Is this immodest?  My opinion is that it is not.

No offense, Ladislaus, but there is NO WAY in which this could be considered modest by a Catholic, much less a Traditional Catholic.
The skirt doesn't come to the knee, it's not modest. Full stop.
Imagine if that girl sat down! Or better yet, DON'T!

You have to have objective standards. Women (just like men) will always try to skirt the line (pun intended).

I fear that just like with the issue of makeup, you are compromising here out of borderline necessity, because your wife and/or daughters aren't fully operating under your well-educated Trad Catholic ex-seminarian control.

I fear that just like with the issue of makeup, you are compromising here out of borderline necessity, because your wife and/or daughters aren't fully operating under your well-educated Trad Catholic ex-seminarian control.

Same bull-crap you get from your slanderous buddy SeanJohnson.  Constant ad hominems when you're incapable of making a rational argument.  My girls do not wear this combination of clothing.  I am not making any points or not taking any positions other than what reasoning leads me to.  I arrived at the conclusion based on reasoning through WHY certain things are considered immodest, why pants are immodest and why shorts skirts are immodest, and explaining how this particular combination does not labor under either concern (when properly executed ... not too tight and leggins on the thicker side).

Did you reprimand Johnson for slandering and clumniating not only myself but the theologians Jone and Merkelbach?  You too are committing slander by making this suggestion, BTW.

By the way, like a good Thomist, I can actually anticipate one particular possible objection to this position.  I want to see if someone else can actually come up with it.  This is the method of St. Thomas.  To test your arguments, you anticipate in your mind objections.  You pretend as if you're trying to refute it.  Then either you can refine the argument or abandon it, depending upon whether this leads to.  So you don't beg the question and adopt a conclusion based on some emotional attachment to it.  You simply follow where reason takes you.  THIS is the type of discussion I'm interested in having on this forum, not all the emotional nonsense that seems to be the norm.

I'm not a Jesuit, and I'll never be one. I'm more Irish. I don't play games. I look at the practical, final result. I look at the big picture, the practical application.
I can't and won't talk millimeters, which men are inflamed to lust by different female body parts and why, or any of that.

I just stick to common man's speech. I call a spade a spade. I'll take good ol' horse sense over highfalutin' book larnin' any day.

I'm also going by standard Catholic teaching here. All Trad chapels, Padre Pio, Marylike standards of dress, etc. have put out guidelines for womens' dress for decades. They always draw the line at the knee. I've never see any of them make allowances for "thick tights in combination with a very short skirt to obscure the butt".

I am a bit frustrated myself. Here you are so educated on all things Catholic, but like a Jesuit you talk yourself into justifying things that most Catholics on-the-street reject for religious reasons. I expressed my FEAR that you compromised your otherwise-solid beliefs and morality on this point, to accommodate some personal need. I'm glad to hear that isn't the case.

I am *solidly* on Sean Johnson's side in your "Jone's Moral Theology" fight, by the way.  I should point out to Sean, however, your paragraph towards the bottom of the thread where you state you personally don't believe spousal sodomy is without sin, etc. I can see you were being extremely detached and impartial here, if a bit Jesuitical. But to Ladislaus I would point out: You have to understand why Sean and others react with horror to your conclusions!

I'll take Sean Johnson's "sensus Catholicus" or, "I can't point to a law or reason why you're wrong, but you're just wrong" -- any day. It's that kind of "instinctive", practical, or "emotional" adherence to Tradition that caused almost all Catholics to join the Traditional movement in the first place. Most of us didn't get here because of some rational, dry argument. It was sensational or semi-sensational compilations of abuses, and OTHER emotional appeals (most books of Archbishop Lefebvre swerve into this category, at least to some degree). There are other emotions besides anger by the way: love, satisfaction, fear, joy, nostalgia, appreciation of beauty, honor, nobility, etc.

I still wish you'd stop being a Jesuit. Stick to the timeless mind of the Church and Tradition -- otherwise you're one Modernist book (authored by someone with ",S.J." after their name) away from being led astray with convincing-sounding arguments. I suppose there were many smart, educated men like you in the Church in 1962 -- most of whom were convinced and sold on the New Religion. I guess we should be grateful God placed you later on the Church's timeline...

Seriously -- it wouldn't matter what highly-respected, highly-intelligent, highly-convincing professor got up there and taught my philosophy class how there is no objective reality -- I wouldn't fall for it because of my horse sense. Rational arguments MIGHT or MIGHT NOT do the trick. And looking at the outcome of Vatican II, it looks like rational arguments alone have a POOR track record at best. Again, I thank God for my horse sense/common sense.

if you honestly find an objection you cannot address, that you must refine your position or abandon it in favor of another.  Nothing undermines sincerity more than emotional attachments.

So, as I have said before, if Matthew were to ban everyone except those who thought exactly like myself, I'd probably quickly drop participation in this forum.  Without this ability to interact with people of opposing positions, this forum would have very little appeal for me.

Part of wisdom is knowing when to CLOSE one's mind. I am not open AT ALL to competing worldviews other than Traditional Catholic. Does that make me less than 100% completely dedicated to the Truth? I don't think so.

I would argue that having an emphasis on "the big picture" and emotional attachments to the past makes one much more stable. My history and present are proof of this. I've seen guys who live by your standards and they fly all over the place, as they focus on one or another aspect of the question. Being human they can only focus on one aspect at a time -- each aspect leads them to a different conclusion. They lack the big picture, so they have no mass or ballast to keep them stable. They end up passing through each one of the various Trad groups, never staying in any place very long. They are extremely unstable.

I am Catholic-proud (as in, "all glory be to God") of my stability. I'm unwilling or unable to uproot my whole life, everything I've done thus far, because of a well-written article, book, sermon, or youtube video. And call me crazy, but I'd say that's a good thing.


P.S. Will you stop bringing up banning if I don't bring it up first?

I would posit:

The more people in the world like Ladislaus, i.e., the more people willing to change or believe anything based on the outcome of a single syllogism or debate, the world becomes a worse place.

Woe unto the world because of a lack of common sense!

If I could make 5 more people have common sense, or 500 more people willing to change their life and thinking to align with the outcome of A rational argument, I'd have to go with the former.

Because the ten million dollar question is: whose rational argument? There is too much error out there. One needs to have a sanity-check ("common sense") to navigate the sea of error, especially in the Modern World.

I laid out a rational argument for why I would consider this modest (given certain conditions).  Go ahead with a rebuttal, but stop the personal attacks and insinuations.

Consider my rebuttal:
1. Common sense. An immodestly dressed woman is not modest.
1b. The Blessed Virgin Mary would never wear a skirt like that.
2. Perennial Catholic teaching, i.e., argument of authority. But what an authority! The Catholic Church is an authority to be respected. All conservative/Trad Catholic modesty guidelines have consistently excluded skirts such as the one you pictured.

I am *solidly* on Sean Johnson's side in your "Jone's Moral Theology" fight, by the way.  I should point out to Sean, however, your paragraph towards the bottom of the thread where you state you personally don't believe spousal sodomy is without sin, etc. You're being all rational here, if a bit Jesuitical.

In that particular case, the discussion was specifically about whether it was GRAVE sin.  By the way, what you're saying is not precise.  I never said that spousal sodomy is not grave sin, but, rather, that the controversial activity was not in fact sodomy (in other words, I agreed with Jone's definition of the term).

Nevertheless, there's a much bigger issue here, Matthew, and both you and Sean are both GRAVELY wrong about, assuming that you completely agree with him, as you just said you did, and it's a very pernicious fruit of your R&R position.  What I was most concerned about, rather than the issue itself, and why I kept engaged on the issue, is the false allegation for SeanJohnson that one is morally "in peril" for adopting a position based on an approved Catholic source.  When the majority theological opinion says something, one may (and perhaps should) form his conscience along those lines.  So, Johnson made a big deal about how I'm rejecting St. Alphonsus (i.e. I disagreed with this particular opinion), but ignored the fact that HE was rejecting St. Alphonsus on this point.  St. Alphonsus is perhaps best know for his principle of probabilism, that one may act, without sin, in accordance with any probable opinion (not even necessarily the majority opinion or the common one).  So in defending St. Alphonsus, SeanJohnson was ironically REJECTING St. Alphonsus.

Let's get this straight.  Neither you nor SeanJohnson nor anyone else has the right to impose your conscience on anyone else.  With your R&R position, you reject the authority of the Magisterium to do exactly that, and you end up replacing this authority with your own private judgment.  And then you impute sin to anyone who does not happen to agree with your own personal conclusion.

I'll give you a practical example of what I mean.  As many of you know, I disagree with what Pius XII stated in his Allocution regarding NFP.  HOWEVER ... if I am a priest and confessor, and a married person comes to me and tells me that they are using NFP, and they have a grave reason as understood commonly by Traditional theologians, I absolutely do NOT refuse them absolution based on my opinion.  I might recommend that they reconsider.  But I have NO AUTHORITY to impose my own private opinions on anyone else.  Period.  THAT is where private judgment stops.  If you start crossing over that line, then you are adopting an incredibly pernicious schismatic attitude.  That is why I have rejected the Dimonds.  I told them directly that I disagree with their characterization of BoD as heresy, since the Church has allowed it and has even made Doctors of the Church men who believed it.  For me, then, to say that it's heresy is schismatic.  Schism involves separation not merely from the Pope but also from those in communion with the Church.  When I decide that certain people are not Catholics when the Church receives them as her own, then I am in fact a schismatic.  I have routinely denounced ALL the private excommunicators.  And, Matthew, you yourself established this forum with some of those principles in mind, and I have repeatedly praised this about CathInfo.