Happy Holidays!

I am, of course, referring to Saint Andrew's Day (today), Saint Nicholas' Day (usually December 6) and Saint Lucy's Day (usually December 13). Poor old Nick and Lucy have been bumped by the Second and Third Sundays of Advent, so B.A. and I are celebrating them on the Saturday evening before.

I spent some time yesterday scraping candle wax from the toes of Saint Joseph in the Great Parish Clean-up, and it gave me opportunity time to ponder the righteous anger of the Catholic blogs I read or write for.  I was rather shaken by the depths to which Roman Catholics could go when duking it out online. In fact, I was so disgusted by the occasion for sin that is Twitter that soon after I got home, I deactivated my account.

At Boston College I wrote a lot about righteous anger as a response to blasphemy because I was fascinated by the Mohammad Cartoon Crisis. As a university student, I was pretty tired of all the blasphemous images of Our Lord and Our Lady that appeared in undergrad newspapers (although not at BC), wink, elbow, snigger, and it blew my mind when such newspapers, with all other such non-family newspapers, categorically refused to republish the Mohammad Cartoons. The Boston Phoenix was at least honest about it. To paraphrase a lot of swearing, it said the staff was too scared of potential violence.

"Can we learn from the Muslims on this?" I read out from my paper in a Thomistic ethics seminar, and my classmates shifted uneasily. And no wonder. Not only was I acknowledging that a large enough number of Muslims get their way by screaming, committing arson and killing people, I seemed to be suggesting we do that too. Mutual mediation, bruv.

There was palpable relief when I concluded, despite St. Thomas Aquinas' heartening ruling that blasphemers should be executed, that as Christians we may not scream, commit arson or kill anybody as a response to blasphemy. We first should contact the person who has so badly offended us and give them the opportunity to apologize and pledge that he will strive not to do it again. I think my ultimate punishment was sanctions. "Stop doing X or we won't buy your product." Yeah, that sounds pretty weak when people are now so scared of Muslims that they tweet "I love my Muslim neighbours" before Islamist terrorists have even stopped firing.*

It's sad to think that the sure fire way to stop blasphemy against our Lord would be such brutal and sustained violence that world leaders united in their assurances that "This has nothing to do with belief in Christ" while arresting the blasphemers. But, guess what, I discovered that the only thing that got George IV to sign the Catholic Emancipation Act was the solemn assurance that if he didn't, all Catholic Ireland would rise up and slaughter all the Protestants. This was a big fat lie, but that's how Catholicism became mainstream in the UK again.

So yelling-and-screaming is pretty tempting stuff. Traditional blogs metaphorically yelled and screamed all through the Synod (and I helped) and cries to the Cardinals to WALK OUT OF THE SYNOD actually seemed to shake them up. Naturally if our grandparents and great-grandparents had literally yelled and screamed at their parish priests before said priests started smashing up altars with sledgehammers, traditionalists would not be metaphorically screaming so much now.

Meanwhile, I believe that there is a time for yelling and screaming. For example, this Indian bishop sexually coerced a young married woman in front of her English parish, and the very English response was to send her and her fuming husband home. If I had been there, I would have given that bishop a lecture he would take to his grave.

Father Blake's post is actually about worthy reception of the Eucharist, and all the comments except mine reflect that. But one thing that occurs to me is the Impassibility of God. God doesn't literally suffer. Jesus suffered on the cross, but does not literally suffer any more. Our Lady doesn't literally suffer. The Saints don't suffer. We will not suffer either when we attain (God willing) the Beatific Vision. Blasphemers can do terrible things to Eucharistic hosts, but "they can't hurt Jesus", in the words of a priest I know. Those who are hurt by blasphemy are the same people who are hurt when a bishop insists we lick the cake off his fingers: we ourselves. We can't literally hurt God, but we can certainly hurt each other in all kinds of ways: blasphemy, detraction, libel, quarrelsomeness, chambering...

Yes, there is a time to shout, but that time is not ALL the time. And that is why I am starting my own small campaign to keep Christ in Christmas by merely saying "Thank you" when anyone wishes me a "Happy Holidays."  I am going to keep my righteous anger to a minimum, particularly as the madness on Edinburgh's major shopping streets have almost nothing to do with Christian Christmas and everything to do with Secular Christmas. Secular Christmas is the post-Christians' big holiday, so they can keep it, I hope they are successful in their pursuit of fun, and I will go to their parties, if invited.  Christian Christmas begins--for Latin Catholics--on the evening of 24 December. A number of important holy days fall between the First Sunday of Advent and New Year's Day, so anyone who wishes anyone else "Happy Holidays" is not merely being friendly, they are also accurate.

*To be honest, though, I am more inclined to think that "I love you, complete strangers!" and "I'll ride with you" is more about white people comforting ourselves that we are still in charge, still keeping outsiders oppressed/contained, and it's up to Us Nice Ones to protect "minorities" from the Bad Ones among our White Demi-God, Climate-Changing Selves. In short, "I'll ride with you" is paternalist, patronizing and probably racist. It is most definitely about expressing power---in a very weird, counter-intuitive way.

A Short Homily on Blasphemy...

...for which only a few readers will divine the reasons. Sorry.

Say a chap sends a tweet he means to be cheeky (not blasphemous) to a friend over Twitter. He is referring to a theological post he wrote, and he copies in the guy he's being cheeky about, so that the guy might read the post.

Then say the mocked guy goes nuts because he assumes--not without cause--that the tweet is blasphemous.

The mocked guy then publishes the tweet he thinks is blasphemous on his blog to disgrace the mocker and bring his workplace into disrepute.

The mocked guy's readers rage in the combox about the mocker, demand that he be fired, offer conspiracy theories that he's not a Catholic but "a Jew", etc., because the stupid tweet does look blasphemous, especially after the mocked guy's side of the story.

BUT

The mocker didn't intend his tweet to be blasphemous. He published it on Twitter for two people to see.

The mocked believed the tweet to be blasphemous. He published it on his blog for as many people as possible to see.

Who has blasphemed? One, both or neither?

Single Over 50

Princess Diana's Mother, 1989

A woman in the Telegraph writes about what it is like to be "Single" (she's divorced with children) in her 50s. There's a lot of sadness in her article. She advises discontented married friends not to get divorced.  At the same time, though, she notes that there is a lot of unhappiness in middle-aged marriage.

Well, you know, there is a lot of unhappiness in middle age although, to be frank, in the west these are what might be called First World Problems: oh wah, it's harder to stay thin, one is not as attractive as one was at 27, one does not have so much potential, one is less likely than ever to become a millionaire, one's spouse has not given up that annoying habit after umpteen years, one's dear same-age friend has been diagnosed with cancer, one's knees ache half an hour into a dance (if one even goes to a dance), one sometimes feels a shooting pain in one's hand--is it early on-set arthritis?!

Frankly I feel very lucky to have met B.A. a few scant years before I turned forty because he is the right sort of person I need to have around when I am mooching about feeling middle-aged. First World Problem Story: I took out two beautiful young things for dinner and a concert as a sort of chaperone, and--no word of a lie--on my way to the power-room I glanced in a mirror and was instantly reminded of Princess Diana's mother. When, after an evening of accompanying blooming youth, I found B.A. asleep in bed, and I was enormously comforted because he looked as old as I did.

But to go back to dating at 50, good heavens. Surely at 50 it is really time to stop thinking in terms of dating and more in terms of making friends--or keeping--friends? Not only is one too old to have children (or more children), which is what sex is primarily for, SORRY,  but one is too old to adopt babies. (Many countries won't let you adopt babies after you turn 40.) If at 50 one decides to marry a friend, old or new, then that's lovely. But surely one of the joys of being in late middle-age is that it really doesn't matter as much?

My grandmother Gladys was widowed at 60, and although terrifically popular with elderly men, she never showed the slightest interest in romance, dating or marriage. She went on holiday with her old pals, she carried on volunteering with her pals (they had a band), she went to seniors events, playing cards and doing aerobics and whatnot, she listened to the radio, she smoked until double-pneumonia told her to stop, she read bodice-rippers and "sagas" late into the night and on Sundays she visited family, i.e. us.

The author of the Telegraph article says that it seems to her better to have been married with children and then divorced than to be single-never-married at 50, but then I suspect she is horrified by the very idea that her children might not have existed. There are many 50-something nuns who are quite content to go on being nuns, and I imagine (indeed, I hope) there are many 50-something women who have passed through their sorrow at never having married and had children and realized that not only are they at peace with it, they wouldn't have it differently now. (I'm still going through BA-and-I-can't-have-children grief myself.)

What is cheerful about her article is that she points out the personal freedom Single women have. The Single woman who is financially independent of a husband or family does get to make all the decisions. She doesn't have to ask permission to go on this trip or that trip or to take early retirement to go back to university or to sell all that she has and give it to the poor.

One thing that interested me most in the article was the cheeky questions the author gets as a "Single" woman over 50. I think she is too optimistic when she says no-one asks young blondes about their sex life, as everyone just assumes they have one. Maybe they didn't when she was a young blonde, but I can assure her that older married people (like male bosses) started asking me such questions when I was 17

As for remarks about married life, I agree that in general in the UK married women are considered sacrosanct and you just do not ask them such questions. An American once did make a salty remark about my marriage at a dinner party, and I hit him with my handbag, right there and then. Were I a widow, I imagine I would level a cold stare at the impertinent person through the top halves of my bifocals (which I am beginning to need) and say that I am devoted to the memory of my late husband. It seems to me that dozens of generations of over-50 British women had something to teach us about dignity.

Update: Someone who married older that I did written in to suggest I am too dismissive of later marriage. I apologize for that. Although the subject of being a Searching Single after the menopause is indeed very important, it is something of which I have no firsthand experience. The best I can say is that I think it must be much different to be a widow, looking back fondly (or not) on one's married days, than to be a Single-never-married. However, I hold out the hope that being Single might matter less, not more, the older we get.

Słowacki

I suspect most of my readers who played the Thanksgiving Survival Game of yore have gotten married or moved onto other blogs, which leaves me free to indulge once again in a Polski Piątek!

Polish night school is becoming more exciting because the teacher is now introducing Real Polish Literature. Yesterday we read a poem by Juliusz Słowacki, for whom the Słowacki Theatre (i.e. Teatr Słowackiego) in Kraków was named. Poor old Słowacki was not much appreciated in life, but now he is considered one of the most important Polish poets. 

We have been studying "diminutives" (zdrobienia) in class, and there are a fair number in the poem:

W pamiętniku Zofii Bobrówny

In the diary* of Sofia Bobrówna

Niechaj na Zośka o wiersze nie prosi

Let not Sophie ask me for a poem

Bo kiedy Zośka do ojczyzny** wróci

for when Sophie returns to Poland

Każda jej gwiazdka piosenkę zanuci.

every star will hum her a song.

Nim kwiat przekwitnie, nim gwiazdeczka zleci

For her a blossom will drop, a little star will fall

Sluchaj--bo to są najlepsi poeci.

Listen, for they are the best poets. 

Gwiazdy błękitne, kwiateczki czerwone

The sea-blue stars, the little red flowers

Będą ci całe poemata składać.

will assemble for you whole poems.

Ja bym to samo powiedział, co one,

I would say the same thing as they

Bo ja się od nich nauczyłem gadać

for I learned to talk from them.

Bo tam, gdzie Ikwy srebrne fale płyną,

For there, where flows the silver waves of the Ikwa,

Byłem ja niegdyś, jak Zośka, dzieciną

I once was, like Sophie, a little child.

Dzisiaj daleko pojechałem w gości

Today I have gone far away, an emigré

I dalej mię los nieszczęśliwy goni.

and further an unhappy fate me chases.

Przywież mi, Zośko, od tych gwiadz światłości,

Bring me, wee Soph, from those stars light,

Pryzwież mi, Zośko, z tamtych kwiatów woni.

bring me, wee Soph, from those flowers scent,

Bo mi zaprawdę odmłodnieć potrzeba

for I needs must become young again.

Wróć mi więc z kraju taką jakby z nieba.

And so return to me from that land--as if from heaven.

*Engagement calendar

**Do ojcyzny  literally means "to the fatherland",  but that is too many syllables for my taste.  

English doesn't really have diminutives, although you could argue it does, for we add --ie or --y to things like "the kitty" and "the little mousey".  Archaic English has --kins, as in "Odds bodkins", which means "God's little bodies", i.e. the Blessed Sacrament. (So don't use it.) The Scots put wee in front of everything, e.g. "Let's have a wee dram", which can mean either small or sweet, as in "What a nice wee elephant."

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!

Chocolate Covered Orange Peel

This is not the answer to life but my only project this week that could be at all considered artistic. It is based on the recipe for sugared orange peel I found in Sugared Orange by Beata Zatorska.  Basically I made the recipe and thought, Hey, what if I dipped some of these in chocolate? Would they be as good as the chocolate covered orange peel in Krakowski Kredens? And lo, they were better.

(In case you are wondering, Krakowski Kredens is a boutique grocery store that sells old-fashioned Polish edibles. It's where Poles with a bit of money buy gifts for their friends back in the UK. I am cross with Krakowski Kredens because they do not sell my favourite flavoured vodkas in 100 mL bottles, and thus I cannot bring them back in my carry-on luggage.)

So with no further ado, here is my recipe for chocolate covered orange peel, based on the recipe in Sugared Orange.

Seraphic's Culturally Appropriated Chocolate Orange Peels

You need:

2 orange
330 g/1.75 cups/three-quarter pound fine sugar (e.g. caster)
2.5 cups of cold water
100 g/bar good quality dark chocolate
small sharp knife
2 saucepans (or saucepan and a double boiler)
wooden spoon
tongs/slotted spoon
wire rack
baking paper/wax paper
tin/plastic storage container with lid
stove

Directions:

1. Wash oranges to remove any wax.

2. Carefully cut through the oranges so that you cut only the skins and not the fruit. Make four cuts lengthwise on each and then gently peel off the four pieces from each orange. Put skinned oranges aside.

3. Laying each peel flat, carefully cut or scrape off as much of the white pith as possible with the knife.

4. Cut each quarter lengthwise into four strips. You should have 32 equal pieces, but don't sweat it if you tore the quarters while scraping them and so this turns out to be impossible. It's all good.

5. Put the sugar in a saucepan, pour in the water, and stir the sugar constantly over low heat until it is completely dissolved. You'll know this has happened when miraculously the water is clear again. Turn up the heat and keep stirring until the sugar-water starts to boil. Put the strips of orange peel into the sugar-water and turn the heat to low.

6. Leave peels simmering there for two hours. Come back after an hour and half to check up on them. Obviously you do not want the pot to boil dry, but really that shouldn't happen within two hours on low.

7. Turn off the heat. Lift each strip of sweet orangey goodness out of the pot with the tongs or slotted spoon and carefully drop it on the wire rack to cool. (Put something under the wire rack to catch the drips.) Pour what is now orange-flavoured simple syrup into a jug to use or discard when it cools and wash the pot, utensils, counter, stove top at ONCE with hot water. If you don't you will have a very sad time trying to get the sugar off later. (I rinse them with boiling water from the kettle.)

8. With double boiler or one pot on top of another, bring water to boil. Break up 100 g/bar of dark chocolate and put into the top pot. Watch like hawk.

9. Holding onto the end of each now cool but sticky orange peel strip, dip into the melted chocolate until it is covered.  Place on wax/baking paper to set.

10. If there is melted chocolate left over, section the orange and chuck pieces into the chocolate pot. Poke them around until they are covered. Put them on the wax paper to set.

11. When set, put the chocolate orange peels in a wax/baking paper lined tin or plastic container and hide it. Eat the chocolate covered orange sections as a reward for your hard work.

12. Serve the orange peels with coffee or tea (e.g. after a dinner party) as an elegant treat for the deserving.

Have Yourselves a Gloomy Little Advent

Good morning! It is Traddy Tuesday,the day I rekindle the flame in the hearts of would-be converts to Catholicism who have been misled entranced by Catholic books written before 1960, only to be shocked by their local RCIA class/parish liturgy/obscenity-dropping parish priest. Oh dear, I see your astonished faces in my mind's eye: "B-b-b-b-but Chesterton!" Yeah, I know.

But despair not! There a gazillion Roman Catholics who believe as (and what) Chesterton did and thousands who do their best to worship as he did, too. Our world is considerably worse than his was, so we are much crankier than he, however. Sorry about that. I apologize on behalf of the old lady who turned around at the Extraordinary Form of Mass and snarled at your friend's noisy baby. In her defense, she either traveled two hours to get to this Mass or she sold her house to live within walking distance. Try to forgive her--and offer to take the baby out.

So today's theme is ADVENT and the challenge of keeping it a penitential season when most of the English-speaking world thinks that Christmas begins the day after American Thanksgiving (at latest) and ends at midnight on Christmas Day. If I still have any Eastern Orthodox readers or Byzantine Catholic readers, please reveal in the combox how you manage to keep your fasts when all around you are having Christmas parties.

My dear friend Calvinist Cath does not believe in Christmas at all, so avoiding the December-long celebration of Christmas is a challenge for her too. Amusingly, the challenges of not observing Christmas before Christmas could unite the Orthodox, the Greek Catholics, the Latin Catholics and, amazingly, the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.* (This last avoids it completely , of course, but never mind that for now.)

I read somewhere that one of the reasons why the Latin Church doesn't fast like the Greek Church or the Eastern Orthodox Churches is the large number of important feast days during Advent. Just now I looked them up on the trad calendar on the front hall (from the monastery of Papa Stronsay), and the only one that leapt to the eye is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8), for both the Feast of Saint Nicholas (December 6) and the Feast of Saint Lucy (December 13) fall on Sundays this year. That said, for Latins Sunday is always a Feast Day, and never a Fast Day, except for the Eucharistic fast, of course.

Feasting and fasting are hallmarks of traditional Catholicism, and B.A. and I can't have a dinner party with Catholics without B.A. leaping up to see whose feast day it is. He flips the pages in his missal looking for the right Collect (prayer of the day) while the soup gets cold. Drives me nuts. However, B.A. has the right attitude, and the solution is for me to mark the place beforehand. My church friends take feasting very seriously and are wont to chide those who refuse to partake of wine on Sundays, which I think is taking feasting a bit too far.

Rather less fun is fasting, although fasting is the good servant of feasting. As two nice Byzantine Catholic girls explained to B.A. and me recently, if you don't fast, you can't really feast. And it is certainly true that food, wine and coffee all taste amazingly better if you have done without them for a bit.

However, we are Christians, not Epicureans, so fasting is also supposed to make us feel physically uncomfortable, a discomfort we willingly embrace so as to do penance for our sins and the sins of others. Meanwhile we have to look cheerful when we do it, and not tell others we are fasting so that they will think well of us (Matt 5: 16-18).  It's supposed to be between us and God, which I remember when Toronto Greeks get too noisy about how much better they keep Lent than us rotten Roman Catholics. (Admittedly, they do.) However, I suppose "I'm sorry, it's against my religion" is okay when well-meaning people tempt us into Advent gluttony. It has the added bonus of making us socially uncomfortable, too--yay!

Occasionally I get emails from women from traditional Catholic backgrounds who have developed eating disorders from fasting. It is dreadful when this happens, and it really shouldn't. A good spiritual director will not let this happen, and in the absence of a good spiritual director, the fasting Catholic should just use her head. If you don't eat at all on Friday, you had better have a good nutritious breakfast on Saturday. If you fast on Wednesdays, don't fast on Thursdays. Meanwhile, contemporary eating is such that if you merely eschew anything made with refined sugar, that's a painstaking fast. Especially if you try to eschew refined sugar in Advent, aka secular Christmas.

I'm kidding about having a gloomy Advent. However, the fact is the Advent is a penitential season, traditionally involving fasts, abstinence, prayers, special masses and almsgiving. But, also traditionally, there are Feast Days to break it up a bit, like St. Nicholas' Day, and every Sunday.

One of the tricky things about re-establishing traditional fasting and abstinence procedures in a Roman Catholic household is that all the other healthy adults have to agree to it. If the Church doesn't impose fasting-and-abstinence, who is the lady of the house to do it, eh? (My mother didn't bring back Friday abstinence until John Paul II said he thought it a good idea. "Right," said Mum and fed us the orange sawdust fish triangles of doom ever after.) So I have consulted with my Liege Lord (i.e. B.A.) and we have come up with our own private Advent plans.

Because, really, it's not cricket to embrace all the fun things about traditional Catholicism without cheerfully taking on its disciplines, too. One helpful community penance would be to help dust and clean the church, any fellow Edinburgh traddies who are reading this (Saturday 2-4).

But to end on a celebratory note, we rejoice in the establishment of the Fraternity of the Priests of Saint Peter's first proper parish church in the United Kingdom. (The rest of us piggyback, like the Maronites who shared my childhood church.) The archdiocese of Liverpool gave the FSSP a BEAUTIFUL church first owned by the Benedictines, and you can see photographs of the inaugural Mass here.  Naturally we EF-loving Catholics are still praying for a church of our very own. I like the pretty wooden one we steal borrow share, but the choir wants one with better acoustics.

*Leaving aside the age-old Dec 25/Jan 6 issue, naturally.

Update: Note the complete lack of women in the sanctuary, o-the-humanity #weeping #wailing. There's some in the choir. Presumably they made up at least a third of the congregation.