medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Christopher wrote:
>Chris Laning <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> The Catholic kids of my acquaintance in the 1950s....(I suspect they
>believed the story about why girls shouldn't wear patent-leather shoes,
>too. :)
>
>wow.
>
>this sounds kinky, even for 50s catholics.
>
>i don't suppose you can share the details, on a Family List?
Sure. <g>
Supposedly the nuns who were teachers in elementary schools would tell the girls that they shouldn't wear patent leather shoes because they were shiny and would reflect images of the girls' underwear (assuming the girls were wearing skirts, of course).
Of course, this story circulated at an age when boys' seeing girls' underwear was supposed to be a Big Thrill :)
>> Of course things are different now :)
>
>yes, thankfully.
>
>> I'm curious, by the way, about how many of this "underbrush" of 19th-
>>and early 20th-century misunderstandings of Catholicism has medieval
>>roots. It's my impression that a lot of it dates from these more
>>recent centuries -- comments anyone?
>
>surely most of it comes straight --or more or less straight--
>out of the 16thc. ?
I actually suspect not, which is why I asked. My experience of the mid-20th century Catholic Church (I was brought up Protestant in a heavily Catholic area), and what I hear about the 100 years or so before that, leads me to suspect that Catholics in the US in that era -- feeling, with some justification, that they were widely mistrusted and discriminated against -- tended to be much more defensive, clannish, closed-minded, prudish, and paranoid than Catholics today. I would not be at all surprised to discover that many of the "urban legends" on both sides had their source at that time.
Anyone else remember the "cardinal" quarters when Kennedy was running for President?
____________________________________________________________
0 Chris Laning
| <[log in to unmask]>
+ Davis, California
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