Travelling on Business

I have a sad tale from a reader who travelled on business to a traditionally macho nation. She was there for some weeks, long enough to get to know some of the men there, also employees of her multinational employer. I shall call the two principal men Hans and Franz although this was not a German-speaking country.

Hans was a cheerful chap with a steady girlfriend, but also apparently the sort of man who complains that other guys get all the girls.

Franz was charming, handsome and, according to Hans, was one of those guys who gets all the girls.

To make a long story short, Franz began to flirt with our heroine, whom I will call Sally, in a way that shocked her. To paraphrase, "Do you always talk to female colleagues that way?" she demanded. "Only when I like them," quoth he.

This carried on for a bit, Franz oozing charm and handsomeness, and Sally trying to figure out if he was at all serious when he said he wanted to kiss her. One day she and Hans spotted Franz with another girl. "Something's brewing there," said Hans, and Franz and the other girl disappeared. Who knows where?

But Franz continued to make his flirtatious remarks, including that he did not want to talk, he wanted to kiss, and when Sally was preparing to go home to her English-speaking country, even though they have never really had a serious conversation, he asked her if she would like to be his girlfriend.

Sally was shocked, doubtful, thrilled. No-one had ever asked her to be his girlfriend before. But being a practical woman, she asked how that would be possible, as they live so far away. He suggested sexting. I'm not sure what Sally said to that--I suspect she let it slide. At any rate, Franz gives sexting the old college try when Sally gets home, she tells him off, and that is that.

Except that Sally really misses him and wonders if she should contact him to apologize and explain, and if she made a terrible mistake in not agreeing to be his girlfriend.

And my head fell into my hands, for I had got Franz's number when I read the part of the story in which he said that he wasn't interested in talking. But to be frank, I had half Franz's number, thanks to Hans' subtle English-is-his-second-language warnings.

Talk about a culture clash. I wonder if innocent Sally confused player Franz as much as he confused her.

I think women from English-speaking nations should be taken aside and warned about men from non-English speaking nations before business trips.* It should be banged into our heads that not all countries have the same codes of office conduct, and not all men take them as seriously as the men in our offices.**  A Single woman travelling alone who is leaving in a few weeks is still a Single woman travelling alone who is leaving in a few weeks.  If that Single woman is travelling to a country where having sex with as many pretty women as possible is a national past-time, she is more likely to be hit on by male colleagues than she would be at home.

Manager: Franz, I hear from head office in London that you made sexual overtures to Sally.

Franz: Ah, Sally. So sexy, so foreign.

Manager: Did you score?

Franz: (long pause). Alas, no.

There are useful little books for business travellers, and I highly recommend that everyone who works with people from other countries read them. For example, the behaviour of one of my foreign colleagues in the theologate seemed to me so odd that I read a business travel guide to his country, and much was made clear.

The fact is that although all people belong to one great family called the human race, and we all share a lot in common, we also have significant cultural differences, and some of them--a lot of them--pertain to sexuality. One piece of evidence is the national indicator for virginity loss by age 15. In Canada, roughly the same number of boys (24.1%) and girls (23.9%) have had their first "sexual experience" by the age of 15.  In Israel, however, it's 31% of boys, and 8.2% of girls. Could there perhaps be a stronger sexual double standard in Israel than there is in Canada? Hmm....

Grandmothers fearlessly used to warn their granddaughters about men from other countries, and my own grandmother warned me against Italian men before I went to Italy, predicting that my bottom would be pinched black and blue. Well, maybe that was true in the 1950s, but nobody pinched my bottom in Italy in 1998, 1999, 2010 or anytime since. I suspect Grandma was seriously out of date.

But that said, the whole world is not London or New York or Toronto and so we shouldn't be caught off guard when men do not act like most men born in London, New York or Toronto. When the elevator boy at your resort in Egypt (France, Italy, Greece, Brazil, Turkey, Poland) tells you that he has fallen in love with you at first sight, he is lying 99% of the time.

The older I get, the more amused I am at the idea of foreign elevator boys, foreign seminarians, foreign owners of grocery stores telling me that they are in love with me, but then I'm happily married.

It's not so funny for women who are lonely and wish they did have a boyfriend, let alone a husband. The battle between good sense and wishful thinking must be very bloody when an American/English/Canadian woman is suddenly romanced by a handsome man from a macho country where constantly hitting on women is just what men do there.  And unless marriage is a ticket out of poverty, marriage to Foreign Woman is almost never on their minds. The goal here is not marriage. The goal here, if it is not just flirtation for flirtation's sake, is sexy fun bedtime with as few complications as possible. Thus your ticket home makes you even more attractive.

Update: There are two heroes in this story. The first is Sally, who strove to remain professional. The second, of course, is Hans, who tried to balance loyalty to his pal Franz with warnings to Sally.


*That said, the most devastating film about bad workplace behaviour I ever saw, The Company of Men, was set in the USA. That though was about men who were vicious woman-haters, not men who think women are like fine wine and other valued comestibles.

**That said, not all the men in our workplaces are so good about that, either. I've heard some eyebrow raising stories about British workplaces.

American Thanksgiving Dinner Survival Game

Thanksgiving in Canada (October) is important but not as important as Thanksgiving in the USA
seems to be. To the best of my knowledge, we don't have films showing Canadians jetting from one side of the country to the other just to partake of turkey and pumpkin pie.

No doubt the internet is full today of Americans anticipating the horrors of having to eat with their own extended family. One might argue that this is an example of pop culture attacking the family so as to break it up into individuals who are more easily exploited by Madison Avenue and the government.

That said, not all families are delightful, and sometimes the agony of family life is prolonged by a woman who wants people to say at her funeral that it was she who managed to keep the [self-devouring] family together. My perennial advice is that if you have been miserable at every family Thanksgiving dinner for the past ten years, you will almost certainly be miserable at this one too, so you shouldn't go. Either have a wonderful pot-luck Thanksgiving dinner with friends or volunteer to serve Thanksgiving supper to the homeless.

Your no-show may make your mother cry, but this might be the "hit bottom" moment she needs to finally admit that not all is well in Dodge.  On the other hand, if the problem for the past ten years was you, your absence will be the removal of a cloud for everyone else. Let us humbly consider the possibility.

If you have a pretty-good family, with a bearable level of grumbling and carping and throwing things across the table, then naturally I hope my American readers go to their traditional family Thanksgiving Dinner. Of course, if relations come from afar, there may be a fair bit of catching-up and questions about how everyone is and, as people enjoy relationship gossip, if you are in one.

If you are Single, this puts Thanksgiving in the same category as Mother's Day, when your parish tortures you for being Single-and-Childless, and Valentine's Day, when you torture you for being Single-and-Childless. This time it's your family's turn--and it's a sit-down dinner so you can't escape!

The only thing to do is to turn the dross of remarks about your Single status into the gold of POINTS for the annual Seraphic Singles/Edinburgh Housewife American Thanksgiving Dinner Survival Game. Please pay strict attention to whatever your relations say concerning your Single status, including queries as to when you're going to marry your boyfriend, and give yourself a point for each remark. (Nota Bene: If you are actually engaged you are not eligible for this game. You can give your sisters a point each by shoving your ring in their faces in and saying "LA!" in an exaggerated Lucy-Steele voice.)

"LA!"

Please report your score in the combox below, regaling us with the comments you remember. Naturally I myself am in Britain and so will be in bed before the west coast sits down to eat. However, I will hang out with the computer when I get back from Polish class this evening, so if you need to vent, I will be here until 4 PM San Francisco time, which is 7 PM in Buffalo, is it not?

Have the happiest Thanksgiving you can manage, and be as kindly as possible to your relations, especially the ones in the kitchen who might need you.  Above all, remember that you are not alone, and that from sea to sea your fellow Singles are being asked if they've found a fella yet and when are they getting married.

And a point from Cousin John....

***
Update: The M.Div. is now IN for anyone who might need to vent.

Update 2: All quiet on the western front this year. The M.Div. is going to bed!

Dating in Light of Matthew 5:37

Inspired by Cardinal Sarah's wonderful book, God or Nothing, I have been slowly reading the Book of Matthew, and one of the verses came back to me when I was thinking of some basic dating advice. The context is swearing oaths, but the simplicity of the teaching strikes me as pertinent to conversations between men and women: "Let your word be 'Yes, Yes' or 'No, No': anything more than this comes from the evil one."(Matt 5:37).

When someone asks you out on a date, it is better not to obsess on what it all could mean, or why he asked you by text and not in person, by letter or by homing pigeon. If the invitation is, "Would you like to meet me for coffee?" instead of having a brain-freeze, you must ask yourself, "Would I like to meet him for coffee?"  If you answer is "Yes," then say "Yes". If your answer is "No," then say "No." Unless there is a very good reason you should NOT be meeting this person for coffee (e.g. he is a flirtatious married man you secretly fancy), say what you want and don't feel guilty about it. Meanwhile, no man on earth--even the one you are thinking right now is exceptionally sensitive--is going to fall over and die because you said "No."

If the guy shows up for the date in blue jeans and a T-shirt, and you think he should have shown up in a suit, to show proper respect for you or the venue (e.g. the opera), then this may weigh upon your decision about a next date--although frankly I think a man is a man and is going to wear what he's going to wear. If you don't want to go out with a man again just because he wears the uniform of his generation, then obviously you're just not that into him. Personally I think you should give a guy a chance, but that's me. Can you imagine a guy never calling again just because you wore jeans on a date? But anyway, it's up to you, so if he asks you out again, you should ask yourself, "Would I like to go out with him again?" If "Yes" say "Yes" and get used to the blue jeans because you have no right to tell a man what to wear unless you're having a formal dinner party.  If "No", say "No", and if pressed, say you feel no spark. Or you can throw caution to the wind and say you're looking for a Cary Grant type. Please e-mail me what he says. 

I think a lot of contemporary unhappiness could be averted if women just took the time to ask ourselves what we want when we are asked directly if we would like something. Do I? I do, so "Yes." I don't, so "No." Men at swing-dancing, who take what used to be the women's privilege of accepting or rejecting dances, say "No, I'm too tired" or "No, it's too fast" without being the least bit apologetic. (They are not entirely to blame for this appropriation. If women ceased to ask them to dance, we would get our privilege back.) Although I don't like being told "no", I envy the men guilt-free decisiveness. 

There is something to be said for openness, of course. When I went to swing-dancing, I wanted to dance with the men there. Now that I don't want to dance with the men there, I don't go to swing-dancing. (Actually, there are three regulars I'd happily dance with, but you know, it's a long way to go on a cold night, it would cost at least £3, I'd have to look at the smug faces of the other guys and watch beautiful, talented women throw themselves at them.) If you despise all the men in your social circle, then maybe you need to change your social circle.

But even if you like all the guys around, there is no reason for you to have a coffee with one, or have supper with one, or go to a concert with one, if you really object--for whatever reason--to the proposed plan. Maybe you don't like coffee, supper or concerts. Maybe the idea of being alone with him for 1-3 hours makes you cringe. In which case, if he asks you if you would like to have coffee with him, you will probably say "No"--and that's okay.  However, if you like the idea of having coffee or supper with the guy, or going to a concert with him, you will probably say "Yes", and that's okay too. "Yes" to coffee, supper or a concert is not "Yes" to anything else, and if he assumes it is, ask yourself the question again. Do you want to go out with this presumptive chap? If Yes, say "Yes." If No, say "No." If pressed for an explanation, say "You're too presumptive." That'll larn him.

Don't be a Snob

"It's not about race, it's about class," I am wont to repeat when I think about the woes of the USA. A pecking order based on where you get accepted to college is incredibly stupid. It's arguably another form of consumerism, and this spills over into friendship and dating. It creates a nasty form of snobbery which punishes women in particular.

Read the following article.

It is true that I married a university graduate, like my father. My husband got his degree in the humanities. He works in the charity sector. Fortunately I grew up with a mother who thinks consumerism is sinful and that the love of money is the root of all evil. We are very happy.

A friend of mine from university married a skilled tradesman, like her father. He didn't go to uni at all. He is foreman for some company or other. When they got married, he already had a house. My friend still has her teaching job, but she also has a house, garden, chickens, a car, etc., etc. They are very happy.

A friend of mine who went to different universities married a farmer--not like her late father, actually. I think he was in telecommunications. Anyway the farmer had dropped out of uni. He works for his older brother, who owns the farm. They live in their own farmhouse and have a glorious view. This friend also has a teaching job, but also a farmhouse and guaranteed work for her husband, two children, an extended farming family, a pick-up truck, etc., etc. They are all very happy.

I don't think anyone should feel she should HAVE to date a guy with whom she has little in common, but making friends from all ages and walks of life is a good idea. It's also a good idea to meet as many guys at college or uni as possible, so as to realize that not all guys at college or uni are as smart as some of the tradesmen and self-employed businessmen you have met. Also, not all of them are suited for college or uni life and drop out sooner rather than later to take up some trade they discover they would really prefer to white-collar work.

Mostly I think it is important to make friends, real buddies, guys who respect you and whom you respect. They don't have to be just like you, and you don't have to be just like them. Naturally, it's a good plan to share core values with anyone thinking you might be a good girlfriend or marriage prospect. But core values must have some kind of objective value. "Love of family" is objectively valuable. "Wears Ralph Lauren" is not. "Is a critical thinker" is objectively valuable. "Went to Harvard" is not.

I really honestly don't think "has university education" should be anyone's criteria for befriending men. If you have a university education, great. Hopefully that opens the career/job doors for you you want opened and hasn't crippled you with debt. University is a great place to make friends, friends you may have all your life. But it's supposed to make you a broad-minded person, confident in speaking with all kinds of people and figuring how best to communicate ideas to different audiences (e.g. if you study math, how you would teach it to a five year old), not closing you off to other people, as if uni had inducted you into a sacred priesthood. I'm not saying you should go on a date with a real slacker; I'm just saying, stop rejecting 90% of humanity before they've even said "Hi."

Meanwhile, although your husband's way of life would have an enormous impact on your life--so you need to be really sure before you sign on--women are no longer defined socially by their marriages. Okay, here at the Historical House, I am definitely Mrs B.A. But to a segment of the Catholic reading public, I am definitely DCM.  Over the sea, Mrs Tradesman is still Professor Herself, and Mrs Farmer is still Professional Mezzo-soprano.

Boaz's Cold Feet

Yesterday I read the charming Book of Ruth in the Old Testament and decided I really must have a look at how one or two of the Early Church Fathers read the story. Sadly I haven't managed to do that yet, but I was struck by the pitiable circumstances of women without husbands or sons in Naomi's day.

If you remember, Naomi is a married woman with two sons and two daughters-in-law. Her husband dies and  her sons die, and she tells her daughters-in-law to leave her and go back to their kinsmen back home. (In short, "Save yourselves!") One takes her advice, but Ruth stubbornly sticks with her, which seems to have been truly heroic. Instead of fleeing to the protection of her own family, Ruth adds her small strength to that of Naomi and goes out to work on her behalf. 

Working in the fields seems to have been dangerous for women, who were in constant danger of sexual assault, and the owner of the field where Ruth gleans away gives special orders that she not be harassed and even that grain from the official harvest be left for her. Hearing that Ruth has been singled out for special protection, Naomi tells Ruth to go out and snaffle the owner. (I paraphrase, naturally.) She is to find Boaz when he is asleep after some harvesting party, uncover his feet and lie down at them. 

I recall reading some nonsense about how "feet" is a euphemism, blah, blah, blah, but speaking as a middle-aged person who does not sleep as well as she did in her youth, alas, I know exactly what Naomi was up to. She wanted to make sure Boaz woke up and noticed Naomi's superlative humility. How to wake a middle-aged person up without incurring his or her wrath? Remove the blanket from over their feet and wait. When the poor middle-aged feet get cold, the poor middle-ager will wake up, as did Boaz. 

Someone or other has tried to justify chasing after men with Ruth's pursuit of Boaz. However, I would posit that Boaz "made the first move", as the saying is, by singling out Ruth for special protection and alms-in-the-form-of-grain. Naomi, who was an older woman and very realistic, had enough evidence to guess that Boaz might like to marry pretty, much-younger Ruth. Trusting to Boaz's reputation as a good man,  and not wanting Ruth and herself to live in unprotected poverty, she sent Ruth into a potentially dangerous situation. This was not about romantic love; it was about economics and safety. But it was also about good people recognizing other good people. Instead of being cross, Boaz was impressed that Ruth had made herself vulnerable to him, not to some handsome young guy--as young women generally do, sometimes for shallow reasons, sometimes not. 

Still that was then. Women in the west don't usually have to depend on their male relations for economic support, and good luck to you if you try to convince them that they owe you your living. Not only are all kinds of jobs and professions open to us, it is against the law for people to sexually harass us while we work at them. If you're good at your job--and you're not in some incredibly sexist-agist business like television--you can look like a monkey puzzle and you won't starve to death. 

Obviously the Book of Ruth is not a sacred version of The Rules, but the aspect of the Ruth-Boaz relationship that really speaks to me is that Ruth may have "gone after" Boaz, after an older, perhaps wiser, woman who sincerely loved her judged this to be a good idea, but he was significantly older than herself. 

I don't want twenty-somethings to cry into their morning coffee, but it does seem to me that the older are flattered by the attention and loyalty of the younger, and young people seem quite beautiful to the older, just for being young. If all the 20-something boys around you seem oblivious to your inner beauty, the 30-something men are probably not. However, this does not make them any less dangerous to your happiness, if they are jerks. A jerky 20-something wants a supermodel; a jerky 30-something wants a young thing to dominated. But at good 30-something man, if he isn't married already, will be equally surprised and delighted if a 20-something gives him the time of day.

Yes, I know you are probably sick of being hit on by "creepy older men" but not all older men are creepy, and nobody is creepy just for being five years or more older than you. It is worth it to strike up conversations with older guys in your social groups, just to be friendly. I do not, however, recommend finding the most attractive and attentive one where he is asleep after a party and uncovering his feet. You're not an impoverished widowed Moabite with a mother-in-law to feed. 

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?

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.

Singles as Part of Extended Families

Does anyone know if Singles have been mentioned during the Synod of the Family?

I was thinking the other day about my parents far away on the other side of the Atlantic, and how glad I am that three of my brothers and sisters--all the unmarried ones---still live in their town. Meanwhile, it would never occur to me to think that these siblings lack "families of their own", for what are the rest of us all? Chopped liver? 

I am not a fan of the concept "nuclear family" , which apparently means a couple + kids seemingly besieged by weird old grandparents, eccentric uncles and aunts, plus bullying cousins, at the holidays. This is the Hollywood idea of the family, and it makes no sense to me. Of course, it probably has something to do with migration patterns of Americans within the United States. Or Hollywood itself. Not exactly a family-friendly institution, is it? 

My parents have five adult children (plus two children-in-law) and the big house they bought in 1985, so it is easy to see them as the centre of our extended family, with adult children moving back in and moving out again or coming to visit, with or without spouses, with or without their own children.  I suppose one day the center will shift eastward to Quebec, to my eldest brother, his wife and their children. But for now I see everyone defined by their relationship to my parents (when, naturally, I look beyond their relationship to me). 

So far I have not been much troubled by women with children pulling sad faces and asking me if I am sorry I don't have "a family of my own." Naturally I am sorry I haven't conceived children, but I do have a family of my own. The people I feel very badly for are those who have no family at all: not a living parent, no sibling, no child, no foster mother, no spouse, nobody.  

That is when the Church really has to come to the rescue, I imagine. And by "Church" I do not mean a semi-faceless entity composed of priests, sisters and bishops (weird how sisters are given a semi-clerical state when they are laypeople like the rest of us), but the whoooooooole Church, which mostly means laypeople. 

This reminds me of a semi-angry message I got from a young married woman and mother who was annoyed that there was nothing established at her parish church to get other young married people with children to meet each other, as there was at a local Evangelical establishment. I believe I wrote back something like, "Well, meet with your parish priest and offer to start one," and I could almost hear the screech. Oh no, she was sooo busy, being a young married working mother and all. She couldn't possibly do it. "The Church" should do it. 

"We ARE the Church," I thought. This was a big power-to-the-laypeople slogan in the 1970s, but it has stuck in my head as something very true. We ARE the Church. WE are the Church. Which means if we want something done, we should do it. Naturally, if this is something parish-based, or we want to use church buildings, we have to ask for priestly blessing. 

Anyway, I am very pleased thinking about the fact that my Single brother and sisters have the time and opportunity to keep an eye on our parents, although I remind myself that expecting Singles to do a lot more work than Married-People-with-Children is one of the problems of Single life. In the workplace, this gets articulated as "Well, you don't have a family to go home to, so...", which is pretty darn presumptuous, especially if you need to get home to your aged mother or your highly dependent sibling. Children-of-your-own are not synonymous with "family."

And these are my thoughts on Single Life for the day--oh, except for one. If you think the Church should come up with a scheme to get Catholic Singles married to each other, than you might want to come up with your own scheme and consult with others how you might implement it. After all, you are the Church. When I was Single, I thought it would be nice to blog for Singles, and as a result I made a lot of friends and got married to another Catholic Single. It never occurred to me to ask anyone's permission to blog for fellow Catholic Singles. I just did it.  

Further Thoughts on Acceptance and Exclusion in Dance

When I was 12 or so, I thought I'd sign up for ballroom dancing lessons. My mother thought this a good idea and signed up my brother, too, with the promise that she would increase his allowance. Apparently paying brothers to escort sisters to dancing lessons was one of my mother's beliefs. Sadly, the course was undersubscribed and therefore cancelled. It would be more than a decade before I learned the mysteries of the waltz, the foxtrot, the tango and the polka.

The assumption was that one needs to go to dance lessons with a willing partner, but nowadays many dance classes assure the potential subscriber that partners are not needed. Certainly swing-dancing classes in Edinburgh rotate partners, and if sometimes there are not men enough to go around, some plucky women take the lead role. Still, I see some fortunate women bringing leads with them, which means they are guaranteed someone to dance with them at the subsequent socials, and if they stumble and their leads make faces, the girls can kick them in the shins or give them heck at home instead of cringing and smiling in that horrible, weak, subordinate way women so frequently employ. Please forgive me, kind sir. If I could I would self-combust so as to remove my sub-human self from your celestial orbit.

Given that to get through a swing-dancing social as a solo beginner one might need a skin of rawhide, I am rethinking my advice to Single women to take up partner dancing as a way to meet people. The dance world is very big and varied, though, so I will just posit that different clubs have different philosophies when it comes to welcoming beginners. If you're a skilled dancer already, then by all means do not be afraid to join a club in a new town and go to their socials. In cold Edinburgh, I note that there is an unspoken acknowledgement of the aristocracy of talent. If, however, you are a beginner, you may wish to observe and judge how well the organizers welcome complete novices before deciding to risk the socials.

Naturally there will be classes for beginners. And naturally beginners will drop out again and again and again. Thus, those beginner classes never seem to get old and never stop attracting new money. After almost a year of them, I have noticed that new faces tend to disappear after just one or two classes, and how there is an exodus of learners once the social begins. There is a corresponding influx of the old hands, who for the most part dance with each other.

Meanwhile, I have gone to socials almost weekly for six months, and the only conversations I have had there that went deeper than the smallest small talk have been about Polish literature.  (That said, I had an excellent lunch-time talk about religious faith with a visiting Canadian during a Saturday of workshops.)

The question the Single woman will want to ask herself before she sails out for a night of partner-dancing is, "How much more feeling of being-passed-over-by-men can I take?" You pay your money and you take your chances. Me, £5.50 for a lesson and then an hour of, perhaps, not dancing with a soul, is not a painful investment. The lesson will certainly be worth £5.50, and if no-one at all dances with me afterwards, I just go home to my husband and it doesn't matter. £5.50 and an hour of my life--not a bad risk. If my ego takes a topple, B.A. provides a soft landing.

However, I have quite a lot of rejection in my life already. As a freelance writer, I send out material, and sometimes it is accepted, and sometimes it is rejected. Lately I have forced myself to send out fictional stories--my first great love--to magazines, and the magazines gaily reject them. Recently I got two rejections on the same day. That would have been a bad day to find myself at a swing-dancing social, no fellow beginners in sight.

If you are already in a very comfortable place in your life, with a strong emotional support network, and work or study you enjoy and excel at, a bit of cold-shouldering won't hurt you. You may even find it bracing, in a "I'll show them I'm no lightweight" kind of way. However, if you are feeling kicked by life, then I would recommend choosing some other activity than one that entails you having to ask men to dance or standing around hoping men will ask you to dance--unless you are already a very fine dancer indeed. If you are a fine dancer, then I would definitely recommend dancing as a way to meet people, although heaven knows what the fine dancers I see all talk about.  Maybe the feelings of affirmation and the fun of dancing will be enough for you. 

I will ponder further the subject of clubs and activities most likely to welcome and affirm Single women. For the time being, I would suggest picking something that plays to your strengths. If you are crazy about wildflowers, a hiking club might be appreciative of your knowledge of the little feathery things at the side of the path.

Update: To be fair, I have enjoyed myself enough for the past six months to smile through anything. I  even wrote such positive reviews of a swing performance at the Edinburgh Festival that I totally forgot how miserable and out-of-place I felt there until B.A. reminded me. (Sad and embarrassing story. In short, everyone was invited to attend and support the locals in the show. I went happily and joined the people I recognized from swing-dancing on the bleachers. They either looked at me like I had two heads or ignored me completely. Mortifying.)  I may go in the future, if only to chat with other fish-out-of-water. But really, as you can see, I am too cross right now even to fake enjoyment and high spirits.  I am looking forward to seeing how the Toronto scene welcomes newcomers; I already know that Montreal has developed some fantastic ways to develop their community.

Singles over 60

A neighbour of mine, a recent widow, recently died. I was sad to hear about her husband; I was shocked to hear about her.

"Did she die of a broken heart?" I exclaimed.

It would seem so. And I was surprised because she had adult children, young grandchildren, the home she has lived in for seventy years... But no. She just died. One day she stood up, she fell down and someone called an ambulance, but that was it. May she rest in peace and may perpetual light shine upon her.

I knew a widow--my grandmother's best friend--who cried for her husband on her deathbed. Her husband died a lot later than my grandfather did--the widow never really had time to get used to it. Poor woman, it was really a terrible shock, even though the couple was in their eighties.

This will make Benedict Ambrose laugh, but one of the thoughts I had yesterday, as I gave up on a terrible weekend and £55, was how terrible my life could be if my husband died. Imagine if I had gone home from a weekend of being blanked to an empty flat, no kind man to tell me that he would never blank me himself, all the rest of my family at least three thousand miles away. Ick.

Naturally my emergency plan is the Benedictine of Ryde, but I cannot be sure they would go along with being my emergency plan, so my next recourse would be Canada, where my family is, and where I sincerely hope I could find a job among whatever Catholic organization I haven't alienated yet. Hopefully I could keep my "It's so much better in Scotland" remarks to a minimum although--to be frank--what could be more Toronto than loudly dreaming of some country far, far away?

I know a Single woman who has just turned 60, and when I last saw her, she was walking to the bus stop, going home from a night out at the theatre. I was going home from the first dance this weekend, and I recognized her by her beautiful long silver hair, piled in an elegant bun, her chic outfit and her high heeled shoes. She told me she had just put her 92 year old friend in a cab. It was hard for her to remember her friend was 92, and to stop heedless people into crowding past her friend, unaware that the friend's youthful appearance hid fragile, 92 year old bones.

The more I heard about this 92 year old, the more amazed I was. She was just back from a writer's conference up north; she had given an address, having written dozens of successful novels herself. And she loved dressing up, going out, and going the the theatre with such younger friends as my 60 year old friend.

Thinking now about this pair of chic, theatre-going Single women, aged 60 and 62, I feel rather pathetic. One is a retired art teacher who lives on her pension, paints beautifully and has got a splendid exhibit up. The other is a successful paperback novelist. Of course, they are Scots, and this has been their city for decades, but their survival--emotional or financial--does not at all depend on a man.

Oh dear, that sounded very feminist in a "fish needs a bicycle" kind of way, and let us hasten to remind ourselves that Gloria Steinem was rarely without a high-status male of one kind or another and eventually married--some time after she had plastic surgery, I recall, although apparently she had a really good excuse for that: folds of fat making contact lenses impossible, or something.

However, I am impressed that these Edinburgh women have managed to get it all together in a way I have not, and I hope that some of their self-reliance rubs off on me before it is too late!

Seraphic's Guide to the Breakup Speech

A tempting approach but no.

I enjoyed this article in Verily, the one fashion-and-lifestyle-magazine I would love to write for. (Email me!). Wouldn't it be cool if I were the Verily advice columnist? Yes, it would.

If you are Single and not happy about it, the article may make you feel a bit baleful. When, you will wonder, am I going to get that cocaine-like rush, eh? Where's my romantic once-a-week intentional hiking date? I like hiking. Hiking is good. Is that guy really her fiancé, or is that a model? 

However, there's an even worse train of thought and it is the glum, Been there, done that, rush gone, still got the guy, don't want to marry him. 

The horror. The embarrassment. The squeamy ghastliness of it all. What the heck are you supposed to do when for months you have been planning your future out loud with your boyfriend and now you realize you would rather stick pins in your eyeballs than go through with it?

Yeah, it's bad.  I know because I have been there. More than once. And I still feel bad about it.  See Psalm 24/25: Remember not the sins of my youth, O Lord. 

We never want to be the bad guy. We are often wrongly haunted by the thought that we are the bad guy. But sometimes we are the bad guy. And if possible and appropriate we have to apologize. (A guy once apologized for breaking up with me. "That was, what, nine years ago," I replied.) The time to apologize is during your break-up talk at the doughnut shop. And will it be hard? Yes. Is it okay to make it sound like this is all his fault? No--although you should be 100% clear to yourself why (A) you thought he was so fantastic at first and (B) what character revelations convinced you that marriage to him would be a big mistake. "You're so boring I could scream" is something for your diary, not for his ears.

I am sorry I behaved so imprudently is probably something that will need  to be said. When you asked me out, I was delighted because I had always wanted to go out with [a college student/ a nice Catholic boy/anyone at all]. I couldn't believe that after [X] years without a boyfriend, someone actually liked me that much. You made me feel wonderful. You did these great things: [list the great things], and I honestly thought that we would get married one day. So when we were making out [or whatever, maybe all you did was hold hands], I thought it was okay because you were such a great kisser [hand-holder] and also because I assumed we were getting married. 

However, all our time together taught me some things about myself that I didn't realize when we met, and it is that I won't be happy as a married woman unless to a man who is [whatever it is he  isn't]/shares my core values [list them]. All I can say is that I am really terribly sorry, and I was so blown away by your [good qualities] that I just didn't think. 

Naturally you would deliver this speech in person, or at very least on the phone, because you don't want him to post your email to the internet in an uncharacteristic fit of rage. And you don't want to write a letter because who knows who will see that? If he keeps it, his eventual wife will find it. (Me, I wouldn't read past, "I am sorry I behaved so imprudently," but apparently there are women who think it is okay to sneak their husband's letters. I don't. ) And perhaps the social conventions of your community condemn these easier options.

You are in this situation because you made a decision--he's perfect for me, we're getting married one day--before all the data was in. That was very imprudent of you, and probably fuelled by such things as relief, vanity, loneliness, sexual attraction, and who knows what. I'm not throwing stones. Glass houses, and all that. I feel pretty rotten about my youthful imprudence. But that's now. At the time I was even more angry at the men for not being the men I thought they were supposed to be than I was at myself. Meanwhile, I thought  helplessly that I was fickle; I wasn't fickle: I just had more information. 

So even if a man is crazy about you, and you feel crazy about him, it is better not to talk about marriage, the future, etc., unless you have known him for some time, and you are 100% okay with the fact that he is [X, Y, Z], and think it absolutely marvellous. When you catch him telling whoppers, you laugh merrily in a comradely way. When you perceive he has no ambition, you are charmed by his relaxed live-and-let-live philosophy and adopt it as your own.  When he... Who am I kidding? Listen, just don't go on about your happy future together until he has made the serious commitment of buying a ring and setting a date, and you have made the serious commitment of saying yes.

Make-believe is so much fun, isn't it? But then Real Life presents you with a bill, and that is not so much fun.  Real Life hands you a bill and slaps you in the face to boot. And very unfortunately, other people may have been colluding with you in your make-believe because they too have made their own make-believe plans, e.g. your prospective father-in-law thinks that your dad will be able to give your boyfriend a leg up in business, or your prospective mother-in-law thinks your babies will be beautiful. Either way, their loyalties are not to you but to their son, and as much as you like them and want them to think well of you, if you have been talking marriage to their love-struck son and then you break it off, say good-bye. Literally you may have to say good-bye. If you do that, though, you are certainly braver than I ever was.

With all your speeches and apologies and people feeling sorry for your ex and him crying and whatever it is men do now--nothing would surprise me--it may be hard to remember the justice of your cause. You are to blame for imprudence--although depending on your circumstances, e.g. you were only seventeen, there are mitigating factors--but not for bravely breaking up. If you don't want to marry a man, but he thinks you do, you owe it to him to tell him that you don't. And your reasons for that are your own and whatever they are, if they are true, they are good enough. If it's because he is poor, and you can't live with that, others may scream at you, but I certainly won't. Better the poor boy marry a woman who enjoys his poverty (or thinks he is rich compared to her, or thinks he is worth it) than to marry a woman who resents him whenever he turns on the TV.

I come from a privileged background where adults are expected to know our cultural heritage, and I need to marry a man who does too.

I come from a humble home where we feel rich because of our Roman Catholic faith in our Risen Lord, and I need to marry a man who does too. 

I come from a traditional background in which men are expected to be the breadwinners, and women are expected to put homemaking and the care of their children first, and although everyone on TV and at college tells me this is wrong, this is the future I want for myself.

This last reminds me of something that is not quite a get-out-of-jail-free card, but might assuage some of your guilt. Society keeps telling us that we are nothing if someone doesn't find us attractive, and so it is no wonder that we are so relieved when a cute guy finds us cute, and start thinking marriage thoughts before we have eaten dinner with his family (or in the absence of family, friends).

Society also keeps shoving stories about girls overcoming their own "prejudices" to date/sleep with/marry boys whose values are polar opposite to our own. Bizarrely these are called "Romeo and Juliet" stories when Shakespeare's whole point is that Romeo and Juliet had everything in common and their fathers' rivalry was based on passion.

Certain kinds of families are depicted as cruel or stupid, and and others, especially those of "the other" are shown to be jolly and fun.  (I know of a WASP couple who walked out of My Big Fat Greek Wedding; their WASP son had been ditched by his wife for the sin of not being sufficiently of her ethnic group. Too bad she didn't admit her core value to herself and him BEFORE they married.) No doubt this is something for communities to think about, but it doesn't point to guaranteed happiness in marriage. (I know of a woman who secretly learned her husband's family's language, and they only found out about it when they were enjoying their usual past time of insulting her in front of her face, and finally she told them off in words they thought only they could understand.)

Therefore you may be more-or-less brainwashed to think that sexual attraction = love and romantic love should conquer all, including what you really, really want in a husband. And, behold, you may have been told what you want (a man with a career he enjoys, a man who shares your faith in God, a man who speaks your parents' language, a man who knows Orff from an ostrich, a man who encourages you in YOUR career)  is shallow, bad, wrong, liberal, reactionary, whatever.  Well, I am sorry, but a husband is for life, and the solution to the Annulment Crisis is to stop people from marrying the wrong person, or from marrying when we are the wrong people ourselves.

So although you may owe your soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend an apology for your initial imprudence, you are perfectly justified in telling him you don't want to marry him. Just make it about you, and what you want from marriage, not about him and how inadequate he may be. Apologize for imprudence, stand firm for your core values. Be more careful of the next man's feelings.

She slides shut the door on the grille. 

She opens it again briefly.

And go to confession.

Slam.

It's Just Coffee, But...

A reader pointed out the absolute hellish torture "just a coffee" can be if you have almost nothing in common with a fellow, even if that "almost" is shared religious faith.

Personally I am skeptical, but then I was forced to examine my whole culturally-underpinned attitude towards the café. There may be whole swathes of society who never go to cafés, just as there are vast crowds of women who would never be caught dead in a betting shop.

Embarrassing secret: whenever I imagine a new chap asking a reader out for coffee, the scene in my head is always the parish hall at St. Paul's R.C. Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aka "the Harvard church."

There is the strong possibility that there are communities of adults in which, "Hey, let's have a coffee" would be a weird thing to say. A feminist decontructionist would have a field day with the middle-class, urban, Global North assumptions of my blog.

What this is all pointing to is class/social origin. As I currently believe in democracy, I don't believe in class hierarchy. In fact, British class chippiness makes me want to vomit, whether it's a high school drop-out whining about "posh people" or a titled alcoholic putting on airs. However, I acknowledge that my assumptions are what I suppose would be widely recognized as "urban, middle-class." Frankly, I would prefer to be considered a bourgeoise, and that crashing noise was Benedict Ambrose fainting in horror. My German-American grandma's people were utterly bourgeois before the 1929 Crash, and I'm wistful about it. All that lovely money and servants, too. Sigh, sigh.

***********

It's not speed-dating, but would an hour in café quietly assessing a man's fitness as a suitor actually kill anyone? No, but if he doesn't understand the concept of "it's just coffee", there could be an embarrassing conversation ahead.

Who is the chap most likely to think an appointment in a café actually means more than two well-disposed people passing the time of day, calling a truce in the War between the Sexes long enough to see if they have anything in common?

Situation A. It could be the chap who has been hanging about, making awkward conversation, for weeks on end, making you feel more and more uncomfortable because he is soooo boring.

Situation B. Or it could be the chap who thinks any meeting with a woman naturally ends in sex.

With extreme reluctance, the existence of such characters makes me release my grip on the absolutism of my rule, "It's just coffee."

The thought "it's just coffee" is supposed to encourage the skittish girl to stop hearing "Marry me?" every time a big lumbering male says "Coffee?" and to stop rejecting every single man who shows a flicker of interest in her because he doesn't resemble her fond imaginings of what The Perfect Man is like.

However, this is not to say that some women cannot tell before an hour's conversation over coffee, that they and the men who will eventually ask them for coffee do not share core values. 

As long term readers know, I am pretty obsessed with married couples sharing core values. And although a shared and active interest in Catholicism is one of my core values, it may not be one of your core values, even if you are a Catholic, capisce? For example, your central core value may be artistic talent. You may be the sort of woman who will put up with anything, as long as your man is producing really stellar paintings. Heaven help you, but if that's your core value, that's what it is.

Finding the spouse who will make you happy (and whom you will make happy) depends on an authentic, humble, nonsense-free examination of who you really are right now. It is not a good place for blame. No blame. No name-calling. If some guy makes you feel guilty about your core value, e.g. 'Oh, you are such a wonderful woman except for your outrageous obsession with animal rights", then refuse to see him as a potential suitor.

SITUATION A

So if you meet a man who hangs around long enough to let you know that A) he has a crush on you and B) he does not share your core values, there is no need to go out for coffee with him. Indeed, it is kinder not, only now you might have the embarrassment of explaining why. You don't actually ever have to explain why, of course. You can keep saying "No, thank-you" like a parrot. It's your right.

Scooter: Would you like to have coffee some time?

You: No, thank you.

Scooter: Why not?

You: No, thank you.

Scooter: It's just a coffee, for Pete's sake.

You: No, thank you.

However, if you are in a kind and courageous mood, you can give an explanation.

Scooter: Would you like to have coffee some time?

You: No, thank you.

Scooter: Why not?

You: I'm an animal rights activist, and I wouldn't feel comfortable spending an hour with a man who hunts down and shoots living creatures for fun.

Scooter: Aw, come on.

You: I appreciate the invitation, but no thank you.

Your core value may be slightly embarrassing of course. For example, if your core value is belonging to a certain community, and a chap who doesn't belong asks you for coffee, and just the thought of talking to a guy who doesn't belong to your community for an hour freezes your blood, then expressing this is going to be tricky. Still, you are under no obligation to tell him.

Scooter: Would you like to have coffee some time?

You: No, thank you.

Scooter: Why not?

You: I'm a Roman Catholic, and I wouldn't feel comfortable spending an hour with a man who isn't himself a Roman Catholic.

Scooter: Have I fallen into a time-warp? Is this Glasgow in 1985?

You: I am never, ever, putting out.

Scooter: Bye.

Personally, I think this is too harsh. A coffee is just a coffee, and a good way to make business contacts, acquaintances, all kinds of social relationships---unless the guy has been hanging around for weeks making his romantic interest clear.

I had a blind coffee date with a guy the student who set me up with him called "Professor George." It was a successful coffee date because I soon discovered that Professor George's core value was not love-of-academia but Greece. Professor George, who almost never set foot inside a church, assured me that the One True Faith was the Greek Orthodox, and that is when I knew Professor George and I were never going to have another date. It took only an hour, and no hearts were broken. Sadly, both Professor George and I were very embarrassed because neither of us went thinking "It's just a coffee." Silly us. We might have been great additions to each other's Rolodex.

In contrast to Professor George was Zeke (not his real name). Zeke took quite a shine to your dear Auntie, as she was a sweet, fluffy little thing in her early 20s, despite the fact that Zeke's core value was Jewishness. Zeke was rather down on the religious side of Judaism, but he used to tell me hopeful stories in which the Catholic heroine converts to Judaism out of love for her devoted Jewish boyfriend. So I never did have coffee with Zeke ("Aw, come on") although he was very nice indeed. He never made me feel rotten for saying I could only ever date a Catholic, possibly because he knew deep down that he could only ever marry a Jew.

SITUATION B

The other situation is the guy whose core value is sexual sin to such an extent that he tells you before he even asks you out for coffee. In such a situation, don't have coffee with him. Even a squirrel has the brains to run away from a hunter, once it hears the gun go off.

Amusingly enough--unless he is trying it on with you there and then--this guy transcends all national, class and religious boundaries. All over the world, at all times, in all places, there are men scheming to get sex for free. Well, maybe not in all places. But in all villages, towns and army bases. There are some women like that, too, of course. Occasionally a hacked-off man tells me a funny story of advances thrown his way by some good-time girl who is not just there for the dancing/food/sunshine, know what she means, nudge, nudge.

Throughout history, of course, men have been hit on by prostitutes. It frequently happens in books, too, and the men generally turn up their collars, mutter "No, thank you," press a few coins upon the damsel (if they are moved by pity) and skitter off into the rain.  I once knew a young man who was solicited by hookers when he was on the way to my school prom with his date. They made opprobrious remarks about my poor classmate and predicted that he would have a better time with them than with her. Naturally this was absolutely horrible, so why am I crying with laughter? Dear me, go now and read something pious and worthy.

Poppets, My Heart: Avoid Self-Declared Bad Guys

You will be the death of me. I just found an email from a reader--girls, ALWAYS use the subject heading or I will think you are spam---who went on a first date with a man who told her he was a "bad guy."

Now I am prostrate, worrying that this reader has decided to give him the time of day because I didn't email back in time. It's like being the mother of a six hundred invisible girls who are all wandering around the world, getting into trouble.

Always use the subject heading when you email me, and always remember that if a man says he is a "bad guy", he very probably is a bad guy. Good guys don't tell you they are bad guys. Quiet or bold, they just don't.  Of course, not all bad guys will be so dumb as to tell you, but I believe it cuts down on the bad guys' guilt later if they can think, "Well, I told her I was a bad guy."

When a guy tells you he is a bad guy, he's asking for permission to act like a bad guy. If you ever see him again, he may take that as the permission he was hoping for.

There are good boys, darn it. There are at least two in my parish. Let everyone arrive in Edinburgh en masse to have a look at them.

The Reality of Other People

Benedict Ambrose is a big fan of the novelist-philosopher Iris Murdoch, and Murdoch had this to say about love and reality: "Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. Love...is the discovery of reality."  

B.A. quoted this at a dinner party, and both ladies present looked highly skeptical that the realization that something other than oneself is real is extremely difficult. Was Murdoch some kind of monster, or were we just not getting it?    

Then I remembered something Father Bernard Lonergan wrote about Eddington's two tables. Eddington observed that every table is the table is the table as it appears to us AND the table as it is to itself, i.e. atoms surrounded by emptiness. Lonergan described the difference between things as they are in relation to us, and things as they are in themselves. 

We can even see God in this way: when we consider the Incarnation and salvific history, we are most definitely seeing God as He is in relation to us. But when we contemplate God in His Triune majesty, we worship Him for who He is. At a certain point in prayer we have to leave off asking for gifts and saying sorry for sins and just contemplate He Who Is in Himself. Simultaneously God is for us and also wrapped up in an eternal dance between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Yes, it's a mystery.

People are also a mystery, to a certain extent, and the one way I know you can come close to seeing a person as God sees them is to fall in love with him/her. And I mean really him/her, virtues, warts and all. You see that he is an alcoholic or a fibber or lazy or chews his toenails or whatever, but you know--truthfully--"I can accept that." This is not a "should" by the way, and most definitely not something to talk yourself into. It is just a phenomenon that happens or doesn't. And what a phenomenon! Hopefully you also see him for who he IS in himself, and not just who he is in relation to you, e.g. "My idol."

So I think what Murdoch was getting at is that everybody and everything is something outside of ourselves and not contingent on us. If we shut our eyes, the people around are still there. If we were to wink out of existence, reality would go on without us. If I should keel over dead, my mother would be very sad, but she would probably still go on her next river cruise. I certainly hope so. 

Children have a hard time seeing their mothers as anyone other than their mother. This drives some mothers crazy, and they try to impress upon their children that they are something other than "Mother" to themselves. I am not sure if this is a good idea or not, but possibly it is necessary so that the mothers don't go crazy and burn their homes down. Children have no power, no money, few rights, and little understanding; possibly believing that their mothers' lives revolve completely around them is necessary for their sanity. 

But eventually the child "gets it" and sees that his mother is neither goddess nor slave but a woman at least 14 years older than himself, with her own interests, own friends (hopefully), own opinions (which are sometimes wrongheaded, but not the war crimes they seemed when he was 14), and own experience of herself. I'm sorry to say the first literary example that comes into my head is from The Vampire Lestat, when Lestat turns his mother into a vampire, and she stops being his mother to assert herself as Gabrielle. 

Only a very childish person sees everyone around himself solely in relation to himself, and what he can get out of them, or what he wants them to be. In the brutal words of one young man I know, re: the girls who chase him all over the shop, "I can see why they are interested in me, but I don't see why they think I should be interested in them."  As staggering as this statement may sound, it implies "They aren't considering who I may be or what my interests are, are they?" 

Imagine Prince William at the University of Saint Andrews, and how difficult it must have been to make friends who actually liked him for himself and not because he was, you know, the second in line to the throne. The question "What could Prince William do for me?" must have jumped to hundreds of adolescent minds, however subconsciously. This sort of selfishness is easily noted by the thinker and regretted as base, but I pity whichever young things on campus got a random smile from Prince William and allowed themselves to spin this everyday pleasant social convention into "OMG! He likes me! Maybe we'll get married! I'll be the QUEEN!" 

Well, I would say more, but I must away to a funeral. I am thinking of the reality of my husband and how he will feel if I don't meet him at Paolozzi's giant foot sculpture outside the Cathedral when I said I would. 

Nature's Little Double Standards

Met in January 17, 1971. Still together.

The crime of rape is mentioned in this post.

***
Men and women are different.

I'll just let you sit with that statement for a moment.

Men and women are different when it comes to sexuality, and the sooner girls accept this the better. B.A. was horrified when he discovered that a young female acquaintance was living in a hostel with co-ed dorms. When she beds down at night, it is in a room with a random, changing selection of men. When B.A. asked her if she wasn't worried about being attacked, she looked at him as if this was the most sexist, paternalist thing she had ever heard and said she was just as likely to be attacked by women.

Um. No.

I am sorry to begin a discussion of male sexuality with rape. I apologize to all my male readers. It's not you: it's me. As a child, the first novels I read with sexual content involved rape: Song for a Dark Queen by Rosemary Sutcliffe comes to mind, as of course does the explicit, true-crime, gang rape of a devout Catholic Irish immigrant in The Donnellys Must Die by Orlo Miller. Both of these novels were in my Catholic elementary school library.

Meanwhile, a number of my classmates were sexual bullies. The bullying ranged from mocking girls in general for having to have periods (which the boys learned about from the school library's copy of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret) to leaping on top of a  selected female classmate in the schoolyard while shouting "Gang bang!" Male hands shoved up female shirts and down female trousers, and I was sorry that the boy who finally got caught doing this was one of the least violent offenders. I hope nobody was actually raped.

The threat of rape scares many women silly, especially as the great bulk of world literature tells us it is the worst thing that can ever happen to us--"worse than death." I think it must be the absolute worst for little girls and other virgins because even in a loving marriage, bride fortified with strong drink, defloration can be (can be, not always) indescribably painful. Meanwhile, I believe an encounter with seething male hatred for women-in-the-abstract, or people-of-my-ethnic-group, or me-the-stuck-up-bitch would be so horrible, I take every legal step I can to prevent it happening to me. (Choosing my company carefully is key.)

Ordinary female sexuality is marked by the blood, pain and unfair shame of menstruation, and then (often) the blood, pain and unfair-and-confusing shame of defloration. Oh, and females get pregnant. When a girl or woman gets pregnant, people around assume she has had sex. Their reactions may range from joy that a grandchild is on the way to an honour killing.

Ordinary male sexuality is not marked by blood, pain and shame. If a man runs away with a married woman in rural India, tribal elders may rule that his sisters be gang-raped, though. Sucks to be him, eh?

Men and women are different.

A male reader once wrote that he was tired of trying to talk to girls at Catholic events because too often they would look at him as if he were a serial killer. I am guessing that he was not as good looking as Tiago Gomes de Rocha, who actually is a serial killer. Too many women seem to think that men who are handsome are probably good and those who are not are more likely to be bad. It takes an act of reason to get beyond this. It also takes an act of reason, if haunted by stories of rape, to judge that men almost never sexually assault women at Theology on Tap.

Now we get to my apparently controversial belief that men know a woman is pretty when they first clap eyes on her, and women often need time to develop an attraction to men. Beyond the fact that many women are terrified of stranger-rape, where do I start?

Men carry two sets of look books. The first, shared by women, recognizes the unusual beauty of starlets and models. The second is highly characteristic to each man. Women can have a hard time getting our minds around this because most of us are not sexually attracted to women. We get that men are attracted to the nineteen-year-old supermodel du jour. We don't get that some men are clearly attracted to forty-year-old Mrs Macintosh behind the bar at the Whistling Snail. We blame men for having impossibly narrow standards of female beauty, but a short walk around the mall will reveal all kinds and conditions of women hand in hand with men, or pushing strollers.

Therefore, when I say that men should date only those women they think are pretty,  I am talking about a very large number of women. Whatever they may say to their friends before they grow up, men are really not that fussy. They don't need to be; as young men, they are capable of mating with almost any woman up for it. But at the same time, the inclinations of their hearts have an awful lot to do with their eyeballs.

Women, on the other hand, are a lot more imaginative than men. We are the primary consumers of romantic fiction and erotic fiction, whereas the primary consumers of internet pr*n are men. In general, I would say that men's sexuality is more visual and women's is more symbolic. What first got me interested in B.A. was not his photo (au contraire) but his college pal telling me that women throw themselves at him.*

Symbolic-minded women have a bad habit up making up stories about men we barely know. The classically handsome man at the front of the class seems clever. Tom probably is clever, therefore, and good to boot. He has a Polish/Croatian/Italian/Czech/Slovak/Slovene surname, so he is probably a devout Catholic, too. He is, therefore, committed to chastity and just wants to find a nice girl to get married to and have five children. It can take a dreamy college girl a long time to allow the reality of Tom (superficial, selfish, agnostic, unchaste, immature) to supplant her fond imaginings. Of course, the rapid A-Z-Q-Z thought process that follows an ordinary, somewhat awkward guy saying, "Hi, I'm Scooter" at a social event can be even more life-blighting.  "Let's go for coffee" does not mean "You'll have to give your body to me if we do."

That is why I advise women to have coffee with any man in her social circle who asks, unless she believes that he is mad, bad and dangerous to know. Not only is it just a coffee, it's an opportunity to get to know the reality of that man, to find out who he really is. (A subsequent date is another story. See here.)

When women accept the chance to get to know a man, we can look beyond our first impressions, which 99.999% of the time include  the thought that he does not look like Ryan Gosling, or whoever is our current symbol of male caring and sharing. When I first clapped eyes on B.A. and his unspeakable checked tweed jacket (of which I am now rather fond), I resolved that we were just going to be friends. Previously I had sternly told myself I was not going to make any decision about that funny reader Benedict Ambrose based on the photo someone sent; photos are not a good guide to potential female happiness.

If I were Queen of the World, I would disallow men's photographs on internet dating sites. You would all have to decide whether or not to respond to them based on their religion/profession/philosophy/hobbies/enthusiasm for you. ("Hi, Sharona. I'm Pete. I hope you don't mind me stating bluntly that I'm a huge Grace Kelly fan, and you look a lot like her. Plus, you're a Catholic schoolteacher, just like me. I teach junior maths, and I'm quite fond of the little monsters. Well, some are not so little; there are a couple of six-footers and I'm 5'8. If you don't mind being seen in public with a chap an inch shorter than you, I'd be delighted to take you out for a cup of coffee.")

As Pete's inventor, I will tell you right now that he does not look like Ryan Gosling but has a heart of pure, romantic, gooey gold. He really digs Grace Kelly. Sharona is seriously disappointed when she claps eyes on him, but by the end of coffee is seriously impressed by his personality, primarily his intelligence and sense of humour. She says yes to dinner. Strangely, he seems cuter at dinner.

Thus, NAture has yet another sad little double standard. A man can court a woman he finds pretty and often convince her that she should keep seeing him because he is inwardly incredibly attractive. A woman can't court a man she finds handsome and convince him that he should court her in return because she is outwardly very beautiful. Women can certainly flirt with men, and even (incredibly subtly) pursue men, but we can't court like men without looking, well, more like men.

My mother said that women don't get to go out and choose a handsome man; we have to choose from the men who are interested in us. She said that when I was 14, and I was furious. I thought she was completely out of date.  However, almost thirty more years have elapsed and I admit that she was right. Saint Edith Stein wrote about "Call" and "Response." In her discussion, men call us for companionship and/or help, and we respond. We can try to work against this, of course. We can declare this sexist and court men like men court women. Best of British luck!

The one comfort I hold out is that although men know at once who is pretty to them and who is not, they do not all fall in love at first sight. They ask out (or bob around) a pretty girl and either become more attracted to her because of her personality or they cease to feel attracted because of her personality (or, if they are immature/stupid/base, it becomes clear she isn't going to have sex with them any time soon). But "pretty" begins the process. If a man asks you out, he thinks you're pretty. And that's a good thing.

*Now, of course, accidentally seeing B.A. somewhere I don't expect him carries a rush of emotion only comparable to that caused by catching sight of my beloved parents ambling along somewhere.


Update: I cannot resist. This is the funniest comment I have seen so far on the "Catholic Answers" thread about my dating manifesto: Honestly her idea seems so foreign to me. I don't know anyone who would be okay with what she is saying. Over here people are "dating" months before they have a "first" date with each other. The blog is called Edinburgh Housewife, is she not American or not familiar with American dating standards?

The shocked tone makes me howl. No, darling, I am not American. Sometimes people aren't, and I daresay that is very sad for us. But having lived (and dated) in the USA for two years, I am familiar with a variety of American dating standards. Sometimes American dating standards are quite unlike those that rule your homeroom/dorm. Sometimes Americans graduate from college without being engaged. Sometimes Americans don't go to college at all, or even to high school with the opposite sex. (Eeek!)

Update 2: Okay, I erased my remarks about the gazillions of people who are not Americans yet speak English and blog. One assumes from her/his remark that the poster is still a child, and it is not nice to poke fun at children. I think a good solid term abroad would be helpful to her/his horizons, however. Like in Forrest Gump, you know.

A Dating Manifesto

A coffee is just a coffee.

The old conventions about dating might have been restrictive, ageist and unfair, but at least we knew where we were. By "we" I mean people from English-speaking countries, for the kind of "I'll pick you up at 8" dating we associate with the 1950s was never universal. Young women in most places and times were watched like hawks by their caring (or tyrannical) families because the elders knew perfectly well that undisciplined sexual attraction is dangerous to happiness, and that vast numbers of men, young or old, were out for what they could get. It was generally assumed that young women wanted to get married and have babies, and this was seen as a good thing, and steps were taken by families to bring marriage-and-babies about.

Now it is no longer assumed that women want to get married and have babies, or that such desires are even good. Women are taught--via pop culture--to fear being tied down by marriage-and-children, and men are taught--also via pop culture--that wives, especially stay-at-homes--see their husbands as brain-dead bank machines. In my humble opinion, homilists ought to condemn television shows much more than they do.

Faithful Catholics complain in and out of season that sex and reproduction have been wrongly uncoupled from marriage, and they have. The more astute observe also that the unitive aspect of marriage has been insanely more stressed than the procreative in the post-Vatican II Church, with the inevitable and suspicious shrinkage of the Catholic family. However, the bright side of all this is that nobody is "on the shelf"  just because her fertility has taken its inevitable dive. It used to be that if you were Single at thirty-five (heck, thirty), people thought of you as an Old Maid, and your marriage prospects began to rely even more heavily on  your economic situation. If your parents died and left you their shop, well, the widower in the shop next door might suddenly find you more interesting. Charming. 

The good news of the reign of sex and companionate marriage is that no-one is deemed too old for marriage. The bad news, of course, is that many men aren't interested in marriage until women their age are too old--or almost too old--to have children. Occasionally readers tell me that it's not missing out on romance they fear most: it's missing out on having children. I  understand. At the same time, I very much hope readers do not settle for someone they do not passionately love and admire just to ensure they have children.

I meant this post to be about Coffee, Date 1 and Date 2, but I realize we need some background to this Coffee, Date 1 and Date 2.  And I suppose the most important consideration is economic. With the prevalence of no-fault divorce--and in Scotland the vast majority of divorces are instigated by women--many men are terrified of finding themselves the sole breadwinners for themselves, their wives and their children. And who can blame them? Say a man marries a woman and they agree that she will stay home and take care of the kids. If she decides to divorce him, he is on the hook for her support and the children's support, even if she is habitually beastly to him and poisons the children against him. He has to work for years (decades?) without all those nice things--being loved, cherished, honoured--he was promised on his wedding day. Therefore, it is not enough to convince men-in-general you are not the divorcing kind. It behooves you to show men-in-general that you can and will support yourself economically if need be.

Therefore before any consideration of dating, I highly recommend that you choose a trade or profession and get cracking. If you dream of being a stay-at-home mother, find a trade or profession that involves what you like most about homemaking. Pastry chef, for example. Early Childhood Education. Tailor. Carpenter. Gardener. Nurse. Get qualified. Get a job. Show yourself to be economically self-sufficient. I spent my youth planning aloud to become a university professor, and my admirers were sure this would come about. Faithful B.A. thinks I will make a mint as a writer one day. Goodness, I hope so.

Okay, so now you have interests and a trade or profession you are gunning towards or already practice. Excellent. Welcome to adulthood in the 21st century. Notice I couldn't give a stuff if you have a CAREER. Men aren't impressed by careers. They don't care what women do for a living, as long as it makes the women cheerful and not inclined to look down their noses at them for what they do.

Now you can go for coffee.

COFFEE

If someone asks you out for coffee, and you find him or her a reasonably interesting and pleasant human being, and you are Single, accept. (If you are married, there are many more qualifiers.) A coffee is just a coffee. It is always a compliment to be asked, for this person is willing to spend an hour with you. (Never assume a coffee will last more than an hour, and if female, end the coffee meeting within the hour.) While chatting, you may be able to establish if you have core values in common, and if there is anything you and this person have to offer each other. At very least, this person might come to a professional event you are planning, or is planning a professional event you find interesting. If you are a gardener, this person may know someone who needs a gardener.

The coffee time is much too soon to determine whether or not you are in love with the person. Indeed, if you are female, the idea of being in love with such an ordinary-looking man may make you laugh. And if you are in love with the person after just one coffee, you are not in love--you are infatuated. Unless you have corresponded for some time, or spoken to them several times before, you need a serious reality check. All the same, I hope you get asked out on a date.

Hopefully this date is at least ONE WEEK after the coffee.

DATE 1

If the person who asked you out for coffee asks you out again, don't ask yourself if would marry that person. 99% of the time, you wouldn't. After all, you have only had one coffee. You barely know them. It is way too early to think seriously about marriage, except to ponder if the man or woman belongs roughly to the KIND of person you would like to marry. Do you have anything in common? Do they share your core values? Have they already told you they hate children? Have they already expressed disappointment in anything you hold dear?

If your core value is Roman Catholicism--and I don't mean if it should be, I mean if it IS--don't accept a date from a non-Catholic or a non-practicing Catholic. Be blunt. "I'm sorry. I date only practicing  Catholics" is not that hard to say. It will hit a non-practicing Catholic upside the head, but no doubt that will be good for him/her. If you want to marry a Roman Catholic, there is no point dating non-Catholics. Coffee is just a coffee, but a date is a date.

Of course, you might be a Roman Catholic whose core value is something else. It might be your ethnic group. For example, you might think Polishness or Italianity the be-all and end-all of life, and although you may have been surprised to discover that the Polish-American/Italian-Australian across from you at the coffee table hasn't seen the inside of a Catholic church in years, you may feel inclined to go on a first date with him/her anyway.

Women: I firmly believe that any pleasant man who shares your core values deserves two dates before you give up on the idea of ever feeling physically attracted to him.

Men: Don't date girls you don't think are pretty. Don't ask them, and don't accept dates with them. Coffee, yes. A coffee is just a coffee. Network, network.

Almost nobody is at their best on a first date. However, I have a few first date rules:

1. It should be in a public place, never in a private home.

2. Be very careful of what you talk about. Talk about your core values, if you like, but don't spill your guts or express strong negative emotions. Don't, for the love of heaven, bring up the topics of marriage, children, or what kind of a parent you would make.

3. Don't drink too much.

4. For the purpose of this First Date, your life has been an unclouded oasis of joy. If he/she asks, you broke up with your ex-bf/gf because you really didn't have that much in common. That he/she killed your dog is something you may divulge much, much later. You don't want him/her to think you are the kind of person who has relationships with people who behave like that.

5. Listen and don't ignore red flags just because he/she is cute. For some reason, men love to tell you at least some of their bad stuff on the first date. If he's an alcoholic or thinks he may be one, he will very often tell you, or at least hint. Do not ignore this. When men tell you they are bad guys, they are not being modest or funny. They are bad guys. You cannot save them. Save yourself.

6. Don't lie about or hide your age. I've done that, and it's childish, stupid and dishonest. It's also a red flag. Nothing screams "ISSUE" like someone too ashamed to admit how old he or she is.

7. How he or she treats the server really is a good indication of how they treat people. All my adult life I have not wanted this to be true, but it is true.

8. However, just because he/she is a dork on the first date doesn't mean he/she is actually a dork. First dates often make people nervous, over-eager, and generally an embarrassment to everyone. And therefore, unless this person has revealed (consciously or unconsciously) to you that, although they share your core values, they have serious personality problems, you should go on Date 2. I don't care if there's no spark yet.

[Update: 9. If you're divorced-without-annulment and/or have children, the person across from you deserves to know that. Telling someone either fact on the first date may indeed mean there is no second date, for nothing so destroys the comfortable first date illusion that your life has been a cloudless oasis of joy. I am tempted to say you shouldn't tell them until the second date. However, I once found out the guy I was out with was divorced-without-annulment only on the second date, and I was furious. I felt like I had been tricked.]

Date 2 should ideally be no sooner than ONE WEEK after Date 1.

DATE 2

Date 2 is when people living according to my philosophies--how nice that would be--should decide where in the social order of their lives the "pleasant, shares my core values, has no scary issues" people across the bistro table from them belong. He/she may remain an acquaintance, or he/she may already be someone you think a friend or ally, or he/she may be someone you could fall in love with. Falling in love with someone in as few weeks as three is rare*, but I think three weeks--with no more than a meeting a week--is the minimum requirement in peacetime for determining whether a person is at all marriage material.

Naturally you are not going to tell the chap/girl on Date 2 what list you have put them on, for you are not going to put them there until you have had some time to mull. When he/she contacts you to ask/hint for Date 3, that is the time to tell them that you don't feel a spark, but you hope you will remain friends--and as such have coffee again eventually. Or, if you are overjoyed by their continued interest, you can just say yes.

***********

Nota Bene: if you accept the third date only because you are lonely or flattered by the attention or for any other reason than that this person has made your marriage-potential short list, you are now leading him/her on. This is not cool. Break it off as soon as you realize your impure motives. Apologize. Accept the blame like a grown-up. Go to confession. Don't, however, marry anyone once you realize you don't want to marry him/her.

**************

If female, do not bring up the future, marriage, children, or where this relationship is going for at least six months. If you really like the man, and you do these things, I will come to your house and beat you with a stick. The six month rule is for women over 30. If you are under 30, I would say wait a year. If he hasn't proposed in a year, it is time to clear your throat and ask delicate questions.

Being cynical, I think having sex with a guy before you are officially engaged  removes a very attractive incentive for him to propose marriage sooner rather than later, if ever. And of course all premarital sex, including between the merely engaged, is a serious sin. But putting the fear of eternal damnation to the side for a moment, I think having sex with a guy before you are officially engaged removes a very attractive incentive for him to propose marriage sooner rather than later, if ever. ** (Not that it kills all hope: if his friends are all getting married, he may think it is high time he married too.) As for anti-marriage principles, I know married Marxists. My friend Fishie (male) is absolutely convinced that when a man loves a woman, he marries her. End of.

And that is my current dating manifesto. How happy I am that I shall no longer date again. If B.A. should come to an untimely end, I shall fly to the Benedictines of Ryde and throw myself outside the cloister door, begging for entry.

*B.A. and I corresponded a bit and read each other's blogs religiously for months before we met. And we were old and wise and so thoroughly banged about by life we knew who we were and what we wanted.  Ordinarily, two-weeks-together-constantly-and-then-separated-for-months kills a holiday romance stone dead.

**This is not an attempt at morality but at psychology and common sense. If you think smart, self-respecting, non-Catholic girls just hop into bed with whoever at any stage of their relationship, think again.

Update: Meanwhile, do not repeat my cynical thought around an uncatechised man. There are some men that think they somehow have "a right" to premarital sex and that by dating them without intending to have premarital sex with them, women are trying to "control" or "manipulate" them into marriage. Try to avoid men like that; the concepts of Christian purity are probably beyond their shriveled-peanut brains.

One of the interesting hypocrisies of the PUA movement is that these men want to, er, sleep with all the women they can seduce, but then, if they should deign to marry, marry a woman who has had no or only one or two, er, partners. PUAs are such animals, I was delighted to discover one of their big gurus was recently chased out of a Montreal bar by a mob. Generally I am down on mob violence, but in this case: woot!

Update 2:  I return for a Reality Check. Although naturally I would like to be Queen of the World, these Coffee/Date 1/Date 2 rules are purely my own invention. I do not expect them to become the latest rage, even among Catholics. (I don't have that kind of clout.)  However, I think they are easily defensible. "But you went out for coffee with me!" makes for a rather feeble guilt trip, should a discouraged suitor/suitoress start to cry. (Repeat after me: "A coffee is just a coffee.") "You let me buy you dinner--twice!" is also rather feeble, and can easily be countered with, "Well, you invited me."

But I'm not really worried about tears and hurt feelings. I'm more worried about Single Girls saying "No" to the right boys too soon and "Yes" to the wrong boys long after a "No" was called for.

The hardest part will be the CLEAR and HONEST "No" to Date 3 (or Date 2, should the chap beat the server to a pulp, reveal he is an alcoholic, mention he is married, etc.) instead of hinting, hiding, qualifying, apologizing, disappearing and other cowardly behaviour we women are so good at. Just say it (or email it) .  Here is a sample letter:

Dear Scooter:

Thanks again for dinner! I got your message about Friday, and I have to say that although I enjoyed our dates, I don't feel that we are ever going to be more than friends. I wouldn't mind catching up over a coffee some time, since we diehard Traddies [Lefties, Trekkies, Georgette Heyer fans] ought to stick together, but I think accepting another dinner invitation would be unkind.

Sincerely,
[Thoughtful You] 

Don't have a cow if, within minutes of receiving this email, he asks out another girl from your social circle. It's his right to do so, and your duty to yourself to tell anyone who asks what a great couple you think they might make. Incidentally, note the total lack of apology. You're just not that into him, and that's not your fault.


Update 3: My five male readers may be wondering what they can do to appear more physically attractive to  the pretty girls they ask out for coffee within three weeks. As most women are more imaginative than we are visual, you go out and do something manly and athletic before Coffee, Date 1 or Date 2, and when Prettiness asks what you have been up to, you can truthfully say "I climbed Ben Nevis" or "I played football in the park" or even "I shot a few hoops with my pals." This is particularly effective if you have a scholarly reputation.

Meanwhile, you never, ever, EVER mention sexual stuff during Coffee, Date 1 or Date 2.  If the poor Child of Mary, having an awkward First Date moment, asks you if you believe in premarital sex, you should say you believe it sometimes happens to other people.

And don't send the girl umpteen emails between appointments. Totally unnecessary and bad psychology. Short delays are important.

Your schedule: Coffee. Wait two days. Request Date 1  (scheduling it  at least a full week after the coffee).  Go on Date 1. Wait two days. Request Date 2 (scheduling it at least a full week after Date 1). Go on Date 2. Ponder if you want to date this girl again. Ponder for two days. If you do, request Date 3 (scheduling it at least a full week after Date 2). If you don't, you don't have to do anything until the inevitable email/text arrives. ("How's it going? What happened? Don't be a stranger!") If she turns you down for Date 3, you can cry (privately) and then thank your lucky stars she was that honest and respectful of your time and resources. A lesser woman would either have eaten your entire student loan or seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth.


UPDATE 4: Hello, Catholic Answers readers! Gladden the hearts of the sales staff at Ignatius Press and buy my book. Alternatively, startle Liguori into action by buying the Singles one  unless you are Polish, in which case proszę wzbogacić  the coffers of the Krakow Redemptorists. Support Catholic publishers today!