Particular Questions Concerning Scandal

107. On the adornment of women. a. First of all attention must be paid to the intention with which a woman adorns herself: for this can be done in order to preserve the decency of her state according to the custom of the country, to please her husband, to find a spouse, to hide defects of the body, and these intentions indeed are licit; then it can be done from levity or vanity in order to display beauty, and these intentions are lightly sinful; finally it can be done to provoke the concupiscence and impure love of men, and this intention is a grave sin.

Therefore to smear the face with rouge and cosmetics will be mortal if it is done for wantonness, venial if only to feign beauty, none if it is done to hide some defect.

b. As regards adornment itself, honorable adornment and adornment fitting one's state according to the custom of the country is licit and is to be permitted to women; therefore they are not bound to put aside decent and honorable adornment, even though others, even determinate persons, are thereby enticed to concupiscence: for to abstain from modest garments and ornaments which are according to the custom of the country would be too great a burden, which charity does not demand for preventing the sin of another.

c. Immodest and gravely sinful adornment is always grave scandal, because it gravely and proximately provokes others to lust.¹

Where authors speak of dishonorable feminine adornment, they have especially before their eyes the uncovering of the breast. What uncovering is gravely dishonorable depends much upon custom: for things to which people are accustomed entice less. Hence it can happen that adornment which in one place is not grave scandal furnishes in another place an occasion of sinning gravely. Therefore authors teach by common consent that a woman can sin gravely by introducing somewhere an adornment which elsewhere, because of a custom already long prevailing, is not gravely scandalous.

d. Superfluous and venially sinful adornment, for example an uncovering of the breast not gravely dishonorable, is not grave scandal, because it entices only lightly and remotely to sin. For this reason women are not bound under grave obligation to abstain from adornment of this kind. Yet if it is established for the woman concerning the grave danger of falling for some determinate man, which danger will cease after a brief time, she is bound under grave obligation to abstain from adornment of this kind for that time.²

A woman who without just cause uses male clothing, or a man who uses female clothing, commits a light sin, because this of itself induces a light danger of lust and light scandal; if this change of clothing is made from a just cause, for example to hide oneself, for honorable recreation, etc., it is no sin.³

¹ St. Alphonsus, n. 55. What adornment is to be called gravely immodest must be judged from the things which are said in De sexto praecepto, n. 48.

² Cf. Lessius, De iustitia, etc., bk. 4, c. 4, n. 112 ff.

³ Cf. St. Alphonsus, n. 52.

108. On obscene pictures and statues. Obscene or immodest are called those pictures and statues which commonly excite to lust; this can happen either because of the scene which they present, or because of the nakedness of the persons who are represented. Wherefore those are obscene both which represent a more or less base action, and which display to sight dishonorable parts of the body; but those which, with the dishonorable parts covered, have other parts uncovered, at least if they are male images, are not judged obscene, nor are likenesses of infants, even if wholly uncovered, obscene, because they excite less. Therefore they commit grave scandal:

a. Those who make notably obscene images or statues, except, however, the case in which this is done from a just cause, as if something of this kind must be painted or fashioned for teaching anatomical science.

b. Those who expose publicly images or statues of this kind in their workshops, or in houses and gardens, or even in museums and art galleries to which all can have access.

c. Those who expose images and statues, even not gravely obscene, in public squares: for all see these, indeed they can scarcely not see them; and, with attention paid to the common frailty of men, there will always be several who take grave scandal from things of this kind, even if they are not gravely obscene.

d. By no means can what is said be conceded, that works of art, even if in themselves dishonorable, are not to be considered as an occasion of sinning, but that each one can look at them and licitly enjoy their artistry. For, omitting the question whether obscene representations truly deserve to be called works of art, insofar as they excite lust, they certainly do not cease to be occasions of sin and therefore, just as they cannot be recommended without restriction, so the one who has no other excusing reason than the pursuit of acquiring for himself, as they say, universal culture cannot licitly enjoy the sight of them. To these things must be added that works of ancient art, even if obscene of themselves, excite lust less than works of recent art. Therefore what Aertnys has is to be approved: "immodest images and statues, but of excellent art, made by distinguished artists of an earlier age, can be exposed separately in some hall (of a museum or art gallery) under this law, that entrance be open not to all, but only to experts in art of mature age."¹

¹ Aertnys, Theologia moralis, Paderborn: Schoningh, 1898, I, n. 72.

109. On participation in civil funerals. a. To accompany the funeral of a deceased person who, for example because of suicide, is deprived of ecclesiastical burial, is not a sin, because attendance is considered a merely civil action when the funeral is arranged without a special ecclesiastical or civil solemnity.

b. If funerals are carried out with a special civil solemnity, attendance is of itself illicit, both because it is judged a favor furnished either to an impious person or to an impious sect which requires or prepares a funeral of this kind, and because it begets scandal.

Therefore where this twofold reason ceases, participation in a civil funeral can become licit; but it ceases: a. in places in which funerals of this kind have already been held rather often and therefore are less noticed; for in these circumstances participation is considered a merely civil act, especially for those who by reason of kinship or friendship are more closely connected with the deceased; b. for those who by moral necessity must attend the funeral, such as soldiers compelled by commanders, bearers of the bier who otherwise would be deprived of office, subjects who are ordered by superiors to attend: for where the moral necessity of attending is publicly known or can easily be known, all understand that attendance is made only materially in order to avoid grave damages.

c. If a civil funeral is so arranged that Freemasons or socialists attend with their signs and banners and attach the signs of their sect to the bier, attendance can be permitted with much more difficulty: for since funerals of this kind have the character of a solemnity established by an impious sect, one who attends them without grave necessity is judged to approve the sect.¹

¹ Cf. Genicot, I, n. 236; Berardi, Praxis confessariorum, 6th ed., I, n. 333; Villada, Casus conscientiae, 2nd ed., Brussels: Vromant, 1885, II, p. 103 ff.