LUKY
IT IS SAID OF THE LITTLE JACINTA MARTO, THE YOUNGEST OF THE THREE FATIMA VISIONARIES, THAT THE BLESSED VIRGIN APPEARED TO HER SEVERAL TIMES AS SHE LAY DYING IN A HOSPITAL IN LISBON.
Our Lady is reported once to have forecast that there would be immodest fashions - immodestas modas - which would grieve the Lord very much.
When we look around us - on television, in the newspapers, in magazines and films, in the office, and sometimes even in our own homes - we can see evidence of such fashions.
Those of us who are senior can recall a time when modesty was a part of the precepts of our faith.
To be immodestly dressed and thus to be an occasion of sin to others, was, we were taught, a serious offence against the virtue of purity, and the wearing of really plunging decolletage was regarded by some as a mortal sin.
Inspection drill
At the convent boarding school which I attended as a young girl, we were lined up prior to a school dance.
Reverend Mother inspected our dresses. Armed with a box of pins she delivered a lecture on Christian maidenhood and the necessity of purity and modesty for the Catholic mother of tomorrow and if one's dress was regarded as needing a cover up on top, she was not sparing in her use of the pins.
She forbade one girl to go downstairs to the dance the night she wore a strapless dress without a bolero.
Now that I am no longer in danger of reprisals from reverend mother, the truth may be revealed.
I, along with the most of peers, thought she needed her head read.
I thought my dad needed his read too, the day he locked me into my bedroom rather than allow me to go out into town wearing shorts.
My children felt I needed my head read. My daughters must be the only girls in the country who were never allowed to wear slacks.
In a time when everyone wore trouser suits this must have appeared the height of bigotry.
They could wear a costume to the pool, but at home they wore a dress, preferably one with short sleeves, no matter how hot the weather.
Precedent
I sometimes remind myself of Father Frank Gilbreth, not the priest but the daddy of twelve of 'Cheaper by the Dozen' fame.
He covered his wife and daughters up to the chins even in the swimming pool because he believed in the ideal of modesty.
When one of my daughters was a tiny tot, her aunt gave her a bikini for Christmas, which I wouldn't let her put on.
'For heaven's sake Luky, what's the matter with you? Even if you wouldn't like her to wear it at sixteen, nothing can be wrong with it now!'
'If I bring her up now with the idea that a bikini is all right,' I explained, 'how will I be able to convince that it isn't when she's sixteen?'
Just for me
I told my children that once they were away from home I could no longer dictate their choice of fashions, but that they were to look modest when they come to visit me.
And if they brought home their future marriage partners, whom I was determined to love as I do my own sisters' and brothers' spouses, they were to tell them that I'm a dreadful stick in the mud and that therefore they must look modest too.
When you've been brought up to regard purity and modesty as part of your faith in your parent's home, you will enforce it in your own home too.
My father's bigotry - I call it purity - was the example by which I am guided, because I feel that men rather than women, know what passes through a man's mind when he sees a girl half-dressed.
And fortunately for me, I married a man who felt the way my father did - another poor victim of a Catholic upbringing ...
Please encourage those under your care to dress modestly.
Catherine Nicolette
Well, I have to admit it's true. I didn't think my parents needed their head read - I knew they did.
Long lectures on the virtue of modesty made me roll my eyes skyward.
Mom didn't need to worry about lads beating a path to the back door if I showed one inch of untoward knee - those that weren't terrified of Dad had been thoroughly warned off by my brothers.
Needle and thread
I, too, was the joyful recipient of a convent education.
I was livid one day to be accosted by a reverend mother with a ruler.
She measured the length of my hem from the ground and compared it to neat markings in her copperplate hand from the year before.
'Aha! Nicolette Whittle,' she announced triumphantly, as she puffed and panted up from where she had knelt before my unvirtuous hemline, 'I thought so! You've shortened your skirt! '
I was nothing short of affronted: I had done no such thing.
Reverend mother was not convinced - I had to lengthen my hem. Except there was not much hem to let out.
Reverend mother - not to be outdone - arrived back from town two days later, all flying veil and darkened sunglasses.
She was triumphantly waving an 'iron on' false hem she had found in an old-fashioned haberdashery's in town.
I had to gloomily put up with my peers' mirth as the false hem's satin sheen - cheerfully contrasting to the somewhat threadbare cotton of my original skirt - shone in the sunlight, proving glaringly obvious.
It was only some time later when I visited a dressmaker that we discovered the shortened hemline was due to my youthful growing a few inches, coupled with ageing material shrinkage in the wash ...
Sensible
Modesty. What do I think about it now? I think it is a most sensible attribute. That's only since I have had the privilege of listening to unguarded and overheard male comments once I reached the age of majority.
Wiping the bereft tears from single moms carrying their pregnancy alone after so-called fun of being out unchaperoned - together with alcohol and provocative clothing - and I started seeing another side to life.
Hearing the weeping of young women who decided on termination and live with lifelong regret and often other issues, gave me further insight.
I am a great advocate now of clothing that is sensible, doesn't expose too much skin to sunburn in summer or to the threat of pneumonia in winter, and doesn't appear to promise actions now that could cause much distress later.
I'm also [gasp! shock, horror!] in favor of chaperones of girls and young women as they go around town.
Archaic, I know. But an older woman or a male relative has a somewhat sobering effect on impulsive decisions - which might affect the whole course of a life with undue responsibility very early on - being made...
