The Most Pelagian Day of the Year

Happy New Year all my little Singles and sympathetic non-Singles! I am back from Mass, and well primed with champagne. Time to harangue you and generally get up your nose and say things your mother is too nice or too afraid to say.

The first thing I want you girls to do is to cross "Get a boyfriend/husband" off your resolution list. Shame on you for trying to pre-determine the fate of other people. Shame shame shame. Why not just cook up a love potion, shove it in a box of chocolates and randomly hand the box around? It's the extreme of what you are plotting on your little list. Getting a boyfriend/spouse is not something that you do but something that happens. You can lose (or try to lose) ten pounds, or increase your earnings, or quit smoking, or learn French, but you cannot make a man fall in love with you. You can only be pleased or distressed when one does.

And because, like Nature, I unashamedly have a double-standard, I am hoping that men-not-called-to-Single life have themselves made a resolution to get to know more girls with an eye to perhaps future courtship. However, I will remind that you too can not make people fall in love with you, although women are often impressed and flattered by a real effort.

There is a limit, though. If a girl says, "Just friends," drop her flat and try someone else. Don't waste your time on piddly little friendships with girls who want to be "just friends." Let the sudden drying up of your attentions teach them what happens when they say "Just friends" to perfectly eligible bachelors like yourself.

Pelagius, in case you haven't yet supplemented the sub-standard religious education common to most Catholic schools, was the great theological rival of St. Augustine and therefore a superstar among heretics. Pelagius, who was British, thought you could become good without prevenient Grace; in short he thought everyone should just pull himself up by his own moral bootstraps. He did not think you needed God's help to do this. And like all super-duper heresies, this attitude has never gone away. You cannot be good without God's help, and you cannot get married without His help, either.

As I like to say, the primary reason why Searching Singles are not yet married is that God has not willed it. Therefore, when wondering why you are still Single, the person to talk to is God, because He is primarily responsible. He has not yet brought the handsome or pretty stranger into your life, and why not, eh? Only He knows, but it must be for a good reason. Possibly your future spouse (if you have one) isn't ready for you yet. Goodness knows, my own spouse wasn't ready for me until two or three days after I met him in person, which is when he was received into the Church.

So if you have made a resolution to get engaged this year to someone you haven't even met yet or, worse, someone who isn't at all in love with you, then cross it off your list and write "Meet more friendly people." That you can do. Try to meet people of all ages. Grown-ups don't hang out only with people born the same year as themselves, and they often know other people your age, e.g. their lovely daughters, handsome sons, witty grandchildren.

Under that write "Be happier and more confident." That, too, is up to you. Pray for the grace to accept what life throws at you more cheerfully and for confidence. Happiness and confidence make you more attractive than any cosmetic surgery known to man.

Under that write "Try to be more pleasant in public." Letting it all hang out is not, actually, the cardinal virtue opposed to the sin of hypocrisy. It is sloppiness, and generally a bad idea except among your very best friends of the same (THE SAME) sex. Even married people should do their best to keep up appearances before their poor old spouses, who cannot escape. Personally, I have resolved to stop using bad words in front of dear B.A. Women should endeavour not to use bad words before men, and I would have eighteen thousand fits if BA used bad words before me.

So although women cannot in fact "Get a boyfriend/spouse" and men usually cannot make the Queen Bee of their set want to snog them and them alone, there are things that you can do to make yourself more attractive to other Searching Singles. Just remember that you can't control other people, and that God is the boss.