:

“If there were truly no connection between public nudity and impurity, the entire sex industry would not depend entirely on promoting the former.”

Does not this industry exploit the same mechanism — especially during beach season, with its imagery and advertising?
And is it not for the same reason that so many songs associate the beach with immodest suggestions?
Thus we have often heard lines implying that “half the beach is dreaming of something happening,” or lyrics praising women’s legs, or playful invitations to “show your knees.”
These cultural signals reinforce the same dynamic.

It is no coincidence that throughout the centuries of Christianity, one of the signs of conversion was the adoption of clothing that we would today call modest.
For this reason, pagan peoples who walked naked or wore immodest garments were taught modest dress. This is precisely how we should understand the decree of St. Pius V to the bishops of Brazil in 1569:

“Minister with zeal and prudence, using every means so that the newly converted abandon their savage customs and adopt civilized ones, persuading them to give up the habit of going naked and to dress in a manner befitting Christian modesty and civilized peoples.”

It is likewise no coincidence that the Saints were almost never tempted by the sight of women in long, modest dresses, but rather by images of women naked or immodestly clothed.
Frequent exposure to immodesty dulls the sting of temptation. For the Saints, however, the opposite was true — even the slightest stimulus could become a trial. Does this mean the Saints were somehow more lustful? Quite the contrary. Their sensitivity was a sign of a rightly formed conscience, whereas the dulling of sensual reactions is a sign of corruption. Human “peace,” the absence of temptation, cannot be taken as a measure of moral goodness. Often this “peace” appears precisely where the devil need not work hard, because people are already doing wrong while believing they are doing right. This is exactly what St. John Vianney warned about:

“A certain saint once passed by a monastery and saw a multitude of demons tormenting the monks, yet unable to tempt them. Then he entered a city and saw a single demon sitting idly at the gate, watching the people. The saint asked why he sat alone in such a large city, while so many demons attacked a handful of monks. The demon replied that in the city he could manage alone, for the people willingly came to him, living in hatred, impurity, and drunkenness. With the monks, however, the matter was far more difficult: an entire army of demons assaulted them with temptations, wasting time and strength, and gaining nothing. Their only hope was that the monks would grow weary of their strict rule.”

For this reason the early Christians avoided public bathhouses:

“Consecrated clerics, lower clergy, ascetics, and indeed ALL LAY CHRISTIANS should not bathe together with women, for this is the chief accusation we bring against the pagans.”
— Canon 30

St. Alphonsus Liguori taught that women exposing their breasts or legs commit sin; Pope Innocent XI imposed excommunication on women who exposed their breasts. Similar admonitions regarding the covering of the body can be found in the writings of many Saints — St. Cyprian, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory, St. Antoninus of Florence, St. John Capistrano, St. Philip Neri, St. John Vianney, St. Robert Bellarmine, and many others.
For nearly two thousand years it was obvious what ought to be covered, and therefore the principles of modesty — despite changing fashions — consistently required the same parts of the body to be concealed, and in the same manner. Thus, there was never any question of short skirts, bare shoulders, exposed midriffs, or women wearing the kind of trousers common today.

The shift in attitudes toward clothing was not the result of some “enlightenment” within the Church, but of actions taken against the Church by those who sought to undermine it. From that source these fashions entered the Christian world. It is therefore no surprise that they are incompatible with Christian principles.
How did they enter the Church? Through a capitulating attitude, brilliantly described by Fr. Franciszek Blachnicki in his essay “The Pedagogy of Modesty in Light of the Human Person”:

“After attempts to combat immodest fashion and moral corruption in the interwar period, today we have adopted a posture of capitulation toward these processes and phenomena. Around the issue of immodest fashion there now reigns a conspiracy of silence in the Church, although Pope Pius XII was still highly sensitive to this problem and often spoke about it.
This capitulation is justified with arguments such as: we are glad to have freed ourselves from prudery and Manichaeism; this new style expresses an appreciation of earthly realities, including the body; the decisive factor is habit — if people no longer see anything wrong or scandalous in it, why make an issue of it?
Thus even those who otherwise take their Catholicism seriously submit to the general fashion and customs. Among the scantily dressed youth wandering in mixed groups along mountain trails, there are groups led by academic chaplains and other youth ministers who place no demands on the young, especially on girls, regarding modesty and chastity — and who boast that despite this, they manage to create a ‘pure atmosphere’.”

This passage comes from a text I strongly recommend as essential reading. How often do we hear: “Fr. Blachnicki said this, Fr. Blachnicki said that,” and people would follow him into fire — yet the moment you mention his views on modesty, they immediately respond: “Well, in that he must have been mistaken,” because “he wasn’t perfect.”

So what then?
Did all the Saints of twenty centuries get it wrong — and only we, suddenly and conveniently, have discovered the truth against them all?

Extra‑garment factors degrading the mystery of the body

“Dating(?)”

What many contemporary Catholics consider an innocent form of “dating” often includes behaviours which — in the logic of Christian morality — should be reserved exclusively for marriage.
The problem is not the act of getting to know one another, but prolonged intimacy, spending time alone in secluded places, and forms of closeness that by their very nature belong to the marital sphere.

The justification is the same as in the case of modest dress:
certain forms of bodily closeness are inherently sacred, because they touch the space in which God acts in a unique way — in the relation between man and woman.

Dance

Dance is not evil in itself.
Just as eating is not poisonous simply because it is eating, so dance is not sinful simply because it is dance.
What can be morally wrong are specific forms of dance, just as certain foods can be harmful.

The Fathers of the Church, when they condemned “dances”, often used a linguistic shortcut.
Just as Christ was not a polytheist when He said “you are gods”, nor did He preach heresy when He called Peter “Satan”, so too the Fathers used the word “dance” to refer specifically to immoral dances, not to every form of rhythmic movement.

Why are some dances morally problematic?

Because they cross the intimate distance — a physical boundary that is not crossed in any other ordinary situation outside of marriage.
In ballroom dancing one allows a closeness that, in any other context, would be considered immodest or reserved for spouses.

The difficulty is that habit dulls perception.
What is objectively stimulating ceases to be felt as such — and many take this numbness as proof of innocence.
In reality, it is proof of desensitisation, and desensitisation of what should remain exceptional is always a loss.

Dance as a form of pairing

Janusz Prusinowski reminds us that the mazurka became popular precisely because it was the first dance that allowed a man and a woman to dance “alone together”.
It is no coincidence that dance became a space for pairing — and that it often ended in “accidental” pregnancies.

If dance had no erotic dimension, it would not be so strongly tied to courtship.

Why does this matter?

Because certain sights, movements and forms of closeness must not be stripped of their natural power.
If a man becomes accustomed to frequent physical closeness with many women — their movement, touch, nearness — then closeness with his wife loses its uniqueness.

And that uniqueness is part of God’s design:
it protects marriage, builds the marital bond, and belongs to the sacred sphere.

On “context”

One often hears the argument: “in dance this is not intimate, because the context changes it”.
But context is not absolute.
Contexts are created by people, and people make mistakes.
A cultural context can be wrong — just as fashions, customs and habits can be wrong.

Therefore one must step outside one’s own habitus, look at reality with the eyes of an outsider, and above all:
examine what the Tradition, the saints and the Magisterium have consistently taught across centuries.

That is the proper reference point — not whatever happens to be socially normal at the moment.

A revealing paradox

Secular ballroom dancers often openly speak of the erotic dimension of dance.
Some Catholics even praise this.
But when someone points out that this erotic dimension makes such dances morally problematic, the same people suddenly claim that “dance is not sensual; it depends on the dancers”.

Thus they contradict themselves.
First they admit that dance has an erotic charge, and then they deny that this charge has any moral significance.

Let us give some examples.

In The Little Sinner’s Handbook, Fr. Ksawery Knotz, a Capuchin from the Apostolate of Marriages “Chance of Encounter,” writes:

In dance there is always an element of seduction and bodily closeness that awakens interest in the other person. During dancing, sexual stirrings may arise. Through dance people draw nearer to one another and open themselves to one another. It is essential to examine one’s heart and reflect in conscience on the relationship being formed. There exists a whole hierarchy of higher and lower movements of the human heart — pure and impure, loving and lustful — which to some degree intermingle, take on different shades, and manifest outwardly through the body: through speech, through touch. Depending on which movements dominate a person’s heart, they will carry a completely different meaning and build a completely different kind of relationship with another person.

Argentine tango, for example, is a highly erotic dance. Dance seduces. It opens the dancers to a deep intimacy. If spouses dance it, it unites them, draws them closer, strengthens their marriage. Through dance they express their love, and it translates into deeper marital bonding. But in other cases such an erotic dance exposes one to the danger of infidelity. If someone loses themselves in it, they may lose their sense of boundaries. Dance involves touch, clothing, scent… it affects us. One must remember one’s wedding ring while dancing.

A person with a pure heart will sense that they should not dance too much with certain people, because it may turn into something harmful. Dancing after alcohol is something else entirely — it can lead to a loss of self‑control. Inhibitions fall, and one does things one would never do when sober. Through dance one can create situations that enable the sexual exploitation of another person. It matters with whom one dances and how one dances.

There are many beautiful dances that bring people joy, good fun, and happiness, and bear good fruit. Much depends on the heart."

 „Poradnik małego grzesznika”, red. Sebastian Moryń Wydawnictwo Fronda, Warszawa 2012, s. 176

Dominika Kozłowska, commenting on these words on the website of the monthly Znak, attempts to argue that the problem does not lie in the forms of dance themselves:

Is altering one’s state of consciousness a sin? And are intoxicants the only things that do this? There are known cases of addiction to physical exercise. And what about dance, in which — as Fr. Knotz writes — there is always an element of seduction and bodily closeness? If someone loses themselves in it, he adds, they may lose their sense of boundaries.

They may — but they may not. I emphasize this probabilistic character of harmful consequences. Most human activities can be viewed through the lens of potential evil or sin arising from irresponsible use. It is not alcohol itself that is evil, nor marijuana, nor dance.  

https://www.miesiecznik.znak.com.pl/6932013dominika-kozlowska-wolnosc-sumienia/ [dostępne 1 Października 2022]

In this attempt to justify various activities all at once, the commentator misses a crucial distinction:
Alcohol or physical exertion are morally neutral things or activities, whereas the seductive, erotic component present in certain dances — which even she admits is “always there” — makes such dances immoral outside the hiddenness of marriage.

This is how ordinary people perceive it as well. For example, an internet user named Mulan writes:

I’ve been dancing ballroom for six years and I must admit Fr. Knotz is right. Many couples “formed” through dance. I myself was in such a relationship. It’s important to distinguish purely dance‑related interactions from those that have little to do with dance. Some people, consciously or not, cross certain boundaries. They don’t realize that the other person may misunderstand their intentions.

Another commenter, Jassp, asks:

Can one prove the thesis that by dancing with someone I learn what their future erotic behaviour will be? In other words: if someone dances in a certain way with me, will our intimate life look the same? Put simply: the way you dance — is that the way you are, or will be, in bed?

Much depends on the heart — but the “interior of the heart” also depends on what we allow from the outside to enter it.
Here Fr. Knotz falls into a contradiction: he writes that dance seduces, and then says one must “maintain boundaries.”
But if something seduces — if it has an erotic undertone and effect — then the only proper boundary is marriage and the marital bedroom.

What Fr. Knotz writes actually confirms the point made by Mirosław Salwowski.
It is unfortunate that Fr. Knotz does not notice that this erotic dimension of ballroom dance excludes its presence outside marriage.
Eroticism ought to be enclosed within marriage, a mystery accessible only to its participants.
A Christian therefore cannot dance such dances publicly — only privately, within marriage.
But this makes such dances senseless as a public art form: how could one learn them, or speak of dances with shared rules, if they must remain hidden?

"Joann Kealiinohomoku, in her essay “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance,” after reviewing numerous theories of the origins of dance — often mutually contradictory — concludes that identifying a single source is impossible.

The most reasonable conclusion is polygenesis.

Thus the roots of dance must be sought in play as well as in sexual life; in animal behaviour as well as in magical‑religious acts; in group activity as well as in carefree individual expression.

For Johan Huizinga, dance is a special and particularly perfect form of play.

Havelock Ellis, on the other hand, located the origins of dance in human sexuality.

For Ellis, dance was a fundamental part of primitive orgiastic rites — a place where mystical and erotic elements of early human life were balanced.

Evolutionary theorists likewise saw dance as an integral part of primitive cultures, inseparable from ritual.

Moreover, dance formed the basis of all other art forms that originated in the human body."

1Tomasz Drożdż Człowiek i taniec. Systemy choreograficzne jako profile badania kultury Praca doktorska pod kierunkiem prof. dr hab. Ewy Kosowskiej Uniwersytet Śląski, Wydział Filologiczny Instytut Nauk o Kulturze, 2012

It is equally possible, however, that what we today call “dance” was originally a collection of different forms of coordinated movement with different origins — which only in modern times have been grouped together under one name.

At this point it is worth turning to the compendium “The Fathers, Doctors and Saints on Mixed Dancing” compiled by Mirosław Salwowski, for it shows clearly that the criticism of many dances—those which most people in every age have considered “ordinary, harmless entertainment”—is not the invention of any particular era, but a stable and enduring value throughout nearly two thousand years of Christian history.
For this reason, neither historical nor cultural context can be invoked as an excuse here. The same applies to clothing, to the gaze, and to behaviour.

The author comments on the collected quotations as follows (I refer the reader to his book for the full set):

“These quotations span almost the entire history of the Catholic Church. The earliest come from the second century after Christ, and they continue through virtually every historical period—antiquity, the early and late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque, the Counter‑Reformation, the Enlightenment, the nineteenth century—ending in 1975.
Although reading them may at times present greater or lesser difficulty, I trust that a calm and thoughtful reading will help readers form a sound judgment regarding the widespread modern fashion for dancing.
For any sober and reasonable person, it should not be difficult to apply earlier Catholic teaching on dance to the evaluation of today’s dance entertainments—especially when one considers that the dances popular in the early twenty‑first century are, in the overwhelming majority of cases, far more immodest and licentious than the dances condemned by ecclesiastical authorities in the sixteenth, seventeenth, or even the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
One should also keep in mind that these quotations come from people with immense experience of God’s guidance, of human weakness and sin, and of spiritual combat. Most of them spent decades in pastoral ministry, heard tens or even hundreds of thousands of confessions, devoted long hours to prayer, and at times even expelled evil spirits from the possessed.
Respect for their profound spiritual experience should help us look with greater distance at our own, often very limited and error‑prone, impressions and experiences connected with dance.”

He further summarises the material as follows (after explaining his methodology in the article “Mixed Dancing: Pleasing to God or to the Devil? Part III” on the portal konserwatyzm.pl):

Among the 80 clearly interpretable statements and positions of Catholic authorities, four groups emerge:
1. Strongly negative or openly hostile toward mixed dancing, viewing it as an immediate near occasion of sin, and at times as sin itself, without mentioning any exceptions. The classic representative is St. John Vianney. This group contains 55 statements (68.75%).
2. Decidedly unfavourable, firmly discouraging mixed dancing as dangerous, yet allowing rare participation for sufficiently serious reasons. Representatives include St. Francis de Sales, Pope Benedict XIV, and nineteenth‑century apologists such as Fr. Ambroise Guillois and Fr. Jean Gaume. This group contains 20 statements (25%).
3. Moderately cautious, acknowledging real dangers but expressing them in less categorical terms, advising prudence rather than absolute avoidance. Examples include Cardinal Gousset and Fr. Konstanty Gawroński. This group contains 3 statements (3.75%).
4. Mildly favourable, presenting mixed dancing as a legitimate way of forming acquaintances that may lead to marriage. This group contains 2 statements (2.5%).

There is also the well‑known case of Tom Faulkner, a ballroom dance instructor who, after his conversion to Christianity, began fervently opposing the very pastime he had once taught. In his works From the Ballroom to Hell and The Deceptive Allure of Dance, he described how dance leads step by step toward sexual immorality.

Habit, Innocent Shame, and the Loss of Wonder

The familiarity to which St. John Vianney alluded is like nibbling at a cake before the feast begins: by the time the celebration arrives, one no longer desires it.
May such daily nibbling not rob modern people of the marital wonder they owe first and foremost to God when they experience His gift—the privilege of participating in the creation of a new human being, a new image of God.
One must not separate this task from the “reward” that accompanies it—bodily pleasure. To do so is theft and profanation.

Is it not common today to hear complaints that marriage “loses its magic,” that wonder fades and routine remains?
Is this not partly because, beyond the tabloid‑driven idealisation that inflates expectations, the uniqueness of marriage is no longer wrapped in mystery, but is available around every corner—sampled long before its proper time?

There is such a thing as satiation.
If one celebrated every day, the feast would cease to be a feast.
This is why celebration follows six days of labour.

So too with modesty and the veiling of the body in relation to the sacrament of marriage.
The body is veiled to counteract the human weakness of oversaturation, which dulls our appreciation of the unfathomable mystery of God’s action in creating a human being through marriage.
And this creation—something modesty is meant to remind us of—occurs in a fallen world: the image of God that comes into being is wounded by original sin, and this is our fault.
A sense of unworthiness before such a gift demands that the entire pleasure associated with it—including aesthetic pleasure—be preserved for the sacrament, which is God’s permission and blessing.
We must not destroy this gift through trivialisation.

There is a beautiful, simple feeling—“this is not for me”—a kind of innocent shame that we desperately need.
But innocence is hard to preserve when every young person in the throes of hormonal upheaval is surrounded by amplifiers of that storm: images, music, dances.
The sight of the body ceases to evoke the instinct to turn away, to recognise: “I have no right to this; I have not earned the privilege of beholding this beauty.”

Psychology speaks of the “law of first associations,” according to which early experiences—especially intense and repeated ones—leave a lasting imprint.
Young men are thus deprived of a significant portion of the pleasure and strength that belong properly to marriage—to the fulfilment of God’s task.
This is one of the causes of divorce.
It is in youth that trivialisation occurs most powerfully, because attraction is strongest.

Sampling nectar from many flowers ensures that one’s wife will not be the first and only flower; the uniqueness of the sacrament is diminished.
And many eyes and imaginations have already dipped into the chalice of that flower—because it was not shielded.

What husband is pleased that others admire and fantasise about his wife’s body?
What wife is pleased that she is not the only one who has inspired her husband’s wonder?

Surely no one.
And if someone is pleased, something is deeply disordered.

Intimacy and exclusivity in access to the mystery of the body are proper and fitting.
Modest dress protects that exclusivity and mystery.

So when someone objects that “the wind might lift a skirt,” I would answer: in such moments the proper feeling should arise—the instinct to avert one’s eyes.
And skirts help cultivate precisely that instinct.

Historical and Cultural Context vs. Moral Relativism

Context Does Not Justify Relativism

When someone begins explaining to me that in earlier times people were simply “not accustomed” to the sight of nakedness, and that therefore stricter norms were appropriate back then — whereas today, being “accustomed,” we supposedly react differently — I answer in a different way.
And I answer differently as well when someone claims that the way to overcome immodesty and impurity is precisely to accustom people to nakedness, so that they no longer experience impure thoughts at its sight.

Feelings Are Not the Measure of Morality

I repeat: human feelings are not the measure of the moral value of actions.
If you can pass indifferently by the body of a woman, that indifference is not a virtue — it is the fruit of habit, a dulling of the natural attraction God Himself placed in human beings, an attraction meant to be beautiful and awe‑inspiring.

Human weakness means not only that we may illegitimately seize this wonder, but also that such illegitimate seizing destroys the very wonder we were meant to preserve.
And this destruction cannot be accepted.

Human Nature Above Culture

Human nature — the integral, more‑than‑material nature — stands above culture.
I have written about this already.

Thus the fact that people in different times and places dress and behave differently does not mean that the moral norms of modesty must be derived from those shifting cultural forms.
The forms vary; the moral truth does not.

The Divine Perspective as the Measure

Human beings have many perspectives on things — though they instinctively seek what is universal and lasting.
This alone should direct us back to what I have already stated: it is God’s Perspective, God’s “Feeling,” that determines the morality and rightness of actions and cultural forms.

Context is not the final measure of value.
Context itself must be judged by the Law of God.
And because context is shaped by human beings — who are fallible — context can be morally wrong.

Contexts Within a Culture 

Many Contexts, Not One

One may speak of “context” as the whole that gives meaning to cultural forms.
But one may also speak of multiple contexts — concrete situations within a culture.

This is why, for example, some people consider a bikini “moral” on the beach but “immoral” on the street or in church.
Such situational relativism is acceptable only if the social norm in each situation remains within the bounds of universal moral principles.

In other words:
A bikini would be morally permissible on the beach only if it were morally permissible everywhere — including in church.
If society rejects it in church, then either:

• society is overly strict in sacred or formal contexts, or
• society tolerates a violation of universal moral norms at the beach.

The history of Christian teaching — and the example of the saints — makes clear that the second explanation is the true one.

 The Christian Tradition Rejected Contexts of Nakedness

From the earliest centuries, Christians rejected public contexts that normalized bodily exposure:

• the prohibition of mixed public baths,
• the rejection of balls and dances,
• the rejection of beachgoing and immodest dress,
• the condemnation of beauty contests and similar spectacles.

These were not arbitrary cultural preferences.
They were judgments rooted in a stable moral vision.

Modesty Inside and Outside the Church

Many people believe that women should dress modestly in church, but that such standards need not apply outside it.
But this makes no sense.

What is morally modest outside the church cannot suddenly become immodest inside it.
The principles of modesty — which concern not elegance, but the veiling of what belongs to the mystery of the body, the Temple of the Holy Spirit — are universal.
They apply to all public life.

The church, as a sacred place — the true omphalos ges, the Center of the World sought by all traditional cultures — requires modesty even more.
Its absence is more offensive there — if not to people (who grow accustomed to anything), then to God.

Exceptions Arising from the Protection of the Body

Universality does not exclude legitimate exceptions — situations in which the protection of the body itself requires suspension of ordinary norms (medical care, rescue, emergencies).
These are cases in which one must first safeguard the object of modesty so that modesty may again be meaningfully applied.

Culture, Context, and the Formation of Conscience

A child can always be taught a different context, a different culture, a different meaning of things.
Human upbringing is necessarily relative to environment.

But — as we have already discussed — human cognitive relativism is a weakness.
It blinds us to the non‑relative moral truth, the stable reality of how things ought to be:
how relationships should look, how clothing should function, which situations are proper and which are not.

Full stop.

I do not judge persons — only ideas.

That Which Exceeds Our Earthly Existence

The Order of Relations Between Bodies

Every element of matter can be understood as an ordered relation of smaller elements.
And every visible whole — such as the human body — stands in relation to other bodies and to the world of which it is a part.

There therefore exists a proper order of relations between bodies — an order arising from the Creator’s Perspective.

Modesty as Action, Not Symbol

Modesty in dress, in light of the dignity of the body, is not merely a symbolic gesture expressing some culturally relative sense of shame.
It is an operative act:
it protects the bodily object of modesty and orders the inter‑bodily reactions and relations.

Modesty is not merely a sign pointing to something spiritual.
It is a form that acts, shaping the place of the body and the way bodies relate to one another.

Clothing fulfills a duty arising from the Divine Order.
Because that Order is stable and eternal, the form that fulfills it must have stable criteria — an area of many possibilities, but not of arbitrary ones.

Clothing, as I wrote earlier, is a response to human weakness and a regulator of the place the Creator assigned to the body — a place from which human weakness constantly tries to dislodge it.

The Source of Modesty: The Will of God

Modesty arises from the desire to preserve a particular kind of relationship between people — a relationship that includes the relationship between bodies.
Its source is the Will of God, who desires that these relationships have a particular shape.

Therefore modesty has direct value:
it protects the proper place of the body and the proper form of relations.

And because we live in a world where fallen human nature is constantly tempted, where evil imposes itself and good requires effort, we must continually strive to keep the body in the place God intended.

Good Order Requires Effort; Disorder Pulls Us In on Its Own

We cannot hand over the matter of dress — or, more broadly, modesty and chastity — to shifting human moods, impulses, or accidents.
What is disordered pulls us in by itself; it does not ask whether we consent — it simply drags us along.
And if we wish to do what is good, we must exert effort, accept hardship, suffering, and at times even a kind of martyrdom, in order to resist that pull.
We must not allow ourselves to be swept along while pretending that this drift is “the direction of our own will and decision.”

For what is good always leaves us the possibility of choice.
It requires that we move toward it — it demands effort, self‑denial, and toil.

An Invitation to Try…

In writing these words, I hope that there will be people — and above all women — who share this intuition.
I also hope that the reader, reflecting on what is written here, will turn to the writings and lives of the saints, the Fathers of the Church, the popes, the bishops, in order to discern that “holy synthesis.”

And at the same time, I hope the reader will renounce — for a time, and for the sake of testing oneself and practicing self‑denial — such things as:

• going to the beach,
• swimming in mixed‑sex pools,
• wearing what I have described here as immodest,
• and even aesthetically admiring the bodies of women encountered in daily life.

It is also worth giving up music derived from rock’n’roll (which includes techno, disco polo, reggae, metal, and their offshoots), as well as most contemporary forms of social dancing.
At least for a time — for example, during a retreat devoted to examining one’s life, “testing everything and holding fast to what is good.”

During such a time, I also recommend ensuring that meaning — and therefore order — is present not only in the words with which we describe our life and the world, but in life itself: in how we arrange our time and the space around us.
Let certain rituals and rites become points of meaning — expressions of religiosity.
Let dress and behaviour express the sacred significance of the body, of bread, of the home, the village, the church, the heavens.

In place of the abandoned forms of music, dance, and clothing, we must — as Catholics — create new ones.
This is work for generations.
But if I do not begin now, no one will do it for me.
Nor for you.

So let us begin!

Music — Can It Be Harmful?

Do we blame someone for drinking a refreshing beverage simply because it contains substances harmful to the human body?
Of course not. On the contrary — we warn him, to protect him from a danger he does not perceive.
He may be a saintly person.
It would be absurd to claim he is evil merely because he consumes something that contains harmful ingredients.

The same applies to those who listen to music.

Music acts upon the body, and through the body — upon the soul.
Just like herbs or synthetically produced chemical substances: some heal, others harm.
So it is with different sequences of sounds, which influence the human organism.

And just as a narcotic state produces effects in the soul, so too do those elements of music that have a narcotic‑erotic effect.
A large part of the contemporary music industry is built precisely on these elements.

Consider the phenomenon of trance and how it is induced.
Note the methods by which trance is produced — and then observe how often these same methods appear in modern music:
the rhythm that induces trance.

It is true that such rhythms existed in many folk cultures.
They did — because they served religious functions.
But the religions they served were incompatible with Christianity, and therefore permitted elements incompatible with it.
Folk culture, in itself, is not sufficient.

Cardinal Ratzinger expressed this with great clarity:

Consider, for example, the Dionysian type of religion and its music, which Plato described from his religious and philosophical perspective. In many forms of religion, music serves intoxication and ecstasy. The liberation of humanity from all limitations — toward which the human longing for infinity naturally strives — is sought through sacred frenzy, through the madness of rhythm and instruments. Such music breaks down the barriers of individuality and personality; a person is freed from the burden of consciousness. Music becomes ecstasy, liberation from one’s “self,” union with the universe.

A secularized return of this phenomenon appears today in rock and pop music, whose festivals constitute a kind of anti‑cult — a desire for destruction, the removal of everyday boundaries, and the illusion of liberation from the self in the wild ecstasy of noise and mass emotion. These forms of “liberation” are akin to the effects of intoxicants and fundamentally opposed to the Christian faith in salvation.

It is therefore understandable that satanic cults and satanic music are increasingly spreading in this sphere — their dangerous power, their intended disintegration and fragmentation of the person, has not yet received sufficient attention.

The conflict Plato describes between Dionysian and Apollonian music is not our conflict — Apollo is not Christ. But the question Plato raises is of immense importance for us. Music today, in a form unimaginable one generation ago, has become a decisive expression of a certain anti‑religion and thus a stage for the separation of spirits.

Because rock music seeks salvation through liberation from personality and the responsibility bound to it, it is closely linked with the ideas of anarchic freedom that are increasingly asserting themselves across the world. For this reason it is fundamentally opposed to the Christian vision of salvation and freedom — it is its antithesis. Therefore, not for aesthetic reasons, nor out of conservative stubbornness or historical inertia, but on principle, such music must be excluded from the Church.

Joseph Ratzinger „Nowa Pieśń dla Pana”, 

A New Song for the Lord:
Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

(Pope Benedict XVI)Published in 1995 in German with the title, Ein neues Lied für den Herrn: Christusglaube und Liturgie in der Gegenwart,  in polish version on pages 193-194

Ratzinger then notes (in the scholarly commentary) that this connection has been clearly shown by former rock musician and disc jockey Bob Larson in works such as Rock and the Church and Hippies, Hindus and Rock and Roll.

[from the footnote — my note:
This largely overlooked connection is clearly shown in the works of former disc jockey and rock‑band leader Bob Larson: Rock and Roll: The Devil’s Diversion (1967); Rock and the Church (1971); Hippies, Hindus and Rock and Roll (1972).

On the subject of jazz and pop music — perhaps less harmful, yet still by their very nature incompatible with the aims of the liturgy — see H. J. Burbach, Sacro‑Pop, in Internationale katholische Zeitschrift 3 (1974), pp. 91–94.
Page 94: “The supposedly avant‑garde ‘sacro‑pop’ is a product of the regulated mass culture which reproduces the cheap tastes of an undiscriminating consumer audience.”

See also the same author, Aufgaben und Versuche, in R. G. Fellerer (ed.), Geschichte der katholischen Kirchenmusik II (Kassel 1976), pp. 395–405.
A summarizing assessment on p. 404 reads:
“This is music which, above all through its ‘rhythm,’ tends toward an ever more advanced dissolution of the individual — and this in a world that, through increasing concentration of power, is moving toward total administration. Music becomes ideology. It steers, directs, filters, and fuses into one the initially directionless stream of feelings. It narrows it and reduces it to a pattern of stereotyped experiences.”]

 He also cites studies showing that even seemingly milder forms — jazz, pop, and “sacro‑pop” — often share the same underlying tendencies:
a rhythm aimed at dissolving individuality, shaping mass emotion, and reducing experience to stereotyped patterns.

(Please note the close interconnection between music, dance, clothing, and the distorted concept of freedom we analyzed earlier in this book.)

A large portion of folk music consists of remnants of pre‑Christian cults.
The trance on which such music relied arose from a form of ecstasy that Christianity judged to be improper.
Fallen human nature is drawn toward this kind of experience — but, as Joseph Ratzinger emphasized above, Christianity reveals that such ecstasy, though it promises fulfillment, cannot satisfy the human longing for Happiness.
It actually leads us further away from it.

It is important not to condemn “pre‑Christianity” as such, but rather its specific harmful elements.
Many pre‑Christian forms, as we know, became foreshadowings of Christianity — seeds worth receiving and cultivating.

The Gradual Dulling of Trance

The kind of trance we are speaking about has always existed.
It is true that we have grown accustomed to it, and its effect has weakened somewhat.
But the power of trance is gradational.
Before we became accustomed to it, we were already — and still are — subjected to the constant influence of intoxicating music (and, by analogy, other sensory stimuli) that transmits certain contents into our subconscious, supporting mechanisms of cultural manipulation.

This music is everywhere:
in nearly every television program, on buses, in supermarkets, in shops, in public spaces.
Young people walk with headphones on, go to concerts, or to nightclubs.

Music as a Physical Phenomenon

Music is a physical phenomenon; therefore it exists in a web of relations with other elements of matter — including our bodies.
From this it follows that music can influence the body, a fact long recognized by scientists.

Christian musicians recognize this as well.
But they do not always consider that if music can act like a medicine, it can also act like a poison, if the placement of sounds within the system of reality is improper.

The same is true of drugs: they are not evil in themselves — what is evil is their misplacement in the human organism in a situation where they do not belong.
Listening to certain music can be an act of such misplacement.
If music can act beneficially on the organism, it can also act harmfully.

The Ontological Place of Sound

Matter itself belongs to the order of Creation, for God created it and assigned it a proper place within the Order of the Cosmos.
Sounds therefore also have their proper place in the order of the world, and music is a particular ordering — a placement — of sounds.

This placement can be good or bad.
Its harmfulness can be linked to the kind of influence it exerts on the organism:
whether it disrupts the internal order (the functions and relations of the body’s elements among themselves) or the external order (the functions and relations of the organism as a whole in relation to the external world).

Music is not merely isolated sounds — such as God created — but arrangements of sounds: structures, systems, orders, overlays, sequences.
And these arrangements, like chemical substances in certain combinations, can harm a person, be neutral, or help.

Musical arrangements and their uses are the result of human action.
And human actions can be good — or evil.

Let Us Systematize the Matter

• Music is an arrangement of material elements, and therefore it can serve as a material vehicle for meaning.
  (In terms reminiscent of structuralist semiotics: it is a system of differences, a configuration of acoustic units whose relations generate sense.)
• Sound, as a physical element of matter, exists within the universal network of material interactions — including interactions with the human body.
  It can therefore exert influence upon it.
  (Here Lem would say: every vibration is a message, and every message has a receiver, whether the receiver is aware of it or not.)
• God created matter, and within the Architecture of Creation assigned each of its components a proper place.
  Thus the object of moral evaluation is not “matter in general,” but concrete actions, processes, and states occurring within matter.
  This includes sound, for sound is a physical process — measurable, energetic, capable of perturbing systems.

If, therefore, we reject criticism of a given type of music on the basis of statements such as:

• “Only the words and intentions matter; music itself cannot be evil,”
• “Music cannot be harmful; it depends solely on the lifestyle of the listener,”
• “This music belongs to contemporary culture, whether we like it or not, and therefore we should adapt to it,”

— then we are simply mistaken.

The last claim (and one could substitute for “music” the words entertainment, clothing, customs) ignores the fact that cultural context and its elements are themselves arrangements produced by human action.
And because they are human products, they can be good — but they can also be evil.

Accepting that claim would force us to conclude that if, in some culture, an expression of hospitality consists in “offering one’s daughters for the night as a gift,” then we should accept that form of hospitality as well — because “the form does not matter, only the intention.”

This is not exaggeration.
It is the logical consequence.

If Music Can Influence the Human Organism, We Must Ask Whether That Influence Is Good or Bad

If music can affect the human organism, then in each concrete instance we should ask whether that influence is good or harmful.
And if a given type of music once appeared — in the general Christian sensus fidelium — as harmful, then it is worth examining whether those intuitions were justified.
All the more so because they were supported by the reflections of figures such as Cardinal Ratzinger, by the scientists he cited, and by musicians who abandoned the very music they once created.
Such intuitions existed — though fashions and upbringing have largely uprooted them from us.
These intuitions arose especially in relation to the broad family of “rock music” when it first appeared on the world’s stage.

I will not focus here on lyrics or cultural aesthetics, but on sound itself and its effect on the human person.
For this reason, I will set aside the issues of subliminal messaging, backward masking, and non‑musical satanic symbolism.
Why?
Because these things would be harmful even if they did not accompany music.
They are not intrinsic to music as such, and therefore cannot serve as the basis for evaluating music in itself.

Someone may ask: What remains to analyze if we set these elements aside?
Precisely what is essential in the critique of music — not of lyrics, not of clothing, but of sound.

This dimension was sometimes mentioned in early critiques of rock music, but later drowned out by the easier analysis of lyrics or the biographies of performers.
Yet it is precisely this neglected sonic layer that should, in my view, be the true axis of critical reflection on what we call “rock.”

And it is this very effect of music that Cardinal Ratzinger had in mind when he wrote — unequivocally — that certain kinds of music are incompatible with Christianity:

My remarks concerned primarily rock music, whose radical anthropological contradiction with the Christian image of the human person and with the cultural intention of faith has by now been fully demonstrated by other authors… This kind of music destroys individuality and personality — the person is released from his very self. Music becomes an ecstatic experience, a liberation from one’s own identity. Such liberation differs in no way from drug addiction and is entirely incompatible with the Christian faith in salvation.
(J. Ratzinger, Nowa Pieśń dla Pana(A New Song for the Lord), Kraków 1999, p. 173)

I strongly encourage reading the entire book A New Song for the Lord.
Its author — a brilliant intellectual, a pope, a good man, and a lover of fine music who occasionally played the piano — understood music both spiritually and artistically.

The Anthropological Shift of 1968

Fr. Robert Skrzypczak wrote:

The music of the ’68 generation radically changed the meaning of musical culture. Drawing on ancient tribal rhythms and Afro‑Cuban expressiveness, it supported the intention of freeing human instinct from the control of reason and will. A new style of dance, modeled on obsessive bodily movement, reinforced this. “Rock’n’roll” means “to rock and to roll,” with an explicit sexual connotation… One of the aims of rock music was to arouse sexual excitement in listeners… As tempo exceeds the natural rhythm, emotional tension increases… It is possible to induce in any human organism a kind of hysterical disintegration… All this served the revolutionary aim of transforming the human interior, intended by the revolution of 1968.” (Chrześcijanin na rozdrożu. Kryzys w Kościele posoborowym Ks. Robert Skrzypczak: http://mateusz.pl/wam/ksiazki/Chrzescijanin-na-rozdrozu/ dostępne 6 may 2020)

Names and Their Meanings

Names alone prove nothing — but it is worth asking whether they point to something deeper:

• rock’n’roll — “to shake, to disturb, to incite” + “to have sex” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_roll – 6 may 2020)
• funk — originally associated with the smell of sexual intercourse; later with sensual, bodily, sweaty dance (za: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funk  6 may 2020 )
• punk — slang for a young male sexual partner of an older man; archaically, a prostitute ( http://www.thefreedictionary.com/punk –  6 may 2020)

These etymologies do not prove moral harm, but they reveal the semantic field from which these genres emerged.
And the musical markers of these genres — their characteristic rhythms, riffs, and bodily associations — often reflect precisely those origins.

“But I Don’t Feel Anything Wrong…” — The Problem of Desensitization

Someone may object: I don’t feel anything indecent when listening to rock.
But feelings are not a reliable indicator.
There is such a thing as threshold shift — the dulling of sensitivity through habituation, overstimulation, and reward‑cycle conditioning.

Just as with immodest clothing or sensual dancing, soft pornography does not shock those who consume it daily.
They simply need something stronger.
This does not make it good — it only shows that their sensitivity has been blunted.

This dulling is not necessarily the fault of the dulled person.
As we have noted, he may simply be unaware of the processes reshaping his perception and mentality.
In truth, all of us living in this culture are victims of such routinization of what ought to remain mysterious.

Experiences that should belong to the realm of sacred mystery no longer move us.
And this gradual shifting of boundaries — through habituation and contrast with ever greater extremes — has been going on for a long time.

It may lead to a point where what we today call prostitution becomes, for future generations, merely a matter of taste — a form of entertainment.
May the boundary of relativism (at least among Christians) never shift that far.

But what our grandparents considered unthinkable — an eternal and unchangeable form of immodesty — we now treat as a matter of personal preference.
Why, then, should we assume that our grandchildren will not shift the boundary even further?

The True Measure of Morality

The measure of morality is not human feelings — relative, culturally conditioned, historically shifting, situationally variable (though they do play a role in discernment and culpability).
The true measure is the proper states and proper places of elements within the System of Creation.

I am not saying that variety or change is evil.
I am saying only that crossing certain boundaries — the boundaries of goodness — is evil.

The Cult of Pleasure and Postmodernism

(Now I will step slightly beyond the realm of music.)

It is worth noting that the characteristics of what we have here called “rock” or “beat” are closely linked to the ideological and mental transformations of our society.
Certain musical elements — those that relativize moral judgment — correspond directly to the relativism now propagated and embraced.
And relativism, in turn, opens the gate to questioning every authority and every prohibition, including the boundaries that concern sexuality and all forms of temporal pleasure.

These boundaries are also crossed through the very music we are discussing.

The experience of trance transports us into a reality in which we participate, in effect, in a cult of the self.
This is precisely the nature of the trance described earlier as “rocking in church.”
According to the author cited, this phenomenon was originally tied to religious experience.
But I cannot accept the claim that such “rocking” is something good, something Christian.
For this experience is nothing other than the cult of pleasure, which — despite verbal declarations or even initial intentions — does not lead toward God, but toward the self.

This is also the result of what we have already described: words becoming hollow, corrupted, emptied of meaning.
Consequently, the definition of God’s Law expressed through such music becomes vulnerable to distortion by our current, creative, fashionable whims.

As one analysis put it:

“Rock music provides above all an emotional gratification in the sense of here and now… and the pleasure achieved becomes the decisive, fundamental motive. What we are dealing with is a kind of intoxication by a worldview — but above all, intoxication by music itself. With these elements, rock acquires something that previously existed only in liturgy: the element of fascination. The historical development of liturgy and of rock music illustrates the secularization of an element that originated within religion, but never returned to it.”

The conclusion regarding the link between sensuality, ecstasy, and the cult of pleasure — a cult that stands in opposition to God — was formulated with precision by the future Pope Benedict XVI:

“The aim of pagan music is often to induce sensory ecstasy through rhythm and melody. In such a shift toward sensuality — which returns in contemporary rhythmic music — the Savior God is assigned a completely different place than in the Christian faith. Such music can become a temptation leading a person toward false goals.”
(J. Ratzinger, Słuzyć prawdzie,(To Serve the Truth), Wrocław 2001, p. 239)

From here it is only a short step to the postmodern “paradise” described by Fr. Skrzypczak.(Skrzypczak, ibidem http://mateusz.pl/wam/ksiazki/Chrzescijanin-na-rozdrozu/]

And the primary engine of this mental transformation was the cultural revolution of ’68 — rightly called both sexual and rock’n’roll. [abridged version of the 2011 text]

4π — The Formula of Mystical Counter‑Revolution (and a Recap)

At least for my own purposes — through field research, archival work, my master’s thesis, and life in various environments (always with a certain distance) — I arrived at an answer to the question: how do societies lose their faith?
And, in the process, I also answered the complementary question: how do they preserve it?
Certain regularities emerged.

The four characteristics that shape the social strength of a given claim, worldview, system of ideas, or religion are:

1. Systemicity

Order, structure, coherence, interdependence — a kind of “grammaticalization” of reality.

2. A Sense of Objectivity

Formed by what is given from above, by Tradition, and by expression through Signs that refer to the most enduring laws of nature.

3. Multisensory Formality (Non‑verbal Expression)

The ability to manifest itself through forms familiar to people — ordinary, embodied, and necessary for life.

4. Communicability and Repetition

The capacity to be reproduced by different members of society, both explicitly and implicitly, as an obvious, transparent assumption — not so much described as used to describe the world, to argue about disputed matters, while itself remaining undisputed.

Redundancy as the Foundation of Credibility

All the above characteristics rely on the principle of paraphrase and redundancy:
people find more credible what is repeated often —
in multiple sensory forms,
in various important daily contexts,
across time,
handed down by many ancestors,
and echoed by many members of the community,
not only in speech but in action,
as an unspoken assumption enabling meaningful cooperation and communication.

How Religion (or Any Shared System of Values) Declines

If a religion or any socially shared system of ideas loses its persuasive power, it is because these four pillars are attacked.
This can be reduced to four self‑destructive models of action and belief:

1. Autonomism (Secularism)

Expressed in the hypertrophy of specialization (which is good in itself and has given Western culture great advantages, but — like everything human — becomes harmful when exaggerated).
It appears in claims that religion must not “interfere” with this or that, or in slogans such as “art for art’s sake.”

2. Anti‑traditionalism

An orientation toward progress understood as change for its own sake.
As with anti‑formalism, this does not make the content disappear — it merely removes our control over what is being changed.
By valuing change itself, we lose control over the content being changed, because our attention and positive valuation attach too strongly to the mere fact of change.

3. Anti‑formalism

A prejudice against external forms — both multisensory and everyday.
A refusal to acknowledge that form shapes meaning long before meaning is articulated.

4. Over‑linguification of Communication

When we abandon care for form, its influence on our worldview does not disappear — we simply lose control over it.
Something else takes over: the “anything‑goes” aesthetic, or those who understand the power of form and use it to stimulate our desires and reshape our worldview so that we, for example, want to buy their product.

Over‑linguification is the consequence of anti‑formalism — a substitution of forms that have been abandoned.

It manifested, for instance, in hasty judgments (rooted in anti‑formalism and anti‑traditionalism) that the “superficial faith of the people” stemmed from their attachment to external forms and tradition.
The proposed remedy — increasing the reading of Catholic literature and teaching people to read — was based on a false diagnosis.

If superficial faith exists even among the highly literate, often those who know the entire Bible, then seeking a solution in reading alone is insufficient.
It may even cause serious crises of faith, because most people lack the competence to navigate the multi‑layered, multi‑contextual texts of Scripture and Tradition.
Commentaries will not solve this; they become yet another layer contributing to a new kind of illiteracy — not textual, but semiotic.

Sola Scriptura as an Example of Over‑linguification

This phenomenon can occur with Scripture itself or with later traditions and commentaries.
It often results in reducing meaning to previously formed prejudices — for example, to archaeological or presentist interpretations of not only words but the very function of language, which may have been different at the time the text was written.

What was obvious, unspoken, and transparent to the original authors and audiences may, over time or in different circumstances, become opaque and inaccessible.

Over‑linguification ends with a rigid adherence to the text, treating it as self‑sufficient.
Because the text is not self‑sufficient, we impose our own interpretations upon it — our subjective readings — and then treat them as objective, non‑interpretive meaning, as if they were the facts themselves.