Experiences like the one described in the above article always strike a nerve for me. Not only is the behavior of the roommates described appalling in multiple ways, but the outcome and lasting effects it had on Morson only make the whole thing more tragic. I have seen something analogous with another person at my own college who began his freshman year as a self-identified traditional Catholic and because of excruciatingly negative experiences with other traditional Catholics ended up drinking the liberal Kool-Aid by the time he was a senior.
Yet why is the outcome of the author's experience tragic? A reader might get to the end of the essay cheering for the author and her newfound sense of freedom, of liberation from the poisonous aspects of purity culture. Indeed, the article is written in such a way as to evoke that sympathetic response from the reader. But the author doesn't just reject the poisonous aspects of purity culture. She rejects the entire culture itself: "My faith remained the same, although purity culture was no longer a part of it."
If by purity culture, we mean this sort of Orwellian, omnipresent surveillance and intrusion via secret purity police, who always style themselves as "friends," into literally the nooks and crannies of other people's lives, then of course, we should reject this culture, which isn't culture in any true sense of the word but a prison. On the other hand, the notion that "[n]ot having to worry whether or not my bare shoulders were causing others to sin was freeing, and if anyone, man or woman, thought it was their place to call me out, I’d inform them to avert their eyes if they couldn’t handle it"—this is simply not Catholic but classic liberalism and the attendant exaggerated individualism that we see today in feminism and most forms of libertarianism.
Morson summarizes purity culture:
In purity culture, the highest good is your virginity. It teaches that safeguarding your soul and your physical virginity means that you will be immune to the deep heartache of lost love. In other words, keeping your hymen intact means keeping your heart intact as well.Of course, given her experiences, Morson is hardly an unbiased reporter, yet she is not trying to be objective. Her goal here as throughout her entire article is to show not only why she rejected purity culture but implicitly why anyone should reject it. If purity culture means a commitment to ridiculously naive beliefs, such as a direct correlation between maintaining purity, physical virginity, and the affections of love, then we would be crazy to accept it in the first place. But Morson's caricature is simply naive itself. Who actually believes such things? And what should we make of those many virtuous women who suffer so much because they have a hard time finding a virtuous man, who may have had to end a relationship because they realize the man they currently love seem woefully inadequate to be a father or spouse? This common experience simply sets aflame the straw man that Morson has set up.
Morson continues: "A commitment to purity culture must be expressed in dress: You show the world how unblemished you are by dressing modestly." Yet this is precisely backwards. Modesty isn't virtue signaling, or at least it ought not to be. One dresses modestly because one wishes to remain unblemished, pure, chaste, virtuous, not because one wishes to peacock to others that one is chaste. Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter demonstrates this discrepancy eloquently. The world has nothing to do with it at least not in its fundamental motivation and principal purpose. The commitment to purity and its expression in dress is the result of consistency between believing that sexuality is a powerful and profound good, that man is fallen and prone to weakness and temptation, that we as social beings must build each other up and not be stumbling blocks, and the most effective means to preserve these beliefs and principles. Modesty, like all forms of temperance, is an external expression of an interior disposition, yet before it is a powerful statement to a rapidly degenerating civilization, it firstly ought to be the result of a powerful commitment to a virtuous life.
The moral theology of scandal (CCC 2284–2287) and the ways in which we can participate in another's sin (CCC 1868) clearly form some of the basic principles, the guide posts, by which any truly healthy civilization may emerge. Is the attitude expressed by Morson in the above quotation one that shows concern for the spiritual well-being of her fellow man, or is it more like the snide retort of Cain, who when asked by God where the slain Abel was, said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen. 4:9). There are extremes here to be avoided. What is tragic is that this woman was pressed into another extreme because of the opposite extreme that vilified her.
Morson's error is further illustrated by the following rhetorical question: "I knew that I was the same person whether I was wearing baggy pants or a mini skirt, so why wouldn’t that apply to the world at large?" This is a simple philosophical error. Aristotle lists as one of the accidents, that is, non-essential characteristics of a substance, the manner in which one dresses (vestition). Obviously to change the way one dresses does not change one's substance, one's essence, and by extension one's intrinsic dignity as a human person. No one is claiming that your dress does effect such profound, substantial change. The issue is that the nobility of man is expressed through accidents, and that one's substance may shine through well-ordered accidents. Everyone recognizes the effects of good grooming, of care of one's body, of being well dressed, of carrying oneself with deliberation, of speaking eloquently and persuasively. These are all accidents in Aristotle's terminology, but they have a true effect: they express man at his best, and when the accidents are disordered, they hide man's dignity, or better, they tar and smear it behind disorder. Modesty is a virtue that beautifies; if one is dressing in such a way that makes one positively or objectively ugly, then that is not modesty but a sham form of it.
We would do well to recall the summary of the moral theology of scandal contained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (emphasis mine):
II. Respect for the Dignity of Persons
Respect for the souls of others: scandal
2284 Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor's tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense.
2285 Scandal takes on a particular gravity by reason of the authority of those who cause it or the weakness of those who are scandalized. It prompted our Lord to utter this curse: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea." (Mt. 18:6)
Scandal is grave when given by those who by nature or office are obliged to teach and educate others. Jesus reproaches the scribes and Pharisees on this account: he likens them to wolves in sheep's clothing. (Mt. 7:15)
2286 Scandal can be provoked by laws or institutions, by fashion or opinion.
Therefore, they are guilty of scandal who establish laws or social structures leading to the decline of morals and the corruption of religious practice, or to "social conditions that, intentionally or not, make Christian conduct and obedience to the Commandments difficult and practically impossible." (Pius XII, Discourse, June 1, 1941) This is also true of business leaders who make rules encouraging fraud, teachers who provoke their children to anger, or manipulators of public opinion who turn it away from moral values.
2287 Anyone who uses the power at his disposal in such a way that it leads others to do wrong becomes guilty of scandal and responsible for the evil that he has directly or indirectly encouraged. "Temptations to sin are sure to come; but woe to him by whom they come!" (Lk. 17:1)If we have learned anything from the feminists, is it not that sexuality may be a form of power? Chastity and purity protect this power, the power of life, so that it may not become a weapon of death. Purity culture ought to be one that celebrates life in every true, good, and beautiful manifestation of it. There will be fear, for we are suffering from generations of emasculated men, who are weak in the face of exposed, raw sexuality. But the nurturing, the patience, the mutual concern of one for another, the fruits of the Holy Ghost, these ought to imbue and to till the spiritual soil of present Catholics as they strive not only for their own sanctity, but to lay the groundwork for a renewed West, for future generations of strengthened individuals who when faced with slighter—or greater—forms of immodesty will have the power of virtue to resist temptation.
Morson concludes, "Nothing about my own values was altered, but the lens through which I viewed those around me changed." The sad thing here is that whatever lens we choose to view others or the world through is precisely determined by our values. We do not exist as "objective," detached (floating) thinking things ala Descartes. We exist in flesh, in the world, and pressed by our biology and our fallen, fractured nature. On the most fundamental, psychological level, the way in which we perceive, structure, and participate in the world is determined by what our brain deems as valuable and what our mind (intellect and will) pursues as good. There can be no change of lens without a change of values. But perhaps rather Morson means to confess that the scales of a lens she never really bought into finally came off her eyes.
Those roommates who confronted Morson failed on multiple counts: they presumed Morson's guilt; they presumed to correct without prudent consideration of the best means; they presumed to intrude into Morson's privacy; they presumed to represent the best of purity culture. They failed in all of these and more. But most of all, they failed to encourage. Our role is not to police but to encourage, literally to fill with courage, with fortitude and strength. And in this we must also be conscientious not to cause scandal as our Lord Himself warned us. The tragic irony of Morson's experience is that in being scandalized by the dress, that supposed sign of promiscuity, those fellow Catholics scandalized Morson in a much more profound and lasting way.
