USCCB – On Preparing to Receive Christ Worthily in the Eucharist

In July, 1925, Mgr Besson bishop of Lausanne, ordered to read the following letter at all Masses in churches and chapels of the diocese on 19 or 26 July [1925]

Indecency modes, especially in the city, took scandalous proportions. The faithful, and especially mothers, should not forget that there has yet, in this area as in others, the rules of Christian modesty which no one can under any circumstances, be exempt. We need the moral level has fallen well down so that the woman is resigned to the toilet outrageous that the whims of a perverted world make him wear. We need the sense of propriety was greatly weakened so that we no longer know it is incorrect to leave home before he finished dressing. We are disgusted to see that such aberrations occur not only in the people of bad life that inspired them, but among Christian, even among those who should be more, because of their social position, set a good example. We are sorry to think that the light of so many mothers never compromises the soul of the poor children, especially girls poor, by accustoming them to certain ways of dressing that are losing their sense of modesty. Against such a revival of paganism, we have the grave duty to react, and it is the Christian spirit of the faithful that we use. Whatever vain pretexts that you can invoke, Ladies and Ladies, we do not assert that current methods are often a source of fear for unconscious sin that accept and an occasion of sin for those they scandalize. In the day when God will ask account and evil you have done and the evil you have done to make it not judge you or from your fashion magazine, or from the false principles of all materialized hygiene nor after the alleged worldly propriety, but according to the holy Gospel. Now the Divine Master said, “Woe to him who is a cause of sandal! “Heaven and earth will pass away; this word will not pass.