Dear TIA,

Regarding your article on bikinis.

Ever since our first parents traded in their preternatural gifts, the likes of which made them full blown mystics in league with the St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross and St. Catherine of Sienna for a pair of faded leaves in the Garden of Eden; we have been under plan B, indeed

The photo of Nuns nonchalantly walking on the beach with bikini-clad, practically nude women illustrates this point. They need prayers that will motivate them to take time to pause and consider how hot it is in the big boiler room, which is not even half full as the saying goes.

The poor Friars, who very well may fry for being in the bikini business, are in need of some serious prayers too. If they don't do better than this, they will be sorry they ever joined a religious order and wish they had sold bananas on a street corner, a not too well known street at that.

     Our Lady of Good Success, Pray for Us.

     S.M.

Dear TIA,

I've read some of your articles and you talk a lot about the importance of the modesty of women and even keeping them separate if they fall pregnant without marriage (have yet to see article about the men responsibility in this.)

Since it always seems to be totally the womens' fault, what do you suggest if a woman is very good looking? Should she put on weight so as not to offend modesty by being too beautiful? Or should she veil herself in public?

     Regards,

     D.W.



TIA responds:

Dear D.W.,

Catholic Morals is applicable for both men or women, whether they are ugly or good looking. This elementary truth is normally known even by the most ignorant people.

It seems, however, that you are not really concerned about knowing what Catholic Morals says, but rather just want to have a good laugh with your friends in ridiculing us for defending Catholic principles that are no longer practiced in today's average revolutionary ambience.

If this is so, we pray that you will change your attitude, because whoever laughs at Catholic Morals laughs at the Church and at her Founder, and will have to make an account for this action when she appears before God at her judgment.

     Cordially,

     TIA correspondence desk

Dear TIA,

Thank you for publishing in your Forgotten Truths the excerpt of Pius XII about how young women should not leave their family homes. I have always believed this was one of the greatest reasons for the loss of purity among young women, but never had any papal document to back my claim.

When Catholic parents casually sent off the young women of my generation to college in the 1970s, they never guessed what was going on there. There were no more strict visitation rules for men (even in the Catholic college I went to), and there was lots of sin. Women naturally want to please men and tend toward romance, and so, the results. Not many of my friends were still virgins when - and if - they finally married. Today, young unmarried persons who are dating even travel together on vacations and naive parents believe nothing is going on. At the very least, the young people put themselves in the occasion of sin; usually they sin, imagining that their 'love' saves them from offending God.

Now if Pope Pius XII was giving this sound advice back in the 1940s, why haven't the Popes been addressing this issue specifically in the last 40 years - after the sexual revolution erupted and went crazy? Wouldn't the World Youth Day be the perfect place for the Pope to remind youth about the occasion of sin? About the importance of maintaining purity? About standards for courting and the dangers of 'dating'. But we never hear anything about this. I sometimes wonder if the priests and parents have forgotten all about original sin. I guess it went out with the old teachings of the Church after Vatican II.

Anyway, keep up your good work.

     In Holy Mary,

     B.J.

Dear TIA,

Thank you so much for reproducing the warning of Pope Pius XII on the dangers of young women leaving the family home. This saintly Pontiff was certainly very prescient. We can all now see the deleterious affects, exactly as His Holiness predicted, on the young woman, on the Sacrament of Matrimony and on society.

Young women who leave the shelter of their parents authority are by and large, unable to cope with the perils which modern society offers. They cannot cope with the so called freedom. Their feminine nature becomes corrupted. They enter a workplace in which they have no God given right.

They occupy positions which should be held by young men. They postpone marriage until they are in their thirties or worse still, enter sinful liaisons without marrying. They waste their best child bearing years in frivolous pursuits. By the time they marry, if indeed they do, they have become assertive and selfish and less inclined to submit to the lawful, God given authority of their husband. Their willful nature becomes closer to Eve than to Mary.

On the other hand the young woman who remains at home until she is married enjoys a truly wonderful time. She becomes a helpmate to her mother, a true handmaid, in a relationship of the most tender purity. She learns from her mother the duties and responsibilities she herself will have when she marries. She prays for a good Catholic husband and learns to trust in God and put her future in His hands. She has an opportunbity to repay her father for his endeavors in providing for her. She ministers to him, joyously caring for his needs and recounting the deeds of her day when he returns home from work.

Of course she remains under his authority; she is protected by the house rules, she has to report on her excursions, is subject to a curfew and has to introduce her friends to her parents. In this way father and mother can vet her male friends and ensure that constant supervision is maintained. In this way the girl retains the discipline of childhood and her virtue is protected. She can in time much more easily, move to the authority of her husband when she is still under the authority of her father.

This is the ideal and I truly endorse the call to all Catholic parents who value tradition, to keep their daughters at home. It is essential that young Catholic maidens rediscover their Mary- like qualities and their essential God given feminine nature, in order for the coming of the Kingdom of God to become a reality, sooner rather than later.

     Yours faithfully,

     C.M.P.

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