Dancing Parties Under "Catholic" Auspices (1916)

[84] Dancing Parties Under "Catholic" Auspices.

The current "Analecta" contains a document of special importance from the S. Congregation of Consistory. Its purpose is to enforce the decree of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore which prohibits "entertainments" with balls for the purpose of promoting pious projects—"convivia cum choreis". The "provida mens" of the Bishops in Council assembled not only forbade such entertainments but enjoined the pastors to do what they could to prevent them. "Mandamus quoque ut sacerdotes illum abusum, quo convivia parantur cum choreis (balls) ad opera pia promovenda, omnino tollendum current" (Conc. Plen. Balt. III. cap. V, n. 290).

How far ecclesiastical superiors may be responsible for the neglect of the decree is not easy to determine; but the fact that Catholic papers in various parts openly advertise such entertainments would indicate that no particular censorship has been exercised in the matter. A primary qualification of fitness of a Catholic editor is or should be the ability to exercise intelligent responsibility in safeguarding, besides knowing, the diocesan laws. Catholic editors may have been guided in such matters by priests who overlooked these laws. Some of them have been foreigners, and diocesan statutes, much less the Baltimore Councils, were not their normal guides. So the matter went on until we had a "custom" against which an individual voice and even the local Ordinaries found it difficult to raise a successful protest. Now the protest has come, apparently from Canada, whose border parishes have been invaded by the usage tolerated in the United States. It will be difficult to abandon it, at least without creating the discontent that turns hundreds who are bound by the chains of social [85] obligations away from the sacraments or the Church and religion. But the Holy See has made it clear that our tolerance has been amiss.

Once more we may be allowed to call attention to the conduct of the Catholic press. There has been a good deal of discussion recently about the duties of Catholic editors and about the support our people owe to Catholic periodicals. Some years ago the REVIEW published a paper on this subject. We reprint it in part here because it may be suggestive. The excuse of editors that "the priests should advise us in such matters" is puerile. A journalist has no right to assume the editorship of a Catholic paper unless he knows and is prepared to defend the laws of the Church, if need be even independently or against the practice of the priests. Says the writer referred to in the ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW:

When a brother custodian of "Religion's sacred fires" guards his trust according to his own conscience, even though is methods differ from mine, I may have no right to find fault. But if the smoke of those "fires" blows in my direction, to the detriment of my discipline and the confusion of my flock, surely my giving some account of the faith that is in me, cannot be construed into any assumption on my part of superior wisdom or piety, or as meddlesome impertinence.

Now I wonder how Catholic papers can consistently and conscientiously make a practice of publishing emblazoned accounts of dances and balls given by Catholic societies and under Catholic auspices. Catholic papers, persistently and rightly, I think, insist on the importance of the apostolate of the Catholic press. While the readers of Catholic papers may not accept as doctrine every salutary statement they see in a Catholic paper, most of them will, probably, accept as "gospel truth" from which there is no appeal, any declaration or suggestion favoring greater amplitude in a matter of coveted liberties.

Some time ago one of my Reverend neighbors was reported as having declared that his parishioners might dance all they wished. Knowing by experience that this man weighs the moral bearing of his words, I felt entirely safe in absolutely denying the report as it stood, and I soon found that he had said nothing of the kind. Such a declaration from a pastor would, it seems to me, unnecessarily encourage a practice which, given the reins, soon runs to the devil, and would considerably embarrass parents who conscientiously keep their sons and daughters away from such places of amusement.

[86] But if such a declaration from a pastor were imprudent, is not the publication of such amusements in a Catholic paper likewise imprudent? Let a pastor see fit publicly to denounce dancing in his parish, while his hearers read reports in Catholic papers, of balls and dances under Catholic auspices, and they will probably conclude that their pastor is rather old-fashioned or fanatical, too young or too old to know better.

Of course, there is no dearth of authority, sacred and profane, ancient as well as modern, in support of the pastor's position. Several Councils of the Church have anathematized dances, and the Council of Laodicea forbade them even at weddings. The Council of Trent (sess. XXII. c. 1. De ref.) forbids clerics under pain of ecclesiastical censure to be even present at any. The good and learned St. Charles Borromeo called dances "a circle of which the devil is the centre [sic] and his slaves the circumference". St. John Chrysostom denounced them as "a school for impure passions". Many more similar texts might be adduced. Nor are these at variance with Holy Scripture, which says anent this subject, among other uncomplimentary things: "Use not much the company of her that is a dancer, lest thou perish ["] (Ecclus. 9: 4).

Should it be suspected that the saints are not competent judges in a matter of this kind, profane and heathen authors may be found galore to testify to the same effect. Sallust, for instance, himself a dancer, and anything but a saint, declared of a certain Roman lady, that "she danced too well for an honest woman". Even applied in our day these words are not without some truth, at least.

Certainly, there is no disputing the theory that dancing under favorable circumstances may be tolerated, and that even waltzing may be done decently. Yet may we not say, in the words of Dr. Cook, author of Satan in Society, that waltzes at their best are, to put it mildly, "subversive of that modest reserve and shyness, which in all ages has proved the true aegis of virtue"? Whence one might ask, has Terpsichore the right, under the palliating title of "fashionable grip", to sanction liberties and poses that would be accounted rude indecencies, to say the least, under any other auspices?

Of course so long as theory says that some dances may be innocent, on goes the dance—the St. Vitus's dance, the Tam O'Shanter dance, and the innocent dance. But it is one thing, quietly and restrictedly to tolerate dancing, and quite another thing to herald and trumpet such toleration to a public only too apt and eager to accept the liberty and ignore the restriction. (C. P. B.)

Such toleration, however, cannot be identified with the sanction given to public and fashionable dancing in connexion [sic] with Catholic charities or educational enterprises, in which [87] while we offer to Catholics aid and instruction with one hand, we press them down with the other to the low level in which they breathe sensual amusement. The advertisement of such amusements is not mere toleration.

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Source: J.F.S., "Dancing Parties under 'Catholic' Auspices," Ecclesiastical Review 55, no. 1 (July 1916): 84–87.