Sensation of reservation and delicacy with respect to the reality of one’s own body and everything that refers to it in the somatic and in the affective.
It is synonymous with modesty, honesty, delicacy and modesty. Although many environments are not conducive to its cultivation, it is still a virtue, a gift, an ideal. Modesty affects both one’s own body and that of others and is a reflection of the dignity of the person who possesses it, just as its lack implies rusticity and vulgarity.
Pedro Chico González, Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy, Editorial Bruño, Lima, Peru 2006
Source: Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy
Modesty in general can be defined as “fear of the disapproval of others.” To avoid it, the individual is instinctively led to hide everything that could be a more or less direct cause of it. Logically, this can happen for various reasons, insofar as the fear of the disapproval of others can refer to everything that negative can affect the person himself, on a physical, moral, intellectual, social level, etc. Modesty is related to feelings of shame, modesty, reservation in general of everything that concerns respect for the intimate sphere of the individual. Modesty affects the sexual sphere in a special way, due to the reserve that characterizes it and due to the very important and delicate role it plays in human life. And this happens, although in different ways, in all peoples, even primitive ones, as history and cultural anthropology testify. The reality of modesty appears already in the first pages of Genesis, where the sin of Adam is narrated. After creation “the man and the woman were naked, but they were not ashamed” (2,25); but, after the sin, the sense of modesty is manifested in them as true sexual modesty (“they realized that they were naked”: 3,7) and as shame, and more generally, as a sense of guilt (“I was afraid because I am naked and I hid myself.” 3,10). Thus, in the biblical perspective, modesty appears aimed essentially at protecting the sexual sphere from the disorder introduced into it by sin. However, there is also a glimpse (as in the episode of Noah’s nudity that is narrated in Gn 9,22) a different and deeper purpose of modesty, as a delimitation and at the same time as respect for an area of intimacy and reserve. of the person, which is lawful for no one to transfer.
The appreciation of modesty continues throughout the Christian tradition, which sees in modesty a bastion and a guardian of chastity. Saint Thomas distinguishes between the natural movement of modesty (verecundia: 11-11, q. 144) and modesty as a virtue (pudicitia: 11, q. 151, a. 4). To keep chastity, although it is of great help, the natural feeling of modesty is not enough, but the virtue of modesty (pudicitia) is needed. Modesty, converted into modesty, makes man very sensitive to the dangers against chastity both in certain interior attitudes (thoughts, desires, imaginations) and in external behavior.
After the denial of the value and meaning of modesty that has been carried out in the last two centuries by the dominant culture in the West, which saw in it not a natural fact but an acquired fact and, therefore, with a essentially relative and conventional, contemporary thought, thanks above all to the contribution of personalism, has rediscovered the sense of modesty as a “revelation of being”. Modesty is seen as an essential constitutive element of the person and revealer of its mystery, beyond any reduction of the person to a closed corporeity. Modesty is the refusal to appear before others totally dissolved in one’s own corporeality, to appear and be for others everything and only corporeality, total offering without veils or mysteries. Offering oneself to the gaze of others as mere corporeality, that is, impudently, means giving up being a person and being accepted only as an object.
Modesty, as it affects the relationship of man with himself, with others, with the world, acquires an important ethical importance. It is an essential and irreplaceable element of love, not only sexual, to the point that without modesty there is no love. Modesty is the vigilant guardian of the authentic encounter of interpersonal love, not reduced to the mere corporeal dimension; it allows sexuality to develop harmoniously and to make itself available to the other in love. The purpose of all authentic education in modesty consists in making the person capable of giving himself to the other in conjugal love, in the case of virginity, of offering his own body in total gift to God.
G. Cappelli
Bibl.: G, Campanini – A. Autiero, Pudor, in NDTM, 1582-1593; A. Zarri. Modesty, in DTI, III, 983-994; And Marcozzi, The meaning of love, Studium,’Madrid 1959; J Rey, modesty, Sal Terrae, Santander 1962; K. Wojtvla, Love and responsibility, FAX, Madrid 1969.
PACOMIO, Luciano, Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary, Divine Word, Navarra, 1995
Source: Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary
MORAL THEOLOGY
SUMMARY
I. For a definition of modesty.
II. The modesty in the Christian tradition.
III. The denial of modesty in the last two centuries.
IV. The rediscovery of the sense of modesty as “revelation of being” in contemporary thought.
V. The ethical importance of modesty.
SAW. New demands of modesty in the contemporary world:
1. modesty and communication;
2. modesty and information;
3. modesty and politics;
4. modesty and education;
5. Modesty and hospitality.
Modesty, understood as a feeling of modesty and shame, especially in what refers to the sexual sphere, represents a fundamental element of the personality. It is related, on the one hand, to sexuality, on the other, to the intimate sphere of the personality, and is related to feelings of shame, modesty, reserve, and, in general, to everything that concerns respect for the sphere of privacy of each.
It is, therefore, a fairly complex concept, of which we will especially examine the ethical dimension, disregarding a legal assessment, which is more interested in the social relevance of the sense of modesty and the consequences of impudence and obscenity. in good manners. For the rest, it is evident that the implicit conviction that is at the base of the legislation is that modesty is a value, although it is evidently not up to the jurisprudence to found it.
After an attempt at definition (I), they will be analyzed in order: the conception of modesty according to the Bible and the Christian tradition (II); theories that deny modesty that have arisen especially in the last two centuries (111); the rediscovery of the sense of modesty as a “revelation of being” in contemporary thought (IV); the importance in the ethical plane of the feeling of modesty (V). In a last part (VI) an overview will be drawn as an example of some areas of human living that today demand to be protected by a new sense of modesty.
I. For a definition of modesty
Under the more properly psychological aspect, we could define modesty as a “restraint of the soul”, in which it is necessary to highlight “its natural and profoundly human character” (M. PRADINES, 250).
On the properly moral plane, modesty can be defined as “the vigilant conscience that defends fidelity and conjugal love” (B. HüRING, 320).
A properly spiritual, and even religious, definition of modesty captures it as a deep feeling, “linked to the incarnation of the spirit” and as a kind of “envelope… placed by nature around feelings, to prevent the spirit from becoming too early in contact with life, to allow him to get used to it little by little”. In this way, modesty is not only a protection mechanism, but also an “organ of spiritual development” and the “mediator of the unity of the soul with the body” (J. GUITTON, 77-78).
Related to modesty may be a certain feeling of shame or regret; but modesty and shame do not coincide, and the first, unlike the second, appears more closely linked to the interiority of the person. With R. Le Senne (bibl.; ed. fr., 1949, 541ss), it can be affirmed that modesty is the object of a double tension: downwards, in the sense of becoming aware of an embarrassment, and therefore as shame; upwards, as aspiration and tension to value.
Precisely because of this bipolarity, modesty is much more intuitively “felt” than theoretically grasped, even when the experience of modesty is necessarily proper, not only to the thinker, but also and above all to the common man.
II. modesty in the christian tradition
The reality of modesty is one of the first to be found in the Bible. The fundamental page of the Gén that narrates the sin of Adam represents an essential point of reference for the same contemporary reflection on modesty. We can easily grasp the deep meaning of the biblical story, above the interpretations on the specific points. Immediately after creation, “the two were naked, the man and his wife, without being ashamed of each other” (2,25); On the contrary, after the sin, the feeling of modesty is manifested as true and proper sexual modesty (“they realized that they were naked”, 3,7), as shame and, in general, as a feeling of guilt (“I felt afraid because I was naked, and I hid”, says the man to the Lord, 3,10).
From the beginning of the Bible, therefore, the link between a feeling of modesty and a sense of sin appears very close. Modesty appears as the necessary consequence of the mysterious disturbance determined by guilt in the intimate structure of the personality; Faced with man’s inability to exercise total control over himself, to fully dominate his passions, modesty is shown as a “guardian of being”. In the biblical perspective, modesty appears essentially aimed at protecting the sexual sphere against the disorder introduced into it by sin, not without it still being glimpsed (as in the well-known episode of Noah’s nakedness that Gen 9 tells us: 22) a different and deeper purpose of modesty, as a delimitation and at the same time as respect for an area of intimacy and modesty of the person, which it is not lawful for anyone to trespass.
Throughout the biblical tradition, the affirmation of the positive value of modesty is constant, together with the clear condemnation of its lack. From this point of view, the NT does not add anything to this tradition, even when the demand for respect for one’s own body and the body of others is given a fuller and deeper basis, putting it in relation to the indwelling of God in man. , which has made purity of heart possible, understood above all as a total disposition to the love of God. Therefore, aware that not only the body is at stake, but the whole person, Paul affirms with tremendous severity that “neither the lustful, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate… shall inherit…