Last Week 4. The Body in the Soul's Keeping

Heroin is an awful drug. It is seriously addictive and has all the caché of the floor of the men's washroom of your local dance hall at 2 AM. Some people think it is cool, other people (like me) think it is dirty, and hopefully everyone knows it is hideously dangerous. I have never been tempted to touch it, and I have never been offered it, and I know only one person who ever used it, and she said once was enough and it terrified her.

I don't need to try heroin to know that I should stay the heck away from heroin.

Codeine, on the other hand, is a different petal of the poppy, because I have indeed taken codeine, and I have never had such a chemical high in my life. I was so happy, so blissful--and in such terrible pain because it made my rib cage feel like it was coming apart. In memory of my ribs, I have not taken codeine since. Meanwhile, occasionally friends are given morphine at the hospital, and afterwards we giggle over them having being given a highly addictive substance with a darkly glamorous reputation by a respectable doctor.

"How was it?" I say.

"It was awesome," they say.

"It's terribly addictive," we say together.

This is all a metaphor for sex because chastity speakers always have lousy metaphors and similes for sex, so why should I be any different, eh?

I think chastity speakers do as much damage as they do good, and they are at their worst when they try to terrify teenagers into keeping their clothes on my telling them that sex robs them of their intrinsic worth. What crap.

Nothing can rob you of your intrinsic worth. You're a lot more like a hundred dollar bill/50 pound note than a glass of water or whatever the horrible prop is these days. No many how many hands you-the-currency go through, you are still worth a hundred dollars/50 pounds. You might get a bit crumpled and possibly you get covered in germs, but you're still legal tender until some idiot sets fire to you to show off how rich he is.

But of course you're worth a heck of a lot more than a hundred dollar bill or fifty pound note, as you hopefully remember every time you contemplate the life, passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.

That said, sex is for marriage. Sex outside of marriage is like nasty heroin, sex inside marriage is like the prescription drug. Sex, in short, is the opiate of the married. Did I mention it's addictive? It's addictive.

It is also one of the most powerful natural forces that govern human beings. Reader after reader has written in to say that they NEVER thought they would do the things they have just done with their boyfriends before they got married. NEVER. They were totally committed to being chaste, and they read the chastity books, or they went to Theology of the Body conversation groups, or they actually gave chastity lectures themselves. In short, they did all the theory and now that they are in the field, so to speak, they are screwing up. As are their stupid boyfriends.

Welcome to the Struggle with Chastity. Everyone's first mistake is to think that resisting sexual temptation is easy. Yet how many times did you think about sex today? (I once asked someone how often he thought about sex. He said, "You mean, in an hour?") You're definitely thinking about it now, and I apologize, but it's such an obvious temptation of Single life that I have to write about it.

Singles think about sex way more than Marrieds do. I think much more about food although that may partly be chastity training and partly sublimation, not just it being an ordinary part of ordinary life now. But, aw gee, I cannot imagine anything worse than going to a Theology of the Body talk with B.A. How boring and uncomfortable and how painful to watch the poor Singles in increasing anguish. Blah!

Actually, I did go to one when I was Single, and I was very impressed by the speaker, who was a youngish married guy. (Incidentally, I never listen to anything virgins say about sex. I will read the great intellectual saints on the topic, but that's it from my ontological superiors. Virgins should ask questions and voice fears about sex, not give speeches and advice. On coping with chaste celibacy, okay. It would be fantastic if every virgin priest got up in the pulpit and explained to the whole congregation how he copes with sexual temptation. The churches would be packed.) Anyway, someone asked the Young Married Guy, who had spent at least an hour showing us there was more to Catholic sexuality than "How Far Can You Go?", was asked "So how far can you go?" And he said, blushing to his hairline, that as crazy as it sounded, he honestly thought dating people shouldn't do more than kiss each other on the cheek or give each other a nice hug.

What?! No making out? Oh, the outrage. But for some years I have seen that he is right. Not only did a pope rule that making out before marriage was a sin--and who am I to contradict Alexander VII, eh?--but it quite obviously leads to ... other stuff. Yes, I know it is one of the most fun things in the world. I know that. Knocking back shots of cherry vodka like there's no tomorrow is fun too. I can think of many super-fun things that seem like good and harmless ideas at the time but are actually occasions for sin, if not actually sins themselves. I think I can manage three shots of vodka over an hour without getting drunk, and I think kissing handsome young men on both cheeks is okay, especially if I say "MWAH MWAH" at the same time. But that's it for the vodka and the handsome young men. C'est la vie.

"But you're married," you all say, and I say, "Ha! You just wait until you're married." And indeed, my little poppets, one of the reasons why you have to discipline yourselves to chastity now is because you may need it later,when you are terribly irritated with your husband's bad habits and you become great pals with that funny new guy at work/your golf instructor/your brother-in-law.

But it really is easier for Married people to stay chaste than for Single people to stay chaste because almost all the world still thinks that adultery is wicked, even though a good chunk of it thinks that serial monogamy (or consensual polygamy) is great for the unmarried. The fallout from adultery is a lot more obvious that the fallout from ordinary Single person fornication, unless you live with your parents and they walk in on you. Oh. My.

How glad I am I will not be blogging about this any more. I feel that I need to write a list now.

How to Be Chaste (a List)

1. Always remember that no man can touch you if he is three feet away. The secret of our relatively chaste engagement is that B.A. and I lived three thousand, three hundred and seventeen miles apart.

2. Remind yourself constantly that you are dedicated to a life of chastity. Get a single bed. Hang a cross or crucifix over it. Say your prayers. Read yourself something non-sexy until you feel yourself drifting off to sleep. Do not treat yourself to a sexual fantasy. If you do, you have to go to Confession and tell a priest about it. Sucks to be you.

3. Various saints have written that there is a connection between fasting and chastity. Worth a shot, but don't starve yourselves. Feeling hungry between normal breakfast and normal lunch and between normal lunch and normal dinner is probably enough. Maybe the idea is to get used to saying "No" to your whiny body when it wants something it shouldn't have yet.

4. Various confessors have recommended vigorous sports. Maybe this is because exercise tires you out and helps you fall asleep that night. Maybe it is a salutary reminder of what your body is for. Maybe, like fasting, it trains you to say "No" to your body when it whines "This is hard. I wanna quit."

5. Be humble and honest with yourself. You are probably a sexual sinner. Your sins are probably mild. They are probably mostly things you thought up while you were in a boring lecture or were whiling away the time between going to bed and going to sleep. Maybe you got a thrill from reading that trashy book or watching that sex scene. I'm not throwing stones here. I'm just reminding you that you are a human being and without God's grace you are not stronger than the tsunami of sexual desire that has carried away so many of your formerly devout Catholic friends and relations. John Paul's Theology of the Body is really beautiful, but John Paul never snuggled on the couch in front of the TV late at night with an attractive member of the opposite sex, did he? He was ordained before there was TV.

6. Don't read sexy books or watch sexy TV shows or sexy movies or play sexy video games (I imagine there are sexy video games) or look at porn or write erotic stories or have erotic conversations over the internet. Otherwise you will drive yourself crazy. You may even develop a porn addiction, and this will almost certainly blight your life.

7. If you find yourself going about with an attractive man, have a chastity mantra. "Don't touch the hottie" worked for me for a whole week and a half, and then B.A. grabbed me. (My subsequent post-kissing thought was "You better want to marry me, or I am going to be REALLY MAD.")

8. If you practise making The Speech, imagine that you are making The Speech to someone you are crazy about. I realize that when we imagine making The Speech, it's to some slimy, ugly, arrogant dude. However, when we actually do make The Speech, it's more likely to be to someone we actually would want to sleep with, were we married to them. Oh, and don't feel GUILTY! He should feel guilty for putting you in a position where you have to make The Speech. And the only correct response to The Speech is, "I respect that." If he doesn't call afterwards, he has ceased wasting your time. No big loss.

9. Despite Alexander VII, I do not think it is such a big deal if people who are actually engaged, which means that there is an actual engagement ring and an actual wedding date and his mother actually knows about it, make out. If accidents happen (oops), you're getting married anyway. You'll probably feel bad, and you'll have to go to confession, but otherwise, whatever. Not my business. I don't really care. The affianced are not my bag, baby. (Update: I'm sorry my tone scandalized some folk. The affianced should consult the Catechism--see 2350--and their confessors on such matters.)

10. This reminds me: if you "made a mistake", a phrase many readers use to mean "had sex", that is between you and God. Go to confession, and as part of your penance, you must not tell anyone else except (if applicable) your doctor, your fiance or--it just occurs to me--anyone else you're going to "make a mistake" with before you make the mistake again. Diseases are rife, and your fiance (or future male concubine) has a right to informed consent. "I'm not a virgin, but I have no diseases" is probably enough information. I suppose a Christian fiancé will want to hear "and I'm sorry about that" between "I'm not a virgin" and "but I have no diseases."

This is one of the most controversial things I blog on. One of my ethics profs once said is that that Church can never tell people how to sin more safely. I'm not interested in that myself. But I can tell you that most of the time, you must shut your mouth about your sexual sins and not try to get relief or a feeling of forgiveness by telling multiple people--especially men--about them. Tell a confessor, a therapist and/or a doctor instead. The only other person who deserves such information is the person who has elected to go to bed with you at some point in the future. Hopefully that is your fiancé. And do not give details. Do not admit to numbers. He might say he wants to know, but actually he doesn't. He wants to think he is the best and most important man in your life in EVERY WAY. Never underestimate men's feelings of competition with other men. It's not about control. It's about losing face. And jealousy, naturally.

11. Don't brag that you're a virgin. Pride goeth before a fall, and virgins who like to go around telling people they are virgins are at risk of virgin-hunters. Young virgins usually know very little about sexual dynamics; clever non-virgins often do. Stay under the radar of the wicked, and refuse to discuss something so personal with anyone other than your doctor or, if you get engaged, your fiancé.

If you're Catholic, your Catholic friends will assume you're a virgin anyway. Your non-Catholic friends will probably assume you're not. Whatever. It is so not anybody's business but your own (and anyone you go to bed with). Incidentally, St. Augustine ruled that you can't lose your spiritual virginity without an act of will. So if you've never consented to sex, you're a spiritual virgin, no matter has been done to you. If you're also a physical virgin, it's because nobody messed with you when you were a kid. Or a teenager. Or yesterday. This should be a sobering thought.

My first husband was obsessed with me because I was a virgin. If I hadn't been one, he would have left me alone. Fact. "I would have pitied you," he said, with all the arrogance of youth. I should NEVER have told him at all in the first place.

Yeah, some scars never heal. On the bright side, here I am happily married to B.A. and living in the Historical House.

12. Try to see chastity within the context of other virtues, like prudence, temperance and fortitude. For example, you probably have other physical disciplines you stick to in the face of temptation. If you are a vegan or celiac, you are very careful about what you eat, and good for you. If you are a non-drinking alcoholic, you avoid drinking and occasions for drink. If you are a runner, you run no matter what the weather and you put up with a lot of discomfort. If you are a boxer, you train and fight. You might even face fear, and win. (For me the most important fight was won when I climbed over the ropes.)

Well, I hope all that was helpful.

Not a Cure for Depression

As a survivor of full-blown depression, I thought I should write something in relation to the death of actor Robin Williams. My first brother and I are old enough to have watched "Mork and Mindy" as kids, and my brother, were he still a kid, would have taken news of his death really hard.

I don't know how it was for Robin Williams, but depression has never removed my ability to make serious moral decisions. It has made me cry a lot, and feel like a huge failure, and to suddenly escape conversations at parties to fall dead asleep on the hostess's bed. It prevents me from bouncing back from disappointments all that easily, and it urges me to quit just about any difficult endeavour. And like tens of thousands of people, I take prescription anti-depressants. But the one and only time I ever said anything remotely suicidey--and it was at a really bad time--it was to my best friend who indirectly, and in the nicest way possible, i.e. by talking about another friend, told me she would never, ever forgive me or anyone she loved who did that. And I'm glad she did. It was the spine-stiffener I needed at a moment of moral weakness.

Depression is not an excuse for suicide, although suicide may come to look like the only way out if the depressed person isn't careful with their thoughts. Perhaps in some people's case depression so interferes with their moral freedom that they really aren't culpable of their self-murder. But I am not aware of myself ever being THAT sick, even at my loopiest. I have always known (A) that sudden death of a family member is absolute hell on the rest of the family and (B) that one suicide can lead to other suicides and (C) that things ALWAYS get better eventually and (D) that suicide is a mortal sin.

Now Father Ron Rolheiser writes in his syndicated column once a year every year to say that suicide is not necessarily a mortal sin, and we should not put away the photographs of our loved one's who commit suicide, but accept their suicide as the sad result of a bout of depression and celebrate their lives. I think the idea is that suicides have "lost their battle" with depression the same way cancer victims "lose their battle" with cancer. Instead of being shunned as murderers, as they once were, suicides are bathed in a heroic glow. And I can most definitely see the appeal of that, especially as someone who "battles depression" myself.

However, whenever I read Father R's annual suicide piece, I get the impression he is writing to us merely as family members and friends of suicides, not as potential suicides ourselves. In fact, I often wonder what the cumulative effect of Father R's suicide column might be, not on a grieving family member, but on an unhappy and trusting mind in a very bad moment. One way to read Father R is that he thinks we can just jump from this world straight into the arms of Jesus, for Jesus will never, ever let us fall. So why not jump?

I believe it is salutary to hope and pray that God forgives the serious sins of others while never assuming that he will forgive one's own serious sins without contrition, confession and penance. And I certainly hope that God will forgive the serious sins of Robin Williams (as I hope he will forgive the serious sins of Auntie Seraphic), particularly this shocking last one. Poor man. There may indeed have been a staggering lack of moral freedom in his case. Certainly he seems not to have taken comfort in the thought that at the age of 63 he had amassed an impressive catalog of life's work, had sired three children, had proven himself to be a great comedian and a good actor, and had touched the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.

So there you have it. Like many other people, I am saddened that Robin Williams is dead, particularly because he killed himself. And as a fellow sufferer of depression, I understand that depression is a physical condition, not a moral failing, that attacks your grip on reality. But at the same time, I feel it necessary to state, for the sake of readers tempted to do what he did, and for their families, that suicide is a sin, and although we can hope and pray that God will forgive it in another, we can never assume God will forgive it in us. Although depression is not a moral failing in itself, and it may attack one's freedom to make moral decisions, one is not morally off the hook. You can say "No" to evil and "Yes" to good: it's just harder.

Update: I've just been talking with someone whose life was saved by some very tough talk from a dear friend. It really costs a lot for someone to tell someone they deeply love, "If you commit suicide, you will go to hell" and mean it. It is an incredibly compassionate thing to do, especially as it leaves the poor Christian vulnerable to accusations that he/she WANTS his/her beloved friend to go to hell. And thus the compassionate person is labelled a "judgemental" and "hateful" person--and he or she doesn't care, just so long as his or her beloved friend doesn't kill him or herself.

When someone commits suicide, they are sinning against everyone who loves them. How culpable they are when they do that can only be determined by their therapist, or the courts, or God. Those sinned against may do some serious mental gymnastics to excuse the person who hurt them for their sin. "I forgive you, I forgive you, may God forgive you," seems to me the most natural reaction of a panicked, grief-stricken Christian who still loves his or her loved one and hopes against hope the loved one is okay. The thought of a loved one being in hell is awful--intolerable! Indeed, there are people tortured by the idea of anyone at all in hell, and they find the easiest way to cope is to turn off their brain and pretend there isn't a hell after all. However, the authentic Catholic response is to pray for the dead, to do penance on their behalf and to hope, not assume, that God will have mercy on them. Turning off our brains and parroting "He's looking down from heaven smiling" and "He's at peace now" is a sin against reason, however comforting it might sound.

I don't think I am a cruel or insensitive person, and like anyone who suffers from depression, I think about depression and how to cure it a lot. It takes prevention, medication, all kinds of effort usually invisible to others. Depression is a common complaint; apparently one in four American women in their 40s and 50s take anti-depressants. Imagine if they all just ended it. What a bloodbath! Imagine if I just ended it. You regular readers would feel unsettled, hurt, angry, disappointed, betrayed. "How DARE she call herself Auntie Seraphic," you would harrumph, and rightly so. Let's not even imagine what my family would think, especially the little ones. I would rather suffer from a painful disease for forty years than hurt my little loved ones like that. My uncle's (natural if too-young) death when I was nine hurt my brother and me terribly, and I will never, ever forget my grandmother weeping through Mass that Christmas.

The fact is that "mental illness" does not necessarily make us adults as incapable of sin as three year old children. It's not a comfy moral place where we can do whatever we want, safe in the knowledge that our self-appointed nannies will scold anyone with the brass to "judge" us. Those of us who are catatonic or living in heightened states of irrational terror or anger, okay. Those of us who know what we are SUPPOSED to do to live normal, rational lives but from laziness or whatever do not do it are, however, culpable of sins of imprudence or whatever else. (That reminds me; I must take my pill. Gulp. Okay.)

Today I am annoyed not at suicides but at people who are getting high from their public expressions of compassion and approval for people who commit suicide and their scoldings of those who think suicide is a rotten thing to do. These nanny-types seem to think we are adding to the suffering of the suicide's loved ones, but if anything we are pointing out the real harm done to these loved ones and dreading any future suffering of the suicide. ("To die, to sleep - To sleep, perchance to dream," said Hamlet. "Ay, there's the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come...') Really, the only thing anyone can say to the loved ones without sounding like a twit is "I'm so sorry for your loss." But when talking generally about suicide, and its implications, I think it is best to use our reasoning faculties.

The whole world seems to be talking about the Robin Williams suicide (probably because suicide is such a contrast to his funny, life-giving persona), so the forces of intellect and truth are being forced once again to engage the army of cheap sentiment and woolly thinking.

Day of Solidarity with the Christians of the Middle East

For seven centuries, the Near East was home to Christians, Jews and followers of other religions, excluding Islam, which had not yet come into being. And over the centuries, although some ancient Christian and Jewish communities were wiped out by the violent spread of various sects called Islamic, indigenous Christians and Jews continued to flourish in the Near East, and even northern Africa. However, for the past hundred years, Christians and Jews (except in what is now called Israel) have been ethnically cleansed from these regions to such an extent that they now have what is, unthinkably, more or less a token presence (if that) in their own ancestral lands.

This is not a part of Christian history--and Christian current events--we can forget. And these are not Christians we should forget. We especially cannot forget them if we belong to Catholic or Eastern Orthodox traditions. Anglo-Saxon Protestants may be forgiven for their ignorance of these communities, but no-one who loves the Holy Mother of God, so revered in the East, has an excuse.

We are women, very often poor women: students, Singles, young mothers, artists. As we watch and--I hope--spread the news, we may feel helpless. We want to help. But what can we do? We can pray, fast, go to Mass and, very importantly, give alms today. It doesn't matter if what we give is akin to the widow's mite. If all we Christian women--women rich and poor--gave just the cost of what today's food would cost us--that would be a tremendous sum. If you eat nothing today, offering your hunger pangs and headache for our suffering brothers and sisters, how much will you save? Five dollars? Ten pounds? Send it to CNEWA, choosing the country where you wish the money to be sent, e.g. Iraq. Let lazy armchair warriors snarl on the internet about bombs and Obama and whatnot. We women will send bread.

Earlier it troubled me that Christians' donations were being used not solely to help penniless Christians but also their poor Muslim neighbours. This made me cross because my first feeling is that Muslims have their own charities to help Muslims, and nobody but Christians seems to care about Christians, and even then, we privileged Western Christians are very neglectful of our own, or think only of central and south Africa and Latin America. (My amazement when I discovered there is a fund in Germany to help the poor of the former DDR and other former Iron Bloc countries!) However, then I heard of how grateful and amazed the poor Muslims are that the Christian aid groups feed them too, and I realized that this can help create love and respect in the now-majority Muslims for the now-few Christians in their midst. And changing hearts is just as important as feeding empty Christian tummies and giving shelter to Christian heads.

If you have an affinity for the Society of Jesus, Mike Swan at the Toronto Catholic Register tells me that the Jesuit Refugee Service is a very experienced and effective provider of aid. And in the UK, it may be most natural to give money to Aid to the Church in Need UK.

At 6:15 PM British Summer Time, I will be praying at Mass in Edinburgh's St. Cuthbert's Chapel.* If all "Seraphic Singles" readers would join me in prayer at the same time for the Middle Eastern Christians, that would be truly awesome: a real prayer storm. I will be praying especially for the safety of the girls, young women and nuns. (CNEWA Canada has a special fund for a orphanage for Iraqi Christian girls run by nuns.)

Update: Okay, done it: put our money where my mouth is. I'm sorry it's not more, but on the Day of Judgement, I will be able to raise my head for at least a moment.



*Note to Scots: It is unclear if Mass will begin at 6 or 6:15, so I recommend coming for 6.

UPDATE: Mass is indeed at 6

The Stein Speech (Abridged)

The Edith Stein sections of my May speech about "The Theology of Woman: St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and John Paul II" have appeared in their entirety on the Dzielne Niewiasty blog. Twenty-four paragraphs strikes me as a lot for one blog post. I will skip the biographical stuff and just post the theological overview.

All direct quotations from Saint Edith Stein come from "Essays on Woman," Volume 2 of The Collected Works of Edith Stein, translated by Freda Mary Oben. As this was a speech, I didn't create the ordinary scholarly apparatus. And let me tell you, I regretted this later when I was translating the quotes into Polish. (Had I written the citations, I could potentially have found the official Polish version of St. Edith Stein's writings and swiftly looked them up.)

By the way, I am putting up a new tip jar because we are in serious need of a new vacuum cleaner in our battle with the common British clothes moth. B.A. would also like you to know that I have been known to proofread and edit the English style of academic essays for $40/hr. I accept work only from people who are recommended by their professors, however, so this is not an ad to the students, but to any professors who would prefer that someone fix up their keen but illegible foreign students' essays before the professors have to read them. Theology a specialty.

St. Edith Stein's Theology of Woman

It is a miracle that Saint Edith’s manuscripts and notebooks survived the war. When, after her arrest, a bomb fell on her monastery in the Netherlands, the nuns and villagers ran around rescuing her papers from the wind and the rain. Her writings on women were eventually gathered into a volume called “Die Frau: Ihre Aufgabe nach Natur und Gnade”, which translated means “Woman: Her task according to nature and Grace.” This book has been translated into several languages including Polish, and I think that everyone with university-level reading comprehension should read it. The essays are challenging, but deeply helpful for men and women to understand woman’s nature and what she is called to do in the modern world.

Saint Edith examined the reality of what it is to be a woman from two sources: Scripture and her experience of living as a woman among women as a teacher of girls and women. Her philosophical training under Husserl taught her to subject everything she was told about women to the light of lived experience. (It is a failure to do this which led Aristotle, most dramatically, to make severe errors about women, which subsequent generations merely parroted, without examining lived realities.)

Saint Edith identified a woman as human, first of all, called to the same overall human project as men: to be the image of God, bring forth children and be masters over the earth. Men and women are in the image of God because they have reason. They bring forth physical or spiritual children. They are masters over the created earth in several ways: they are “to fight and conquer it; to understand it and by knowledge to make it [their] own, to possess and enjoy it, and finally, and to make it in a sense [their] own creation through purposeful activity.” But Saint Edith sees that men and women differ in the ways they use their reason, have children, and exercise their rule over their earth. For example, men have a tendency to concentrate on only one subject or aspect at a time, whereas women have a tendency to multi-task and see “the whole picture”. In this they compliment and correct each other.

Saint Edith also observes that women are much more interested in people and in helping others with their work than men are; men literally prefer to mind their own business. Unless economic necessity directs otherwise, most men gravitate towards subjects and professions involving physical strength, independence or abstract thought, whereas women gravitate towards professions that focus on helping people: medicine, teaching, social work, translation. However, she sees no profession to which women are not suited: she observes that women have unique gifts to bring to what have been male-dominated professions. There is no need for women to become like men in order to enter a profession: what is needful is that a woman enter the profession for which her own unique personal talents most suit her and in such a way that this profession does not interfere with her primary vocation which is, whether or not she literally gives birth, a mother.

Motherhood is key to Saint Edith Stein’s theology of woman, and her great model for motherhood is Mary, Mother of God. Just as Our Lord Jesus Christ is the “New Adam” who frees humanity from the sin of Adam, so the Mother of God is the “New Eve” by whom Our Lord Jesus Christ enters the world. Eve was tempted by the serpent and sinned; Mary did not sin and gave birth to the Son who defeated the serpent.

Because the New Adam and the New Eve are mother and child, Saint Edith infers that woman’s most important role towards humanity is not her role as a wife, but her role as mother. Indeed, even a married woman’s role as a human wife is subordinate to her call to be a mother, which is to say, motherly. Edith talks of a spiritual motherhood, not just a physical motherhood; many women who do not have children, like female religious or other unmarried women, have a vast capacity for maternal love than can and should be used for the whole community. It is, in fact, a feminine gift which can help women become more like the Mother of God.

Jednakże w badaniach Księgi Rodzaju... Just kidding!

But in her studies of Genesis, Edith Stein notes two things in particular: that Adam was made before Eve and that Eve was made as a helper and a companion for Adam. She reflects that by having been created first, Adam seems to have a certain precedence over Eve. This masculine precedence is echoed in the fact that Our Lord Jesus Christ chose to live His humanity as a man. Thus, Saint Edith does not depart from the belief that woman was made for man, to be a helper and a companion for the man. And she sees in women around her an earnest desire to be helpful and to be companions for men. However, she notes that before the Fall, the relationship between man and woman was not the relationship of domination and submission it became after the Fall. Man’s tyranny over women is a result of Original Sin and should have no part of the redemption brought by Our Lord Jesus Christ. She notes that Adam showed what a bad master he was going to be when he immediately blamed Eve for giving him the apple.

Saint Edith has a keen sense that we still live under the effects of Original Sin and whenever she talks about humanity, femininity or masculinity, she always notes that we have a fallen humanity, a fallen femininity and a fallen masculinity. (She notes, too, that certain men have more developed feminine characteristics, and certain women have more developed masculine characteristics). Men have to strive against the fallen aspects of masculinity just as women have to strive against the fallen aspects of femininity. For example, men are more likely to become very narrow in their attitude towards the world: striving only for one thing or one goal, to the neglect of other needful things, including the feelings of other people. Women, however, with our interest in other people are more likely to become involved in other people’s business in a meddlesome way. And Stein also warns that if women become narrow in our approach to the world, we become narrow in a particularly dangerous way, abandoning abstract thought and creative action to focus solely on the possession and enjoyment of a good life. Our “reverent joy in the things of this world degenerates into greed” leading us to hoard things we don’t need, or to lapse “into a mindless, idle life of sensuality. “ We can well imagine what she means — ultimately to live for food, romance, entertainment and shopping.

Our primary model for overcoming the fallenness of our female nature is, for Saint Edith, the Mother of God. Not only is the Mother of God a model of obedience and openness to God, of marriage and of motherhood, but of how we should do our paid work. She writes, “Mary at the wedding of Cana in her quiet, observing look surveys everything and discovers what is lacking. Before anything is noticed, even before embarrassment sets in, she had procured the remedy. She finds ways and means, she gives necessary directives, doing all quietly. She draws no attention to herself. Let her be the prototype of women in professional life. Wherever situated, let her always perform her work quietly and dutifully, without claiming attention and appreciation. And at the same time, she should survey the conditions with vigilant eye. Let her be conscious of where there is a want and where help is needed, intervening and regulating as far as it is possible in her power in a discreet way. Then she will like a good spirit spread blessing everywhere.”

What Saint Edith was proposing was a radical departure from the arguments around the Woman Question. Instead of asserting with the feminists that women were the same as men, and therefore equal, or with the traditionalists that women were different from men, and therefore unequal, she asserted that women were both different from men and equal to men, with just one caveat: that men had some kind of precedence shown by the fact that Adam was created first and by the fact that Our Blessed Saviour chose to live His human life as a man. This precedence, however, does not mean that female life is any less important. Indeed, Stein points out that a woman’s assent — Eve’s to the serpent and then Mary’s to God — “determined the destiny of humanity as a whole.” And while Saint Edith affirmed that men, whose primary vocation seems to leadership, and fatherhood a secondary part of this leadership, are the heads of their families, she notes that a good leader knows when to deputize. She writes that “the husband will find that [the wife] will give him invaluable advice in guiding the lives of their children as well as themselves; indeed, often he would fulfil his duties as a leader best if he would yield to her and permit himself to be led by her.”

Meanwhile, Saint Edith put the good of the man and woman’s family life before any professional consideration. She is deeply concerned for the happiness of women who, through no choice of their own, find that their professional work conflicts with their responsibilities to their families. She notes that such a conflict is a heavier burden on mothers than it is on fathers. She asserts that “Any social condition is an unhealthy one which compels [my emphasis] married women to seek gainful employment and makes it impossible for them to manage their home. And we should accept as normal that the married woman is restricted to domestic life at a time when her household duties exact her total energies.” I think Saint Edith Stein would support a movement to grant Polish mothers more than just 20 weeks of maternity leave.

Saint Edith’s theology of woman is also the source for the notion of the complementarity of men and women: the idea that men and women, working together, combining masculine and feminine characteristics, create a balanced whole, not only in family life, but in professional and national life, as well. Saint Edith’s work is so well known today because of her most famous disciple, who never met her, and was in Kraków when Saint Edith was murdered with her sister in Auschwitz. I speak, of course, of Saint Jan Paweł II.

---from "A Speech about the Theology of Women of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and St. John Paul II to the Dzielne Niewiasty in Kraków, Poland on May 4, 2014 " by Dorothy Cummings McLean.

The Reluctant Gatekeepers

Following on the work of St. Edith Stein and St. John Paul II, I feel no embarrassment in saying that men and women are different in fundamental ways. And again following Saint Edith, I observe that femininity, which women tend to have more of than men do, and masculinity, which men tend to have more of than women do, have been adversely affected by the Fall. Just as we live in a fallen world, a creation warped by Original Sin, so masculinity and femininity are fallen, too. All the more reason to look to Our Lord for the best example we have for what masculinity should look like and to His Blessed Mother, conceived without sin, for prelapsarian femininity.

St. Edith notes in her writing that Our Lord was the New Adam and Our Lady was the New Eve, and she reflects also that it is significant that Our Lady's principal role was not spousal but maternal. Both Saint Edith and Saint John Paul hold that all women are called to be mothers of one kind or another.

Saint Edith does not think that men's principal role is paternal. She thinks fatherhood is just a subset of the male call to leadership. Since the Fall, of course, this leadership contains the seeds of selfish tyranny. And fallen motherhood, I would add, contains the seeds of selfishness, too. Mothers have a huge amount of emotional power, and some use this power for evil. Think of the female mentor who develops relationships of trust with younger women at work only to stab them in the back. Yikes.

However, I think a much more likely female sin is to abdicate maternal responsibility, either letting their own kids run wild, or even indulging their bad habits, or giggling foolishly while their male friends behave badly, or just giving in when their boyfriends start to take their relationship "to another level" in the front of a Honda Civic.

At this point readers may shout, "But he shouldn't start to take the relationship to another level in the back of a Honda Civic! Why do I have to be the one who says no?" And I would say, "Because he's the one being excessive." According to the traditional scheme of things, masculine men take leadership in sexual advances. (I would add that more feminine men expect women to seduce them and feel disappointed when we don't.) This leadership is, thanks to the Fall, flawed. And therefore it is a principal of redeemed motherhood to say "No. Stop. This is getting a bit crazy, so I think we'd better cool it."

Frankly, whoever is being excessive is the one who needs correcting. I am sure B.A. could give you examples of feminine excess at the Historical House. Let me see. Oh, I suspect I am way too interested in my friends' lives. And I even used to mope or cry occasionally when not invited to certain parties, which B.A. thought was ridiculous. Saint Edith Stein would say that this was textbook fallen feminine behaviour, had expressions like "textbook behaviour" been current before 1942. Of course, B.A. gets excessive in his leadership, e.g. haranguing me in an over-exasperated tone, which I counter by wailing, "You're not making me feel better! I'm sorry I mentioned it. I should have called a WOMAN!" Etc, etc. Ah, the joys of marriage.

But actually that is what marriage is for, other than having babies, I mean (of the body and/or of the spirit). Man confronts fallen femininity and helps his wife rise above it, and woman confronts fallen masculinity and helps her husband rise above that. To use a very basic example, husbands question the practical advantage of expensive if pretty shoes, and women ban sexual sin. The thought of B.A. saying "Aw geez" upon finding out I spent 65 quid on a new pair of pretty shoes generally stops me from buying a new pair of pretty shoes. And the force of my yowls that he change that channel, makes B.A. change the channel. I was so outraged by that rapey sexual scenario with the Turkish guy that poor B.A. never got to see "Downton Abbey" again. However, how dare they beam such filth into gthe sitting-rooms of Britain? (I admit it was an example of feminine excess to insult All Britain, e.g. What's wrong with you people?, at the time.)

Camille Paglia (you didn't see that name coming, did you?) thinks sexually active hom*sexu*l men are heroes for spitting in the eye of Mother Nature, but even she was shaken by the excesses of urban American gay cult*re in the 1970s. She blamed the excess on the fact that there were no women involved. Given that there was no feminine check on masculine sexual behaviour, she was not surprised by the AIDS epidemic. And, lo and behold, in current discussions around same-sex "marri*ge" the very concept of sexual fidelity is being held up to ridicule. I thought the Sex and the City franchise, though straining every fan's credulity in marrying off Anthony Marentino to Stanford Blatch, was refreshingly open about the fact that Anthony had no intention of curbing his polyandrous sex life just because he was married. And actually it could indeed be that Stanford wouldn't care, as long as Anthony respected their emotional bond, treating all his other partners as, I don't know, less than. For one thing, Stanley might take it as tacit permission to do the same thing. And thus they would encourage each other not in virtue but in excess. Most women, however, naturally and laudably draw the line at such self-indulgent (and destructive) promiscuity in the men they love.

I am not saying, by the way, that women do not suffer from sexual temptation. Of course we do. Obviously this is not something to brag about although certainly chastity educators {who trains these people? do they all have certificates from accredited institutions, or what?*) need to learn about contemporary realities instead of repeating the tired cliches that might have been true back in 1950, when pop culture was not giving girls a 24/7 training in vice. But I am saying that one thing hasn't changed, and it is that women are called to confront masculine excess, both in men and, increasingly, in themselves.


*Here's a thought. No Catholic school, parish or organization should host chastity speakers who have neither a certificate or diploma in moral theology (or philosophy) from an accredited institution nor episcopal oversight. Both would be best. Me, I have an M.Div., but no oversight. You should remember that, especially if you are young, and if teenage readers are ever troubled or enthusiastic about anything I write, I want you to discuss it with a wise and trusted adult who knows and loves you, okay? Just because someone on the internet seems smart or fun does not mean she or he has all the answers.

Where There's a "Wola", There's a Way

There are some things in life we cannot control. Most of us, for example, are not very good at controlling other people's hearts and minds. However, when it comes to our intellectual faculties, there is a lot we can do. Of course, when it is difficult, we have to really want to do it. For example, since January I have wanted to lose weight and do a proper Spring Cleaning of our flat. I have lost at least 14 pounds, but I have not done a proper Spring Cleaning of our flat. I suspect this is because I really wanted to lose weight, but I didn't really want to get on my hands and knees and scrub. Mea culpa (whack), mea culpa (whack), mea maxima, maxima culpa (whack, whack).

Another thing I really, really want to do is become fluent in Polish, for various reasons, including wanting to know what it is like when one's brain makes the switch into second-language fluency. However, as I don't live in Poland, or in a Polish-speaking household, and am over thirty, I expect this fluency to take some time. Meanwhile, I promised Alicja over at Dzielne Niewasty (Brave Women) to translate my speech about Saint Edith Stein into Polish, and eleven days later I have stopped procrastinating and have begun this difficult task.

Here are the original two paragraphs:

The concept of “theology” may sound complicated, but it is very simple. St. Ambrose of Milan defined theology as “faith seeking understanding.” Any time you seek to understand a truth of faith, you are doing theology; you are a theologian. Every Catholic who believes what the Church teaches and seeks to understand what it is that he believes is a theologian.

However, there are men and women who dedicate their entire lives to reading the works of the greatest, most insightful Catholic theologians, who themselves had read the work of major and minor theologians before them. Seminarians must read theology, but only a few priests are allowed to dedicate their lives to studying and writing it. The same is true for many religious sisters, and few lay men and women can both study theology full-time and support their families.

And here is the first draft of my translation. I am sure it is riddled with errors, and I will send it to Polish Pretend Son, begging him to fix it.

Pojęcie teologii może wydawać skomplikowane, ale to jest bardzo proste. Sw. Ambroży z Mediolanu zdefiniał teologię jako "wiara w poszukiwaniu rozumienia." Kiedykolwiek szukacie rozumieć prawdę wiary, robiscie teologię--wy jestecie teologami. Każdy Katolik który wierszy co który uczy Kościół i szuka rozumieć który co to jest że on wierzy jest teologiem.

Jednak są mężczyzny i kobiety którzy poświęcają ich całe życia czytaniu książk najwielkszych, najwnikliwszych katolickich teologów, którze siebie odczytać książky głownych i niewielkich teologów przed nimi. Seminarzyści muszą studiować teologię ale tylko kilku kapłanom wolno poświęcić ich życia studiowaniu i pisanie tego. To samo jest prawdziwe dla wielu zakonnic, i niewielu świecki może zarówno się uczyć teologię na pełnym etacie, jak utrzymywać ich rodziny.

Oh heavens. Two and a half years of study, two dictionaries and two verb handbooks went into that. But it's like losing weight: there are no overnight solutions. And I did it in less than an hour, so that is a vast improvement!

It's About Service

Today is Holy Thursday, and I am at the blow-my-nose-every-45 seconds stage of my cold. I have overseas guests arriving in three hours, a paper on the Theology of Woman to write, and Holy Thursday Mass an hour-and-a-half by bus away. This is a bad day to feel this bad.

However, like real mothers, I dragged myself from my bed of pain to do what housework is necessary, and like women with 9-to-5 jobs, I will get down to writing my paper. What I am doing now is service that nobody has asked me (directly) to do but nevertheless ought to be done, which is to address Catholic Singles and Other Singles of Good Will about the Single Life from a Catholic perspective.

On Holy Thursday there is attached to Mass an optional service in which a priest washes the feet of twelve other priests or, lacking that many priests, twelve appropriate priest stand-ins. Most fittingly, those would be the "viri" demanded by rubrics, but some of us are just happy if the feminae selectae remember not to wear pantyhose. Incidentally, there is a fashion for women lay ministers to wash feet, too. My nose hurts too much to go on about what THAT does to theology of the ordained priesthood.

At any rate the contemporary, un-traditional and confusing involvement of laity is supposed to remind us that all Christians are called to service, which actually I can remember without watching a woman in the sanctuary whipping off her pantyhose as an alb-covered woman with a sponge waits politely. Service is not about rituals most fittingly done by and for priests but about being truly helpful. If stuck, see the corporal works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy.

But service is more than individual acts. It's about a shared way of life. It is about serving without expectation of human reward, serving for God's sake, or for humanity's sake, or serving's sake, no matter what your state in life or your chosen profession. If you are a salaried or by-the-hour professional server, paid for your service, you may not have enough time or energy to experience the true joy of Christian service, which would be unfortunate.

Mysteriously, there is something spiritually wrong with being paid for Christian service. I don't know exactly why it is so, but it is so. What is way better is being gratuitously rewarded, either in money or something else, for Christian service. Priests in my hometown are usually financially dependent on their bishop (and probably helped out by their families ), sometimes working around the clock, snatching sleep when they can, seven days a week. I don't think of them as working for a paycheque, exactly. Meanwhile, nobody pays mothers and fathers for being generous mothers and fathers, or childless marrieds for being substitute mothers and fathers, or singles for being generous with their time and talent on behalf of the community.

Sometimes these people aren't even thanked, although you may recall that of the ten lepers miraculously cured by Our Lord, only one went back to thank Him. And if nine people miraculously cured from a dread disease forget to thank the Son of God Himself, I guess it is understandable when someone forgets to say "Thank you" to me or his mom.

The Lord seems to expect us to do service for people who can never give us anything in return (and may forget to say thank you). I am reminded of His advice to one of His hosts "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, otherwise they may also invite you in return and that will be your repayment. But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous" (Luke 14:12-14). The emphasis here is that you profit from not being materially rewarded. And I notice that Our Lord suggested a service His host enjoyed and was good at--hosting.

I host a bit, and the good thing about opening your home to foreign students (if you do) is that almost all students are at least cash poor and because their homes are in foreign lands, it is less likely that they will have the chance to open their homes to you. Of course, it is very nice when they do, but you don't expect it, and it doesn't matter. Meanwhile, the Poles have a saying that I really love--"Guest in the house, God in the house." I think this is literally true in some mystical way.

Anyway, I am not feeling so brainy, thanks to my cold, so I will drag myself back to the point of this post and say that Single Christians are equal in dignity to Married Christians or Consecrated Christians in that Singles are equally called to service. Priests are always telling lonely bored Singles that the way to cheer up is to serve others, and I am not surprised if the Singles roll their eyes around the minute the priest's back is turned. I think I probably did. However, this actually turns out to be TRUE.

One of the intolerable sufferings of my PhD years was that I couldn't find any opportunities to serve; I had served a lot during my M.Div., and I really missed it. However, I finally hit on the strange notion of writing a blog for Singles, and it changed my whole life, and directly or indirectly brought me everything I have achieved or been given in the past seven years, minus my tiny nephew and niece (of course). So much reward for something that--let's face it--nobody asked me to do or paid me for. (Thanks, by the way, to anyone who ever sent me a donation over PayPal, which I no longer use, as it proved unworkable.) It's really amazing.

Christian service is voluntary and not on a cash-per-hour basis. Ideally, the service you do is something that you are good at and enjoy. Philosopher Simone Weil went to tremendous lengths to serve her countrymen long before she became a Christian, most effectively by giving them free night classes that helped them pass exams to get better jobs. Blessed Natalia Tułasiewicz went voluntarily into what was for other Poles forced labour in Nazi Germany so as to minister to them spiritually, emotionally and intellectually. Servant of God Dorothy Day wrote and protested on behalf of the poor, clothed them, listened to them, and made them coffee and soup. And what did all these ladies have in common? They enjoyed their form of service, even though Weil was killed (in part) by overwork and Blessed Natalia by the Nazis.

They were also all unmarried non-nuns. And they all flew in the face of the idea that you shouldn't do something skilled and worth something to others unless you are being paid for it. It is a beautiful irony that Blessed Natalia went voluntarily into forced labour in Germany--so that she could carry out an illegal (and unpaid) ministry among the forced labourers. Yet Simone Weil and Dorothy Day served by demanding better pay and better work conditions for workers.

Paid work and Christian service: two separate things. How nurses have the time to do both is a puzzle, but I am sure many must. And I hope whatever they are doing as unpaid service is something they deeply enjoy: motherhood, for example.

Update: To be fair to American Catholics women who have volunteered to have, or been pressured into having, their feet washed this evening, here is what the American bishops have to say about it. If I were a priest, however, I would get twelve men involved in lay ministries of whatever kind--choir, altar service, lectors, hockey team coaching--stuff them in cassocks and albs, and wash THEIR feet, as an example to little boys of how church is not just for one man and a whole lotta women.

When he was here, my eldest nephew was mesmerized by Mass, and I don't think it was the Latin. Nooooooo. I think it was because everyone on the altar was male and dressed properly. Just saying.

Christological Musings into the Fatherhood of God

I've spend a few hours today arguing about the fact that God transcends the human limitations of sex (gender) and is neither male nor female, not that many Christians wander about under the impression that the Divinity is female. Naturally the Second Person of the Trinity is male insofar as He has chosen to live His humanity as a male human.

The Second Person of the Trinity, during His earthly mission, told us to call the First Person of the Trinity Father, and stated that God was His Father. And so, of course, we do as He said, and the Roman Catholic Church and the churches united to her do not believe anyone is validly baptized unless baptized in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit/Ghost.

However, as God as God is not male, which is attested to by Saint Gregory Nazianzus, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Jerome, St. Thomas Aquinas and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, why did Christ call God His Father? And why did Christ choose to live His humanity as male?

I can only speculate. And I am speculating wildly, without being surrounded by the works of the Fathers, so kindly keep this in mind and your reason at a critical distance from what follows. I offer the follow thoughts just as ideas, as if in a seminar. Don't accept any of this as the teaching of the Church because it isn't; it is speculative theology.

First, one of the analogies in the Scriptures, in both the Old Testament and the New, is the analogy of the bridegroom. In this analogy God is the bridegroom, and His people is the bride. It's not a perfect analogy--bridegrooms are not to brides what God is to His people--but then you can't have perfect analogies when talking about God: God is infinite and thus beyond our linguistic and mental capacities. However, given the Scriptural analogy of bridegroom, it was probably easier for the first Christians to understand the male +Jesus+ as the bridegroom than it would have been for them to understand a female +Jesus+ (if you can get your mind around that for a second) as Wisdom. (The Wisdom figure of the Old Testament is understood in light of the Incarnation as a metaphor for the Second Person of the Trinity.)

Now, as God decided that the Second Person of the Trinity would indeed live His humanity as a male human--being human necessitates having a sex (gender)--this may (MAY) have influenced the way the Second Person described the First. "He who has seen me has seen the Father", said Our Lord (John 14:9). Christ revealed to us who God is, or what God is like: a healer, a saviour, the giver of life, a forgiver of sins, a friend, even a servant (!) . And a son more clearly mirrors a father than he does a mother, and a father more clearly mirrors a son than he does a daughter. So as Christ as human was male, perhaps it made more sense for Him to call the First Person of the Trinity His Father. It helps, too, of course, that as human He had a human mother, who was very much in evidence. He had no human father; as with his begetting from Eternity, God was His only begetter. And so--Father.

Also, the Hebrew traditions around God were in stark contrast to Mother-Goddess worship. The Middle East was full of worship of the personifications of human reproduction, particularly female ones. The human temptation to worship sex-and-reproduction seems endemic. Thus, by calling the First Person His Father, the Son was affirming that God is not the personification of human reproduction, the Mother Goddess. God is a Creator, an intelligence at work, not a Cosmic Womb.

The only risk is that humans, not being very bright, and generally obsessed with sex, might confuse the First Person of the Trinity with Jupiter or Zeus or Wotan or any one of a number of Sky Fathers. However, this did not seem to be a problem for the Christian Church, as St. Gregory, St. Jerome, et alia, were rather harsh with people who went around saying the Godhead was male. Again, it is the teaching of the Catholic Church that God is beyond human notions of sex (gender). He is neither male nor female; He is God. We use the pronoun "He" because it is used generally for any reasonable being, as in "everyone must read for himself". It is used of angels, and angels are also neither male nor female, each angel being A) incorporeal and B) his own species.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, and I invite any Readers with graduate theological training to wade in and tell me if I am out to lunch entirely, or where I am out to lunch, or if I have something here.

Naturally it is important that the Second Person of the Trinity chose to live His humanity as male, but I am interested to know why this was most fitting, as it most assuredly must have been. Also, it is important that the Second Person told us to call the First Person "Father" but as God is not male, it is interesting to speculate why it is that the Second Person chose a term associated with male humans. (By the way, was it ever "Father" or was it always "Abba", Daddy? Because there is a big difference between father and daddy.) How many times does "Abba" appear in the Christian Scriptures, and how many times "Pateras"?

And if you are wondering, this all arose out of a Facebook dispute around the use of the word "Godself" as a replacement for "Himself." I don't think this is the biggest heresy out there, or even heretical at all, but Hilary White seemed incensed. I think it sounds like Gerard Manley Hopkins coined it.

P.S. By the way, there is one poor man on the Facebook thread who keeps bargling on about how God is male, and seems to think the idea that God is beyond male-or-female some kind of body-hating yet feminist plot. No matter how many times I list off the Church Fathers, he keeps fighting on for the maleness of God. I think he is really confused at this point because St. Augustine quite famously came to realize that God doesn't HAVE a body (Confessions, Book 7). I think, though, the problem is that he can't mentally distinguish between the humanity of Christ, the divinity of Christ, the three Persons of the Trinity, or analogy from reality. I rather rudely suggested my interlocutor thinks the Holy Spirit is a bird.

As a matter of fact, I love the depiction of the Holy Spirit as a dove. I really do. I used to doodle it all the time when I was taking breaks from writing theological essays.

Pigs

(Second post today.)

Last night I watched "Never Let Me Go", which disturbed me so much, I considered becoming vegetarian. Or partially vegetarian. Like many British people, B.A. and I are so disgusted by factory farming, that we do not eat battery hens or buy battery eggs. We won't eat anything we are reasonable sure had a horrible existence. But I am feeling a bit queasy about potential sentience.

A vegetarian reader took issue with my characterization of meat as a harmless pleasure that one can give up in Lent. I remembered several Biblical verses that not only assume but command meat-eating. Indeed, Saint Peter was offered in a vision all kinds of animals that Jews of his day did not eat and told to kill and eat them (Acts 10:28). He was not, of course, told to practice factory farming. I am sure that Saint Peter would have been just as astonished by what farming has become today as he was by God's directive to give up his Jewish dietary practices.

One argument carnivores give vegetarians is that we are the only people who can improve the living conditions of livestock. As vegetarians don't usually buy meat, the livestock industry don't give a damn what they think. But when British carnivore Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall cried over his dead experimental battery chicks, there was a British carnivore revolution on behalf of chickens.

But chickens are not very smart. Sheep are pretty smart, though, as are pigs. I very much like pigs to look at. They look friendly and apparently "a middle-aged pig can be as smart as a three-year-old [human] child." I am fond of pigs, but I also like to eat pigs. Pigs are yummy.

All the same, I am troubled. Would it be better for humans to keep eating pigs, which means that pigs will continue to thrive in large numbers, or to stop eating pigs, as a recognition that sentient beings should not be subordinate to other sentient beings' desires, even if this means there would no longer be domestic pigs at all. Is eating only well-raised pigs a satisfactory ethical choice, a recognition that pigs should at least be comfortable before I eat them?

Readers are invited to make rational, well-tempered arguments for and against the eating of pigs. RATIONAL and WELL-TEMPERED. This is a serious ethical question, and there is nothing in the New Testament to suggest human beings should not eat the meat of fish, birds and beasts. The taboos of the Old Testament suggest that pigs, etc., are somehow ontologically unclean, but I do not believe pigs are unclean--I believe they are delightful. I also believe you can both hunt, kill, eat and respect non-human animals all at once; in Canada we are frequently told it was the practice of First Nations people to pray to the spirits of the animals they killed.

I think I will put up a poll. Incidentally none of this is binding on poor B.A., who can make up his own mind on what is okay to eat. We have long since decided that it is not okay to use human beings for selfish or health reasons, except where the humans--adult humans--have freely, without economic pressure, donated parts of themselves, like blood.

St. Edith Stein's Advice for Single Girls

Here's an excellent article about the advice of St. Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) for Single women. St. Edith (or Teresa) was an adult Single long before she entered Carmel, for reasons beyond her control.

Thank you very much to one of our Readers named Jennifer!

Seven Quick Pancakes

1.

It is Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday, or Mardi Gras in Western Christendom. I wonder how much of Christendom actually makes the pancakes, however. In Poland and Polonia the fun day is Tłusty Czwartek, Fat Thursday, which was last Thursday, when Poles have a good excuse to stuff themselves with pączki, i.e. jam-filled Polish doughnuts. This year I was determined to remember to celebrate Tłusty Czwartek, but then Hilary White converted me to Anti-Sugarism. That said, I shall be making blueberry pancakes for B.A. and me tonight and not stinting on the 100% Canadian maple syrup. As Carnival hijinks go, that strikes me as mild.

2.

I was going to make pancakes for breakfast but unfortunately I was in the grip of a terrible dream. In this dream, I had been hired to give Seraphic Singles lectures at a Catholic or Evangelical conference in Cuba or Bahamas or somewhere like that, but instead of giving the lectures, I had an affair. It had absolutely no glamour of evil, either. There was no deep conversation or shared jokes or high-minded speeches or sunsets. It was basically just being in bed with some skinny stranger while cranky conference organizers burst in the room from time to time to find out where I was and go through the trash for evidence of wrongdoing. They found a lot, for when I got home, my mother revealed that they had written to her, and she was not amused.

At this point the dream got even more confused because it seemed to me very unlikely that I would do such a wicked thing, or have the time to go to Cuba or the Bahamas during my Canadian trip. Although I vaguely remembered something like that, I was sure it must have been a dream. How to explain the letter, though? In great agitation of spirits, I checked my passport to see if it had any corroborative stamps. Hélas! My passport was a patchwork of wrong names and advertising!

From time to time I would half-wake up and notice B.A. snoring away beside me and feel sure that the dream was just a dream, but then I would fall back into it. Really, it never seemed to end. I kept rushing hither and thither trying to prove I had not gone to Cuba or the Bahamas. It was a great relief to wake up entirely and find B.A. buttoning up his shirt. However, when I told him of my ghastly dream, he said, "So that's why I got that letter from the Cuban Health Authority."

Hours later I realized that the skinny stranger was the British "Food TV" presenter who wasted an hour of our lives last night wandering around Los Angeles eating street food. Ugh.

Three.

My mother watches a lot of television, but as my parents have a big house, it is quite easy to escape the idiot box. The same is not true of the flat in the Historical House. My mother thinks the flat has the same square footage as her house, but it really does not have all the comfortable nooks and crannies. It also lacks the neighbourliness of several people all looking vaguely like me. The only other person around is B.A., so if I want the comfort of another human presence, I have to go back into the living room where he is watching brainless British telly. "It's not brainless," he is wont to say. "It's a documentary about the coast of Ireland."

4.

Although I can get sucked into "The Great British Bakeoff", I would be perfectly happy if the only channel we got was ITV Three, so I could watch "Poirot", "Endeavour" and "Lewis." Although "UK Border Police" was diverting, watching illegal migrants climb out windows and run like the wind struck me as cruel.

5.

The trad part of the Catholic blogosphere is going nuts because the young, plump bishop of Fort Worth, Texas has tried to solve the problems of a local Catholic college by banning its use of the Extraordinary Form. It is striking that the man was made bishop at age 47, and now he is internationally infamous, too. Nobody gave him the memo that bishops can't ban the Extraordinary Form. Nor did it occur to him (or whoever actually wrote his letter) that suggesting that the Mass of the Ages, which dates long before the Council of Trent, and nourished generations of Christians, including almost all the known saints, is bad for your soul is best left to anti-Catholic tracts.

I have no stake in Fisher-More College, except for any readers there (hello!), but I understand that the bishop's real concern was not about the Extraordinary Form but about the college president's increasingly strident critique of the Second Vatican Council. How happy I will be when we have Trent II, so we have another Council to fight about. All my life people older than me have been banging on about Vatican II like it was Catholic Woodstock. Vatican II was actually quite dull compared to other Councils: the bihops, periti and guests never had to suspend talks and flee because war had broken out, and nobody punched anyone else. My friend Aelianus loves the Council of Florence best; currently I have a soft spot for dear old Trent. At least people obeyed the liturgical reforms of Trent. Very few people seem to have read the liturgical reforms of Vatican II. "Look, giant puppets!" "No, it says Gregorian Chant." "Puppets!" "No, look. Sound it out. G-r-e-g-o-r-i-a-n ch-a-n-t." "Puppets!"

6.

Only once have I walked out of Mass thanks to the musical stylings of the soi-distant ministers of music. That really amazes me when I think back to what I have sat through in my time. Long electric guitar solos in the middle of the Gloria. Outrageously loud amplification in a German seminary chapel. A parish choir singing the atheist "We Rise Again in the Faces of Our Children" during Communion. No, what did it for me was a Filipino folk band in Toronto. The place was packed with stolid-faced white folk, and the only one smiling was the elderly priest, who did a little dance behind the altar as the happy band banged and strummed, tootled and wailed through microphones. I forget if I lasted to the Gloria, or if it was the Kyrie that inspired my retreat. As my heels hurriedly clicked-clicked to the blessed quiet of the street, all eyes to the left and right followed me enviously down the aisle.

7.

I once told a flame that what I liked best in music was the silence between the notes. He was most impressed and said I was ready for jazz, which is the sort of thing flames say. Men love to instruct women on just about anything: shooting pool, shooting baskets, Wittgenstein. Use this knowledge for good.

What I like very much in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is the extraordinary hush it fosters in a congregation. At the 11 o'clock at Holy Family Church in Toronto, you can hear the flutter of the Mass booklets and the gentle thumps of the kneelers going down. Sure, sometimes a baby has to wail a bit. but he is usually taken out if Mass has actually begun.

I am strongly of the opinion that we hear God in the silence between the notes. A world that hates silence is a world afraid to hear God.


***
Update: Mark J. Miller of Catholic World Report differs on the subject of bishops being able to squelch celebration of the EF. Still unanswered, however, is the question of how squelching it would in any way help the college president's or his students' souls.

Update 2: When I say "young, plump" bishop, please don't think I have it in for obese priests. As a matter of fact, I feel terrible for them, as I do for any priest who has an obvious health problem. We have developed an understanding and supports for priests who abuse alcohol, poor souls, but so far I haven't heard anyone address the problem of clerical obesity. My only uncle died at my age, and I am absolutely sure this was related to his weight, his eating habits and his Single state, poor man.

Women's Retreat in Cracow May 2 -4/Rekolekcje Kobiet w Krakowie 2-4 Maja

I am very happy to tell you all, but especially those of you of Polish nationality or extraction, that I will be giving four lectures at a retreat for women in the Redemptorist retreat house in Kraków, Poland this spring. Behold.

The lectures will be in English and simultaneously translated into Polish by a translator, although I think I will try very hard to write at least part of one of them in Polish, and the translator can switch to English if there are any ladies there who don't speak Polish. The last time I participated in the Redemptorists' ladies' retreat, there was one brave American girl who is fluent in French and hopped over from France. She had a very nice time, I believe, in part because Polish women are very nice and have usually studied English, and at least one lady there was very good in French, and there was a Polish-Canadian girl about her age, and they looked at the sights of Kraków together.

Now one of the exciting things about Kraków, especially this spring, is that Blessed John Paul II lived there for a long time and was its archbishop. There is no big city in Poland that loves błogosławiony Jan Paweł Drugi the way Kraków does. So you can imagine the party that will erupt on Sunday April 27, when he is canonized in Rome. And the retreat is, conveniently, from May 2 to the afternoon of May 4. Thus, it may be well worth your while, if you have ever been tempted by thoughts of visiting Poland, to come to Kraków for a week.

The catch is that you would have to think about hotels before the actual retreat (when you could pay the very reasonable fee to stay at the retreat house) now, as the town will be likely to be packed with visiting Poles (as will be Rome). The other catch is that, except for my four lectures, the rest of the retreat will be in Polish. Polish masses, Polish other lectures, Polish-speaking meals, unless you sit next to me or other English-speakers. But, as I said, the Polish ladies will speak English: most of them will just be shy about it, as you are when you are called upon to speak French or Spanish, or whatever. But Poles do seem to like visiting Western female tourists, especially if they are well-behaved, so if you learn a few phrases, you would be likely to have a very good time indeed.

I shall provide you with more information, and the sign-up link, as I get it. Meanwhile, the subject of the conference is the Dignity of Women, so what should I lecture about? The priest leading the retreat wants to know the titles of my talks, so I thought I would ask you. I am especially asking the Polish readers for their opinion, because I will have to fit my lectures into a Polish context. Serdecznie dziękuję!

The Inherent Dignity of the Single State

I'll tell you what this blog isn't: it isn't a guide to getting a husband.

I wish I knew the secrets of husband-getting. Tomorrow I leave for Rome on holiday, and several million Euros would come in handy. I have some general ideas, but not a magic formula.

There is no magic formula. There is human nature, and there is Providence.

Human nature is very much influenced by society. Human beings are by our very nature conformist, and we tend to conform to society around us. In societies that champion premarital chastity, it is easier to stay chaste. In societies that champion early marriage, it is easier to get married. (It is, however, less easy not to be married.)

Catholic women are caught between a rock and a hard place. In the West, society champions premarital sex, and it strongly discourages early marriage.  But Catholicism forbids premarital sex, and it holds up vowed life--as a married person, a priest or a religious--as the ideal.

This means the Catholic woman who wishes to remain chaste and to marry without being "test-driven"  is going to be, in the West, a nonconformist, and men most likely not to be annoyed or unsettled by her failure to conform are going to be other nonconformists. And let me tell you about nonconformists: we can be weird. If we're nonconformists about sex, we can be nonconformists about religion, and if we are nonconformists about religion--I speak as someone who goes primarily to the Traditional Latin Mass--we might be nonconformists about clothing and opinions and social behaviour. Gleefully so. It's hard to find someone who refuses to conform to society's sexual expectations and yet is otherwise entirely "normal."

Incidentally, anyone who wears a Che Guevera T-shirt on a Western university campus is a total conformist. One of the most hilarious things about conformists is how conformist they are when they think they are being edgy. No doubt Miley Cyrus thought she was being edgy last week. In fact, Miley was just going along with the zeitgeist. I've seen similar behaviour in clubs.

The best hope for Catholics then, particularly the vast majority who are natural conformists--which is not shameful in itself, incidentally, as it shows a natural and even enviable openness to community--would be to withdraw from contemporary Western society and create a Catholic-only nation were it not for one thing: Providence.

Before Providence where scientific or social scientific (very dodgy) determinism falls down flat on its face. Atheists can stare at contradictory material data all day long and make pronouncements about how short men have little hope of marriage, and women over 35 can hope only for low-earning 50 year old suitors and how bumblebees can't fly. Catholics don't have the luxury of being so stupid.

Poor old atheists have missed out on the most important Reality of reality which is the existence of a Supreme Being Whose personality and love for us was revealed in and by Jesus of Nazareth. Catholics have not. And therefore, Catholics know Providence means more than the scribblings of sociology. Short men often marry. Thirty-something women occasionally marry high-earning twenty-something men. Bumblebees do fly. Chaste Catholic girls usually do marry.

The fact is that God has a plan for everyone's life, and everyone could figure it out much more easily if we would trust in God, listen for His voice and see where He is in our lives around us right now. God is not just "up there"; He is "down here" and among us. He has revealed His will through the Scriptures and Tradition, and by paying attention to the Scriptures and Tradition, in the way a blind person pays attention to her cane and her dog, we can find our way in the dark.

Yes, there are qualities that are attractive to other human beings--big eyes, shiny hair, a roguish grin and whatnot. The best ones I know are joy and confidence. And the deepest joy and confidence come from joy and confidence in God. And Catholic Single women living chaste (and therefore perhaps uncomfortably un-conformist) lives are a testament to obedience to God; what is needed for flourishing is also joy and confidence in Him.

The Single state, lived in a spirit of chastity, even if it should turn out to be temporary, is inherently dignified because it points to a sustained openness to and trust in the will of God, in Providence. It puts God's will above all else, particularly the Western god of Sex (for whom g*y m*rriage activists are currently the high priests). Sex is only God's servant; godhood sits ill upon it. The chaste Single person gives glory to God by not allowing the servant to usurp God's will for her.

And so the point of this blog is not to get you all married off, although you do seem to get married quite often--long-time reader Med School Girl is the most recently engaged--which does not particularly surprise me, as most people marry eventually. The point of this blog is to show you your inherent dignity as Singles and to encourage you in joy and trust in God.

With that, I am off to pack for Rome. I shall return a week Monday, D.v.  God bless you!

More Thanks and St. Dorothy's Day

I am in the middle of cleaning the flat, packing, tying up my literary legacy in case the Atlantic Ocean gets me, so I am rather frazzled. But I must thank JW, BS, FK, ER,LW, ES, JS, NW, CD (who shouldn't have but she's a girl, so ok, xox), DB, CL,CB,MG, JV and RK. Onto the prayer list you all go.

Today is the Feast of St Dorothy, who has a particularly beautiful story, I am pleased to say.  After Vatican II, the Bollandists suggested that she never existed, but I found an altar with her remains underneath in Trastevere, so I say to Bollandists, whatev-ah! Talk to the hand.

In short, Saint Dorothy was a Christian girl in Cappadocia who got caught in one of the Diocletian persecutions and was brought to trial. A lawyer thought it a shame to execute such a cute Christian crumpet, and offered to marry her instead. She said, "No, thank you, I would rather go and die with the rest of my Extraordinary Form of the Mass parish fellow Christians, but thank you all the same. Would you like me to send you something from heaven?"

"Erm," said the lawyer, taken rather aback. "Sure. Send me some fruit and flowers."

Later he was at some deplorable Roman men-only supper where his friends joked at him for being turned down by cute Christian crumpet. But they all shut up when an angel appeared with a basket of fruit and flowers, (A) because, you know, angels and (B) because even in Ancient Rome fruit and flowers were rather scarce in February.

Among other people, Saint Dorothy is the patroness of brides, which I do not quite understand because she chose to die and go to heaven right away rather than to become a bride. However, I think  is must be because she is a gentle saint, and people should be gentle to brides, who are usually under a lot of stress, especially if they are the young and traditional kind.

Another Kraków Retreat

There will be an Anielskie Single retreat in Kraków between October 25 and 27, 2013.  I will tell you the details when I know them. The retreat will be in Polish--although my talks will be predominantly in English, with a simultaneous Polish translation provided--and open to both women and men.

Last May there was one non-Polish speaker besides me at my first Polish retreat, an American girl living in France who speaks fluent French. I thought she was one of the bravest American girls I ever met. To spend a weekend at a religious retreat in Poland surrounded by Poles when you don't speak any Polish is very brave. Fortunately, there was also a Canadian girl there, fluent in both English and Polish, so the American girl had someone to hang out with. Most Polish girls in Krakow speak at least some English, but they are sometimes shy about it. There was also a Polish woman who spoke French very well, so that worked out nicely, too.

Kraków (Cracow in English) is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen, so it is well worth a visit although I imagine, from October 25 and 27, we will all kept very busy in the retreat centre. If you do not live in Poland, it would make sense to make the retreat part of a week-long trip to Poland.  Early to mid-October is very beautiful, and November 1st, All Saints Day, is one of the most important holidays in the Polish calendar. Expats fly home to be with their families and decorate family graves. The cemeteries are beautiful, and you just might give up any lingering pagan attachment to Hallowe'en.  

It goes without saying that Poland is one of the nicest places in the world for a Roman Catholic to visit.   Poles tend not to understand this, but they are always happy when foreigners praise Poland. It is full of beautiful churches, and the churches in Kraków and Warsaw are packed on Sundays and Holy Days and First Fridays, although if you exclaim over this, the Poles will tell you that this is nothing and you should have seen them ten years ago, the congregations spilled into the streets, Catholicism in Poland is in decline, woe. They usually haven't a clue what it is like to be Catholic outside Poland.

Poland is also exciting to visit because it is in the EAST. Poles will tell you that it is not in the east but CENTRAL or even in the WEST because it is so westernized now, but once you get on a neglected highway east of Kraków, you will know you are in the EAST. (That said, Warsaw is a lot more EAST than Kraków is.)  

"Wait," I hear a voice cry. "Back up. You said something about the retreat being open to men."

Ah, yes. Ahem. Yes. Yes, it is. And this means poor Auntie has to adjust her thoughts to make them more specifically relevant for men, too, including any with SSA. It will not be like chatting to you girls with the men listening at the door. Presumably they will actually be sitting there and eating with the women and praying among us at Mass. The dynamic will be completely different from last May's retreat, but Father Paweł (whose idea this is) seems perfectly sanguine about it, so I guess it will be okay. I don't know why I am so nervous about it. Oh--just remembered.

Seraphic: And how is your mother?

Polish Man: Why do you want to know?

Seraphic: Um, because it's polite to ask?

Polish Man: British small talk is stupid.

As a matter of fact, a mixed retreat is more usual in Poland than a woman-only retreat, which was then an innovation for the retreat house. And I imagine there will be a good mix in age and circumstances--elderly widowed men, middle-aged divorced men, and youngsters who just don't want to or can't get married right now--so it will not be at all like an American Catholic Singles annual cruise ship party.

(Long pause as I try to imagine myself as a speaker at an American Catholic Singles annual cruise ship party. I bet they get paid hugely. Has anyone been on one? I am dying to know.)

Meanwhile, I plan to be in Poland for at least two weeks in October, so if any Polish readers would like me to come and speak to their group, just contact me. I can read Polish from a prepared text, but otherwise you would need someone to translate.

Anna, daughter of Phanuel

I have been reading up on Candlemas (Feb 2) today, a feast I particularly love because one of the blessing prayers mentions the bees.  I am a bit afraid of bees, actually, but I think it is great fun when they are mentioned in church, especially in a solemn way, in Latin.

The Gospel reading is about the purification of Our Lady (after childbirth) and the presentation of Our Lord. It mentions an elderly man and an elderly widow, and although the elderly man composed the Nunc Dimittis on the spot, it is Anna who interests me today.

According to Luke, Anna lived with her husband for seven years before she was widowed.  I don't know why Anna was living in the temple; maybe her husband or her father  had some kind of important temple connection. (Off the top of my head, I would guess it was her father, as Anna is known as the Daughter of Phanuel, not the Widow of Somebody Else.) But at any rate, Anna lived there, praying and fasting, until at least the age of 84.

Now, if Anna married at 14, which would have been perfectly normal for those days, this means she was widowed at 21 and stayed a widow for at least the next fifty-nine years. Presumably she could have married again, but presumably she didn't want to. She was happy in the temple, praying and fasting and doing whatever it may have been that women who lived in the temple were expected to do, and after fifty-nine years of temple living, met Baby Jesus.

That's pretty neat, if you ask me. It's amazing how little space Anna's story has in the Gospel, given its hold on our imaginations. Anna, daughter of Phanuel, tribe of Asher. Widow, aged 87. Married 7 years. Never left temple, worshiped, prayed, fasted. Came to Presentation/Purification ceremony. Recognized Jesus for who He was. Praised and preached. The end--or the beginning, really. Now Anna is one of the most famous women who ever was, for the Bible is the most widely read book there ever has been. More importantly, of course, she got to see Jesus before she died, as an actual baby. Maybe she was allowed to hold him and bounce him up and down. Wouldn't you love to do that?

Anna seems like a serious and single-hearted woman, not given to mourning over what-could-have-been and feeling sorry for herself or envying women with children or any of the temptations adult women give into every day. Those fifty-nine years of  life, though pious, couldn't have been dull. They must have been lived in joyful expectation of something great to come, and lo and behold, He did!

Sin, Actually

Grace. One of the teachings of my Canadian theology school that resounds through my brain ten years later is "If you begin with sin, you end with sin. If you begin with Grace, you end with Grace." I think this is particularly true in all discussions of sexuality. Otherwise we end sounding like Euripides' Phaedra ("Only death can blot out the shame of my random crush!") and Hippolytus ("Why can't we just buy sons?") I think Catholic artists, in particular, have a duty to somehow illustrate the great beauty of Eros, which is above everything else an impulse to escape the prison of one's own ego to connect with someone or something else.

Of course, we live in a post-Fall universe, so sexuality has been at least slightly messed up along with every other created thing, and we have to pray and strive lest the wellsprings of Eros get clogged up with selfishness, greed, lust to dominate, fear and even hatred. And the terrific challenge to Christians, particularly artists, is that we have to school our very thoughts. But whoever thinks that this is just too hard should contemplate the clerical abuse scandals to see where "Oh, don't worry about such little things" has got us. Deliberately sustained thoughts very often lead to deliberate actions.

I was thinking all this the other day when a colleague put up this article on Facebook. It is from the Globe and Mail, an old Anglo-Canadian newspaper whose long legacy of anti-Catholic sneers once actually made me cry, quite hysterically, in the toilets at work. (When I called my mother for comfort, she said, "It's the Globe and Mail. What do you expect?")

The article, as you can see, describes the Toronto Newman Centre as if it were a cult. It "openly targets" university students, says the Globe and Mail article provocatively. Jeepers. I'd love to see if they could get away with saying Hillel "openly targets" university students. And of course the article insinuates that Courage is some sort of scary, scary group that forces its members to "resist homosexuality."

What Courage actually does is acknowledge that there are gay Catholics who have particular challenges in remaining chaste and thus want and need special pastoral care. The Newman, incidentally, also offers pastoral care to other Catholics who want to remain chaste, e.g. in the confessional. To which I am not a stranger.

When shaking its finger at Catholics' supposed reluctance to get with the equality program, the world conveniently ignores that our high sexual ideal is for everybody. Married people do not get a free pass. I imagine many married people have a polygamous/polyandrous orientation, and yet we suppress that all the time--even more than Single Catholics who go around snogging now this girl and that. If a Single parishioner in my parish casually and drunkenly snogged somebody at a party, my guess is that his or her confessor would go relatively easy on him or her. But if I or B.A. did that, our confessor would rip our heads off. (N.B. I'm not complaining. I'm just telling it like it is.)

Then there's the whole NFP deal, such a trial to young married Catholics who are really afraid of having large families but really do not want to be closed to life either.

Then there's the whole transmission-of-life deal, such a trial to old married Catholics who seek fertility help from specialists and embarrassingly and demeaningly have to spell out to strangers why we cannot do this or that.

But of course there are also the chastity challenges of the unmarried, both those who worry they will never get married and those who know that they will not. (And, yes, they are often, perhaps usually, maybe even almost always a tougher row to hoe.) One thing about chaste clerical celibacy and the chaste celibacy of nuns and monks: it puts even the non-gay majority in relatively the same position of gay Catholics who also want to remain chaste.

My dry remark to my colleague was that I remembered being urged at the Newman "to resist heterosexuality." The Newman discouraged heterosexuality in the same way Courage discourages homosexuality, and people should get their information about Courage from its members, not from the Globe and Mail.

Underneath our exchange, some wag wrote, "Resistance is futile."

I beg to differ, particularly when you have the assistance of Grace.

The Cemetery in Kraków

Next year I will write about this for my paper, but I have been writing to a Polish friend about it, so B.A.'s and my visit to a cemetery in Kraków on All Saints Day is very much on my mind.

There is still huge cultural pressure on young people in Poland to get married or embrace religious life, which is great when it comes to making adults behave like adults when otherwise they'd be tempted to become perpetual teenagers, but awful when it comes to women who don't have boyfriends or a religious vocation. The beauty and usefulness of unmarried, unconsecrated aunts must be stressed and celebrated. Maybe there should be a worldwide League of Extraordinary Single Aunts.

And I have a good reason to stress the family ties of Aunts, especially in Poland, because one of the sorrows of Singles is the idea that they don't have families when OF COURSE they have families. We're all born into families, and Poland has the family-friendliest culture I've ever seen. It even beats Italy because although Italians love children, too many (most?) married Italians have spent the past 40 years short-sightedly contracepting Italy towards extinction.

Nothing proved to me the importance of family in Poland more than All Saints's Day. All Saint's Day is a public holiday there, and Poles spend the day and night visiting and tidying the graves of their deceased relations. When B.A. and I were waiting very early in the morning for a tram, I noticed that the one that terminated at a cemetery was absolutely crammed with riders. And even on our less-crowded tram, there were many people with big bundles of flowers and pine branches in dirty plastic bags.

We went to Mass, in part because All Saint's Day is a Holy Day of Obligation in both Poland and Scotland, and after lunch, and fruitless attempts to see art or shop (the galleries and most shops were understandably closed), and a cancelled engagement, we decided to go to a cemetery ourselves.

I was in a tired and frustrated mood from linguistic difficulties, organizational shortcomings, and insomnia, but as we walked to the cemetery, joining the steady stream of people with flowers, branches and dirty plastic bags, and passing the opposite stream of people who now had just the bags, my heart began to lift. We were obviously witnessing something very new to us and very important to Polish culture. Tourists love to be "in the know", and it seemed that we were "in the know."

When we got to the cemetery, we crowded in as others crowded out, and there was still enough light in the early-darkening November sky to read the map. There were two long lists of the names of famous Krakowians buried there. I didn't see the Wojyła family mentioned, but I recognized the names Jan Matejko (the painter), Helena Modrzejewska (the singer) and--especially--Roman Ingarden, Saint Edith Stein's friend and colleague. So having located "our" grave, B.A. and I walked along the avenues to find it.

The tombstones were all raised; they were all big enough to sit on, and there were no flat markers on grass such as we see most of the time in Canada and the USA. They were more like real homes on real avenues; it was a city of the dead. There were trees and tombs as far as the eye could see in all direction, and each and every tomb had coloured, candlelit glass lamps on it. No tomb had been left neglected. There were several lamps on and around the Ingarden tomb; I wondered if family, colleagues or fans had left them there.

There were people everywhere, quiet but chatty and cheerful. Of course I could not understand most of what they said, but I could hear grandsons asking grandmothers how far away their grave was, and grandmothers assuring them not much further. A woman asked me in Polish, and then in a mix of English and Polish, where the Wojtyła grave was, and when I confessed to not knowing, she consulted an older woman who gave complicated directions with much dramatic pointing. In a distant corner, a middle-aged father and college-age son worked silent on and around a flat, raised tombstone, taking lamps and branches from bags.

From a small but ornate chapel, prayers and hymns were so amplified that we could hear them from at least a short distance away. And behind the chapel was a memorial to the victims of communism, in the form of a cross being grasped by many disembodied hands. There was a big crowd of people standing silently before this memorial, and in front of them hundreds of coloured, candlelit, glass lamps. No doubt some of the people were praying for family members who died in the horrors of the Stalinist period and after, but I suspect they were including all the victims in their prayers.

It was not just about family, this quiet cemetery festival. It was about neighbours and nation, too, and the Catholic awareness that our dead--the Church Suffering and the Church Triumphant--are still part of our Church, still part of our families, and should not be left forgotten and neglected by us. For the first time in my life, I was well and truly ashamed of the Canadian/American Hallowe'en, with its pagan enjoyment of ghouls and prurient attitude towards our locked and silent graveyards. As a child in a Catholic school, I was directed to make spooky graveyard scenes with tombstones, ghosts, bats and skeletons, spindly trees, comic epitaphs. It was fun, but it had nothing to do with Catholicism because it had nothing to do with love.

The cemetery in Kraków was full of love. Not romantic, sexual love, although perhaps that was there, too, flickering in the hearts of widows and widowers and surviving sweethearts as they prayed for their lost beloveds. Just love: love for family, love for neighbours, love for the dead, love for the saints and parents of saints. Love for God. Love.