Obey

He said this was me. It wasn't.

Here's another post my conscience says I have to write. Drat. Why can't I just write a novel about it instead, eh? However, there it is.

Twenty years ago I was romantically involved with a young man who often told me what to do and how to be. I had not wanted to be romantically involved with the man in the first place--having told him that I wanted to date only Catholics, as the whole point of dating was to get married. Also, he was not "my type", except that he was scholarly and very intelligent. Very, very intelligent.

But the young man was also very young. He had very strong views on subjects about which as yet he knew very little. And although he was not a Catholic, or even a believing Christian at first, he was disgusted by premarital sexual activity, especially by women. He was also disgusted by divorce, and in depressed moments, inspired by Kierkegaard (I think), thought himself impure because he was the child of a second marriage. For some complex non-Christian reason, he did not believe in divorce, so he thought he was a kind of bastard.

Or so he said. It was some time before I realized that he had lied and bluffed a lot in that relationship to get what he wanted which was, not to put to fine a point on it, me. But not in the way you might fear. No, no, no.  He was, don't forget, disgusted by feminine sexual sin. His intentions, if not his methods, were entirely honourable.

Unfortunately, however, the young man hadn't the slightest idea who I was, which after twenty years I can forgive, as I didn't really know who I was either. I was bored by my Catholic friends, and shocked by my "artist friends", and the world was stubbornly refusing to fall in with my ideas of how the world was supposed to be. However, my ideas of how the world was supposed to be were shared to a certain extent by my agnostic male friend, and he decided that I was the Perfect Victorian Lady, or would be if I followed his advice. Somewhere I have his letters extolling me always to strive for virtue, taking "dear Jane" (Austen) as my model and guide.

It felt wonderful to be put on a pedestal and encouraged to be more of what I already apparently was. It felt great to be flattered and entertained and told that I was beautiful and good by a very clever and promising young man who had a high regard for female chastity. And so I was very sorry when I disappointed his high regard for me by mentioning that I had joined the university revolver club. As a Canadian, I am not that excited by guns (pro- or anti-), but I think knowing how to fire a gun is a good life skill, and I picked the revolver club because my brother was a military rifle instructor. Rifles were his thing.

The young man was horrified. He hated guns--or the idea of a woman mixed up with one. "Beauty cannot hold the repugnant," he said, paraphrasing--I think--Aristotle. He had a student petition against or for some gun bill that he was supposed to sign and pass on, but he said he wouldn't sign it until I quit the revolver club. As a matter of fact, I was terribly uncomfortable in the shooting range, which was in a cellar, and the noise was incredible, and I jumped every time I heard a shot, which was rather tragic for my aim. Thus I was tempted to quit the revolver club anyway, but I didn't for a long time because of that stupid petition. Twenty years later, I realize I should have simply told him to stuff  the petition in his ear, instead of gaily laughing it off every time he shoved it under my nose and looked sad because he had still not passed it on, as he was bound in honour to do.

He meant me to feel guilty for his not signing the petition, and I did feel guilty. And that, my dear friends, provided him with a very useful tool. He was good at looking sad, and expressing shocked, high-minded disappointment, and convincing me that if I did not do something, this would be a blow against all honour and decency and a correctly run universe. Thanks, I think, to his studies, he became a believing Christian, and thanks to my adamant belief I could marry only a Catholic, he entered an RCIA course with a priest I recommended. However, the young man told me he would be chucked out of RCIA if he couldn't find a sponsor to come with him, and so I had to do it. This was probably a lie, but I believed him. After all, his immortal soul was on the line.

He was the most manipulative young man I ever met in my whole life, and that is saying something. He did sales one summer and chatted smugly about the psychological tricks salespeople pull to sell their unwanted wares. I admired him for his cleverness, God help me, and his ability to make people do what he wanted. It never occurred to me that he might be using the same tricks on me, "the woman of his dreams."

He didn't tell me not to wear make-up, but he did tell me what to wear. And when we were engaged, I actually obeyed his clothing strictures, which were almost entirely about preserving my lily-white skin. This meant wearing opera length gloves outdoors in summer and carrying a parasol. In the city. In the 1990s. I felt ridiculous. But when I did not wear my gloves and when I did not carry the parasol, I felt incredibly guilty. It is really amazing what men can make women do if they make us feel guilty enough. At one point--among other things, he dropped out of RCIA-- I called off the engagement, and he stopped eating. He showed up weeping at my door. He told me horrible things his parents had allegedly said about me, but he knew they were wrong, wrong! They couldn't understand! And he needed a friend to talk to me about, but as all his other friends now hated me, only I could understand! Please would I talk to him? Please? Please! He cried and shivered.

Reader, I married him. And I kept wearing the stupid gloves--somehow I lost the stupid parasol--and, because he didn't "want a fat wife", I lost twenty pounds and with them  his hold over me. Somehow all that healthy eating and athletic activity gave me a backbone, and I started pushing back. (Testosterone?) He didn't want me to visit my family, but I visited them anyway. He didn't want me to visit my friends, but I visited them anyway. He most definitely did not want me to continue being a Roman Catholic--"Roman Catholicism is the religion of immigrants and peasants" he memorably said--but I continued going to my parish church anyway. We began to fight--quite viciously, really--and it was terrible. Beyond terrible. Naturally I will not tell you the whole story: telling the annulment tribunal was bad enough.

That incarnation of the young man is dead. I do not mean my ex is dead (although maybe he is--I haven't seen him in 15 years). If he is alive, he is over 40 and the man the past almost-twenty years have made him. By dead, I mean the incarnation of that young man, a twenty-something.  That young woman is dead, too, poor thing. I am the spine she forged in the weight room and the boxing ring, and I'm almost all she had left of herself when she walked out of the apartment with the clothes on her back and her passport in her purse. (I am the spine plus the past almost-twenty years, of course.)

However, I have seen that young man in other men. I've heard about him, too. I sat with a friend's mother--my friend was abroad and desperate, his father had just been arrested for domestic asssault--and discovered she too had married that young man. I've met that young man in other countries. Somehow he persists, generation after generation. I'm sure he's a lefty sometimes, but I don't frequent lefty circles much.

The easiest way to recognize him is through his stubborn fantasy about what women are supposed to be, which he protects by ensuring women live, or at least one woman lives, up to it. I am not sure WHY this fantasy woman is so important, except that she is the love of his life, and he will do almost anything to protect her. If he projects her onto you, God help you, for if you threaten her, he is capable of anything. If he just breaks up with you, consider yourself lucky.

And I am writing this today because of E. E, my dear, I have no idea who you are. My computer doesn't trace commentators easily, and I haven't tried. I think you might be French, but I don't know for sure. For all I know, your name isn't E. I know nothing about you except that you are a reader and you have a boyfriend who lets you know that he is disappointed when you--like most women of your age in the western world--wear a little make-up. He makes you feel a little guilty about it--yes?

E, to me this is a red flag. I am not sure how much pushing-around you want to take from the man in your life. Maybe you don't mind a man who tells his woman what-is-what, and maybe your boyfriend is just a bit grumpy. Maybe you belong to a culture in which women let men be the head, knowing that they are "the neck who directs the head," and in which women nod and smile and then just do whatever they like. However, maybe your boyfriend is, how should I put this, a control freak who will never be content with the woman that you are and wants you to be another woman entirely, perhaps a fantasy image he carries in his head and heart and projects upon you, as if you were just a film screen.

As I have never met him, I have no way of knowing. But I hope you will consider discussing him with your mother, or if not your mother, a favourite aunt, and ask if she thinks he is a controlling type. I hope this because I do not want what happened to me to happen to any other young woman ever again. This is, in fact, [what I think is] the ruling passion of my life.

The Don't Need Make-Up Video

The "Do men really know what they are talking about when they say they don't like make-up?" debate continues! Incidentally, I found a version of it in  Daddy Long Legs  which was first published in 1912. Judy writes to "Daddy" of a man who got his wife to wear "rational dress" and then ran off with a chorus girl.

Thanks to the reader who drew my attention to this amusing video.  

New Depths in the Dating World

ITEM: "This Woman Had The Best Answer When A Tinder Date Said She Was Too Fat To Love"

Yikes. First of all, he didn't say she was too fat to love. He said she was too fat to turn him on.

Okay, so this post is most definitely not safe for little brothers, if they know how to read.  Don't click if you don't want to know how the average non-religious sexually-active Single Guy in the UK might think. Remember my mantra: we can find out what guys think, but we won't always like it.

If I had received that email from a date I would have been mortified, although not because the chap just wasn't into me, but because he assumed I assumed we would be sleeping together. I would also be horrified by his frank biological description of why that wouldn't work. Can I imagine a man saying things like that to a woman out loud? To be honest, no.

Prudence is the first casualty of instant-messaging.

As horrified as I am by the man's confession, I am equally horrified by the spectacle of the woman responding to it--and as publicly as she can. Her reply is toe-curlingly ghastly, as is the "You Go Girl" encouragement of The Independent. I cannot overlook the fact that she told him that her friends offered to do him physical harm, or that commentators hoped someone would sexually mutilate him.

Boiled down, what the chap said was, "I'm into skinny girls. You'd make a great pal, but that's not what Tinder is about, is it? It's about sex, and sex just isn't going to happen because I'm all about the skinny. I want to be a Sensitive Man of the 21st Century, but not as much as I want to bag a skinny babe. Sorry."

Boiled down, what the woman said was, "How DARE you call me FAT?! I've been working on it you know, and you have hurt me so much, I have cried before my next date and my weight-loss group, and for your information I have lost 15 pounds and have only 20 to go. I shared your private message with my friends, some of whom now want to assault you. And I'm making this message public because I know you have a daughter, whom as as fellow woman I am sure I care about more than you do, you pig. Clearly you have a problem with strong confident women like me.  P.S. You're short."

The part about confidence is the saddest, for a strong, confident woman would actually have written;

"Thank you for your message. I agree that we are not compatible. Sincerely, Michelle."

My dear little Singles, I hope and pray you never get a such a stupid, soul-searching message from a man to justify his never asking you out again. But if you do, I hope and pray you write nothing in return but "Thank you for your message. I agree that we are not compatible. Sincerely, [You]."  It's called dignity.

[Dear little Boy Singles, if you feel called upon to write a rejection letter, "Dear [Her], You're an admirable woman, but I don't feel a spark. Sincerely, [You], is all  you really need or should say unless she hit you or something. In that case, you could write, "Dear [Her], Because of your behaviour last night, I will not be contacting you again. Please do not contact me. Sincerely, [You]."

And, yes, for the record, I have written incredibly stupid and undignified emails myself.* I regret them all, and when the hard-drives of the world are erased, I will dance for joy amid the rubble of civilization, for I will know that those emails are gone. Do as Auntie says, but not as Auntie does, as Our Lord said to do re: the Pharisees.

Also, I recommend staying off Tinder, and if you must attempt internet dating, confine yourselves to meeting those LOCAL men who use your-niche (e.g. Catholic) dating sites.


*Although never as stupid and undignified as the letter I got from a feminist author whose book I panned. I shall leave instructions for it to be read at my wake, so my survivors can  have some comic relief.

That "Child-Free" Aunt Article

As I matter of fact, I do like the article, but in rereading it today one thing annoyed me.

It was the word "Child-Free".

"Child-Free" is what childless couples call themselves when they want to justify/celebrate deliberately not having children. I suppose unmarried women might call themselves that, too, now that marriage and child-having have been sundered. As I have mentioned a dozen times, I once found myself explaining to a divorced mother of two why I would not just go to a pub, pick up some guy and get pregnant. I doubt unmarried men call themselves "child-free". Nobody expects unmarried men to have children although--of course--they so often do.

I am not "child-free"; I am childless. Although I realize I have been spared a lot of work and worry, I recognize that this is the most noble work and worry available to a married woman (besides, perhaps, tending her sick or dying husband). Childlessness in a married woman is a real tragedy, whether she knows it or not. Even if it is not a tragedy for her, it is a tragedy for society, a society that needs a maximum of children born to happily married parents to keep it on an even keel.

I think the article describes me, except that I heartily dislike the word "child-free" and think it is anti-child and therefore anti-social. There are people in the "child-free" movement who object to paying taxes towards schools, day care, etc., etc., as if children were not fellow citizens but pets.

However, because the article describes aunts like me, I realize that I am neither entirely child-free nor childless because there are three children in my family and I have good friends with children, too. There are two little boys in Toronto on my birthday present list simply because I love their mother, and therefore them.

Now, it is Seraphic Singles Saturday, so does anyone have an issue or letter for the day?

Accept Me For Who I Am--Or Else!

I was writing a story today in which a character wonders if a boy she likes would notice her if she wore fake tan. They're Scottish, so this is not a far-fetched scenario. And once for Hallowe'en, I went the whole hog on the fake-tan, fake-eyelashes look, and to my shock, Benedict Ambrose thought I looked really great.

<:-O

This did not come as a surprise to my beautician, who covers women with fake tan, wax, shellac, etc., for a living, but my mind continued to boggle. It occurs to me that it might be nice to do the fake-tan, fake-eyelashes thing again although I can't help thinking that would also be rather odd.

I am reminded of an episode of Married with Children  (a risqué 1980s sitcom) in which the mother and daughter reminisce about the time the daughter came home crying because the boy she liked only liked blondes, and so her mother bought her her first bottle of bleach. From the canned laughter, I learned that this was a disgracefully unmaternal thing to do, but now that I think about it, I wonder if that would work.

Why do so many women dye their hair blonde anyway? The expense of keeping the roots blonde must be immense.

Although on a basic level, men-in-general find women-in-general attractive, there is no use denying that not all men find all women attractive, and that a lot of men find the same women attractive, which is incredibly annoying for the women who are found attractive only by a few. However, if you find few men attractive, why should many of them find you attractive, eh? Anyway, there's no shoulds about attraction. Either we/they are attracted or we/they aren't. And meanwhile, there's a whole world out there of amusing and interesting things that you could enjoy even if you were literally invisible to the opposite sex.

In my gym-rat days, I picked up a muscle magazine and read with great enjoyment advertisements telling its readers that women were more interested in men with muscles than with money. A guy with a pair of muscled up arms--said the ad--was a lot more successful with the ladies than the fat or skinny guy with the fancy car. It was not a subtle ad, but it was not aimed at subtle readers. And the amusing thing is that I do now notice big muscled arms more than anything else, probably because I know so few men with big muscled arms. Incidentally, if you are a big Ed Norton fan, you can find his younger double at my swing-dancing.

No doubt there are men who think it outrageous that some women might notice men with big muscled arms more than ordinary nice guys with skinny or flabby arms, but that's just the way some women are. If I were a man--as I have said many times--I would go to the gym every day--or just buy weights and bring them home--because men can grow muscles with something like a third of the effort women have to put in. It is so EASY for men to get big arms, I wonder why they don't do it more. Possibly they think women should just accept them for the whom they are, or we are not worth the effort of ten minutes of arm-improving a day.  Or they have not picked up a muscle magazine and been convinced that women think more of big arms than fancy cars.

 I just read an article by a "John Smith" (brave) at "Thought Catalogue" about things a woman can do to be more attractive, and I'm not going to link to it because it is not little brother safe. To leave out the rude stuff, he suggests:
1. Keeping in shape
2. Don't dye, pierce or tattoo where it can be seen.
3. Make your own money
4. Be feminine
5. Be, uh, easy-going.
6. Don't have slept with a lot of guys.
7. Be intelligent.
8. [Single mothers have a harder time finding boyfriends.]
9. Cook at least three times a week..
10. Don't be glued to your Smartphone
11. Don't wear make-up. (Proof that this article was written by a man. They always say it, and they never mean it. They seem to think super-models never wear make-up.)
12. Stop swearing like a sailor.
13. Stop hoarding guy friends because apparently they all want to sleep with you, which I think cannot be true when I think about my own guy friends, who are usually 20 years my junior.

Sadly, the top internet articles about things a man can do to be more attractive to women are pretty brainless and involve slides. Sigh. At "Men's Health" (also not Little Brother Safe) I have found the following advice:

1. Travel about with male friends.
2. Be nice to babies.
3. Grow heavy stubble.
4. Borrow a fancy car.  (Ha ha ha!)
5. Walk a dog.
6. Volunteer.
7. Be funny.
8. A survey in Anchorage, Alaska showed that women found men who did hunter-gatherer things, like scaling cliffs, building fires, swimming rivers, more attractive. As well they might--in ALASKA.
10. Smile slowly. Quick grins make you look untrustworthy.
11. Show off your scars.
12. Carry a guitar. (What?)
13. Bring flowers. Apparently men with flowers are more attractive than men without.
14. (Fourteen?) Be strong and lean.

I feel my IQ falling to my socks as I type all this. Fortunately, I have found a  much better article on this topic at Thought Catalogue, and it is almost entirely safe for little brothers, so here it is. Naturally we will all roll our eyes at stuff in Item 6, but at least it points out that women also don't like dating people who have slept with a lot of people. And I see--HOORAY--it is about what men look like just as much as advice to women is about what we look like.

Avoid the comments. They are truly depressing, and there's a class of man on the internet which goes bananas whenever a woman gives men advice, for it assumes she's attacking them, personally, with the garden shears.

To return to the title of this blog, I think it is fantastic when men and women accept each other for who they are, no adjustments needed. However, I don't think its a given.  I know a poor guy who lost the love of his college life--which left him in a tailspin of depression--because he rarely washed or did his laundry.

Travelling Light

Oh, Popcorn. What have you done to the nice cathedral?

As I shocked the willikens out of some of you yesterday with my link to the Barnhardt interview, I will write a nice post about Single Life today. My thoughts will be about the one great advantage of celibacy, and it is the freedom of autonomy.

This is never so clear as when travelling, and even I, who have no children of my own, feel tremendous GUILT when I travel unless I am travelling with B.A. or my travels have earned money to bring B.A. This is because it seems to me horribly unfair that I get to travel while B.A. has to stay behind and work.

I cannot go into a pretty church without thinking how much B.A. would love to see this pretty church and how much more he would appreciate it. In London this year I completely avoided pretty churches. Instead I visited friends, which didn't make me feel terribly guilty, as maintaining social ties (e.g. sending the Christmas cards) is one of my jobs. I didn't feel too guilty in Belgium, either, since I was visiting family, but I feel too guilty just to go off to weddings in Poland without B.A. It is true that it costs half as much for one person to go abroad than two, but it always seems to be me who goes abroad, and that is just not fair.

Travelling with B.A. spares me from vague guilt, but brings with it acute guilt about my bad temper, for travelling in countries where I am supposed to know the local language often turns me into Hitler. I was a positive lamb in Belgium and German, for my brother and sister-in-law are fluent in French and my brother's German is fresher than mine, so I never felt the heavy weight of linguistic expectation. I just followed them about and admired their fluency. Poor B.A. has not experienced such lamb-like behaviour  since we went to Barcelona and he trotted out his high school Spanish. I speak no Spanish, so I just sat back bright-eyed in tapas bars and admired B.A.

The other drawback to travelling with B.A. is that he never wants to go to Poland. He has been twice, and he feels that this is enough for now. Naturally I always want to go to Poland, which he finds mystifying, but I have to wait until someone wants to pay me, or else I am crippled by guilt. It's no good telling him that Krakow is the Paris of the 21st century, for he isn't much interested in Paris, either, and even thinks London is too big, etc. He is a patriotic Scot, and the only city that comes anywhere near rivaling Edinburgh in his loyal affections is Rome.

Fortunately, I too am fond of Rome, but you see what I'm getting at here. When you are Single, have the money, and want to travel, you don't have to ask or compromise or worry about an innocent man suffering from your filthy temper or arguing with you about where to go. You find a willing friend--or tour group--or Single-safe destination and just go.

Travelling as a parent, however, is even more restrictive and guilt-ridden than travelling as a married person. When B.A. and I went to Barcelona, five years ago, we joined my brother and sister-in-law and their babies and their married friends and their baby, and we rushed off to look at the mediaeval splendours while the parents slowly assembled their children and supplies and went to the beach, babies screaming and howling, gypsies nicking stuff from the strollers, etc. One of the married friends had his passport stolen from a stroller. ("We've had a lot of problems with Romanians," apologized the police, adding insult to injury, as the married friends were Romanians.) I do not think my poor brother and sister-in-law or their friends saw very much besides the beach, whereas B.A. and I got as far as Monserrat.

("Most unfair," said my visiting mother right now. Too, too true.)

This year in Belgium, I saw the realities of travelling with children aged 5 and 7, as my poor sleep-deprived relations chased them down, dressed them, washed them, fed them, chivied them into the car, and drove them either to parks, which the children liked, or to amazing cultural treasures, which the children tolerated. As their legs are short, the children could walk only short distances, which meant finding parking very close to the parks or cultural treasures, and as their stomachs are small, they usually had to be fed as soon as we arrived anywhere interesting, which usually meant restaurants close to the cultural treasures. And being children, the children objected to the delicious Belgian cheeses, charcuterie, etc. presented to them outside chic wine bars and had to be filled up elsewhere with cheese sandwiches.

This was no hardship for me--I ate the delicious cheeses and anything else the children rejected--but I could see that the generation gap was wearying for my poor brother and sister-in-law, whose pleasure in seeing the wonderful plazas and churches of Old Europe was greatly alloyed by feelings of guilt that the children would rather be at the water park. And the guilt itself was complicated by feelings of frustration as the children kept up a steady stream of criticism and demands, e.g. "I don't like this. Dad, I don't like this. Can we go home? When are we going home? I want ice-cream. I don't want to go in. Do we have to? Dad, do we have to? Awww! I HATE this! Mamaaan? Mamaaaan? Are we having ice-cream now? When are we having ice-cream?"

Naturally I would put myself before a speeding train to spare either child any lasting suffering, but my sympathies were entirely with their elders, who both work very hard 48 weeks of the year to keep the squealers in food, shoes and karate lessons. The first time I saw Cologne Cathedral, I burst into tears of joy, so I am sorry my brother was not allowed a similar experience. Instead he was overwhelmed with embarrassment when a beadle chastized his five-year-old daughter (presumably in German) for climbing on the pews.

[Imagine illustration of fat German man wearing red and black robes shouting at tiny, grinning blue-eyed, brunette, bob-haired moppet here.]

Of course, I suspect my brother and sister-in-law would not have had it any other way, for parents seem to have a magic ability to cope with, accept  and even value that which would send anyone else to an insane asylum. And now that I think about it, the worst of the shared jokes of my niece and nephew, consisting of substituting "Foo-foo" and "Goo goo ga ga" for proper words, would have driven B.A--an only child with one solitary childless uncle--out of his mind with misery. Thus, the more hysterical our niece and nephew got in the back seat of the little car ("That's not a TREE, that's a FOO-FOO!"), the less guilt I felt that I had left B.A. at home.

In this way, the children certainly added a lot to my experience of Belgium--whose top attraction for this doting aunt was the children themselves anyway. If, however, I had wished for some sort of amazing adult-lady adventure, climbing up mountains at dawn, or sailing down the Meuse, or dancing the lindy hop on the battlefields of Waterloo in the moonlight, I would have been thoroughly disappointed.

In conclusion, whereas Singles may very much sigh after Married life (whose restrictions do paradoxically free the mind)  and the Nulliparious may indeed wish for children (whose creation and care are the primary reason for marriage), there is one place where Singledom absolutely trumps Married Life and Parenthood, and it is on the road.

Waiting for Saint Catherine of Siena

"Carissime Sante Pater..."

For those of you who don't mind rough talk about popes, specifically Pope Francis, there is an interesting interview with Ann Barnhardt at Creative Minority Report.  Patrick Archibold, the author of CMR, admits to feeling frustration with Pope Francis and asks Ann what she thinks Pope Francis should be doing in response to the recent American Supreme Court decision.

Ann says: What should the Vicar of Jesus Christ be doing? Um, practicing, teaching and preaching Catholicism. That would be a good start. He should be offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the Gregorian Rite at the Papal Altar of St. Peter's basilica, directly above the tomb of St. Peter himself, every single day, begging our Crucified Savior there upon the altar, with copious tears, to have mercy on and to cleanse His Holy Church and the whole world. This should be broadcast/live-streamed and made available to watch on the Vatican's website and whoever else wants to carry it, with closed captions in Latin above the various vernacular languages. The Pope should likewise celebrate Solemn Benediction every day, and recite the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, again in reparation for the horrific sins of the world - and not nonsense fake Marxist sins like "wasting food" or "using air conditioning". No, actual real sins like sacrilege, sodomy, abortion, concubinage, and coveting and stealing other people's private property and wealth, most especially by governments. Then the Holy Father should lead the world in praying the Most Holy Rosary - all 15 mysteries (You heard me. Fifteen. There are exactly FIFTEEN mysteries.), in Latin, for the crushing of and in reparation for the heresy of Modernism. He should conclude this daily rosary by reciting himself the Oath Against Modernism. Every. Single. Day. Once he gets that squared away, then we can start on formulating a plan for broadcasting him publicly praying the Liturgy of the Hours. The Liturgy of the HOURS. In Latin. Not the Liturgy of the Minutes in some barbarous tongue....

As we approach the Synod on the Family, I am hoping for the emergence of a new Saint Catherine of Siena.  As I have known since I was a tiny child, the original Saint Catherine of Siena corrected/advised the pope of her day. I cannot remember if I was impressed or not that it turned out Saints (Girl Saints!) trump Pope. My family wasn't that interested in popes. Our family devotions were pretty much reserved to the Blessed Trinity although a statue of Our Lady stood on the chimney piece, thanks to my Catholic grandma. (My Protestant grandma was  ho-hum about religion.)

Anyway, I should think that if any new Catherine were to emerge, it would have to be someone like Ann, as Ann is  (A) a chaste virgin, (B) a Daily Mass-goer and (C) greatly given to mediaeval acts of courage, helpfully giving her address to Islamist assassins so she can test out her weapons, defying unjust tax collectors, preaching the hard teachings of the Gospel in and out of season, etc.

However, Ann lacks spiritual clout. She is more famous for her politics than for her piety, which strikes me as unfair, but then she also isn't a mystic. I suppose Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Sister Lucia of Fatima both had the kind of spiritual authority that popes have to listen to, but unfortunately for us they have toddled off to their heavenly rewards. Pope Francis's own mother (who was a very pretty bride, I see) died in 1981.

When it comes to ticking off/advising popes, I hope nobody is looking to me, for I am not at all an appropriate person. Most of the time, a person demanding that somebody in their parish do something to improve parish life should be the person to do it themselves ("Oh, but I am too busy."). However, when it comes to taking on the role of The Next Saint Catherine, I am sure there has to be a voice calling you in the night.

Of course, hundreds (or thousands) would disagree with me and point out that all laymen have the responsibility of correcting the pope, should he err. I wonder how many of them have actually taken paper and pen in hand to do so, however, and which among them has a name so commanding that Archbishop Ganswein, or whoever sorts the mail, would take his or her letter directly to the Holy Father.