A Summary of Aloysius Sabetti's Teaching on the Morality of Dancing

What about dancing? Per se dances are not illicit if they are done in responsible ways; that is, without any immodest touching, acts, or gestures. Per se dances are acts of joy and are not prohibited by law. However, they can become gravely illicit. Some claim that the recent round dances popular in this country are gravely illicit. But provided there is no case of special prohibition, the possible malice of these dances consists in the danger of provoking sexual libido which is essentially relative and therefore different for different persons.[1] In a later solution to a case in the American Ecclesiastical Review Sabetti further explains that special case of prohibition. Some bishops have prohibited round dances. Perhaps the dances in that particular diocese are quite bad and so offensive that the avoidance of sin is morally impossible. Perhaps the bishop has reserved the sin to himself because of the dangers involved in such dances, but then the reserved sin is of disobedience to the bishop and a serious matter and not the sin of impurity connected with the dances.[2]

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Footnotes:

1. Compendium, nn. 186–193, pp. 131-135.
2. Aloysius Sabetti, "The Question of Round Dances," American Ecclesiastical Review 18 (1898): 207.

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Source: Charles E. Curran, The Origins of Moral Theology in the United States: Three Different Approaches (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1997), 140, 165.