"You carry your snare everywhere and spread your nets in all places. You allege that you never invited others to sin. You did not indeed, by your words, but you have done so by your dress and your deportment. ... When you have made another sin in his heart, how can you be innocent? Tell me, whom does this world condemn? Whom do judges punish? Those who drink poison or those who prepare it and administer the fatal potion? You have prepared the abominable cup, you have given the death dealing drink, and you are more criminal than are those who poison the body; you murder not the body but the soul. And it is not to enemies you do this, nor are you urged on by any imaginary necessity , nor provoked by injury , but out of foolish vanity and pride."
-Saint John Chrysostom, Doctor of the Church, (347-407 AD)
"After the year 1900, toward the middle of the 20th century, the people of that time will become unrecognizable.....People's appearances will change, and it will be impossible to distinguish men from women due to their shamelessness in dress and style of hair."
-Prophecy of Saint Nilus, (died c. 430)
"Wars are a punishment from God for sin. ... Certain fashions will be introduced that will offend Our Lord very much. ... More souls go to Hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other reason."
-Our Blessed Lady at Fatima in 1917 to Blessed Jacinta
"From this point of view one cannot sufficiently deplore the blindness of so many women of every age and condition; made foolish by desire to please, they do not see to what a degree the in decency of their clothing shocks every honest man, and offends God. Most of them would formerly have blushed for those toilettes as for a grave fault against Christian modesty; now it does not suffice for them to exhibit them on the public thoroughfares; they do not fear to cross the threshold of the churches, to assist at the Holy sacrifice of the Mass, and even to bear the seducing food of shameful passions to the Eucharistic Table where one receives the heavenly Author of purity. And We speak not of those exotic and barbarous dances recently imported into fashionable circles, one more shocking than the other; one cannot imagine anything more suitable for banishing all the remains of modesty."
-Pope Benedict XV, Sacra Propediem, January 6, 1921
"A dress cannot be called decent which is cut deeper than two fingers breadth under the pit of the throat; which does not cover the arms at least to the elbows; and scarcely reaches a bit beyond the knees. Furthermore, dresses of transparent materials are improper."
-Pope Pius XI, September 24, 1928
"...Numbers of believing and pious women...in accepting to follow certain bold fashions, break down, by their example, the resistance of many other women to such fashions, which may become for them the cause of spiritual ruin. As long as these provocative styles remain identified with women of doubtful virtue, good women do not dare to follow them; but once these styles have been accepted by women of good reputation, decent women soon follow their example, and are carried along by the tide into possible disaster."
-Pope Pius XII, May 22, 1941
"O Christian mothers, if only you knew the future of distress and peril, of shame ill-restrained, that you prepare for your sons and daughters in imprudently accustoming them to live hardly clothed and in making them lose the sense of modesty, you should be ashamed of yourselves and of the harm done the little ones whom heaven entrusted to your care, to be reared in Christian dignity and culture."
-Pope Pius XII, July 17, 1954
"Now many girls do not see anything wrong with following certain shameless styles (fashions) like so many sheep. They would surely blush if they could only guess the impressions they make and the feelings they evoke (arouse) in those who see them."
-Pope Pius XII, July 17, 1954
" A special danger to morals is represented by public bathing at beaches, in pools and riverbanks...Mixed bathing between men and women which nearly always is a proximate occasion of sin and a scandal must be avoided."
-A Pastoral letter of His Emminence Enrique Cardinal Pla y Daniel, Archbishop of Toledo Spain issued this directive in 1959
"The wearing of men's dress by women affects firstly the woman herself, by changing the feminine psychology proper to women; secondly it affects the woman as wife of her husband, by tending to vitiate relationships between the sexes; thirdly it affects the woman as mother of her children by harming her dignity in her children's eyes."
-Giuseppe Cardinal Siri Genoa, June 12, 1960, Notification Concerning Men's Dress Worn by Women
"Wherever women wear men's dress, it is to be considered a factor in the long run tearing apart human order."
-Giuseppe Cardinal Siri Genoa, June 12, 1960, Notification Concerning Men's Dress Worn by Women
The consequences of such violations are not a new outline of man, but disorders, hurtful instability of all kinds, the frightening dryness of human souls, the shattering increase in the number of human castaways, driven long since out of people's sight and mind to live out their decline in boredom, sadness and rejection. Aligned on the wrecking of the eternal norms are to be found the broken families, lives cut short before their time, hearths and homes gone cold, old people cast to one side, youngsters wilfully degenerate and - at the end of the line - souls in despair and taking their own lives. All of which human wreckage gives witness to the fact that the "line of God" does not give way, nor does it admit of any adaptation to the delirious dreams of the so-called philosophers!
-Giuseppe Cardinal Siri Genoa, June 12, 1960, Notification Concerning Men's Dress Worn by Women
"Padre Pio wouldn't tolerate low-necked dresses or short, tight skirts, and he forbade his spiritual daughters to wear transparent stockings. (nylons) Each year his severity increased. He stubbornly dismissed them from his confessional, even before they set foot inside, if he judged them to be improperly dressed...His brothers observed these drastic purges with uneasiness and...fasten(ed) a sign on the church door: 'By Padre Pio's explicit wish, women must enter his confessional wearing skirts at least eight inches below the knees. It is forbidden to borrow longer dresses in church and to wear them for the confessional.' "
-Saint Padre Pio, (1887-1968), from the book "Prophet of the People" by Dorothy Gaudiose
