WOMEN’S DRESS.

Gisborne Times, Volume LX, Issue 9799, 8 May 1924, Page 5

WOMEN’S DRESS.

\ CRYING SCANDAL

LONDON, March 3

Since the days of St. Paul the churches have been moved if not to wrath to annoyance and sorrow in regard to ‘women’s .dress. Wo recently had transmitted the regulations issued by the Vatican on the subject of Women’s dress and yesterday Cardinal Logue in his pastoral letter to his charges in the arch diocese of Armagh said: —- “If there be one thing before all others of which Ireland was justly proud, it was the reserve and scrupulous modesty of her women and girls. Whether it be from a general loss ol that tenderness of conscience or a slavish devotion to fashion, I fear wo can pride ourselves on this no longer. The dresses, or rather, the want of dress, of women at the present day >s a crying scandal. There seems to lie a rivalry between them as to how little dress they can" wear without incurring universal reprobation. We see enough of this in every day life, hut if we can judge from the advertisements in newspapers, wo do not see the worst. What shocks one most is to see persons presenting themselves for a, Holy Communion in these dresses.- I have often felt an impulse to pass them over, and I fear the Cardinal Vicar’s example in Rome, publishing a decree forbidding clergy to give them Holy Communion, must bo followed if tlie scandal is to bo stopped.” , ' After saying that the clergy have appealed to him to condemn dance halls, which are demoralising their parishioners, the cardinal goes on to say:— , . “I have no objection to dancing as such, provided the dances bo clean, like most of our Irish dances, indulged in within reasonable hours with some responsible person in charge to keep order and see that young people, especially young girls shall come and go under safe guardianship. “Young people must have a reasonable opportunity for innocent amusement; but for many reasons, this amusement should b 6 confined to decent houses, never be protracted 1 to the small hours of the morning or to the whole of the night. As to the character of the dances, I know nothing. .... Those who do know them tell me they are most objectionable on the score of morality. They seem to be the outcrop of the corruption of the ago.”