Cape Coast: Catholic Church bans provocative dresses

The St John the Baptist Catholic Church at Pedu, a suburb of Cape Coast in the Central region, has banned what it describes as provocative dresses in the church by its members.

As a measure to effect the ban, the church posts pictures of unapproved dresses on its premises every Sunday.

The President of the church council, Mr Andrew Kofi Wosesor, told the Daily Graphic that the ban was necessary, as some of the dresses exposed parts of those wearing them.

He said some female church members exposed their breasts and panties through the dresses they wore to church, an act which Christianity frowned upon.

According to him, dresses that exposed vital body parts of women tempted some ‘weaker members’ and even some of the priests.

“When we stop them from putting them on to church, they will even stop wearing them to public places at a point in time,” Mr Wosesor said.

He explained that when he assumed office, he, together with the council of elders, realised certain things which were not good about some of the church members and decided to work on them.

“In this era of fashion, some people easily get swayed by the naivety of what they see others wearing, without taking note of where they are going with what they are wearing,” he observed.

He said the council of elders planned to engage the parents and guardians of those they had observed to be wearing those dresses to make an impact in terms of how their members dressed in public.

Education

The church president explained that the decision to educate the congregation about provocative dressing was informed by the fact that some of the young ladies had taken for granted the culture of the society.

He said the body of every human being was a sanctuary of God’s image and must be kept with dignity, saying “the decision is not targetted at only ladies.”

Mr Wosesor said the youth had the tendency to dress anyhow even to the house of God and therefore “when my team assumed office, we decided to engage a seamstress to design presentable dresses which we post every morning in front of the church guide congregants.”

He said the new council’s move to get the church members to be in tune with the teachings of the Bible was not limited to a dress code.

“Recently, we invited officials of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) to educate the church members about drug and its dangers. Infact we have been doing a lot to get our members to eschew all social vices in order to get closer to God,” he added.

Reactions

Some members of the church who spoke to the Daily Graphic said there was nothing new about the directive, as every Sunday “our priests speak against the wearing of skimpy dresses”.

According to them, the church council did no wrong in trying to draw attention to dresses that exposed parts of “some of our female parishioners”.

A young parishioner, Ama Bentum, said although she would not expose parts of her body, she did not see why the church was bothered about a dress code.

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