Latin Mass Society AGM Mass in Westminster Cathedral: Saturday 12th

This Saturday in the Latin Mass Society's Annual General Meeting. If you want to hear me speak, this is your chance - the meeting starts at 11am in the Westminster Cathedral Hall. Obviously you need to be a member of the Society to attend the AGM, but if you're not, you can always JOIN.

The Mass which follows at 2pm is of course open to all. It will be a High Mass celebrated by our Chaplain for the South West, Fr Glaysher. It is a truly awe-inspiring venue, we'll have excellent singing from the Cathedral's own singers, so come along.

We've not had the AGM in Westminster for a few years, it has become harder to get a slot since they started doing Confirmations on Saturdays there for the whole diocese in the Spring and Summer.

Breaking conventions

Rorate Caeli has posted a video - among other things - showing the sad state of the Redemptorists in Ireland. The preacher tells a little story about his meeting with Pope St John Paul II.

He met him in Rome, when he was at the Redemporist monastery there and the Pope came to visit the parish. It was a formal occasion. The Redemptorists all lined up to greet the Pope. Having been told to kneel and kiss the Holy Father's ring, he decided to refuse - 'the Devil got into me', he says - and simply shook the Pope's hand. You only have to listen to the first minute or two to get the anecdote.

It reminds me of my meeting with Cardinal Hume. I was on the Ampleforth Pilgrimage to Lourdes, it was 1990 and I was 18. Cardinal Hume happened to be in Lourdes at the same time, with the Westminster Diocese Pilgrimage, and because of his connection with Ampleforth (he'd been Abbot before going to Westminster) he came to greet us. It was a formal occasion. We all lined up in a large semi-circle and he worked down the line shaking everyone's hand. I was some way down the line and watched this happening. Somehow the Devil - or something - got into me. I was a bit of a rebel, a non-conformist. When my turn came I broke the convention. I took his hand and kissed his ring.

The shattering of the convention was like a bolt of electricity. He sprang away from me as though I had bitten him.

If our Redemptorist priest heard this, he might object that I was just following a different convention, not overturning a convention. But as a matter of fact, although I was aware of the old custom, I had never experienced a milieu in which it was done. What the Redemptorist did, on the other hand, was to abandon a specifically Catholic and religious custom for the universal, secular convention. It was the action of a conventional person who gravitates to the most powerful, widespread convention, who can't cope with maintaining the counter-cultural conventions of the Church against those of the World.

So yes, I was young and foolish: I broke the convention. The Redemptorist claims, next, in the sermon, that Our Lord broke convention when handed the scroll in the synagogue in Caperneum (Luke 4:17): he says Our Lord chose a different passage to one set for the day. This is a fantasy, there is nothing in the text which suggests this. As a matter of fact Our Lord not only worshiped according to the customs of His age, but he kept the Law of Moses perfectly: the only man ever to have done so. When criticised for breaking rules, he never says 'Oh I can't be bothered with the Law of Moses, that's old hat, you need to chill out,' no, he explains that what he had done had not in fact infringed it.

Bishop Malcolm McMahon - now Archbishop of Liverpool - at an LMS Priest Training Conference

So this Redemporist and I can't comfort ourselves with Our Lord's example. He may be on safer ground claiming the precedent set by Pope Francis, but it's bit risky imitating the spontaneous gestures of the Supreme Pontiff. And suggesting that Pope Francis violated a convention by not using the Popemobile is stretching the concept to breaking point. The Popemobile was not exactly a venerable custom.

Seeing Our Lord as a convention-breaker is very tempting, because convention-breaking is what we are all supposed to be doing all the time, but it is the wrong hermeneutic. When He touched the bier carrying the dead Son of the Widow of Naim (Luke 7:14) the onlookers would have thought that he would incur ritual impurity. It wasn't forbidden, some people had to deal with dead bodies, impurity wasn't permanent, but the Pharisees would have done their best to avoid doing it. But for Our Lord it was different: His touch purified, it raised the dead to life. Similarly, when he healed the Man with a Withered Hand on a Sabbath (Luke 6:6-11), it might have looked as though he was working and so breaking the Sabbath, but when Christ cures it is a symbol of the giving of spiritual life, and saving from death was always permitted on the Sabbath.

No, the Redemptorist and I have to think of some other justification, if any. We need to think about what breaking these conventions meant in our specific cases. By stepping outside the expected behaviour, we were making a statement. And the Redemptorist priest needs to be careful about praising the breaking of conventions, because he and I were making quite opposite statements when we broke the respective conventions, the one being followed by everyone else apart from us.

What does it mean to refuse to kiss the Pope's ring? I mean, to do that back in the days, perhaps twenty years ago or more, when attempts were still being made to insist on it at these occasions. It was a deliberate act of disrespect for the man and his office. It was a claim to equality of dignity, an equality of dignity which is only possible by pulling the Pope down to your own level.

Bishop Terence Drainey at the LMS York Pilgrimage 2012

What did it mean for me to insist on kissing the Cardinal's ring? It was a rebellion against the pretense of equality of dignity in which the Cardinal was taking part. No one really thought that he wasn't a great man with a great office: there we were, all terribly honoured to meet him, even momentarily. But the convention of kissing a bishop's or a cardinal's ring was still enough in our consciousness that a statement could be made by pointedly eschewing it: a statement saying: Let's pretend we'll all on a level, that there is nothing special about being a cardinal. We could get a little thrill through the double-think: he's a cardinal and yet he's not behaving like one.

As a young man - yes, I was young and foolish - I had a particular aversion to this kind of pretense. I wanted to prick the bubble of pompous nonsense. I thought it was dishonest. I might take a more nuanced view today. But at the time Cardinal Hume's reaction rather confirmed my feeling that we were being asked to maintain some kind of Emperor's New Clothes illusion. Why did he mind so much if I wanted to kiss his ring, a gesture of respect for his office? Presumably because it disturbed the impression he was eager to create, of relaxed informality in front of young people. Young people who were, in fact, not relaxed at all, but completely in awe of him - with the exception, I suppose, of the foolish youth who was cocky enough to break the convention.

Abbot Stonham of Belmont at the LMS Holywell Pilgrimage 2014

The statement I made was that I respected his office, and the values it stood for, even in spite of his wishes. Cardinal Hume did not abolish the office, or the power that went with it; the men of his generation too often wanted the power without the conventions which had previously served to limit the power, like the conventions which surrounded a Medieval monarch, before the age of Absolutism. It was necessary, and indeed it remains necessary, to reassert the old conventions, the expectations of respect for tradition, respect for the Faith, respect for the Church's law, and come to that respect for God, while not denying the power, because without those conventions the power can be used, and often has been used, arbitrarily.

To reassert those traditional expectations and conventions today, we have flout the expectations and conventions which have replaced them. We have to be rebels in the cause of restoration. This is not an unprecedented situation by any means, but it confuses the liberals no end.

Archbishop Bernard Longley at the LMS Oxford Pilgrimage 2010


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Holywell last Sunday

Here are some photos of the LMS Pilgrimage to Holywell, in honour of St Winefride (album on Flickr here).



St Winefride's Well is the 'holy well' which gives Holywell its name, and the shrine around the well is unique in Britain as never having been destroyed. This may have something to do with the fact that it had been rebuilt by King Henry VIII's mother. It was continuously venerated by Catholics through Penal Times - something really remarkable - and bought back by Catholics as soon as possible. As well as Catholics from Lancashire coming down, there were many from Ireland, as one can see from the inscriptions carved into the walls giving thanks for cures.

St Winefride (c.600-660) was a Welsh princess who resisted the advances of a importunate Welsh prince to the point of death, from which she was raised to life by her uncle, St Beuno. Her importance is indicated by her influence on Oxford's Saxon princess, St Frideswide (650 to 735), who was inspired by St Winifride and whose story is parallel to hers, although St Frideswide didn't actually suffer beheading.




The Pilgrimage to Holywell has long been one of the Latin Mass Society's biggest annual events, and it continues to be well attended. There were about 200 people in church, where Pontifical Mass was celebrated by Abbot Paul Stonham of Belmont Abbey. His vesting in the sanctuary will enrage Mgr Basil Loftus, who has an obsession with the subject for reasons which are obscure, but into every life some rain must fall.



After Mass we processed to the Well and venerated a relic of St Winefride; this was followed by Benediction back in the church.



This is the kind of event which can only happen with the organisation and support of a national organisation like the Latin Mass Society. Over the years we have organised many Pontifical Masses here, a few years ago it was part of Bishop Rifan's itinerary. A coach brings people from London, and others came from all over the country. There was a choir singing polyphony as well as the chant for the Mass. You can see from the photos the numerous priests who came from far and wide to make the Mass run smoothly, and a vast team of servers. These things don't happen by themselves.

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Inexpressive Faces in Oxford

Last weekend the Pro-Life Witness took place, as usual on the fourth Saturday of the month. It is an hour of people praying the Rosary, outside the John Radcliffe Hospital in Headington, the only place in Oxford and its environs where abortions take place. But they don't take place on Saturdays. The occasional pedestrian, bus, and car pass us on the way to the hospital, but as it happens they aren't on their way to the abortion clinic, and we don't do any pavement counselling. It is all very simple and low key.

Nevertheless this small prayer witness has attracted an aggressive counter-demonstration; after being told by the Police they should not actually stand in front of us to hold up sheets to try to obscure our signs, they now limit themselves to playing music to drown out the Rosary. We maintain this degree of good behaviour by videoing the whole affair. They numbered four last weekend, whereas there were about 25 of us, including two priests and a Franciscan friar, and some more praying before the Blessed Sacrament in the church next to us.

The pro-abortionists call themselves 'Disco for Choice', and their token gyrations can be seen if you double click on this photo and toggle between it and the next one in the album.



Despite the enforced jollity they looked fairly glum, especially the leader of the gang who expresses her disapproval of being filmed and photographed by filming and photographing us.

 

Regular readers may be surprised to hear that, when I read the remarks of the new President of the Italian Bishops' Conference, Archbishop Gelantino, distancing himself from the 'inexpressive (or 'expressionless') faces' of those who pray outside abortion clinics, I was at a loss for words. Here, however, are some words of Edward Peters, the canon lawyer who blogged about this here.

I prayed my first rosary outside an abortuary in 1978. I don’t recall what my expression was, but I doubt I was smiling. I have prayed many rosaries outside of many abortion mills since then, have picketed them, side-walk witnessed at them, passed out literature around them, and even drove two women (who had showed up for abortions) to pro-life agencies where they sought assistance toward sparing their babies from abortion. I probably smiled on those two days.

At the same time—even though usually things are quiet (deathly quiet) outside an abortion chamber—I have nevertheless also been screamed at by clinic personnel, cursed at by passers-by, drenched in the rain, had a brick tossed over a wall at me, and once watched a driver gesture the ‘trigger finger’ at me. But even if I had the presence of mind to rejoice at these insults borne for the sake of the least of His children, I’m pretty sure I did not show it on my face. I wonder, does every feeling need to be shown? And what exactly should one feel outside a death chamber?

For myself, I don't support these initiatives because of a great optimism about the pro-life cause. It is more that, seeing the greatest single moral evil of our generation taking place in our own quiet streets, with the approval of the law, I feel that it is morally necessary for as many of us as possible not only to pray, but to protest in public, to show that not everyone is passing the victims on the other side of the street. The evil may continue, but at least we made a token protest.

Loftus Denies the Existence of the Iliad

The Proclamation of the Epistle at High Mass
(Corpus Christi, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament)

Of all the bizarre claims I've read in Mgr Basil Loftus' column, this must win some kind of prize.

An even greater difficulty arose for the early missioners to the Greeks from the total aversion of Greek culture to written records, and their preference for oral myths. "The concept of a text that contained spiritual 'truths' was accepted in Judaism and in traditional religions, but it was new to the Greco-Roman world ... The idea that stories about God and his actions (muthoi) could be frozen in written form and interpreted to make statements of 'truth' (logoi) was alien to the Greeks and there was to be some resistance to it in early Christianity."

The internal quotation is from Charles Freeman The Closing of the Western Mind, a rant about how Christianity ruined everything. Loftus must be congratulating himself on finding a book as muddled as he is; never mind that Freeman is ferociously anti-Christian. Doesn't Loftus know the Golden Rule?

Never Take Seriously People who Feel they Must Always Put 'Truth' in Inverted Commas.

The Iliad had been in written form for many centuries by the time St Paul arrived in Greece. In Plato's time (ie more than four centuries earlier) it had already long been regarded as a more or less inspired religious text (read his dialogue Ion if you need convincing). Its significance was in fact far greater than we would expect of a sacred text: it was held to contain wisdom on a whole range of social, psychological, and even practical matters. Greek schoolboys had to learn lists of archaic words in order to understand it. And then, of course, there was Hesiod's Works and Days, a text setting out the auspicious and inauspicious times to do all kinds of activities, as well as myth; the Odyssey, containing a whole lot more stories of gods and men; more recent literary treatments of myth such as by Apollonius (and, for the Romans, Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses, and other works); and the hugely influential body of Greek drama: the ones most familiar to us today being venerable classics by the time of Christ. And then there was philosophy, the boundary between which and religion did not really exist. Texts composed by Plato, Pythagoras, Zeno, and Epicurius were studied with reverent awe by their disciples, who did their best to live by them.

But never mind all that. Facts get in the way of a good argument. Why on earth is Loftus making these absurd claims? He has his eye on some even sillier claims about the Bible. Here it is:

Early Christians debated doctrine orally; it was Clement of Alexandria, writing in the latter half of the second century AD who was instrumental in overcoming the reluctance to write down any kind of systematic Christian teaching. As a result, later, there was a move to reduce any debate about Christianity to a mere comparison of written documents, and something was lost in the process.

Eh? What about the Didache? A systematic treatment of Christian teaching dating from the late first or early second century: ie, from before St Clement.

He continues:

So once the written word had eclipsed oral tradition in the Church, there was an end to the adaptation to more modern needs of the Christ had said and done. More than one Gospel writer had brought Christ's words and deeds 'up-to-date' by proceeding on the 'Hansard' principle of writing down what would have been said if the speaker had realised what should have been said, thus bringing some authority to bear on the solution of more contemporary problems. But once written down, there would be no further adaptation.

So this is it. Loftus sees a golden age of free-wheeling adaptation in the primitive Church, where nothing was written down so no one could check, and wants us to get back there. Specifically, Loftus thinks that the theology of the authority of bishops, so emphasised by Vatican II, was a late and inauthentic development, and would like to see the Pope 're-think the position of Bishop of Rome'.

Poor old Basil. Anyone can read the Acts of the Apostles and see what hogwash this is. The emphasis on the authentic teaching of the Apostles. The need to go back to St Peter and the others in Jerusalem to check things. Letters going to and fro. And of course St Paul's own letters, which were carefully preserved. It looks as though Loftus, like most liberals, would favour a late date for the Gospels (after St Clement, perhaps?), but where all these fantasies hit the rocks is in the dating of St Paul's letters. We have a fair degree of certainty that the earliest, 1 Thessalonians, was written in or around 51 AD. That is to say, about 20 years after the Passion of Our Lord, perhaps less. Twenty years to fit in Loftus' golden age of purely oral Christianity.

The worst thing is that all the contrasts liberals want to make between 'early' and 'late' theological developments in the New Testament are the wrong way round between the Gospels and the Epistles. Loftus makes a fairly typical suggestion that the Gospels are less emphatic about the Divinity of Our Lord than the Epistles.

Initially, in preaching to the Jews, Peter and Paul had only been able to refer to to the 'exaltation' of Christ after his death. Now, on preaching to the Gentiles, Paul and Barnabas were able to assert the constant divinity of Christ from the moment he was formed in his mother's womb.

But this is backwards. St Paul's Epistles, which assert the Divinity so clearly, came, according to Loftus, decades and decades earlier than the Synoptic Gospels where we it can seem the teaching is more tentative. In the meantime, Loftus tells us, the oral tradition upon which the Gospels were based had been undergoing all kinds of evolution. Is he saying that the Christian message in the Gospels had evolved into something more primitive than what was being written by St Paul so shortly after Jesus' earthly ministry? Or is he saying that the oral tradition was so fixed and stable that what the Gospels recorded was an accurate reflection of the earliest teaching, even when this was several decades out of date? But that somehow this fixed and stable oral tradition had no impact on St Paul?

(No one, incidentally, thinks all three synoptic Gospels were addressed only to Jewish Christians, so the idea that these preserved a primitive teaching suited to a Jewish audience in a sort of time-capsule won't help here.)

Oh dear oh dear, what a dreadful muddle. But it is worth setting this out because you can hear just these kinds of arguments on the lips of liberal Catholics up and down the land. When you hear them spouting this stuff you can also remind them of what Vatican II said:

Dei Verbum, 18-19.
The Church has always and everywhere held and continues to hold that the four Gospels are of apostolic origin. For what the Apostles preached in fulfillment of the commission of Christ, afterwards they themselves and apostolic men, under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, handed on to us in writing: the foundation of faith, namely, the fourfold Gospel, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
19. Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held, and continues to hold, that the four Gospels just named, whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven (see Acts 1:1).

These liberals, they accept Vatican II, right? They wouldn't catch them 'rejecting Vatican II' or anything like that, would you?

There are more quotations from Vatican II they might like here.

The Proclamation of the Gospel


As a service to the public, I have put together quotations on a range of themes from Loftus' published writings, mostly his Catholic Times columns, in a dossier here, and made one of his most theologically egregious articles, on the Resurrection of Our Lord, available here.

Holywell this Sunday

Venue: St Winefride’s Catholic Church, Well Street, HOLYWELL CH8 7PL
Date: Sunday, 6 July 2014
Details: Our long-established and popular annual pilgrimage to St Winefride's Shrine and the Holy Well in north Wales. Venue: St Winefride’s Catholic Church, Well Street, HOLYWELL CH8 7PL. 

Pontifical High Mass starts at 2.30pm and will be celebrated by the Abbot of Belmont. Mass will be followed by a procession to the Shrine. There will be a coach from London (phone Graham Moorhouse on 01322 409231). Full details here.

Approach to Catholic Fashion 3: clothes and ideology

A sanitised and prettyfied 'goth' outfit.
There'll be better examples on the last bus home.

Many Catholics, some visible in the combox in other posts in this series, take modesty in clothing
seriously to the point that they no longer think anything else worthy of consideration in choosing clothes: one commenter, in particular, said there was no reason why a Catholic should not wear the Muslim hijab in one of the pictures. I doubt, however, that any Catholic would ever do so, and I think that the reason would be an instinctive fear of appropriating not only the clothes but their ideological underpinning as well. This post will discuss the way in which clothes express the ideology of the person wearing them (or at any rate that of the designer), and in doing so, I hope, demonstrate the paramount importance of making informed choices about what we as Catholics wear.

The fact that clothes are a kind of language through which we communicate with the people around us is obvious, but still bears repeating. Every society has created a dress which reflects its values, and the ideas which preoccupy it. Within what might be called the mainstream standard of dress there are groups who deliberately dress differently in order to demonstrate that they set themselves at odds with convention: their dress not only distinguishes them from the crowd but makes it clear in what way they are different. This is most clearly seen today in the style tribes: for example goths, who sprang from  the rock music scene of the 1980s. Musicians were influenced by horror in film and literature, and their fans responded by adopting the appropriate dress and props. As time went on the net was spread wider to encompass the occult, and as the movement grew authors and filmmakers looked to the Gothic literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for inspiration. It’s unnecessary, however, to know much about the origins and development of the movement, to understand and interpret the clothes of a goth, when we meet one. The black hair, eyes and fingernails, the black clothing (often ripped), the piercings and, occasionally, dress styled along period lines, usually Victorian, speak to us more forcefully than any UCAS personal statement can that here is a person who rejects the superficial, optimistic materialism of our time, and furthermore, is deeply preoccupied with supernatural concerns of the darkest sort.

This can be seen, of course, over and over again, in sub-cultures as various as skater boys and bohemians. That much is obvious, and I’m sure that no one would disagree. But aside from these subcultures, which after all are making a deliberate effort to identify themselves sartorially as a group in as noticeable a way as possible, and who have taken possession of a certain style of dress, it is still possible to see, in every garment made by any manufacturer at any time, the influence of philosophies and ideologies, some good, some bad, some indifferent, but nevertheless there. Often the maker will be unaware of the influence over him – sometimes even the designer might be so, too, although that is less common. I think this situation is best summarised by the film The Devil Wears Prada, a witty and provocative take on Vogue and its famously unapproachable editor, Anna Wintour. The new secretary, ignorant of all things fashionable (and dressed accordingly), is inclined to be scornful of a room full of fashion editors and stylists preparing their next fashion shoot: she is an Ivy League graduate, and naturally above all that sort of thing, and inadvertently lets this out to the aforementioned editor. She is skewered in a few sentences, as follows:

I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select, I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean, and you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002 Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns, and then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets...and then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers and then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you no doubt fished it out of some clearance bin. However that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs, and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when in fact you're wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.

None of us should underestimate the truth and force of this statement. Everything we wear has been created in a particular way with a particular aim, and is, like it or not, making a particular statement. It may not be a statement that we fully understand, and for that reason, like the secretary in the film, we may not be aware we are making it and be inclined to doubt that we are making it. But it is there, visible to the people around us; and we need to understand clearly that if we haven’t made a conscious effort to choose a style statement, it will be chosen for us by people with whom we probably have very little sympathy.

Again, this is a matter which, like the understanding of beauty, takes time to understand. As Dr Shaw has very clearly put it in his philosophical interludes, it is the exercise of the virtue of prudence. It would be impossible, in one blog post, to list the many philosophies which are at variance with the Catholic Faith and then go on to describe all the many garments which it can be seen are derived from them or influenced by them. Here, I will simply point out three prevalent ones, and the ones that Catholics might even be tempted to wear for modesty’s sake, but which should be avoided if possible.

Nirvana. Not a pretty sight: but they're not supposed to be.

First of all, grunge. Originating, like many such movements, in the alternative rock acts of the 1980s, this can be most easily identified ideologically with the lyrics and mind-set of Nirvana, the rock group headed by the late Kurt Cobain. It is essentially nihilistic, and is concerned with the expression of social alienation as well as a rejection of the conventions of society. In fashion terms, this was expressed by anti-aestheticism – a way of trying to say that the wearer was truly authentic. In other words, if you are dressed with no regard for your appearance (even if you have taken modesty into account) you may well be dressing in a grunge-derivative style. A muddy palette is most earnestly to be avoided in this regard, as well as clothes which are dirty, or damaged, or have clearly been chosen only for their cheapness and durability. (Nothing wrong with cheapness or durability, of course, but taken together and with no other quality to recommend them, and you’re wearing grunge.) It may not be strictly within the remit of this post to mention it, but not washing also puts you firmly in grunge country. It was said of Kurt Cobain that he was "too lazy to shampoo", and this would not be at all at odds with the rest of the above principles. But did it make him a more authentic person? No, just a very anti-social one.

Jeans are bad enough, but these are specifically designed to look as though
you've picked them up off your boyfriend's bedroom floor.

Secondly, feminism. Now the idea that feminism can be expressed through fashion appals true feminists, but it’s undeniable that they have used clothes as a vehicle to express their views (denim dungarees, anyone?), which further underlines the fact that no group can escape the concrete fact of clothes speaking a language that is clearly understood by all. It’s easy to avoid dungarees, of course, but there are also subtler ways in which clothes can be feminist, and it is necessary, unfortunately, to try and keep abreast of the progress of feminism as it tacks erratically from sexual empowerment to Playboy bunnies to Fifty Shades of Grey and back again, taking in different understandings of the place of women in the workplace, in order to avoid the latest feminist on-trend message. In the 80s it was big shoulders and power suits (unfortunately wearing a skirt doesn’t necessarily safeguard you) – now I think the one biggest thing to avoid is the trouser suit. Look out for anything that looks like it has been borrowed from men’s tailoring, and try to avoid looking too much as though comfort has been your only concern when dressing. I know there’s no need for me to warn a traddy reader against anything advertising sexual availability or sexual freedom, but that kind of clothing would probably fall into this category too, though there can be an overlap here with other subcultures such as punk.

Punk is another one to look out for. I must say it is amazing to me that punk is still going, and I think it must be in part attributed to the continuing influence of Vivienne Westwood, still going strong at 73. Punk is the sartorial expression of anarchy (the non-recognition of authority and absolute freedom of the individual – in political terms, a society without a publicly recognised government). This is directly opposed to Catholicism, which is hierarchical and ordered. Punk fashion is usually achieved by combining a conventional element, for example a tartan skirt, which is then contradicted by clunky boots and aggressive jewellery. The overall effect is that of a garment at war with itself and its wearer: it is a brutal, brutalised style. Safety pins, rips and black leather often feature. As time has gone on particular brands have become associated with this, such as Doc Martens, and the movement has developed into expressions of sexual fetishism, deviancy and perversity. It’s not necessary to sport a bright pink Mohican to promote a punk style. That Dress, worn by Liz Hurley (usually known as the 'safety-pin dress') was an example of an anti-fashion statement worn on the red carpet, the one place where you might think haute couture was still safe. Unbecoming, unflattering, it nevertheless made her name: it anticipated a trend, and made a complex fashion statement the ramifications of which are still working themselves out.

For people who regard themselves as above fashion, or at any rate outside it, designers such as Issey

Classic Eskandar: trying to look like nothing
in particular. Can be elegant, can be bizarre, but
it has been so often imitated they even fought
a legal battle about it.

Miyake and Eskandar have a strong attraction. They wanted to reject the tidal movements of fashion and put themselves outside its parameters, and their garments have been worn by many people who sought to identify their style as transcending fashion. However by the nature of clothes design, these designers found themselves involved in the very industry which they set out to contradict. Though both have created some beautiful clothes, their ideological position in relation to fashion is fundamentally incoherent. There is a lesson for us too here: much as we might like the idea of saying that as Catholics, fashion is not for us, nevertheless we can’t help being caught up in it and must make the best of it, rather than trying to pretend that we are disconnected from it.

Aside from these ideologically driven styles, we should be aware of dangerous sociological influences on fashion. Pick up a copy of Vogue, and you will see them at work. The cult of youth, which disparages age and experience, is clearly visible in baby doll styles, and very high hemlines. The blurring of gender roles can be seen in tuxedos for women and so called “boyfriend” shirts and trousers. Also very worrying is the attempt (mentioned in my previous post) of deconstructing clothes by taking them out of their proper setting. Institution after institution has been forced to reduce or drop their dress codes altogether in the face of this insistence on wearing the wrong clothes: I see from the news that Wimbledon is the latest victim. This is sad because once such a tradition is reversed, it’s almost impossible to reintroduce it; and, of course, once sensitivity to appropriateness has been lost, rebuilding it becomes painfully difficult: it’s hard even to get people to see that there is anything needing rebuilding. Even more pernicious, in my view, is the cult of ugliness: Miuccia Prada boasted of making “ugly clothes from ugly materials”, and in anything like that, or in anything that seems to want to uglify or contradict the feminine form, we should see opposition to the beauty of God’s creation all around us.

Our Lady said the the children at Fatima that "there are no fashions in Heaven": anyone attempting to recreate a Puritan-style uniformity of dress within Catholicism should take note! It therefore behoves us to look beyond the craze of the moment, or indeed latest mad list of details constituting a Mary-like dress. What we put on should be determined not by these things but by sensitivity to our situations and the people around us, and in doing so should attempt, in however feeble a manner, to emulate the many and varied beauties of nature, and to embrace the many colours, shapes and textures it gives us.

Catherine of Medici weds the future King of France in 1533.