Letters

Suitable wedding attire

Tom and Barbara Phillip

Contents - Mar 2007 - Buy a copy now Editorial: How we can help young East Timorese - Peter Westmore WYDSYD08: Salesian provincial urges parishes to sponsor Timorese to World Youth Day 2008 - Peter Westmore News: The Church Around the World Sandhurst: Goddess worship at Victorian education conference? - Michael Gilchrist Formation: Continuing growth of Sydney's Catholic Adult Education Centre - AD2000 Report Catholicism flourishes in South Korea - Richard Stokes Leadership: The scandal of Australia's anti-life Catholic politicians - Marcel White 'Professional', a lá carte Catholicism and its papier màché schools - Andrew T. Kania Survey of Catholic teachers The changing panorama of Victoria's historic 'Rupertswood' - Michael Moore Catholic religion courses and the challenge of relativism - Audrey English Letters: Reform needed - T. Kalotas Letters: Catholic schools - Kevin McBride Letters: Null and void - Fr. G.H. Duggan SM Letters: Presumption - John H. Cooney Letters: Suitable wedding attire - Tom and Barbara Phillip Letters: Modesty of dress - Greg Byrne Letters: Ten Commandments - Arthur Hartwig Letters: Abortion counselling - Frank Bellet Letters: Leadership needed - Anne Lastman Letters: Human embryos - Rebecca Soares Letters: Ecumenism? - Peter Davidson Books: The Glory of These Forty Days, by Fr James Tolhurst - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) Books: LISTEN MY SON: St Benedict for Fathers, by Dwight Longenecker - Michael E. Daniel (reviewer) Books: SEEKING THE ABSOLUTE: The Founders of Christian Monasticism - Michael E. Daniel (reviewer) Media: The Rosary of the Virgin Mary - 4 DVD or 4 CD set - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) DOES YOUR PARISH STOCK AD2000? Books: Order Books from freedompublishing.com.au Reflection: The Holy Trinity - source of true Christian unity - Fr John O'Neill

Further to Bishop Yanta's reminder (December/January AD2000) on suitable attire for Mass, we'd like to suggest the introduction of a dress code for Catholic weddings, which we believe used to exist at one time.

Whilst other cultures and religions have standards of acceptable dress which they require to be observed by visitors to their shrines and holy places, this appears to be the case even in St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne, to judge from a recent press photograph.

When people are participants in religious ceremonies, the present trend to skimpy outfits is a sad aberration from the standards of modesty which ought to be synonymous with anyone professing to be Catholic and presenting themselves for the Sacrament of Marriage within the Catholic Church.

Week after week, brides are pictured in gowns which would be more suited at a nightclub. Whether or not the bride is a professing Catholic, some guidelines are obviously needed. If a Catholic ceremony is planned, the bridal party needs to be aware that whatever attire they have in mind must accord with dignified Christian standards.

TOM & BARBARA PHILLIP
Hamilton, Vic

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 20 No 2 (March 2007), p. 15