Benedict XV & American Catholic charity balls

There is a cheat sheet floating about the internet with a list of pronouncements against dancing attributed to various saints and Councils. These quotes, translations or paraphrases are taken out of context, and they are but rarely linked to primary source material. It is neither scholarly, comprehensive, nor charitable. It looks like something a teenager might bring to a high school debate.

The most recent material claimed on this sheet dates from 1916 and 1917, and is introduced with the misleading “In 1916, the Vatican issued a prohibition against events whose chief entertainment was dancing.”

This statement was given so confidently that my working hypothesis was that this was true and my surprise was great when I contacted a historian in Irish music and dance at the University of Galway and discovered that the pious Irish danced straight into the 20th century and all the way through. She had never heard of this supposed Vatican ban on dancing.

Dr. Mรฉabh Nรญ Fhuarthรกin kindly sent me a copy of her article “Parish Halls, Dance Halls, and Marquees: Developing and Regulating Social-Dance Spaces, 1900โ€“60” (ร‰ire/Ireland Journal of Irish Studies 54/1&2 [2019]. While only tangentially concerned with some clergy’s worry about morals, it does stress that the main activity of the parish halls that sprang up everywhere after 1900 was dancing.

The parish halls had commercial rivals: dance halls and dodgy “marquees.” The dance halls were part of an international trend, and “beginning in the 1920s” there were Irish Americans dance halls in Boston, Massachusetts. The clergy of Ireland, whose influence was enormous, seemed to have believed the dance halls were more dangerous to morals than the dances and ceilidhs in the parish halls. Of course, some moralists believed that even “parish halls, viewed as the more safely incorruptible alternative to marquees and commercial dance halls, needed heightened vigilance.” However, one popular 1955 screed against dance halls “affirms the safety of the parish hall.”

I discovered that the pious Irish were dancing not only folk dances, which the Gaelic League wished to reestablish, but “waltzes, two-steps, and foxtrots.” There was the usual worry about dancing to jazz in the 1920s, but there seems not have been–to judge from this document–concern about the older dances in particular, at least not when safely confined to the parish hall.

Having enjoyed an interesting correspondence with Dr. Nรญ Fhuarthรกin, I began to hunt for the actual text of Benedict XV’s supposed ban. Not finding it on Vatican.va, I applied to Dr. Peter Kwasniewski. Dr. K found the original, which is in Latin (naturally enough for 1916), and one important word leapt out at me: America.

“Was it just for the US?” I wondered.

“Seems like no translation exists of the whole,” Dr K. replied and shortly thereafter sent me one the author called “rough” and “quick.”

Now, let me be the first to say that this missive does not look swell for the pro-dancing party—or wouldn’t, if we were all living in the USA or perhaps Canada in 1916. On the other hand, I still don’t know much, outside of the document itself, about its context. One piece of previously suppressed context, however, is the title of the source material:

Decree about Certain Balls in the United States of America and in Canada

The supposed papal “dancing ban” is nothing of the sort. It is a judgement about “certain balls” in the USA and Canada. And as you will see, the decree was sought by American bishops, whose specific problems with the balls were not made explicit. I do not as yet know what they were. I notice, however, bishops’ very great concern that priests not promote, organize or attend these cash cows:

Decree about Certain Balls in the United States of America and in Canada

A century ago in the United States of America the custom began of gathering Catholic families for balls that lasted for many hours into the night along with banquets and other amenities. The reason and cause give for this is that Catholics could get to know one another and be more intimately united in the bonds of love and charity and also raise funds for various necessary pious works. Those who held these gatherings and presided over them were usually the heads of some pious foundation, and often the rectors or parish priests of churches.

But the ordinaries of these places, though they did not doubt the good purpose of those who promoted these balls, nevertheless perceiving the harms and dangers of this custom, deemed that it was their duty to proscribe them. And so in can. 290 of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore they decreed the following:

โ€œWe also order that priests see to it that the use of holding dinners with balls in order to promote pious works be entirely abolished.โ€

Alas, as often happens in human affairs, what is justly and wisely commanded at the beginning gradually comes to be forgotten, and the use of balls revived once more, and began to expand into the neighboring region of the Canadian dominion. 

Learning of this, the eminent fathers of the Sacra Congregatio Consistorialis, having heard from many local ordinaries, and subjected the matter to thorough examination, have decided that the sanctions of the Third Council of Baltimore should be upheld and with the approval of Our Most Holy Lord Benedict XV, have decreed, that all priests whether secular or regular and all other clergy are entirely forbidden to promote and encourage such balls even for the support and aid of pious works or for any other pious purpose. Furthermore, all clergy are forbidden to be present at such balls if they happen to be promoted by laymen.

The Supreme Pontiff ordered this decree to be entered into public law and obeyed religiously by all, notwithstanding anything to the contrary.

Given at Rome, in the palace of the Sacra Congregatio Consistorialis, 31 March 1916

C. Card DB Lai, Bishop of Sabina, Secretary

This is a far cry from telling American and Canadian Catholics, let alone all the Catholics of the world, in 1916, let alone all time, that they may not dance anymore. For one thing, the decree seems to assume that laymen are going to carry on promoting big charity balls. Its great concern seems to be that priests serving in the United States and of Canada stop promoting, organizing or attending these big dances.

I still do not know when this ban on priests promoting dances was dropped, for either dropped or ignored it certainly was eventually. (My only question is how soon after the USA entered the First World War that this happened.)

Meanwhile, whatever the pastoral strictures of 20th century American priests or bishops alarmed by dancing itself, they were not shared by all priests in Ireland. In 1931, a Father Gildea advised caution to the Irish government when it came to dance hall regulations, saying that “any legislation in Ireland ‘should avoid the Scylla of New England Puritanism which forbids dancing of any kind’ (Nรญ Fhuarthรกin).โ€ 

And, of course, to drag ourselves away from the disappointment of American (and Canadian, if the Canadian bishops received a copy of this document) Catholics of 1916, let us give ourselves a shake and recall that neither the USCCB nor the CCCB of our day seems be adverse to large Catholic charity balls.

The last person I spoke to on this subject yesterday was a pastor of souls. He said something eminently sensible, and so I quote it:

It needs to be stressed that in the time, place and jurisdiction in which we live, there is no ecclesiastical prohibition in force, meaning that the Church leaves the faithful free to make their own prudential decision in the context of moral norms. 

Again, if going to Catholic dance in which waltzes and other partner dances are performed is an occasion for sin for you, please do not go. But do not try to destroy the joy of others in an innocent, joyful pastime with cynical prooftexting against it.

Thank you to Dr. Peter Kwasniewski for his permission to publish the translation.

Thank you to those who came to the Michaelmas Dance 2024! For information on upcoming events, please contact me at info@tradcathsocialdancing.co.uk.