Why Catholics Should Learn to Dance
Three authors—Dr. Kwasniewski, Dorothy Cummings McLean, and Julian Kwasniewski—respond to “traditionalist” arguments against dancing
Before Discussion Notes (taken from article)
- We are doing our young people a huge disservice if we hedge their relations about with artificial prohibitions in an effort to overcompensate for the sexual revolution.
- Formal dancing was, is, an elegant solution for bringing young people together and helping them to get to know each other; it is also a pleasant pastime for the married.
- As we all know, King David danced before the Lord, and before that Moses’ sister Miriam took a tambourine in hand and jigged with joy after escaping bondage in Egypt. There are other references to dancing in Holy Scripture, too. The Book of Ecclesiastes informs us that there is “a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (3:4). The Book of Jeremiah contains a promise from the Lord that the “maidens shall rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together” (31:13). Psalm 149:3 exhorts us to praise God’s name in dance.
- Dancing can and should be done in families—and dances should be the kind that you wouldn’t blush to do before your own.
- One of the great joys of formal dances I organize is the presence of families, sons and brothers gallantly escorting mothers and sisters to the floor. As families are the building blocks of society, families that dance continue societies that dance.
- Dancing is a fun, healthy activity that creates happy memories within families, and therefore also in the societies threatened with becoming ever less like families.
- However, dancing is just a more advanced form of walking. Having learned to walk—and to climb—and to ride a bicycle—and perhaps even to ski or skate—you can learn how to dance. Like riding a bike, it just takes lessons and repetition.
- Choreography is another one. One is not just randomly touching one’s partner: specific moves require attention and coordination, and are impossible to execute if one is trying to cuddle.
- interact personally with fellow female persons rather than objectifying them. I can think of no approach more objectifying than to say that one should not look at or lightly hold a girl’s hand in a dance…because then you might objectify her! The whole point of the social interaction is to not objectify, and rather treat the partner as what she truly is: a person to be looked at and occasionally touched (since you both exist in a physical world), not an object of fear to be avoided (or worse, merely used when use becomes permissible.
Farm to Jesus 