The ExPat on the Missionary

There's an Irish chap who wants money to make a film about his cousin, the last Irish missionary nun to leave Japan. There's an article about his project and her life here.

While reading this interview, I noticed that there was not a single mention of the religious reason why Sister Paschal became a missionary sister or the real focus of her life which was, I think I may assume, Our Lord Jesus Christ.  The 33 year old director talks instead of  Church propaganda, lack of options for women in Irish society of the 1930s, Ireland wanting to distinguish itself against England, Catholicism being "somewhat oppressive", and young men and women being "lured" into missionary work.

What really impresses him is that Sister Paschal spent her life among people of great influence and importance in Japan:

I knew she had taught in high circles in Japan for decades, that amongst her past pupils and her private students were members of the Mitsubishi and Suzuki families…very much high-fliers in Japan. I was impressed by this and by stories of one of my uncle’s visits to Japan, where he was wined and dined by her “inner circle.” It seemed like something out of a fairytale, this relative who in another era had left home forever only to be integrated into a completely different society at a very high level, becoming both a part of that society—and in Japan that is not very common—while also maintaining her role as an outsider and a missionary with a message to spread.

And that message was...? The sad thing about the interview is that the youngish Irish chap seems to be embarrassed by his elderly cousin's Catholicism and downplays it as much as possible while talking to a Catholic interviewer for an orthodox Catholic website. He says to actual believing Catholics all the PC things about how awful Catholic Ireland was in the hope we will give him money for his project.

If I thought the project were about the secret of Sister Paschal's happiness, including the mind-blowing idea that her happiness somehow came about in part from the "rules" her young cousin rejects, then I think the project would be worthy of funding by faithful Catholics. But this project sounds like an G-rated Irish version of  Eat, Pray, Love : Irish girl flees narrow Ireland, tempted by promise of adventure, eats sushi, practises "spirituality", is adored by "inner circle" of  Japanese "hi-fliers." Was that what Sister Paschal's life was really about?

Her young cousin thinks her happiness came from her attention to people, "her investment in human relationships". He speaks vaguely of her "inner world", but it seems like it would kill him to say, "She really loved +Jesus Christ." He assures the Catholic World Report, of all media,  he assures Dom Alcuin Reid, of all people, that the Biblical quotes his cousin put on the blackboard for the instruction of her Japanese pupils were "never dogmatic, always based on love and charity."

Of course, from a historical point of view it does sound like a great film. I would suggest that instead of trying to get Catholics to stump up the money, the director try the Irish government, or Irish feminists, or anyone who would be eager to promote a story about a massive Irish contribution to the world directed by a man who harps on how awful the Church in Ireland was and does his best not to utter the the Holy Name of Jesus.

A take-home point: When writing, fundraising or giving an interview, always remember your audience. 

Feast of Blessed Chiara Luce Badano

I'm glad to have found out about this teenage saint. It's her feast day today.

Here she describes how a beautiful lady suddenly appeared and took her hand. It's in Italian, but how often do you hear the voice of a girl-saint born in 1971?

O Wyspiańskim

Moim ulubionym muzeum w Krakowie jest Kamienica Szołayskich. Odbywają się tam wystawy sztuki młodopolskiej. „Młoda Polska” była polskim ruchem artystycznym; kwitnął on w Polsce na przełomie XIX i XX wieku. To była sztuka „Art Nouveau” Polski: myślę, że jest bardzo romantyczna.  

Jednym z moich ulubionych artystów Młodej Polski jest Stanisław Wyspiański . Wyspiański to malarz, dramaturg, poeta, grafik, architekt oraz projektant mebli. Jego najsłynniejszym dziełem jest spektakl „Wesele”. Ponieważ jeszcze nie rozumiem słów „Wesela”,  moim ulubionym dziełem Wyspiańskiego jest na razie  ten obraz  „Planty z widokiem na Wawel”:

Wyspiański urodził się 15 stycznia 1869 roku w Krakowie przy ulicy Krupniczej 14. Jego rodzicami byli Franciszek, który był rzeźbiarzem i fotografem, oraz Maria z Rogowskich. Kiedy Wyspiański miał cztery lata, jego rodzice przeprowadzili się do Domu Długosza przy ulicy Kanoniczej 25. Mieszkanie miało wspaniały widok na Wawel, i wiele lat później Wyspiański napisał ten werset:

„U stóp Wawelu miał ojciec pracownię

wielką izbę biała wysklepioną

żyjącą figur zmarłych wielkim tłumem

tam chłopiec mały chodziłem, co czułem,

to później w kształty mej sztuki zakłułem.”

Niestety w 1876 roku umarła matka chłopca, i młody Stanisław wyjechał z tego mieszkania. Franciszek, jego ojciec, nadużywał alkoholu, a więc opiekę nad chłopcem przejęli wujostwo Stankiewiczowie. Stankiewiczowie byli ludźmi wysokiej kultury, i w ich domu Wyspiański poznał słynnego polskiego malarza Jana Matejkę oraz innych ważnych polskich intelektualistów i artystów.

W 1879 roku, kiedy miał 10 lat, chłopiec rozpoczął naukę w słynnym Gimnazjum św. Anny w Krakowie. Ta szkoła była jedynym gimnazjum w mieście, gdzie wykłady odbywały się w języku polskim. (Musimy pamiętać, że Kraków i cała południowo zachodnia Polska w tym czasie należały do Austrii.) Wyspiański był bardzo dobrym studentem, miał rozległe zainteresowania artystyczne i patriotyczne: teatr, malarstwo, literatura piękna, historia, legendy polskie.

W 1887 roku, w wieku 18 lat, Wyspiański zapisał się na wydział filozoficzny Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, i jednocześnie rozpoczął studia malarskie w Szkole Sztuk Pięknych w Krakowie, której dyrektorem był Jan Matejko. Utalentowany student pomagał sławnemu malarzowi w pracach przy renowacji koscióła Mariackiego.

W 1890 roku, kiedy miał 22 lata, Wyspiański wyjechał za granicę—przez Wiedeń, Wenecję, Weronę, Mediolan, Szwajcarię do Francji—a powrócił do kraju przez Niemcy i Pragę. Bardzo lubił gotyckie katedry, dramaty muzyczne Wagnera, opery Verdiego i Webera, a także dramaty Szekspira.

Trzy razy Wyspiański wyjeżdżał do Paryża i tam mieszkał: to miasto go zafascynowało. W Paryżu  uczył się w Acadamie Colarrosi, często chodził do teatru, wiele malował, oraz zaprzyjaźnił się Paulem Gauguinem. W tym czasie Wyspiański zaczął pisać własne dramaty: „Królowę Polskiej Korony” i wstępne redakcje „Legendy”, „Warszawianki”, „Daniela” i „Melegra”. Wrócił na stałe do Krakowa w sierpniu 1894 roku.

W Krakowie Wyspiański podjął pracę prze restaurowaniu kościoła

Franciszkanów. Zaprojektował i wykonał polichromię z młodopolskimi motywami kwiatowymi, oraz fantastyczne kompozycje w witrażach, na przykład „Stań się”, przedstawiający Boga Ojca. Podjął także pracę dla kościoła św. Krzyża oraz kościoła Dominikanów.

Jednocześnie rysował i malował autoportrety i potrety rodziny, przyjaciół oraz artystów. Według artykułu z Wikipedii, „W jego twórczości plastycznej dominowały ...obrazy wykonywane pastelami.” Dla przykładu, tu jest „Helenka”:

 Helenka była córką artysty.

18 września 1900 roku Wyspiański ożenił się z chłopką Teodorą Teofilą Pytkówną, która jeszcze przed ślubem została  matką jego dzieci. Żona i dzieci występują w wielu utworach Wyspiańskiego, na przykład „Dziewczynka z wazonem z kwiatami”  (1902), „Śpiący Staś” (12) (1904), „Portret artysty z żoną” (1904), „Macierzyństwo”  (1905).

Choć Wyspiański już był malarzem, który odniósł pewien sukces, jego spektakl „Wesele”, który miał premierę teatralną 16 marca 1901 roku, zmienił jego reputację.  Według Arkadiusza Latuska, „Od tego momentu Wyspiański uważany był za wybitnego dramatopisarza i niezwykłego malarza, a niektórzy widzieli w nim wieszcza narodowego, ze wzglądu na narodowo-społeczną tematykę jego utworów.” (Arkandiusz Latusek, „Posłowie”, Wesele, Wydawnictwo Zielona Sowa, Kraków, 2007.)

Niestety Wyspiański ciężko zachorował, i kiedy miał tylko 38 lat, w listopadzie 1907 roku, zmarł. Pogrzeb w Krakowie stał się manifestacją narodowa. Wyspiański został polskim bohaterem artystycznym. Pochowano go na cmentarzu zasłużonych na Skałce.

----D. Cummings McLean, 30 X 2015, Edinburgh

***

Thanks especially to Hipsterka and Polish Pretend Son for their improvements to the style. Any remaining infelicities are, of course, entirely my own.

Maternal Terrorism

"How will I get grandchildren if she doesn't get out there?"

I received an email the other day from a Single asking me to write about the scenario in which a Single's mother:

A. tells people in front the Single that she didn't think her recent-college-graduate daughter would ever marry

B. nagged the Single, an only child, about giving her grandchildren.

Regarding A:

My head nearly exploded. Yarg! Yarg! I am mother age. Let's see ...  I am teenagers' mother age. But I know very well how wicked, cruel, mean, insensitive and downright terrorist it would be to predict that my own twenty-something daughter will never marry. To others. In front of her.

This is not the maternal vocation. The maternal vocation is to say, "My daughter is so lovely and bright, I can only hope she finds a man worthy of her in this day and age."  Men may object to this statement, but too bad. This is what mothers are supposed to say about their daughters: lovely, bright, worthy of a good man's love.


Regarding B:

This mother did not give her child any brothers or sisters, and now she is demanding grandchildren? Say what? 

Okay, so it could be that God gave this woman only one child, and she never used birth control in her life, and longed for children. She didn't adopt, however, or bring up foster children. Maybe she was a Single mother, or divorced. Nevertheless, the child grew up alone, possibly in a situation in which it was just she and Mom, and naturally Mom had all the power. Do your homework. Go to bed. Give me grandchildren.

My parents ruled their children as if we might rise up and defeat them, but this sensation gave us the illusion of power. Five of us, two of them. Ah ha ha ha! But naturally they did a heck of a lot of work; goodness knows what a fortune my father would have amassed had he not spent his income supporting a family of seven. And I do know how much work my mother did to keep us all fed and clothed. At one point she had to iron school uniform shirts for four children, plus my father's shirts, which makes at least 25 shirts a week.

If my mother had looked at her five descendants, aged 18 - 30, all adults guzzling the annual bottle of champagne at Christmas, and said "I miss little kids. I wish some of you lot would give me grandchildren", she would have been within her rights.

But had she deliberately had only one child--and as I am the eldest, that would have been me--and demanded grandchildren, I would have told her to stick her demands in her ear.  In the most filial and pious way of course.

I conclude:

The essence of family life is not letting it all hang out but each member treating all the other members with due respect. The children must mind the adults because the adults usually do know best, but the adults must make allowances for the children being children and not expect them to be mini-adults. Neither children nor adults are allowed to humiliate each other in public, although I think parents are within their rights to scold a naughty or lazy child in front of the child's primary school teacher or any other in loco parentis authority.

Once the child becomes an adult, this mutual respect becomes more important than ever. The adult child must not behave like a dependent, living off his/her parents without contributing anything to the household by way of money or chores, and the parents must start treating their own children almost as peers. Many mothers enjoy fussing over their adult children, washing their socks and cooking their dinner, and they shouldn't be robbed of that, if they enjoy it. But they absolutely must not act as though they own their children's social lives or as if their chaste, unmarried children are somehow robbing them of grandchildren. Give me a freakin' break.

How to cope with a terrorist mother? Speak up. Get in her face. Say, "How dare you humiliate me in front of those people? How dare you predict that I'll never marry? That hurt me, and you owe me an apology." Even maternal bullies are cowards, so she might back down. As the only child, you're her insurance plan. Nobody wants their insurance plan to walk out on them. If she keeps up hurtful comments even after you tell her to quit it, move out. If you have moved out, see less of her. If she complains, say you would like to see more of her, but not if she hurts your feelings.

When you were a child, and you weren't getting along with your peers, your mother had the right to scold you for being too shy or too snobbish or whatever it may have been. But when you are an adult, your mother no longer has the right to comment on your success or lack thereof with your peers, unless you ask. If you ask, you have to take your lumps. But if you don't ask, she should leave the heck alone. She can get your sister to suggest---. Oh, wait, she never gave you as sister? Too bad, then. She'll just have to stew in silence.

Art, Sex and Humility

Today is Artistic Wednesday, but I have been thinking about humility in connection with language studies, not to mention relations between the sexes. Perhaps there's a way to link all these themes.

As I made apparent last week, I have been reading about the career of the Polish artist Stanisław Wyspiański (1869-1907). I am impressed by how very focused he was on his creativity--he excelled in drama, design, illustration and painting--from a very young age. As a child, he was introduced to leading Polish artists and thinkers. As a high school student he studied his brains out. When he graduated he enrolled in both university AND art college and was chosen to help the director of the art college renovate one of his city's most prominent churches. Then he went abroad to immerse himself in the art scenes of France, Germany and Italy. He wasted no time--which was fortunate for the world as he died at the age of 38.

Any kind of artistic work takes humility, by which I mean an objective view of one's own abilities and knowledge. "True objectivity is authentic subjectivity," said the Canadian philosopher Father Bernard Lonergan, S.J. You have to somehow divorce your own self-love (or "ego") from your ability or knowledge or virtue to get a true sense of it and, especially, to improve it.

Humility, properly understood, is not self-abnegation. The humble person doesn't belittle her talents or knowledge. Neither, of course, does she puff them up or talk about them all the time. The humble artist isn't interested in herself at all but in the subject at hand and wants to express that subject as well as she possibly can.

This often takes correction, which can be very, very difficult to receive, judge and accept or reject as one's artistic sense deems necessary. When it comes to learning a second language, correction may feel embarrassing, but it is generally trustworthy when it comes from a native speaker. Not only that,  the sharp emotion of embarrassment helps sew the correction into the memory. However, when it comes to one's own invention, the wrong intervention, especially a malicious intervention, can seriously hurt an artist's ability to create.

What drives me craziest as an artist, by the way, are moral judgments on my writing. "This sounds flat to my ear" is useful. "You spelled 'loquacious' wrong," is also useful. "You should not have written/publish this, for it is immoral," is not useful. In fact, it drives me into a frenzy of rage.

I am a person who writes and spends quite a lot of time writing. I write for money. I write for love. I write to learn. I write to counsel and comfort and help. It is so much a part of me that it is difficult for me to separate it from my sense of self. (How I hate getting rejection letters.) However, to improve my art, that is what I must do.

At the same time, though, we are called to be objective not only about our art but about ourselves. Fortunately this gets easier as you get older. Confidence improves with age, experience and success. Confidence leads to humility, for confidence makes it easier to accept  constructive criticism--even if rudely or clumsily offered--with gratitude. It also makes it easy to reject destructive criticism with grace--even if that means only thinking "You're clearly an idiot" instead of saying (or writing) "You're an idiot." Naturally, confidence prevents the poor artist from thinking "I'm an idiot."

Remember, self-depreciation is not humility, unless you mean it only as a comparison with some admired person in your field, or a saint, or God. "I am little, Thou art Great, O my God. Do Thou assist me, O my Redeemer" is a far cry from, "I'm an idiot."

What can be very, very hard for women these days is admitting to a man--especially one she doesn't much like--that she is wrong, and he is right. This can be harder for women then it can be for some men. I wonder why this is, and I suspect it is because of the high expectations of women of my (and the subsequent) generation to meet and even surpass men in fields hitherto dominated by men, with special honours for anyone who becomes the "First Woman [fill in the blank]".  To admit intellectual defeat by a man just hurts so bad--unless you are married to him, of course. "Oh, I'm sorry, my dear. You are quite right. Wikipedia is on your side" is easier in a loving relationship--especially one in which there is a shared commitment to truth.

That said, yesterday's post suggests that it is very, very hard for men to admit to a woman that he is wrong in some intellectual matter, and she is right. Frankly, I think it has always been this way, and if I had to hazard a guess it is because men associate being corrected with their early childhood of mothers, grandmothers, babysitters, nannies, older sisters and kindergarten teachers all telling them off. However, hopefully modern man will join modern woman in the joint project of accepting correction/constructive criticism while rejecting destructive criticism with grace. Personally, I can think of no laudably humble and edifying sight than a man turning to a woman--or a woman turning to a man--to say, "I did some research, and I must admit you were quite right."

Mad Trad--Spiked! N is for Novus Ordo

Hello! It is once again Traddy Tuesday, the day I chat about traditional Catholic beliefs and devotions. This post is later than usual for I spent the morning in traditional housekeeping, the hoover being a natural and organic development upon the carpet sweeper.

Today I shall post up the last of my Mad Trad columns, which I believe I posted before to show you what could get you fired from Catholic newspapers back in 2011. However I think the column was doomed when my cheerful piece about John XXIII's love of Latin came out. (By the by, I wonder if it is true that Saint John cried "Stop the Council! Stop the Council!" on his deathbed.)

I know people who simply can no longer bring themselves to attend the Novus Ordo. If they can't find an FSSP (Fraternity of the Priests of Saint Peter) or ICK (Institute of Christ the King) church or chapel, they go to the  SSPX (Society of Saint Pius X) for Sunday Mass.

I have never been to an SSPX Mass myself; when I was growing up adults talked about the SSPX with a contempt they did not express for Protestants, Jews, Sikhs or any other religious community. Today I find this pious disgust bizarre. Are we really supposed to admire all religious groups except the one closest to us, one that is, in fact, in communion with us and would have been indistinguishable from (the rest of) us in 1962? All the same, I have not been to an SSPX Mass, and if I cannot get to a Traditional Latin Mass permitted by the local Ordinary, I go an Ordinary Form Mass.

If I seem utterly fascinated by the differences between the Usus Antiquor and the Novus Ordo, it is partly because when I was a child in the 1970s, I had no idea that that Mass I went to on Sundays, Holy Days of Obligation and  First Fridays was much different from the Mass the saints all knew. It was as if all memory of the Old Mass had been buried under the floor and the carpet firmly nailed down.

Well, enough about me. Here is my spiked column, which is also about me. To get past me, I recommend reading accounts of Catholic adults who were attached to the Mass they had always known and suddenly couldn't get to anymore. I highly recommend Dom Alcuin Read's "A Bitter Trial" for Evelyn Waugh's take on the replacement of the Vetus Antiquor for the Novus Ordo.

When the Ordinary Form isn't Ordinary

On the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, I did something I don’t do often: I went to the Ordinary Form of the Mass. It was a Friday evening Mass in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. The Basilica was two-thirds full of students. I’m not sure what impressed me more: that Notre Dame has its own basilica or that so many of its students chose to go to Mass on a Friday evening.

The Basilica was built in the 19^th century and modelled in part on the Gesù, the mother church of the Society of Jesus in Rome, built by Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola in 1568. The Basilica has been renovated three times, most recently to clean it up and to restore such art and artifacts (like the confessionals) banished in the 1960s. In keeping with contemporary sensibilities, it has been repainted and gilded and is once more a truly beautiful church. I gazed at the gorgeous Gothic revival ceiling and tried not to feel weird about my bare head.

When you get into the habit of going only to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, you grow attached to customs that seem odd in the Ordinary Form and find customs attached to the Ordinary Form newly odd. Like many women, I choose to wear a mantilla during the Extraordinary Form and not during the Ordinary Form, where it might distract and even annoy people. (That said, there were girls in the Basilica wearing mantillas.) But if I don’t wear anything on my head in church, my head now feels cold and funny.

Other Ordinary Form customs that seem odd are—bear with me here—laypeople reading the readings and laypeople handling the sacred vessels. In the Extraordinary Form only clergy read the readings and only clergy handle the sacred vessels, so when a woman’s speaking voice breaks the silence or a woman opens the doors of the tabernacle, it does seem decidedly odd after months of attending the Extraordinary Form.

That said, I went to the Ordinary Form of the Mass almost every week for over 38 years, so this Mass felt like an old home, a home whose traditions I know like the back of my hand, and I made the customary reach for the hymn book when the organ rang out overhead. The congregation stood, and the sanctuary party, which included retired bishop John D’Arcy, processed to the altar.

The Mass was solemn and reverent. The cantor sang too high for easy following, but she certainly had a beautiful voice. The altar servers were unobtrusive. Bishop D’Arcy preached on the Gospel, the feast day and St. Edith Stein, in whose honour Notre Dame was having a conference. The students hung on to his every word, and I could sense how much they love him. Mass was very moving. The one thing that bothered me was the lack of a communion rail.

There should not be a war between the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Mass. I know that there are traditionalists who deplore the Ordinary Form—the “Nervous Ordo”—for its imperfect paraphrase of original prayers, for its “three hymn sandwich” and for its inexplicable and unofficial innovations. However, when it is celebrated in a reverent spirit, without a cast of thousands thronging around the sanctuary, with due respect for beauty—the beauty of music, the beauty of art, the beauty of the English language—and trust in the words actually written down on the page, the Ordinary Form is “charged with the grandeur of God.”

But countless Catholics have been scandalized by the Ordinary Form of the Mass done badly. I won’t go into detail—since 1970 Catholics have written ad nauseum about liturgical abuses—but I think it worthwhile to note the empty pews in our churches and wonder if rushed and informal, jokey, innovative and “creative” liturgies might not have something to do with them.

Of course it is important to create a sense of community in our parishes, but Mass should not be merely a community-building enterprise. It is a memorial of Christ’s passion, it is the paschal sacrifice, it is the sacrament of redemption. It must be treated with reverence, so that our children learn to reverence it and not put it away with other things of childhood.

To solve the problem of the communion rail, I decided to do what the girls in the mantillas did. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t remember what that was. But whatever it was, I had the sense afterwards of having attended a beautiful Mass amongst the reverent young people who are the future of the Church.  

***

Speaking of the future of the Church, how about that Synod, eh? 

There were 74 people at  the Edinburgh FSSP Extraordinary Form of the Mass this Sunday, a big number for us. I spoke to a newcomer whose third visit this was; he found us through the internet and already has a shiny new Baronius missal . It didn't occur to me to ask what had triggered his search for us, but let me see. Three weeks ago from this Sunday...25-21 = 4 October. One week later, he was with us. Hmm....

On Dating News from Huff Po

I read this article knowing at once how it would end because the article was about a study showing that men don't like hanging out with women who beat them at IQ tests. Instead of advising women not to engage in IQ tests with men, which is relatively easy to do, it suggests men need to change.

Of course, these findings don't mean that all or even most men are threatened by smart women. This study just adds to decades of literature on gender dynamics which suggests that, as a whole, there are a lot of icky complications around confidence and power wrapped up in heterosexual attraction. 

More research needs to be done until there are any practical implications.In the meantime, it's probably not a bad idea for threatened men to do a little soul-searching and think about why they might be intimidated by smart women.

So much for "born this way", eh?

When I was 25, I would have taken all this extremely seriously, especially the passive aggressive nagging at men to change. As a matter of fact, I dated guys probably not as smart as I was for years, and it was only when I was over 30 that I returned to the "Am I Too Smart?" worries.

Since then, I have come to the conclusion that there is a big difference between being an intelligent conversationalist  and embarrassing men by beating them in competitions, however informal those competitions may be. Guys have to compete with guys all the time. (In Poland male Polish wedding guests march up to male foreign wedding guests and wordlessly invite them to drink vodka shots with them. I saw incidents of this myself this month: it was very funny although, of course, not so funny for the foreign men.)  In general, guys like girls because/when the girls don't compete with them. Having an intelligent conversation is not the same thing as competing. Trying to win an argument is, however, competing. Fine for work. Not so fine for social life.

At best, girls are a lot of fun to be around. They make you feel good about yourself. They don't try to cut you down to size or to get you to drink more than you can stand or to become obstacles in your career path. Except when they do --which to many men feels like the woman are cheating. Sometimes they are particularly annoyed when the  aggressive woman is attractive because they feel this gives her power over them. Men hate it when they feel women-not-on-their-side have power over them, and fair enough. I would feel scared if men-not-on-my-side had power over me. Come to think of it, I suffered unde women managers I really couldn't stand, and they were always way harder to deal with than any male employer I ever had.

If it is a FACT that men are turned off by women they KNOW--in some agreed upon, quantifiable way--are smarter than they are, then the really smart women will not stress to the men we meet that we might be smarter than they are. We don't have to "play dumb". We just don't get drawn into "who is the smartest?" competitions outside of work. (Work is a different story although even there I am sure one can be gracious. Not everyone you meet needs to know that you went to a "Top 15" college, gag, barf.) We don't exaggerate how smart we are, and we don't nuke men with our intelligence unless we are trying to turn them off.

I once nuked a drunken chap who was making ridiculous claims about Saint Thomas Aquinas. It felt very satisfying, but then he wasn't very attractive, and he was patronizing me, and I wanted him to go away. I try to keep this sort of thing to a minimum, however, as becoming addicted to crushing men's egos would be detrimental to my social life. I prefer to be fun to be around and make men feel good about themselves. I don't want to cut them down to size or get them to drink more than they can stand or to become an obstacle in their career paths. I have my jobs, and if I were competing for the ones they want, I sure wouldn't tell them.

Occasionally I feel sad that the men around don't seem to perceive how brilliant I am, or even that I had a really good education, but in saner moments I realize that this really doesn't matter as they are not newspaper editors and are not paying me. Besides, I learn a lot of interesting things by asking men questions. Men famously love to explain things to women, which I think is a weakness that can be used for good, especially if they know what they are talking about and I can learn from them. (If they don't know what they are talking about, I can at least practice being a kindly, restful woman.)

I showed my house guest the Polish Astrophysicist my essay about Wyspiański, and the first (and only) thing he said about it was "It's Szołayskich, not Sołayskich", which was very embarrassing and therefore GREAT because I will certainly never make that mistake again. Incidentally, even if you yourself are an astrophysicist, you can always improve yourself and make yourself sound dumb/funny/child-like at the same time by learning to speak another language. You could have a brain the size of a planet and still charm some manly man foreigner senseless by saying their equivalent of "Is not dwarf star, is comet. I show maths. Where is challllk? Look, look. I am writing on boardblack."

Single Issues of the Day

Quarr Abbey. Just for boys!

Here it is Seraphic Singles Saturday, but I can't think of a Singles topic I haven't written on before. Eeek! Remember how I said married women swiftly forget what being Single is like? Six and half years in, this is happening to me. Mostly I remember what a struggle it could be to see men as themselves and not as Potential Spouse/Not Potential Spouse. But I also recall a frequent sense of unease. What is my vocation? What is my vocation? What is my vocation? What is my vocation?

Catholic education could combat these things--although maybe it did combat the first thing, and I was too wrapped up in my little world to notice. If I had been told in elementary school religion class to imagine how God saw my classmates, would understanding have illuminated my little brain?

I don't know. I don't think it would have been a good assignment to have me write a letter as if I were God to a certain A.P., whoever because instead of radiating divine love, I would have written something like "Dear A, If you don't stop pulling Seraphic's braids, which hurts her a lot, by the way, you will end up in HELL if you die, and you won't like that AT ALL."

(I can imagine how the Grown-ups saw A., of course. "Oh, he is just a ch-eye-ulllllld!")

Anyway, I think it is a good exercise to try to see people around as God might see them; naturally to do this, one needs to fathom God's personality, which is best done by reading the Gospels and what the saints say about the Gospels. I am quite sure Our Lord did not want A to pull my braids, but on the other hand, Our Lord would have known about A's messed-up home life, if he had one.

The solution to hating little boys (if you are a little girl) and being silly about random men (if you are a woman) is to take an objective view, which begins with a meditation on what God, who knows everything, knows about Man X, and how He feels about him. What does God probably like? What does God probably dislike?  What would it be like to be Man X?

Probably there is a lot along these lines in the writings of John Paul II; I should really get around to reading more of them. I wish he had written a Dignitatem Virorem, don't you?

As for the vocation worry, I plunk this right down at Catholic Education's door. "What is my Vocation" turned up in Grade 13, which was almost too late to begin thinking about religious vocations anyway.

Education about marriage (real marriage, not the wedding), religious life and priesthood should begin in childhood--which is when children begin thinking about such things anyway. When I was in kindergarten, playing "House" was very popular, with the alpha female playing Mother. Interestingly, girls never wanted to play "Wedding." Nope, their interest was in being in charge of the kitchen and bossing children around.

As for the priesthood, one of the most heartwarming things I can think of is boys getting really interested in what the priest and altar servers are doing up at the altar. When my nephew Pirate was 7, he and his mother spent Christmas with us, and instead of being bored at Mass--which was in Latin, naturally--Pirate seemed fascinated by the priest, to the extent that he tried to repeat what the priest was saying. If a boy shows that much of an interest in the Mass, then his faithful Catholic family can and should reinforce his good impressions of priesthood. Hopefully the priest is a good man--and it kills me to have to write that. Sigh. At any rate, if you don't admire your priest, your children may see that, and so it is a good idea to go to Mass at a church with an admirable--or at least priestly--priest.*

As for religious vocations for women, I cannot imagine how anyone would think girls would seriously consider this life without actually knowing any nuns or religious sisters. It's as if you were told at 18 that your choices in life were to be Married, Single or a Unicorn. It might sound very romantic to be a unicorn but, er, where are these unicorns? You never see any on the street. There aren't any in your family. Your father's great-aunt was one, but his one memory of her was that he was afraid of her horn, etc.

Don't wallop 18 year olds already nervous about graduating from high school with "vocation" worries. Start talking about marriage, priesthood and religious life when they are old enough to ask questions about them,  e.g. age 4, and when they are worried adolescents, keep telling them that the answer will come to them like a fact they have studied. "What if I fail my history test?" "Have you studied for this history test?" "Yes, for years!" "Well, then if you relax while taking the test , the answers will come to you."

Meanwhile, everyone is called to the Christian Life--poverty, chastity and obedience according to our state in life--which is vocation enough to be worried about, that's for sure.

If I had children, I think I would pass along pearls of wisdom every day, especially when I was cross about something, like, "The most important thing in marriage is respect!" and "Marriage is all about washing the dishes and keeping the house tidy enough so your spouse wants to come back to it!" and "Men are like plants--they need lots of sunshine and nourishment!" and "Isn't your father marvelous! And he has never called me a rude name in all the years I've known him."  (B.A. could say wise things abut women, e.g. "Anything for a quiet life, son.")

Naturally I would take my children to visit our friends in the convent at Ryde, so they would see monastic life for themselves. "Oh these lucky nuns!," I would say. "They pray and sing all day, giving glory to God and fighting their sins with as few worldly distractions as possible. How beautiful and happy they look! Why can't we see their rooms? Well, to go into the cloister, you have to be one of them.  What was that, B.A., Jr? Oh, there are convents for boys, too. We will visit one tomorrow. Man-nuns are called monks, and these ones bind books."

As a matter of fact, one of my father's PhD supervisors was an Augustinian monk, and my family went to visit his abbey, which was just outside of Toronto. I only ever went the once, but I have always remembered it. We had unpasteurized milk (eeee!), and we visited the cows. It certainly made an impression.

*My principal UGH moment regarding a parish priest in the past ten years was hearing one leaning over a boy with a fatuous grin while saying, with an exaggerated local accent, "HEY! D'YA like HOCKEY?"  Shudder.

Incidentally, I dragged a French-Canadian to Mass near his native city one Sunday, and he was utterly horrified because the priest spoke "joual", a working-class Quebecois dialect, instead of proper French, language of the university-educated person he obviously had to be. M. Super-Educated thought the priest's use of "joual" totally inappropriate for Holy Mass, which was rather reverent for an atheist. Atheist head, Catholic heart. Naturally he didn't darken the door again. Moral of Story: priests, be what you are.

Re: Man-nuns. Fact: my youngest brother was known in the family for awhile as "Man-Auntie." This suggests a certain domination in the family of the aunts, n'est-ce pas?

Good Men in a Fictional Crisis

I have returned from Polish class, where I delivered my 650 word paper on Stanisław Wyspiański. Typing the silly thing drove me around the bend, for when I change my normal British QWERTY for the Polish QWERTZ keyboard, I almost always get Z and Y mixed up. I just did it again. However, it is done and photocopied and delivered and handed out to my classmates, and now I can get on with life.

Yesterday I wrote warmly of the Suchet Poirot, and I was wondering today whom you would turn to in a crisis. We often look--foolishly, I think--for mates who remind us of our fictional romantic heroes, but what fictional men would we look to, like pretend daughters or pretend mothers, in a crisis?

For some strange reason, as I was walking up the Canongate this evening, I thought I would consult Mr Rochester on money matters. I certainly would never, ever, ever see Mr Rochester in the light of a romantic hero: what a twister! Big fat bigamous liar! Jane Eyre can have him, and I am not really sure why she wanted him in the first place.

But this is not the place to fight about the dreaminess of Mr Rochester. What I am wondering is, "Which men in fiction would you turn to in a crisis, not expecting or wanting to marry them afterwards, and why?"  If I were very sick, I think I would like to call Gilbert Blythe, MD. Gilbert rather than Dr Watson--Dr Watson is too easily distracted. Naturally I would not want to marry Gilbert (even if single), for he is a married man with seven children (including the dead).

Food for the Synod-Stricken Soul

I confine my remarks here to the laity and rank-and-file priests.My advice to bishops would be rather different.

The trads all knew October was going to be tough, so we were prepared. Some brought popcorn. Some howl with laughter as a bishop comes up with another clunker along the lines of "Let's use the Power of the Keys to twist God's arm behind His back!"* The spectacle of... But let's not go there.

If you are a layperson, and you do not feel it is your job to rebuke bishops or comfort the faithful with rude jokes, stop reading anything having to do with the Synod. When you are tempted to do so, pick up your rosary and say a decade for the Church instead. Yes,the Synod is a disaster--in a way. (Now we have a rough idea of which bishops believe and love the Faith and which ones don't, and we can tune our ears accordingly.) No, this is not the end of the Church.

If the Church should one day be reduced to a tiny village in rural Portugal, with one priest, one seminarian, five nuns and three families, that would still be the Church. But, you know,  Napoleon's men thought Pius VI would be the last pope and they were wrong. The Church looked in terrible shape in 1801, but then in the 19th century--what a flowering! My  "History of the Church in the Nineteenth Century " was full of wonderful saints and stories. My priest-professor told us the tale of Father Petitjean and the Nagasaki Christians, and he began to weep, he was so moved. 

I have been having trouble sleeping, but I have discovered a cure. Every evening Benedict Ambrose and I watch an episode of the Agatha Christie's Poirot series starring David Suchet. I have read a little about Suchet's preparations to play Hercules Poirot, and he amassed a huge binder of details. Even more than Agatha Christie herself, Suchet decided that Poirot's sense of justice stemmed not only from his career as a policeman in Belgium, but from late 19th century and early 20th century Belgian Catholicism. Poirot may love the straight lines and simplicity of Art Deco, but he is not a modernist. Indeed, he is even a bit of a Romantic, a Catholic Romantic who must have had a very good classical Catholic education: balanced. 

But the perfect symmetry of the moustaches, I do approve!

Modern Belgium is a moral mess, but when Poirot is on television, old Catholic Belgium returns for an hour or so. There is our Monsieur Poirot, an agent of justice. No matter how pretty the murderess, no matter how rich, no matter how charmingly she pleads, Poirot turns from her with a curt "I do not approve of murder, madame."

Accidental manslaughter--well. He does not sit in judgement over the merely unlucky; Poirot is merciful to those whose hearts are pure of murderous intent, as I noted at the end of last night's episode. All the same, he does not twist with the wind. 

Another fictional hero from whom I have derived comfort is Giovannino Guareschi's Don Camillo. Last night I read Comrade Don Camillo, and tears sprang to my eyes several time. Guareschi is one of those very few authors who can make me cry; Sienkiewicz is another one. Of the volumes of the Don Camillo stories, I've read, I think Comrade Don Camillo is the best. (N.B. Don't bother with the clowning of Fernandel in the films. Stick with the books.)

Not every reader is a fan of Don Camillo's peasant ways, his scheming against the local Commie mayor (who is the closest thing he has to a best friend), his mighty fists. However, what Guareschi makes clear again and again is how decent most of these post-war (but pre-1963) Italians are, be they Catholic or Communist, they seem to him decent---even heroic--often heroic--men and women, loved by God and deserving of our love, too. For these are merely economic Communists; the hell of the Frankfurt School has not entered their hearts. 

We are the Church.

In 1963, Guareschi was a sad man, shocked and disappointed by the "Dolce Vita" attitude sweeping over Italy, threatening the little worlds of the Don Camillos. However, to open a volume of his stories is to get one of them back for a little while. 

*Members spent quite a bit of time talking about the beauty and comprehensiveness of No. 84 of Familiaris Consortio. Some suggested that FC 84 ought to be put directly into the text. One father spoke about the power of the keys and the Holy Father’s ability to change things. He said that the Pope can, in effect, twist the hands of God. Others responded that the power of the keys does not give the Church the ability to change Revelation and the faith of the Church."

What I Did Today

Because obviously I am completely insane. 

Stanisław Wyspiański

Przez Dorothy McL 

21 X 2015

Moim ulubionym muzeum w Krakowie jest Kamienica Szołayskich (1). Mają zawsze wystawy sztuki młodopolskiej tam. „Młoda Polska” jest szkołą albo ruchem artystycznym polskim; kwitnął w Polsce przełomu XIX i XX wieków. To sztuka „Art Nouveau” Polski: bardzo romantyczna.

Jednym moich ulubionych artystów z  skoły Młoda Polska jest Stanisław Wyspiański (2). Wyspiański to malarz, dramaturg, poeta, grafik, architekt oraz projektant mebli. Jego najsłynnym dziełem jest spektakł „Wesele”, ale jeszcze nie rozumiem słów, a więc moim ulubionym utworem Wyspiańskiego jest ten obraz (3) „Planty z widokiem na Wawel.”

Wyspiański urodził się 15 stycznia 1869 roku w Krakowie, przy ulicy Krupniczej 14. Jego rodzicami byli Franciszek, który był rzeżbiarzą i fotografikiem, i Maria z Rogowskich. Kiedy Wyspiański miał cztery lata, Wyspiańscy  przeprowadzili się do Domu Długosza przy ulicy Kanoniczej 25.  Mieszkanie miało wspaniały widok z Wawelu, i wiele lat później Wyspiański napisał ten werset:

„U stóp Wawelu miał ojciec pracownię

wielką izbę biała wzsklepiona

żyjącą figur zmarłych wielkim tłumem

tam chłopiec mały chodziłem, co czułem,

to później w kształty mej sztuki zakłułem.”

Niestety w 1876 roku umarła matka chłopca, i młody Stanisław miał wyjechać tej sielanki. Franciszek, jego ojciec, był pijakiem, a więc opiękę nad nim przejęli wujostwo Stankiewiczowie. Ale Stankiewiczowie byli ludżmi wysokiej kultury, i w ich domu Wyspiański poznał słynnego polskiego malarza Jana Matejka (4) oraz innych ważnych polskich intelektualistów i artystów.

W 1879 roku, kiedy miał 10 lat, chłopiec rozpoczał naukę w słynnym Gimnazjum św. Anny w Krakowie. Ta szkoła była jedynym gimnazjum w miejsce gdzie wykłady odbywały się w języku polskim. (Musimy pamiętać, że Kraków i całe południu-zachód Polska w tym czasie zależał od Austrii.) Wyspiański był bardzo dobrym studentem, i miał wiele interesów artystycznych i patriotycznych: teatr, malarstwo, literatura piękna, historia, legendy polskie.

W 1887 roku, kiedy miał 18 lat, Wyspiański zapisał się na wydział filozoficzny Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, i jednocześnie rozpoczał studia malarskie w Szkole Sztuk Pięknych w Krakowie, której Jan Matejko był dyrektorem w tym czasie. Utalentowany student pomagał Matejka w pracy w renowacjach koscióła Mariackiego (5). 

And so on.  I'm not even being graded.  Don't steal this, small Polish schoolchildren! It probably has a hundred errors, and one of my two principal sources wasWikipedia.

***
Update: Polish readers will be relieved to discover that I sent my essay to my Polish friend "Hipsterka", and she has made many suggestions for improvements.  

Update 2: KONIEC!

Mad Trad 14: M is for First Friday Mass

It's Traddy Tuesday, the day I write all about some traditional devotion, like Benediction, or doctrine, like marriage being between one man and one woman. For the past 13 weeks I have posted my old Mad Trad Corner columns (2010-2011) from the Prairie Messenger.

If you are from the Canadian prairie provinces, you may be rolling about on the floor at the thought of my traddery appearing in the PM, but it did, thanks to the editor, who admired Seraphic Singles. The editor's love for sparkling writing has trumped ideological concerns more than once, and this seems to have caused dismay among the clerics behind the curtain.

As a writer, I sympathize with this love. When all were freaking out because this editor hired my co-national, the schismatic Mr Coren, from whom the rest of  Catholic media had shrieking fled, I discovered that, naturally, she had admired his writing. Well, of course.

However, he who pays the piper picks the tune, and the men signing the cheques at the PM didn't like mine. Therefore, this is the last of the Mad Trad columns to make it into the Prairie Messenger.   I am sorry that the editor bore the brunt of my missionary effort, both from her bossleagues and from letter-writers, but I thoroughly enjoyed the adventure. Although naturally not everyone enjoys my writing at the Catholic Register, Toronto is--and always has been--a reasonably conservative archdiocese, thanks to the massive immigrant population and, very possibly, the patronage of Saint Michael the Archangel. To write a column about traditional Catholicism to the dioceses in Alberta and Saskatchewan was really a thrill, and if it didn't win me any converts, it certainly won me friends among the traditional Catholics suffering out there.

But without further ado, here are my thoughts on First Friday Mass and the devotion to the Sacred Heart.

The Nine First Fridays

When I was a little girl in the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, the pupils of my elementary school walked to Mass on every first Friday of the month. “First Friday Mass” was a school-wide devotion in a school that rarely talked about devotions. I had no idea that there was a traditional devotion known as the Nine First Fridays until as a teenager I found it mentioned in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Having subsequently done the math, I realize that my class must have fulfilled the Nine First Fridays, from September to May, or from October to June, every year. That was a nice idea of someone’s. I wonder if it was an intentional parish holdover from what some call the pre-conciliar era (i.e. Pentecost to 1963).

Devotion to the Nine First Fridays was born in the seventeenth century as part of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (i.e. our Lord’s great love for humanity). Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was widespread amongst the English-speaking grandparents of my friends, but it was not mentioned in my family—perhaps because my mother grew up Protestant and was not catechized until 1969.

The name most associated with the Nine First Friday devotion is that of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. In her writings, Saint Margaret Mary wrote down twelve promises of the Sacred Heart to devotees, one of which directly concerned First Fridays:

1. I will give them all the graces necessary for their state in life.
2. I will give peace in their families.
3. I will console them in all their troubles.
4. They shall find in my heart an assured refuge during life and especially at the hour of death.
5. I will pour abundant blessing on all their undertakings.

 6. Sinners shall find in my heart the source of an infinite ocean of mercy.

7. Tepid souls shall become fervent.

8. Fervent souls shall speedily rise to great perfection.
9. I will bless the homes in which the image of my sacred heart shall be exposed and honoured.
10. I will give to priests the power to touch the most hardened hearts.
11. Those who propagate this devotion shall have their name written in my heart, and it shall never be effaced.
12. The all-powerful love of my heart will grant to all those who shall receive communion on the first Friday of nine consecutive months the grace of final repentance; they shall not die under my displeasure, nor without receiving the sacraments; my heart shall be their assured refuges at the last hour.

I did not know of these promises all the years I trooped through the playground, up the street and around the corner to the parish church on first Fridays, which seems a pity. Those were ten years in which I could have consciously fostered a beautiful devotion.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart first appeared in the thirteenth century, most notably in the writings of St. Gertrude of Helfta (1256-1302), Gertrude the Great. Subsequent mystics, particularly Carthusians, also developed a devotion to Christ’s heart. At first a German devotion, it passed to a number of religious orders outside Germany, particular to the Society of Jesus [i.e. the Jesuits], who carried it to missionary countries. 

In France, St. John Eudes (1601-80) encouraged devotion to the Sacred Heart, and in Paray-Le-Monial from 1673 to 1675, a Visitation nun named St. Margaret Mary (1648-1690) received her revelations. St. Margaret Mary, her order, and her confessor, the Jesuit priest Claude de la Colombière, zealously published abroad her visions and fostered devotion to the Sacred Heart.

The devotion became well-established in the eighteenth century, and then immensely popular after the Napoleonic Wars. Religious orders were founded under the name of the Sacred Heart, more confraternities of the Sacred Heart were established, and the first “month of the Sacred Heart” was celebrated in 1856. In 1875, to mark the 200^th anniversary of St. Margaret Mary’s visions, Pope Pius IX asked all Catholics to consecrate themselves to the Sacred Heart. On June 11, 1899, Catholics obeyed the exhortation of Pope Leo to consecrate the whole world to the Sacred Heart. Pius X asked that this consecration be renewed annually, and in 1925, Pius XI directed that this be done on the Feast of Christ the King.

It might have surprised Pius XI to know that fifty-five years later, a Catholic schoolchild could have gaily skipped off to First Friday Mass without the foggiest idea what devotion to the Sacred Heart was all about. However, in the 1970s it was fashionable to disparage those devotions that were widespread in the nineteenth century, and certainly devotion to the Sacred Heart was a great comfort to our ancestors in that much-maligned era. So perhaps my childhood ignorance is not so surprising. What might be surprising—and a source of amusement to grandparents in heaven—is that my school kept the Nine First Fridays at all.

Doin' Journalism

Today I very much wanted to write 800 words about the Młoda Polska art movement for my class presentation, but I didnae. Instead I wrote a column for the CR and some other stuff. However, if you would like to read something I wrote for Catholic World Report about a very nice Canadian archbishop, here it is. Meanwhile, CWR has been writing tons and tons about the Synod.

Request: Blessed Natalia Tułasiewicz

Good morning, poppets! A girl named Natalie emailed me this week to ask if there was an English-language Life of Blessed Natalia Tułasiewicz, and to the best of my knowledge there is not. Perhaps we need one, and this is something I could get working on in a few years.

In the meantime, I promised to post the "Blessed Natalia" part of my Kraków lecture "Catholic Heroines of the 20th Century." After all, when a Natalie asks for information on a potential patron saint, how can I say no?

So here is the excerpt, which works very well with Seraphic Singles Saturday, as you will see. It was written with a simultaneous translator in mind, so it may seem a bit choppy!



 NATALIA TUŁASIEWICZ

My second heroine, Blessed Natalia Tułasiewicz, was born in 1906 in Rzeszów and died in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp in 1945. She was the second child of a tax inspector, and first moved here to Kraków in 1914. She moved to Pozńan in 1921, where she attended Saint Urszula’s Secondary School (w Gimnazjum Urszulanek Unii Rzymskiej). She studied Polish philology at the University of Pozńan and music at the Conservatory. She was a very devout Catholic, and wrote that she wished to strengthen her faith by good deeds and studying. Reflecting on the fact that men and women are made in the image of God, she wrote: “It is precisely our reason that makes us creatures similar to God (Przecież właśnie rozum nasz czyni nas stworzeniami na obraz i podobieństwo Boga)”. 

She wrote her master’s thesis about [EH: famous Polish-Lithuanian poet Adam] Mickiewicz and music, combining her love of Polish literature with her love of music. Unfortunately, her musical training was interrupted because she contracted tuberculosis, and she had an operation on her throat. She finished university in 1931 and had meanwhile begun her teaching career. She was active in the Association of Teachers of the Polish Language and also in a Marian sodality.

Despite her great love of God, Blessed Natalia did not feel at all called to become a religious sister. It was very important to her that she remain and work for God in the world as a laywoman. And at first she thought she would do this as a married woman. In 1927, when she was 21, she became engaged and remained engaged for seven years. Unfortunately, her fiancé was an atheist and a communist, and so Blessed Natalia ended their relationship in 1934. 

But rather than being brokenhearted, she felt that love had tied her even more to earthly life in the world. The love of God, she wrote, had made her heart so powerful that nothing could break it. “It seems to me that I am on the path to a new era in my life, a path that is difficult but worthwhile. Now I love life more than ever before. I have always loved it in God, today I desire in the fullest sense to live in God!” (Wydaje mi się, że zdążam ku takiemu właśnie okresowi życia—ku własniej, trudej, ale wartej trudu drodze. Dziś kocham życie jeszcze więcej, niż kochalam dotychczas. Kochałam je zawsze w Bogu, dziś je pragnę w pewnym sensie zwyciężyć w Bogu!)

Blessed Natalia thus gave herself totally to God but in such a way that she could find and achieve holiness in the everyday, modern world. She wrote, “I have the courage to become a saint. Only holiness is the fullest form of love, and so I don’t just want but must become a saint, a modern saint, a theocentric humanist.” (Mam odwagę chcieć być swiętą. Tylko świętość jest najpelniejszą miłością, więc nie tylko chcę, ale muszę być świętą, nowoczesą święta, teocentryzną humanistką!) She qualified as a state teacher and wrote as well as taught: poetry, novels and newspaper articles. She received much attention for her travels with the famous ship “Batory” in 1937. In 1938, she went to Rome for the canonization of Sw. Andrziej Bobola and travelled all over Italy.

Then in 1939—disaster. On November 10, 1939, German soldiers came to Blessed Natalia’s family home in Pozńan in the middle of the night and threw the whole family—and all their neighbours—into the street. Blessed Natalia had just enough time to leave a note imploring whatever Germans were given their home not to destroy their books and manuscripts and to water the plants. Then the family was forced to live in a transit camp, where conditions were very bad, before being packed on a freight train, like animals, and transported to Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski.

Here they lived with an old woman, the nine of them packed into one room. Blessed Natalia decided to go to Kraków and find a job. She got one public one, working in a private library, and one secret one, teaching in a clandestine school. Also in violation of the rules of the German Occupation, she led weekly literary meetings and monthly sodality meetings. She was befriended by Polish aristocrats who gave her work and intervened to keep her in Poland when she was ordered to become a labourer in Germany.

However, in 1943 she changed her mind about going to Germany. That was the year she visited her friend Brother Tadeusz near Warsaw, just as the Warsaw Ghetto was burning down. Her feelings of compassion for these people she could not help, except in prayer, led her to a covert mission to Germany. She joined a conspiracy called “Zachód” [ EH: i.e. "West"] , run for the Government-in-Exile by two priests, ks. Ferdynand Machay and ks. Kazimierz Świetliński. [EH: Ks.=ksiądz, priest. In Poland a secular priest is addressed as "Priest <Surname>. A priest in a religious order, however, is called "Father".]

Zachód trained her to help Poles doing forced labour in German emotionally, spiritually and intellectually. On August 18, 1943 she went voluntarily to Hamburg to share the forced labour. She worked in a factory and secretly taught religion, Polish orthography [i.e. spelling] and German to her fellow workers. She organized prayers and singing. As she wrote to her sister: “Only here do I fully realize how valuable is my life of solitude and my secular apostolate. And I realize how important it is to go outside and fill in the gap between a saint in a monastery and a layperson outside. I would simply say: let us leave with the holiness in our souls to streets! " (Tu dopiero w pełni przekonuję się, jak cenna dla drugich jest moja życiowa samotność i moje powołanie świeckiego apostolstwa. I przekonuję się, jak palącą kwestią jest, aby wyjść z ukrycia własnej kapliczki właśnie ku światu, aby wypełnić tę przepaść, która dzieli świętego w klasztorze od człowieka świeckiego. Powiedziałabym po prostu: wyjdźmy ze świętością w duszy na ulice!” ).

Sadly, the Germans discovered her activities. They arrested Blessed Natalia in April 1944. She was sent to jail in Hanover and then Cologne. She was tortured and beaten so badly, she bled from the scars of her old surgery. But despite her pain, she prayed and adored God every night. She never betrayed her fellow conspirators, and she wrote that she did not feel humiliated by the Germans: she felt supported by God, and wrote that her bad treatment did not make her give up; instead it taught her to be modest and happy.

In September 1944, she was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp for women. There she continued her mission by caring for her fellow prisoners, teaching them and having weekly literary meetings. Already suffering again from her lungs, Blessed Natalia was sure she would die, but she did not despair, for she believed that her death would be God’s will and therefore bring about good.

Of course there were no priests in this women’s camp. Blessed Natalia herself led a religious service (nabozeństwu) on Palm Sunday, 1945. But during the week she became so weak and sick that on Good Friday the Germans took her out of line during the morning inspection. She was sent to die in a gas chamber on Holy Saturday, and then her body was burned. Just a few days later, the Germans fled the camp before the Russian advance.

Blessed Natalia was beatified by Saint Jan Pawel in 1999, one of the only two laywomen among the 108 Holy Martyrs. As yet, she is not famous in the English-speaking world. There are not many English-language materials about her. But I present her because I think it is important for Polish women to know about modern Polish female saints, particularly one who never married or became a nun, one who was determined to find holiness in the world. And because she never gave up, despite disappointment, illness and war, I think she exemplifies perseverance. 

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from  Dorothy Cummings McLean, "Catholic Women of the 20th Century" (paper presented at the Dzielne Niewiasty ["Brave Women"]  Majówka dla Kobiet [May Retreat for Women] Krakow, Poland 2-4 May, 2014).