Nota Bene: My last blog post showed that modesty is actually a means of cultural empowerment for women, not a means of making them overly-subservient. Ladies, if you're going to have thin-skin reading the still-binding modesty-norms of the Catholic Church, please re-read part I to understand that this blog is not about oppression but freedom (cf Gal 5:1) One summer evening, a couple years before I knew I would ever live in Florida, I was passing through the city of St. Augustine, south of Jacksonville. That evening, I went in to pray at North America's first Cathedral. It is stunningly beautiful. Later, I came outside the Cathedral to find the small [...]

Before jumping into the tough topic of modesty, I want to set the stage in a sociological manner. Let's consider romance in any culture, be it Catholic or pagan. It is universally accepted in every culture's romance that the person least-invested in the relationship is the one with the most control. Imagine two 20 year olds approaching engagement in any civilized country today or two hundred years ago. It is always the one who is least "in-love" who controls the advance of this relationshiop. The one most in-love (be it the man or the woman) wants to get married. The lover less "in-love" maintains the veto power in moving forward, [...]