Don't Forget My Book!

Poppets, it's so nice to see so many of you--in my "stats" and amongst my "Followers"! You're definitely giving credibility to my hypothesis that Singles deserve more attention and want to hear more about the Single Life than just "Chastity" all the time.

Of course, chastity is very important, but quite a few Singles have no overwhelming problems in that department.* If you don't have a boyfriend or men flopping about at your feet, being chaste should be relatively easy-peasy. Just don't read racy romance novels or Cosmopolitan, for you'll drive yourselves insane. A much bigger problem is adherence to "emotional chastity," which means stopping yourselves from developing ever-more-agonizing crushes on Mr. Wrong.

Sadly, when I was a teenager (just yesterday, my dears) I loved chastity lectures because they were a certified excuse to listen to talk about sex. The lecturers were usually Evangelical ladies, and they had innocence-fall-punishment-redemption down to an art. It was very thrilling. The narrative was very simple: premarital sex led to absolute hellish misery--and they detailed their premarital sex and their hellish miseries--and marital sex was the absolute best thing on earth, better than ice-cream, chocolate, the first warm sunny day after a long, cold winter, a loving card from a friend you thought would never talk to you again...

This, of course, made people who never dated at all absolutely panic that they would never marry and get this most delightful of earthly experiences. It also led to unrealistic expectations of wedding nights, of which the secret thought of many a woman has been "Is that it?" (Answer: It gets better.) St. Thomas Aquinas would have something stern to say about the Sex-is-Almost-Divine approach to sexuality. In fact he did, in the part of Contra Gentiles where he rubbishes Muslim heaven.

Anyway, if all my lovely advice sometimes grates upon you because I am married now (or even if it doesn't), I recommend that you buy the lovely book I wrote when I was still Single, Seraphic Singles, which in the USA is called The Closet's All Mine, and which in Poland will no doubt will be called something which uses a startling number of consonants. If you're going to the Edith Stein Project at the University of Notre Dame in February, there should be copies of The Closet's All Mine there. I hope they get bought up because, goodness, how embarrassing if they aren't!

I am told that the people who make the most from books are not the authors (alas) or the publishers but the booksellers, so I urge you to help out Catholic businesses by either buying straight from the publisher (which means Novalis, Liguori, and Poland's Homo Dei) or from Catholic bookshops run by lovely nuns. In Toronto, Crux Books is not run by lovely nuns, but they are very good people, and I adore them, so go there. I believe they have THE best prices in Toronto on THE best selection of theology books ever in Toronto amassed.

If you can't get to a Catholic or otherwise theological bookshop, there is always Amazon, and if you buy from Amazon, you can leave a lovely review, if you like. In Canada, I know my book is available from Indigo and Chapters, too.

P.S. If you are Polish and want to know when Homo Dei is going to publish Serafikiego Singli, or whatever they wish to call it, feel free to email them. One enterprising Polish reader already has. It will be such a happy day when I have my Polish book. Usually the books of people I know get translated into French or Spanish first, so this is very, very exciting.

*As I have more male readers these days, I should state that I understand that staying chaste is not even relatively easy-peasy for Single men, especially young Single men. Go ask your very favourite celibate priest how he manages. Do priests tell men these things? I hope so, for who else could better advise a Single man than another Single man, one presumably advanced in holiness?