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Gulf Pine Catholic
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July 18, 2014
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Engaging book looks at role of clothing in U.S. Catholic history
Reviewed by Nancy L. Roberts
Catholic News Service
When the new Pope Francis discarded the tradition-
al red papal footwear for simple black shoes, he under-
scored the power of clothing as a cultural symbol.
This is something Catholics, both clergy and lay,
have always understood. From priests’ Roman collars
to nuns’ veiled habits to schoolgirls’ blue serge jumpers,
American Catholics have long worn visually distinctive
attire.
Such clothing has helped create a sense of identi-
ty and belonging for Catholics, who historically have
sought to find their way in a social landscape ruled by
Protestants. For instance, in earlier times, when most
priests were foreign-born, the characteristic Roman
collar and other specialized clothing helped clergy gain
respectability.
Sally Dwyer-McNulty, a history professor at Marist
College, has given us an intriguing and thoughtful ex-
amination of what Catholics were wearing at different
times and why.
Because Catholics emphasize a sacramental world-
view, she writes, their clothing is fraught with symbol-
ism; and it also holds “political and social significance.”
Thus popes wear white as a symbol of their “singular
holiness and purity,” while “bishops carry staffs be-
cause they shepherd the people, and nuns wear habits
mostly of a dark hue to symbolize death to the world
and ‘marriage’ to Christ.”
Dwyer-McNulty focuses on the period from the
early 19th to the 21st century, a time span during
which Catholicism developed from a largely immigrant
church that was sometimes seen as suspect by the Prot-
estant majority because of its poverty and perceived
otherworldly focus to a mainstream, socioeconomically
successful religious institution centrally engaged in
civic and social life. She focuses on three major groups:
male clergy, female religious and schoolgirls. Among
her findings:
-- Through the 1930s, bishops adopted uniform,
easily recognizable clothing styles “to exert both con-
trol and authority over their middle managers and lay
Catholics.”
-- This clothing also signaled Rome that despite the
Enlightenment’s influence on American culture, obedi-
ence to papal authority prevailed.
-- At first, until about World War II, nuns did not em-
brace the wearing of habits for traveling; they preferred
to wear lay clothing to avoid identification as Catholics
and subsequent discrimination from the Protestant ma-
jority.
-- Uniforms on parochial schoolgirls helped check
excess materialism, promoted modesty and served as a
visual advertisement for Catholic respectability.
-- Restrictive dress for young women “elucidated
... the Catholic Church’s view that girls needed to be
guided more due to their propensity to commit sins of
vanity and that girls and females in general were in a
position to be controlled.”
By the early 1960s, with its political and social up-
heaval, the “Catholic clothing trademark” had begun to
unravel, Dwyer-McNulty writes.
The twin influences of the Second Vatican Council
and the civil rights movement sparked a relaxing of
nuns’ habit styles. Now, sisters wondered if their old-
fashioned attire might actually inhibit their acceptance
by the people they served in poor communities. Many
religious orders, both male and female, adopted mod-
ernized habits or even stopped wearing them.
For the women, this change could be seen as a re-
jection of the church’s emphasis on “female submis-
sion, subordination and denial of self.” In fact, the new
habits -- or their abandonment -- created considerable
controversy, which was “accurately interpreted as a
new understanding of women’s place in the church and
an assertion of self over bureaucracy -- an expression
that Catholics received with mixed reactions,” Dwyer-
McNulty writes.
Today, school uniforms remain supported almost
universally; political conservatives embrace them as
well as liberals concerned with social justice, who em-
phasize “No Sweat” purchasing priorities. But overall,
in the 21st century, Catholic apparel seems less about
creating identity and more about the “diversity in Cath-
olic opinion on theological and social issues,” Dwyer-
McNulty concludes.
“Common Threads”
is authoritatively researched at
several major archival collections, including The Cath-
olic University of America, the Philadelphia Archdioc-
esan Historical Research Center, the Marquette Univer-
sity Archives and the Sisters of St. Joseph Archive. The
author’s exhaustive research distinguishes this as the
definitive study on the cultural meaning of clothing in
American Catholicism.
Each chapter brims with information that commands
interest. For instance, we learn that in 1928, Pope Pius
XI actually published clothing guidelines for young
girls. He specified that “a dress cannot be called decent
which is cut deeper than two fingers breadth under the
pit of the throat, which does not cover the arms at least
to the elbow, and scarce reaches a bit below the knee.”
The pope added: “Furthermore, dresses made of
transparent material are improper, as are flesh colored
stockings which suggest the legs being bare.”
By the 1950s, special tags even identified “Mary-
like” dresses that were judged modest, in dress shops in
cities such as Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Syracuse, New
York, Dwyer-McNulty reports. Sometimes this pre-
scribed Mary-like modest fashion was linked directly
to patriotism and anti-communism, as in a 1949 Holy
Name parade that she describes. In this carefully orga-
nized procession, Catholic girls displayed “religiosity,
patriotism and traditional gender roles in opposition to
what they perceived to be godless, de-sexing, commu-
nist values.”
An accomplished interdisciplinary scholar, Dwyer-
McNulty has written a compelling book that is so en-
gagingly written that it will command interest beyond
the academy.
Roberts directs the journalism program at SUNY Al-
bany and is the author of “Dorothy Day and the Catho-
lic Worker.”
This is the cover of
“Common Threads: A
Cultural History of Clothing
in American Catholicism”
by Sally Dwyer-McNulty.
The book is reviewed by
Nancy L. Roberts.
CNS
Holy Land bishops criticize ‘collective punishmentʼ of Palestinians
JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Catholic leaders in the Holy
Land called for an end to the cycle of violence and criti-
cized Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and
its collective punishment of Palestinians. “Using the
death of the three Israelis to exact collective punish-
ment on the Palestinian people as a whole and on its
legitimate desire to be free is a tragic exploitation of
tragedy and promotes more violence and hatred,” said
a July 8 statement from the Assembly of Catholic Or-
dinaries of the Holy Land. “We need to recognize that
the kidnapping and cold-blooded murder of the three
Israeli youth and the brutal vengeance killing of the
Palestinian youth are products of the injustice and of
the hatred that the occupation fosters in the hearts of
those prone to such deeds,” the church leaders said,
but added that the deaths “are in no way justifiable.”
In early July, Israel launched airstrikes into the Hamas-
controlled Gaza Strip, killing more than 40 Palestinians
-- including children, elderly and militants -- in a circle
of escalating violence that began with the discovery of
the bodies of three kidnapped Israeli teens and the bru-
tal apparent revenge killing of a Palestinian teen. The
Israeli offensive, dubbed Operation Protective Edge,
has hit hundreds of targets, while more than 100 mis-
siles have been launched into southern Israel, reaching
into the center of the country and Jerusalem as well.
The ordinaries, who include Catholic bishops and the
Franciscan custos of the Holy Land, called the situa-
tion in Gaza “an illustration of the never-ending cycle
of violence in the absence of a vision for an alternative
future.”
