Page 10 of Regina Coeli Report of April - May 2018: "The youths of Our Lady of Fatima parish in Portland, OR, took an evening and 'served' the adults.  They.....tended the bar....The evening even concluded with ballroom dancing!"

http://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/n065rp_Balls-02.htm

We continue the publication of the very interesting and useful summary made by the monthly magazine Catolicismo of the moral principles regarding balls and dances in the pastoral letters of Cardinal Pedro Segura y Saenz, Archbishop of Seville. We remind our readers that the Cardinal is not speaking here about classical or folkloric dances.

 The Saints and dances

 St. Charles Borromeo says that the dance “is a circle whose center is the Devil and his cohorts constitute the circuмference, since very rarely or almost never does one dance without sin.”

 St. Frances de Sales, well-known for his goodness and suavity, states: “Because of the circuмstances surrounding dances, it is so propitious to evil that souls run the greatest risks at them. Balls, dances and similar nighttime gatherings ordinarily attract the vices and sins of that region: complaints, envy, jeers and infatuations of heart. Just as the exercise of dance opens the pores of the body, so also it opens the pores of the heart. For this reason, if some serpent comes to inspire words of lust or flattery to be whispered in one’s ear, or if some lizard approaches darting impure and amorous looks, hearts are most disposed to let themselves be contaminated and polluted.”

 St. Frances also counsels "Philothea" [a faithful soul]: “The doctors say that the best mushrooms have no value; I say the same to you about balls, the best are not absolutely good.”

 Persons who judge dances as compatible with the life of Christian perfection should meditate often on the considerations of the Holy Doctor (Philothea or Introduction to the Devout Life, III, 32, 33).

 In the life of the Holy Cure of Ars, St. John Marie Vianney, one notes how strongly he condemns the dangerous diversion of dances. He said: “The dance is the means the Devil uses to destroy the innocence of at least three-quarters of our youth. How many girls - because of dances - lost their reputation, their Heaven and their God!”

 St. Anthony Marie Claret, who in the pulpit and his writing fought hard to stop the balls in Spain, in his book The Basket of Moses affirmed, “The Devil invented balls for girls to be lost, and extended them throughout the world like an immense net in order to catch the young people and submit them to his tyrannical domination.”

 He added, “The goddess Venus was the model of charms and the mother of carnal pleasures, and, for this reason, the pagan girls, in their idolatrous fanaticism, believed that the best way to honor the impure goddess was to offer before her altar every type of impure frivolity. … The truth is that dances are of pagan origin - and as for those practiced today - only the Devil could have invented them for the corruption of youth. In the first three centuries of our era, the persecutions and the opposition of the Church to all things that came from Paganism were obstacles against the use of the balls among the faithful. But after the fourth century, little by little they were introduced among Christians and immediately the Ecclesiastical Authority came to prohibit them.”

 A means of ‘decent’ corruption

 Fr. Felix de Sardá y Salvany in his great work Entertainment and Morals wrote, “In his eagerness to make the youth his, the Devil invented a multitude of nooses and ways to corrupt them: Impious magazines, obscene theater shows, the emotions of gambling, the impure tavern, the casino or the cabaret - which is no more than a tavern in which people wear clean shirts. There was not, thank God, a place for the systematic corruption of women. …

 “What was lacking, therefore, was a ‘decent’ means of corruption. A means of corruption that would wipe modesty from the face, reserve from the gaze and purity from the heart - which are the most precious feminine qualities, the best adornments of the Christian damsel. This had to be done without staining the good name of the one to be seduced, without disturbing her conscience with remorse, without embarrassing her honest mother, but rather filling her with complacence and maternal pride. It was difficult to come up with an invention that could attain all these, at first glance, contradictions. Nonetheless, the Devil found one.  It was the dance hall.”
Catolicismo, Campos, January 1952


 https://www.olrl.org/snt_docs/dancing.shtml    


There is always the person who says to me: "What harm can there be in enjoying oneself for awhile? I do no wrong to anyone; I do not want to be religious or to become a religious! If I do not go to dances, I will be living in the world like someone dead!"

My good friend, you are wrong. Either you will be religious or you will be damned. What is a religious person? This is nothing other than a person who fulfills his duties as a Christian. You say that I shall achieve nothing by talking to you about dances and that you will indulge neither more nor less in them. You are wrong again. In ignoring or despising the instructions of your pastor, you draw down upon yourself fresh chastisements from God, and I, on my side, will achieve quite a lot by fulfilling my duties. At the hour of my death, God will ask me not if you have fulfilled your duties but if I have taught you what you must do in order to fulfill them. You say, too, that I shall never break down your resistance to the point of making you believe that there is harm in amusing yourself for a little while in dancing? You do not wish to believe that there is any harm in it? Well, that is your affair. As far as I am concerned, it is sufficient for me to tell you in such a way as will insure that doing this I am doing all that I should do. That should not irritate you: your pastor is doing his duty. But, you will say, the Commandments of God do not forbid dancing, nor does Holy Scripture, either. Perhaps you have not examined them very closely. Follow me for a moment and you will see that there is not a Commandment of God which dancing does not cause to be transgressed, nor a Sacrament which it does not cause to be profaned.

You know as well as I do that these kinds of follies and wild extravagances are not ordinarily indulged in, but on Sundays and feast days. What, then, will a young girl or a boy do who have decided to go to the dance? What love will they have for God? Their minds will be wholly occupied with their preparations to attract the people with whom they hope to be mixing. Let us suppose that they say their prayers–how will they say them? Alas, only God knows that! Besides, what love for God can be felt by anyone who is thinking and breathing nothing but the love of pleasures and creatures? You will admit that it is impossible to please God and the world. That can never be.

God forbids swearing. Alas! What quarrels, what swearing, what blasphemies are uttered as a result of the jealousy that arises between these young people when they are at such gatherings! Have you not often had disputes or fights there? Who could count the crimes that are committed at these diabolical gatherings? The Third Commandment commands us to sanctify the holy day of Sunday. Can anyone really believe that a boy who has passed several hours with a girl, whose heart is like a furnace, is really thus satisfying this precept? St. Augustine has good reason to say that men would be better to work their land and girls to carry on with their spinning than to go dancing; the evil would be less. The Fourth Commandment of God commands children to honor their parents. These young people who frequent the dances, do they have the respect and the submission to their parents' wishes which they should have? No, they certainly do not; they cause them utmost worry and distress between the way they disregard their parents' wishes and the way they put their money to bad use, while sometimes even taunting them with their old-fashioned outlook and ways. What sorrow should not such parents feel, that is, if their faith is not yet extinct, at seeing their children given over to such pleasures or, to speak more plainly, to such licentious ways? These children are no longer Heaven-bent, but are fattening for Hell. Let us suppose that the parents have not yet lost the Faith. . . . Alas! I dare not go any further! . . . What blind parents! . . . What lost children! . . .

Is there any place, any time, any occasion wherein so many sins of impurity are committed at the dancehalls and their sequels? Is it not in these gatherings that people are most violently prompted against the holy virtue of purity? Where else but there are the senses so strongly urged towards pleasurable excitement? If we go a little more closely into this, should we not almost die of horror at the sight of so many crimes which are committed? Is it not at these gatherings that the Devil so furiously kindles the fire of impurity in the hearts of the young people in order to annihilate in them the grace of Baptism? Is it not there that Hell enslaves as many souls as it wishes? If, in spite of the absence of occasions and the aids of prayer, a Christian has so much difficulty in preserving purity of heart, how could he possibly preserve that virtue in the midst of so many sources which are capable of breaking it down?

"Look," says St. John Chrysostom, "at this worldly and flighty young woman, or rather at this flaming brand of diabolical fire who by her beauty and her flamboyant attire lights in the heart of that young man the fire of concupiscence. Do you not see them, one as much as the other, seeking to charm one another by their airs and graces and all sorts of tricks and wiles? Count up, unfortunate sinner, if you can, the number of your bad thoughts, of your evil desires and your sinful actions. Is it not there that you heard those airs that please the ears, that inflame and burn hearts and make of these assemblies furnaces of shamelessness?"

Is it not there, my dear brethren, that the boys and the girls drink at the fountain of crime, which very soon, like a torrent or a river bursting its banks, will inundate, ruin, and poison all its surroundings? Go on, shameless fathers and mothers, go on into Hell, where the fury of God awaits you, you and all the good actions you have done in letting your children run such risks. Go on, they will not be long in joining you, for you have outlined the road plainly for them. Go and count the number of years that your boys and girls have lost, go before your Judge to give an account of your lives, and you will see that your pastor had reason to forbid these kinds of diabolical pleasures! . . .

Ah, you say, you are making more of it than there really is!

I say too much about it? Very well, then. Listen. Did the Holy Fathers of the Church say too much about it? St. Ephraim tells us that dancing is the perdition of girls and women, the blinding of men, the grief of angels, and the joy of the devils. Dear God, can anyone really have their eyes bewitched to such an extent that they will still want to believe that there is no harm in it, while all the time it is the rope by which the Devil pulls the most souls into Hell? . . . Go on, poor parents, blind and lost, go on and scorn what your pastor is telling you! Go on! Continue the way you are going! Listen to everything and profit nothing by it! There is no harm in it? Tell me, then, what did you renounce on the day of your Baptism? Or on what conditions was Baptism given to you? Was it not on the condition of your taking a vow in the face of Heaven and earth, in the presence of Jesus Christ upon the altar, that you would renounce Satan and all his works and pomps, for the whole of your lives–or in other words that you would renounce sin and the pleasures and vanities of the world?

Was it not because you promised that you would be willing to follow in the steps of a crucified God? Well then, is this not truly to violate those promises made at your Baptism and to profane this Sacrament of mercy? Do you not also profane the Sacrament of Confirmation, in exchanging the Cross of Jesus Christ, which you have received, for vain and showy dress, in being ashamed of that Cross, which should be your glory and your happiness?
St. Augustine tells us that those who go to dances truly renounce Jesus Christ in order to give themselves to the Devil. What a horrible thing that is! To drive out Jesus Christ after having received Him in your hearts! "Today," says St. Ephraim, "they unite themselves to Jesus Christ and tomorrow to the Devil." Alas! What a Judas is that person who, after receiving our Lord, goes then to sell Him to Satan in these gatherings, where he will be reuniting himself with everything that is most vicious! And when it comes to the Sacrament of Penance, what a contradiction in such a life! A Christian, who after one single sin should spend the rest of his life in repentance, thinks only of giving himself up to all these worldly pleasures! A great many profane the Sacrament of Extreme Unction by making indecent movements with the feet, the hands and the whole body, which one day must be sanctified by the holy oils. Is not the Sacrament of Holy Order insulted by the contempt with which the instructions of the pastor are considered? But when we come to the Sacrament of Matrimony, alas! What infidelities are not contemplated in these assemblies? It seems then that everything is admissible. How blind must anyone be who thinks there is no harm in it . . .

The Council of Aix-la-Chapelle forbids dancing, even at weddings. And St. Charles Borromeo, the Archbishop of Milan, says that three years of penance were given to someone who had danced and that if he went back to it, he was threatened with excommunication. If there were no harm in it, then were the Holy Fathers and the Church mistaken? But who tells you that there is no harm in it? It can only be a libertine, or a flighty and worldly girl, who are trying to smother their remorse of conscience as best they can. Well, there are priests, you say, who do not speak about it in confession or who, without permitting it, do not refuse absolution for it. Ah! I do not know whether there are priests who are so blind, but I am sure that those who go looking for easygoing priests are going looking for a passport which will lead them to Hell. For my own part, if I went dancing, I should not want to receive absolution not having a real determination not to go back to dancing.

Listen to St. Augustine and you will see if dancing is a good action. He tells us that "dancing is the ruin of souls, a reversal of all decency, a shameful spectacle, a public profession of crime." St. Ephraim calls it "the ruin of good morals and the nourishment of vice." St. John Chrysostom: "A school of public unchastity." Tertullian: "The temple of Venus, the consistory of shamelessness, and the citadel of all the depravities." "Here is a girl who dances," says St. Ambrose, "but she is the daughter of an adulteress because a Christian woman would teach her daughter modesty, a proper sense of shame, and not dancing!"

Alas! How many young people are there who since they have been going to dances do not frequent the Sacraments, or do so only to profane them! How many poor souls there are who have lost therein their religion and their faith! How many will never open their eyes to their unhappy state except when they are falling into Hell! . . .

The waltz was considered a shocking and indecent dance when first introduced.

This Wikipedia article goes into more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltz

Good info, I stand corrected.

I still think that some form of ballroom dancing is not indecent.  If it is, then dancing with the umarried/opposite sex should be forbidden everywhere, but this isn't the case.

I suppose we would need to compare the type of dancing going on at St. John Vianney compared to the type of ball room dancing going on at SSPX chapels. Is it the same or worse?

It's a highly cultured virtue to know how to properly mix a cocktail.  There's little as offensive in this world than an "old fashioned" made by some ignoramus who threw a bunch of pulverized fruit into the bottom of the glass.  Best to start them young before they pick up bad habits.
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Regarding dances and all the rest, bear in mind the condemnations of these were conditioned on them being occasions of sin.  It's like, if a moralist today said "don't go to the club" and Catholics five hundred years from now read that (suppose things have gotten better by then) and read it as a proscription against children forming clubs or something of the like.  It's certainly possible for a social gathering to include dancing and not be an occasion of sin.  Don't know about what was happening in the link.

People read a quote, think they know exactly what it's talking about (rashly, when this isn't the case), and then proceed to promulgate their "discovery" as a decree, morally binding on all Catholics -- complete with excommunication for those who disagree. It's ridiculous.

I trust you are not inferring that anyone has done this as of yet in this thread since clearly no one has - either in the OP or in any of the subsequent comments.

I trust you are not inferring that anyone has done this as of yet in this thread since clearly no one has - either in the OP or in any of the subsequent comments.

Not necessarily in this case, but a lot of laymen bring their "revelation" to its logical conclusion, which is condemning those who disagree. I've seen it a thousand times.

To answer your question (sort of): It applies to everyone it applies to.

I think it is only certain types of dances which are condemned. Dancing itself is no intrinsically bad; but it becomes bad insofar as it favors bad morals. There are some dances which are fine. The folkloric ones, for example, which do not entice lust, romance, or other disordered passions by means of immodest dress or sensual movement. The following three elements are helpful criteria to identify the good dances:

1. Dresses are modest (if people are dancing in immodest attire, that is not a good dance, period)
2. Positions are appropriate (no open legs, inordinate movements, or other distortions of the body)
3. Movements are decent (not sensual or provocative, enticing lust)

I agree Marlear.  Let's see some solid source of this.  I tend to think it was simply posted to try to discredit the Cure of Ars as well as the OP.  In any event, we are both still waiting for a response from Theosist.  If he's going to post that supposed quote from the saint he should at least provide a link for same, a link that works!