A Reply Regarding the Vatican Standard of Modesty of September 24, 1928

There was a well-intentioned reply to my re-posting of a 1958 article that criticizes and calls into question the existence of the so-called Vatican Standard of modesty, published in a letter from the Sacred Congregation of Religious, dated September 24, 1928. This reply, hoping to prove the existence of the Vatican Standard by referring to reliable sources, unfortunately further demonstrated the problem that exists among Traditional Catholics when it comes to the Vatican Standard, namely, they don't actually provide a credible, on-hand source. They simply quote each other or books that they themselves have published, which quote each other. This ends up being a giant circle that goes no where.

So, do we have reason to despair that the Vatican Standard actually ever existed? No, because we have a reliable source that suggests the existence and provides the substantial content of that Vatican Standard. It is found in a Q&A of the Homiletic and Pastoral Review, volume 30, nos. 1-6, pp. 171-173, entitled "Immodest Women's Dress," which article I have republished in its full text here: https://rugwig.blogspot.com/2018/07/repost-immodest-womens-dress.html

In my reply, I note that the fool-proof way to discover the existence of the Vatican Standard is if someone can find and provide either of the following:

1. Its Latin or Italian original has to be found. 

2. The October 1928 issue of Osservatore Romano must be found where the statement is quoted in Italian.

Since I don't have the time to hunt either down, I invite anyone with the means to please do so for the benefit of all Catholics of good will.

Anyway, below is the comment on my post as well as my reply.

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Comment (http://rugwig.blogspot.com/2018/08/repost-modesty-in-dress-june-1958.html?showComment=1536709580628#c8522873001587796019)

"Of those girls committed to a policy of modesty in dress, how many perhaps have been won to the cause precisely through the effectiveness of mathematical criteria?"

> Precisely this "mathematical criteria" won me to the cause of dressing with modesty (which is a necessary help to promote that other aspect of modesty, modesty in behavior).

Without specific standards (or mathematical criteria per say), nothing can be followed or enforced. Parish priests in attempting to address immodesty have no way of showing a woman the error of her mode of dress. Parents experience the same issue when they try to teach their children to dress modestly. For example, how can the letter you referenced from the, “Congregation of Religious (Aug. 23, 1928) to teaching sisters in Rome," be enforced without any guideline to define "immodest dress"?

This 1928 letter is referenced in a second letter on the same topic titled: Letter of the Congregation of the Council, Vigilance: To Treat of Modesty in Women's Dress. This 1930 letter can be found in Acta Apostolicae Sedis in 1930, Vol. 22, pp. 26-28 (see links below). (1)

Next I would like to clarify a misunderstanding regarding this statement:
"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..."
You are correct; this was not issued by Donato, Cardinal Sbaretti, Pref. of the Congregation of the Council. (The document Cardinal Sbaretti issued was the 1930 letter.) This does not mean though, that the statement is fabricated. It is, in fact, an authentic statement issued by the Cardinal-Vicar of Pope Pius XI, Cardinal Pompilj, on 24 September 1928. I have provided links below to support its authenticity. (2)

Two of these links also mention that the authenticity of the statement is further supported by Rufino J. Cardinal Santos, Archbishop of Manila (a),(c). Cardinal Santos quoted these standards as, “‘The Church’s stand concerning modesty in dress’ in his Pastoral of December 6, 1959. He attributes them to Pope Pius XI Himself, and gives the exact date of issuance, September 24, 1928.” (c)

(1) Find the Letter of the Congregation of the Council, Vigilance: To Treat of Modesty in Women's Dress in Acta Apostolicae Sedis in 1930, Vol. 22, pp. 26-28 at:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/aas/documents/AAS-22-1930-ocr.pdf
Translation: https://saintsworks.net/Modesty%20and%20Purity%20-%20Letter%20of%20the%20Congregation%20of%20the%20Council.html

(2) Links supporting the authenticity of statement issued by the Cardinal-Vicar of Pope Pius XI, Cardinal Pompilj, on 24 September 1928:
(a)https://catholic-modesty.com/the-modesty-guidelines-of-the-catholic-church/
(b)http://cora.dashjr.org/trad/modesty.html
(c)https://www.national-coalition.org/modesty/moddecre.html
(d)http://sicutincaelo.org/downloads/TWSG_Read.pdf (pp. 13)

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My reply:

Part 1 (http://rugwig.blogspot.com/2018/08/repost-modesty-in-dress-june-1958.html?showComment=1536774720394#c7619766449871230137)

1. God bless you for dressing modestly and with dignity in this darkening age!

2. The article you were responding to were not my own words but a reprint of an article (see the citation at the bottom of the original post).

3. There are a number of unresolved problems with the August 23, 1928 letter.

a) The only English translation available online is attributed to the late Fr. John Rubba, OP, and seems to trace back to a certain issue of the Marylike Crusader publication, which does not seem to be available online.

b) Fr. Rubba claimed that his translation came from the Commentarium pro Religiosis (vol. 9, 1928, pp. 414-415). This volume has not been scanned online, and I don't currently have access to it, and hence no one actually knows what the original Latin says.

c) Assuming that the reporting and translation of the Aug. 23 letter is accurate, this letter mentions nothing of the Vatican Standards that Pius XI supposedly issued on Sept. 24, 1928, because the letter obviously predates September. There is nothing in this August 23 letter of what later theologians would call "mathematical standards of modesty" but simply general directives.

d) The reference to the August 23 letter in the January 1930 directive simply indicates the existence of such a letter but does not reveal its contents. Hence referring to the Jan. 1930 letter is no help for finding the August 23 letter.

4. The other links you provided supporting the authenticity of the September 24, 1928 statement do no such thing unfortunately.

All references to Cdl. Santos of Manila claim he cites the Vatican Standard in his pastoral letter of December 6, 1959, yet the original text of this letter is nowhere to be found, and even if we could find it, we don't know what source document Cdl. Santos was quoting from, if any. It would be worth pursuing the original document, but currently I don't have the time to.

Other references to the bishops of Quebec, specifically Cardinal Raymond-Marie Rouleau, are likewise problematic. For example, this website (https://pour-reflechir.blogspot.com/2017/03/limmodestie-des-toilettes-feminines-mgr.html) seems to have Cdl. Rouleau quoting the Vatican Standard, yet the citation given by the blog owner is an Italian quotation from a self-published text from 2016! So we have no idea 1) whether Cdl. Rouleau actually quoted the standard, and 2) what his source was.

A similar reference to the bishops of Quebec issuing a pastoral letter entitled "Purity Crusade" ("Croisade de Purete" in the original French) claims that this letter includes the Vatican Standard. One of your own sources claims this (https://catholic-modesty.com/the-modesty-guidelines-of-the-catholic-church/). Yet when one looks at the original French document (pp. 239-240, https://ia800308.us.archive.org/19/items/mandementslettre17glis/mandementslettre17glis.pdf), these standards are nowhere to be found. Further, a so-called "Decree 102" of the Synod of Bishops from 1940 is also not in this letter, nor does this letter quote Cdl. Rouleau's pastoral of December 8, 1930.

In fact, this website you linked to (https://catholic-modesty.com/the-modesty-guidelines-of-the-catholic-church/) does not make any sense in its references to the Quebec bishops. It seems to say the joint pastoral letter "Purity Crusade" (1946) quotes the decree of 1940, which the website gives as its source Cdl. Rouleau's 1930 pastoral letter! Is it possible that everyone has missed the time travel necessary for this to work?

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Part 2 (http://rugwig.blogspot.com/2018/08/repost-modesty-in-dress-june-1958.html?showComment=1536774743628#c3749831196629159323)

5. Your second source (http://cora.dashjr.org/trad/modesty.html) is likewise unhelpful because it is a reprinting of the Marylike Modesty Handbook. Fr. Kunkel claims there that his source was the October 1928 issue of Osservatore Romano, sent to him by a Father Jesus M. Cavanna, CM. This October issue cannot be found online; hence we don't have the original citation. It would validate Fr. Kunkel's source however!

This second source of yours also repeats the copy-and-pasted claims about Cdl. Santos, but again, if the original pastoral of Cdl. Santos is not available, we have no means of actually seeing the original contents. And as we have seen numerous times, these various pastoral letters have been very inaccurately reported by well-intended traditional Catholics.

6. The third source you give (https://www.national-coalition.org/modesty/moddecre.html) is further unhelpful. It simply copies what is found elsewhere about Fr. Rubba, Cdl. Santos, etc. These are all dead ends without the original letters and original sources.

7. Your last source (http://sicutincaelo.org/downloads/TWSG_Read.pdf) quotes a book "Immodest Dress: The Mind of the Church," by Louise Martin (found here http://www.catholictradition.org/Children/immodest-dress.htm). Once again, this book simply repeats all the same claims about Cdl. Santos, the bishops of Quebec (Martin's book adds a further claim that Bishop Douville of Quebec quotes the standards in his pastoral letter of July 22, 1944, yet gives no source citation for this claim).

Martin's book simply quotes from Fr. Kunkel's Marylike Handbook.

8. Hence we get to the crux of the problem: all of these websites and books are quoting from each other the same so-called proof of the authenticity of this elusive September 24 statement. They all exist in a giant echo chamber, and none provide the original source documents to back their claims.

As far as I can tell, there are basically two ways to prove absolutely the existence and content of this letter:

1. Its Latin or Italian original has to be found.

2. The October 1928 issue of Osservatore Romano must be found where the statement is quoted in Italian.

All of these other claims of authenticity referring to bishops living back in the 1930s and '40s are dead ends because none of their pastoral letters are available to us, and those that are available say nothing close to what the promoters of the Vatican Standard say they do, which only further harms their credibility.

9. To close, however, I have found another source, not mentioned by any of these other websites and booklets, that I believe gives us a reasonable certitude of the authenticity of the September 24, 1928 statement. It is found in an article in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review, vol. 30, no. 1-6, November 1930, pp. 171-173, in which a question is submitted quoting the exact Vatican Standards and attributing them to the statement of Sept. 24. The responder in the HPR journal in no way disputes the authenticity of the quotation and even affirms its existence, writing, "The words of the Sacred Congregation of Religious quoted by our correspondent are very helpful to the priests and Catholic educators inasmuch as they express the mind of the Holy See on the subject of immodesty in women's dress." (source: https://rugwig.blogspot.com/2018/07/repost-immodest-womens-dress.html)

I believe, aside from direct proof of the Sept. 24 statement itself, this is the best evidence we have of the existence and authenticity of the Vatican Standards. Since all the other references to Cdl. Santos, Fr. Rubba, the Canadian bishops, Cdl. Mundelein, are so far removed from our access and all seem to simply copy and paste each other, I do not refer to them at all as reliable. However, an article posted in a reputable theological journal only two years after the original statement was issued is very good for establishing its credibility!

I hope this helps. God bless you.