Paul Schleifer

Decorum, according to dictionary.com, means 1. dignified propriety of behavior, speech, dress, etc.; or 2. the quality or state of being decorous, or exhibiting such dignified propriety; orderliness; regularity.

The word came into the language in the 1560s, according to www.etymonline.com, from the Latin decorum (“that which is seemly,” noun use of neuter of adjective decorus “fit, proper,” from decor).

The word looks like it is related to our word décor, but the connection is pretty loose. Here’s what etymonline.com says about décor: “1897, from French décor (18c.), back-formation from décorer “to decorate” (14c.), from Latin decorare ‘to decorate, adorn, embellish, beautify,’ from decus (genitive decoris) ‘an ornament,’ from PIE root *dek– ‘to take, accept.’ It thus duplicates Latin decor ‘beauty, elegance, charm, grace, ornament.’”

I like the word decorum. I teach it to my freshman and sophomore students because I think that it’s a word they should know.

There is a dress code for students where I teach. I am not entirely sure what it says, though I feel certain it is not as strict as it used to be. Decades ago, for instance, young women were not allowed to wear pants, much less jeans. They had to be in a skirt or a dress. Young men were probably required, years ago, to wear a tie to class and to chapel. Today it is a struggle to get the young men to take off their ball caps during class or even chapel.

But this is what I tell them about dress: wear what is appropriate for the time and place. In other words, wear what is seemly.

When my kids were small, we used to go to the beach with them, specifically to Kiawah Island. And when we went to the actual beach, my kids sometimes felt a bit funny about my wife. She suffers from heliophobia (fear of the sun). So she would wear a long-sleeve shirt and jeans and carry an umbrella (I should call it a parasol, but it was, in fact, an umbrella). What’s wrong with that? It was not immodest. True, but it also wasn’t what one wears to the beach. It wasn’t appropriate to the place. One wears beach attire to the beach, like a bathing suit and maybe a wrap.

In the same way, one doesn’t wear a bathing suit, even with a wrap, when one goes to class or to church or to a job. One just doesn’t. It is not as if there is necessarily something wrong with beach attire—it just is not what one does in certain places.

March 7 is, among other things, the feast day of St. Paul the Simple. Here is his story, according to www.catholic.org:

“Paul spent his first sixty years in the world, employed as a laborer. He then suffered the ordeal of discovering that his wife had committed adultery. Thereafter, Paul withdrew into the Egyptian desert in the hope of becoming a hermit under the tutelage of Saint Anthony the Abbot. Upon seeing this aged would-be disciple at his door, Anthony judged him to be ill suited to eremitical life, and refused to receive him. But Paul refused to leave. Anthony thereupon decided to test Paul’s virtue by commanding him to carry out a series of difficult tasks, including a very prolonged regimen of continuous prayer, the sewing of mats that he was then instructed to take apart and sew all over again, and very strict fasting. Paul proved himself to be unwavering in obedience and perseverance, winning Anthony’s confidence and admiration. Anthony was later to say of Paul, ‘How this monk puts us all to shame! He immediately obeys man’s simplest order, while we often fail to listen to the word which comes to us from heaven.’ Paul lived his remaining years in great humility and childlike simplicity.”

It ain’t necessarily so that the way to heaven is to behave just like St. Paul the Simple, but I believe it is important that we always act with decorum. Paul the Simple acted the way he did because it was appropriate for his time and place and circumstances. Even powerful people should act in a manner that is seemly or decorous. I can think of two recent US presidents who do not seem to understand that despite their being elected (and in one case elected twice).

Beauty and grace are not a function of one’s natural gifts. They are a function of how one uses what one has been given. Use your gifts with decorum.

 

The image is a photograph of the American actress Grace Kelly. Kelly was born in Philadelphia (my parents’ home town) in 1929. She became an actress at the age of 20, performing on stage in New York, then on television in the early 1950s, and then in movies. She won a couple of Academy Award nominations and starred with some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, and Jimmy Stewart. In 1956, at the age of 26, she gave it all up to marry the Prince of Monaco, Prince Rainier. The daughter of a building contractor and a teacher, Kelly grew up to be a princess, and she acted the role of princess until her death in 1982.

She was the model of decorum.