Auntie Seraphic & the Vocations Victim

I spent some time this morning answering this letter, so it is the only Single topic on my mind. Hopefully it will not be a shock to the letter writer if she finds my answer here before she finds it in her in-box.

Dear Auntie Seraphic, 

Hi! I enjoy your blog very much. I just shared it with a friend of mine who appreciated it too! 

So, I'm wondering what to do when priests cannot seem to find another topic to talk to young women (people) about than "Wow, you would make a good nun. OR maybe you should find a boyfriend. Have you LISTENED to God about what he wants for your life?" 

In all respect to their (probably) kindly and fatherly intentions ,I find this insulting  because it seems to imply 1) that I'm in my mid-twenties and haven't even THOUGHT about what God wants from me or 2) that somehow I am weird and less a person/Catholic/devoted to God because I'm not in some kind of life-long commitment yet. 

So how does one respectfully and yet abruptly end such conversations without appearing rude/getting angry/bursting into tears? 

I'm of the opinion that even priests don't need to know your whole life story unless they are your confessor/spiritual director or close friends. It just makes life too complicated when you have to answer off the cuff "Yes I have thought about it but discerned X was not for me and was then dating Y but he broke up with me to join the seminary" etc etc. 

How does one kindly and respectfully but firmly end such conversations? 

Does that question imply in it the hopelessness for our generation that it seems to? 

Thanks! 

God bless,

Vocations Victim 

Dear Vocations Victim,

As someone who married at 25 and divorced at 27 and got an annulment at 28 and didn't marry again until 38, I do not like the panicky climate of vocation angst that has prevailed since the 1980s. 

I think it stems from the loss of thousands of priests and nuns in the 1960s and 1970s, who abandoned their responsibilities, communities and vows, either to get married or, in some cases, to have a good time. Somehow subsequent generations are expected to pick up the slack. And I suspect we are are expected to pick up the reproductive slack for two generations of Catholics on the Pill, too. And all this without the wider, confident culture of the pre-1963 era that honoured priests, religious life and large families.

If you restate this in your own words to the next priest who gives you a hard time for not being a nun or a married lady, that might give him pause for thought.  

I see that you are worried about having appropriate respect for a priest. As a fellow Catholic I understand this. However, as a fellow Catholic who has been around priests quite a lot, in theology school, for example, I understand that the best way to respect a priest is to speak to him as truthfully as you would to any other adult. Say exactly what you think, and make it short and snappy, with no hemming and hawing or life story.  Anger--which can be a virtue (see Thomas Aquinas)--is useful here. 

If you think you would love to be married, but the men of your generation all seem to expect premarital sex as a normal part of dating, tell him. 

If you think you would love to be a nun, but your parents despise nuns, tell him that.

If you think he is being terribly rude and inappropriate, tell him you think he is being terribly rude and inappropriate. 

If you wonder why he would assume you have not thought about your vocation, ask "Why do you assume that I haven't?" If you feel insulted, say "I feel insulted."

If you feel like bursting into tears, there are few things men hate more than women bursting into tears. I think women underestimate the power of our tears. Of course, this can be manipulative, so only do it if you can't help it or it is the only way to express yourself without shrieking. Crying is okay; shrieking is not.

You might also ask him what he personally is doing to help his young Catholics meet each other or religious communities. Has he thought of organizing a parish dance? Has he thought of organizing a parish visit to the local monastery? How old was he when he was ordained? Were his parents supportive? What if they hadn't been?

What I am suggesting takes an awful lot of confidence. However, part of becoming an adult--and how the post-Vatican II era bangs on about the laity "becoming adults"--is asserting oneself before officious adults. 

I realize what you want to do is stop the conversation without rocking the boat, but acting as though a priest were just an ugly but precious piece of china you'd prefer to keep at a respectful distance is not the Christian, Catholic way. It's his job to help you, and if he's doing it all wrong, it is respectful--and loving--to tell him that. 

I hope this is helpful. 

Grace and peace,

Seraphic

Sociologists would have a field day if they examined the ways priests and young people, especially young women, interact. (Actually, that would be a field day for a sociologist.) If a middle-aged man you barely knew told you you would make a good nun or asked why you didn't have a boyfriend, I very much hope you wouldn't feel you had to tell him your life story. Of course you don't. And, indeed, you shouldn't. In fact, I bet the average Scottish twenty-something lassie  would look at such a man with venom and say, "P*** off." And off would toddle the middle-aged man with his tail between his legs. 

Now, obviously we can't say "p*** off" to a priest because a priest does not deserve such a curt (but effective) dismissal just for doing his job. His job is saving our souls, and he has been taught that the way to do this is to get us to hear God's voice calling us to religious life or marriage, not just to love Him with all our hearts, all our souls and all our minds, and to love our neighbours as ourselves. And, to give the seminaries credit, both marriage and religious life do indeed free us up for the Commandment of Love because once we get the Sex and Marriage Questions settled, we can stop worrying about them.  

As Catholics who want to have our souls saved, we have to help priests do their job. And the only way to do that is to speak to them honestly, as adults. That does not mean telling them our life stories. That does not mean apologizing for ourselves. That certainly does not mean uttering a few platitudes as if stuck with our father's most boring friend at a cocktail party.   

By the way, one of the most simple and devastating questions in the whole world is the word "Why?" If any priest, inspired by my obvious and perhaps distressing lack of children, told me that I would make a good mother, I would say, "Thank you. Why?" I would not feel I had to tell him how I old I was when I married, or how old I am now, and what the doctor said, and if I have considered adoption, and blah blah blah. 

That reminds me, "You would make a good nun" is not in itself a bitter insult in Catholic circles and should not be regarded as such. It is not the same thing as saying "You look like a sexless being no man would ever want." That is not what a nun is, no matter what pop culture says. If anyone tells you that you would make a good nun, say, "Thank you. Why?"  Unless, of course, it is a complete stranger whose advances you have rejected, in which case, if he looks too old or timorous for violence, consider your local version of "P*** off."

We are not Ivory Soap

From yesterday's combox:

How much influence do you think sexual sin has on the personal history of a woman? Obviously God can redeem and call anyone to anything (Mary Magdalene, for example), but do you think that women who have had some experience of un-chastity, even if not the sexual act itself, are far less likely to find themselves being called to religious life? Maybe because they would prefer to be married and experience sexuality that way, or because they no longer feel free to give themselves to God in a consecrated way? (Leaving aside canonical issues, of course.)

It seems worth discussing in this culture where very few remain completely pure until/ through adulthood.


***

Ah, the overwhelming issue of sexual sin. Well, as I understand it, most men at least when they are teenagers have quite a problem with what some confessors treat as a not-so-serious sin for pastoral reasons but which the catechism says is a serious sin. Many (at least when they are teenagers) also deliberately dwell on sexual thoughts instead of allowing them to flit through their teeming brains. And yet no-one ever says that these men are necessarily not called to the priesthood or religious life. Some men (and I know at least one) give up a life of wine, women and song for the life of men religious). St. Augustine, St. Ignatius of Loyola and Thomas Merton were all unwed fathers. (In the case of the third, this fact was too much for the Franciscans, but the Trappists found it no bar. NB It is believed the baby and mother were killed in the London Blitz.)

For the past 15 or 16 years I have resisted and decried the notion that men and women can be pure in the same sense as a bar of Ivory soap. Whereas the whole notion of spotless purity was perhaps important psychologically in the past, and roused chivalrous feelings of protection towards children, virgins and "nice women", I think its day is mostly done except in the case of Our Lady, who was preserved from all sin and perhaps other human experiences too by an extraordinary and arguably never-repeated gift from God. (As for children, everyone in my fifth grade class deserved protection from sexual exploitation, but I wouldn't call them "spotlessly pure" as a goodly number spent recess french-kissing each other behind the school.)

It simply is impossible to talk about the purity of women as if women were white wedding dresses that can be stained, uglified, cheapened and heaven knows what by sexual experiences. We aren't. Sexuality is a lot more complicated than a gravy stain, and women (like men) are not things but people. We derive our value not from our lack of sexual feelings or experiences but from our createdness by the Creator, especially in the two past thousand years because of our redemption by the Redeemer. The Father considered us worth the life and death of His Son, but this has nothing to do with our merits. It has entirely to do with the mysterious love of God for His creatures.

There is no Scriptural evidence that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, other than that she was inflicted by demons, which suggests to me that she was left unprotected by her family and then, yes, prostitution probably would have been the only way she could have survived. If so, Mary Magdalene was a victim of one of the seriously unjust systems that Christ came to overturn. One might argue that since the sexual revolution, young people are also victims of an unjust system, one which shoves harmful sexual imagery and philosophy at them constantly: in magazines, billboards, television, music, the internet and even in doctors' waiting rooms and at school. Mary Magdalene did not define her life by how well she coped with the system, but by Christ. So should we.

So what does this mean in terms of religious life for women? Well, I was turned down sight unseen by the Tennessee Dominicans, bless them, because 1. I had had an annulment (and therefore had been married) AND because 2. I was 35. It wasn't just that I had been married. It was that I had been married AND was 35. If I had been 35 and never-married, they might have pondered longer. Or if I had just got my annulment and was therefore 28, they might have pondered longer. But actually I was a mess when I was 28, and it would never have occurred to me to join the T.D.s

I'm glad, too, because although I loved growing up with women--Brownies, Girl Guides, Pathfinders, ballet class, women's ice hockey, all-girls school--I enjoy the company of men. A lot. And not just as pals. Nooo. Since I was seven or so, I have been in a state of at least serious crush almost constantly. And the older I get, the more I like men. The attractive ones who also have good characters, anyway. It would be a real wrench to learn to think and speak and behave like a religious sister, which is no doubt why no-one who knows me well has ever suggested I would make a good one.

I can't pinpoint a particular Rubicon that I crossed that made me unfit for religious life. An examination of historical circumstances shows that my parents never praised religious life for women, that not a single teacher, including nuns, ever tried to interest me in religious life until my very last day at school, that between the ages of 6 and 34 I never met a nun whom I thought was the bees' knees*, that the episode in my school's order's foundress' (Mary Ward's) life that impressed me most was that a whole sloo of eligible Catholic bachelors wanted to get engaged to her before she was 12. Me, I could not get a date to the Spring Fling in Grade 9. Boo.

Meanwhile, the most romantic place in the entire world for me was not a convent of any description but the choir stalls of the local Cathedral, for there were the best-trained teenage Catholic Tenors, Baritones and Basses in the archdiocese, and I generally had a crush on one of them. In hindsight this suggests the deepest desire of my heart was to marry a Catholic Tenor, Baritone or Bass from some choir stall somewhere, which is what in 2009 I did.

I can see that developing habits of inchastity may make it difficult to quit being unchaste, but as a matter of fact throughout the ages thousands of women have gone into the desert or into convents to do just that. I am not sure the current structures of religious life support that kind of thing these days, but I'm not a Vocations Director, so who knows?

What I think suggests that a woman has a calling to religious life is not an "unspotted past" (if such a thing is possible for the vast majority of adult women--I mean, where does the spotting start? Kissing games at 12? Fantasies about boy bands at 13? Dancing dangerously too close to your principal crush object to "Stairway to Heaven" at 17? A grope-fest gone out of control with a "fiance" at 22? ) but a real interest in religious life and a real admiration for concrete, real-life women religious. For me it's not enough that St Teresa of Avila and Edith Stein were Carmelite nuns. I'd want to meet and admire a living Carmelite nun before I pondered her way of life for a second.

Frankly, I don't think we should define our lives by our sins, or allow anyone else to define our lives that way. And I don't think we should allow our sins to determine our history. We should define our lives and make our decisions by love. Not by sin. Not by the sorry stream of tatty decisions and experiences we dump on a priest and at the foot of the Cross in the confessional. By love.

We are far less likely to find ourselves called to religious life for the same reason German women in 1919 were far less likely to find themselves called to married life: historical circumstances beyond our control. In the case of the German women (Frenchwomen, Englishwomen, et alia), the men of their generation had been slaughtered on the battlefields of the First World War. In the case of the women of my generation, the upheaval immediately preceding, during and following the Second Vatican Council almost completely destroyed the traditional life of women religious. I do not know of a single Canadian woman my own age who became a nun although two of the boys I knew from local boys' schools became priests.

The situation of women's orders has improved, though, enough to inspire silly Seraphic to call up the Tennessee Dominicans, and to inspire two of the most wonderful women I know to join the Benedictines at Ryde. If a woman is really fascinated by religious life, particularly the historical Rule of a particular religious order, then I suggest she talk to a good priest about it, no matter what her past sins have been.

*When I was 5 or 6, I thought Sister Mary Anthony, IBVM was the bees' knees. When she retired as principal of my elementary school, I cried and cried. I was inconsolable. Possibly I was not just crying for the loss of Sister Mary Anthony but prophetically for the historical circumstances that made it unlikely that a nun would ever be principal of that school again.

Update: My eye just fell upon the idea of wanting to experience sexuality in a married way. Eek. Whereas it is absolutely good and normal to want to reserve sexual acts to marriage, it is not good to get married for "an experience." Marriage is not an experience but a way of life. It certainly has more stability and trust (or SHOULD!) than a non-married relationship in which sexual acts feature, but it is not a infinite font of exciting experiences. Sexuality in the broader sense is who you are as a woman and how you, as a woman, interact with men and the idea of men. In itself it is good, but of course as a created thing it has also affected by the Fall.

Update 2: Note that I am talking about past sins. It is hard to read God's writing at all when you are in a sinful state, and you can't assume God is going to grab you by the shoulder and shout "Hey, you!" He might, but He might not.

Auntie Seraphic's Intention

Listen, poppets. Your Auntie Seraphic has a very big prayer intention.

It is not about babies. I had a conversation with the Lord on Sunday about babies.

"How come you never send me a baby?" I asked.

Eventually He got around to answering.

"I want you to take care of other people's babies right now," He said. "Okay, some of them are six feet tall, but they need your help and I want you to give it to them."

"Oh," I said. "But can't I have a baby AND take care of other people's babies?"

But He had said all He wanted to say for the time being, so that was it.

No, this prayer intention has to do with my career. And I think the very best thing I can do, since I feel more-or-less powerless in this situation, is to ask you to pray for my intention. I ask particularly those who have written me letters because, whereas although obviously the Lord doesn't forget stuff, prayers that begin "Lord, could you help Auntie Seraphic because she helped me" sound kind of convincing---to my ear, at least.

Vocational Discernment Should Start at Confirmation

I have just read another letter from yet another twenty-something girl who is being jerked around by her twenty-something boyfriend who doesn't know if he has a vocation to the priesthood or not. Despite them breaking up over it and getting back together again over and over again--not to mention all the snogging and whatever--the man thinks he might have a vocation to the priesthood.

One thing that young Catholics never seem to understand is that it is actually insulting for a man to tell his girlfriend that he is discerning a vocation to the priesthood. He may be discerning a vocation to the priesthood, but he's also saying, "I think I might spend the rest of my life without you." If I were the queen of the world, I would make it a law that every woman would have to dump her suddenly discerning-a-vocation-to-the-priesthood boyfriend and refuse to talk to him until he showed at her door crying and begging forgiveness.

I am happy to say that I know at least one woman who gave the guy she was seeing the old heave-ho as soon as he pulled that stunt. It was a very weird courtship, anyway, since he took her home to meet his parents almost immediately but wasn't that interested in huggin' and kissin'.

Normally it's a relief when a guy keeps his hands to himself, but after you've been dating for some time you begin to wonder why. Does he not find you attractive or does he have a super-strict confessor or is he secretly and self-loathingly gay? I can only imagine how awful it must be for a son of a pious Catholic family to discover he is gay, but wasting the time of innocent Catholic women is not the solution to anything.

Whatever his own issue, this guy announced that he was going abroad to determine his vocation, and the woman said, "Hmm. Shouldn't you consult this with me?" And the guy was surprised. Astonished. It hadn't even occured to him that his girlfriend should be consulted. It was all about him, him, HIM. Overwhelming self-absorption is not really a sign of the priestly charism, now, is it? Anyway, she dumped him and met an absolutely fabulous guy, a guy whose courtship was a lot more slow, cautious, selfless and meaningful. Best of all, perhaps, he had long since figured out that the priesthood was not for him.

Once upon a time there was this marvellous institution called the junior seminary. Maybe they still exist in some places; I know a priest in his 50s who was in one in Eastern Europe. The junior seminary was a special high school where teenage boys went to be educated and discern their possible vocation to the priesthood. This was deemed later to be bad for boys, but it was certainly great for girls, because it meant we did not have to deal with discerners all the darned time. And the priest I know attended junior seminary is a wonderful priest, very sweet and kind and even innocent. No doubt he hears all kinds of horrors in the confessional, but he has a quality of innocence all the same. He's a junior sem success story.

I am sure these letters will keep coming, but I have to say that nothing burns me up as much as the story of yet another college sweetheart breaking the bad news about his sudden need to discern the priesthood. Could he not have begun that when he was confirmed? It might not be his fault, of course; I cannot remember anyone talking to my confirmation class about discerning vocations to priesthood or religious life. But, really, if you only start talking to teens about this stuff when they are 19 and dating, isn't it too late?

At Confirmation, when you are about 14, you become an adult in the Church. And as an adult-in-the-Church you should start thinking about how you might best serve the Church when you are an adult for real. Don't put off contacting this religious order or that vocatons director after you're had your fun dating and kissing and telling this boy or that girl that you think you love him or her.

At this point, I discern several voices shrieking, "But, Seraphic, you always tells us that vocation can come at any age!" Yes, it can---and for the simple reason that vocation comes from God. God calls, and you answer. But you shouldn't wait until you're 19 to start listening for it, just as you shouldn't have zero clue what you want to do with your life as you muddle your way through junior year.

And call me crazy, but if you have a boyfriend you can't quit, or a girlfriend to whom you keep returning, it might just be a sign that you are not called to perpetual celibacy. By becoming a vocational tourist, you're holding the life and future of the person who might love you more than anyone else in the world hostage. Stop it. Forget about what you might be called to; ask yourself, just who do you think you are?

The Nashville Dominicans told me I was too old for them when I was 35. They were right; it was a shot in the dark and a waste of their vocation director's time. But at least I wasn't dating anyone when I asked. Nobody cried because I called them.

Do your fellow twenty-something Catholics a favour; work out how you feel about lifelong celibacy BEFORE you make out with them, okay?

P.S. Once you are out of the seminary/convent, and have spent a year acclimatizing yourself to the ordinary world, then go ahead and date. Go for it. Recovered ex-postulants and ex-seminarians can make marvellous spouses. But if you suddenly change your mind, mid-snog, and hare after the convent or seminary again you're a jerk. Sorry, but you are. I feel sorry for the heart you're stomping on, not you, drama queen.

"Will You Be My VDP?"

They were at the same college, and they had seen each other at Mass and on the fringes of chaplaincy events. They had chatted a few times, and Katie liked Mike quite a lot. If he wasn't tall, at least he was taller than she. And if he wasn't very handsome, at least he was more handsome than the other guys around. He was always carrying some Catholic book or other, even though he was science student. Katie thought this was very cool.

Then one day, in the college library, which was a lot like your college library, where Katie was diligently trying to memorize vocabulary lists by writing out each word ten times, Mike appeared at her elbow. Katie looked up and smiled, hoping against hope that she was not blushing.

"Hey," said Mike.

"Hey," said Katie.

Mike looked around the library and then back down at Katie.

"So are you busy?"

"Kind of," said Katie and then, not quite fibbing because the thought had that very second occured to her, "I was thinking of taking a break."

"Cool," said Mike. "You want to grab a coffee or something?"

"Sure," said Katie and then, since she is a great fan of this blog, smiled and said, "You paying?"

"Sure," said Mike. "I want to ask you something."

Now Katie prayed to all her favourite saints that she wasn't blushing. She chewed the inside of her lip to keep from smiling too widely. Her heart pounded in her maidenly bosom. She scooped her papers and laptop into her bag, picked up her coat and followed Mike to the library cafe.

They chose a table with a view of the campus, and hung up their coats on the backs of their chairs, and put their bags on the floor. Katie watched as Mike unwound his college scarf from his neck and felt a bit woozy. She distracted herself by silently reciting vocabulary lists.

"So," said Mike. "A latte or what?"

"Double double," said Katie.

"Aha," said Mike. "A sweet tooth! I like that in a woman."

He strode to the counter and Katie sat on her hands so as not to chew her fingernails. She looked out the window and recited more unfamiliar words crucial to her studies.

Mike returned with a big cup of white coffee, a big cup of black coffee, a brownie and a plastic knife, all carefully balanced on a tray. He cut the brownie in half and smiled at Katie.

"I figured we might both need some chocolate by now."

"Thanks," said Katie faintly. She felt an almost overwhelming urge to text her best friend immediately, but she repressed it.

Mike flung himself in his seat and lifted his mug.

"Cheers!"

"Cheers," said Katie.

Her coffee was rich and sweet, exactly as she liked it.

"So," said Mike, leaning forward. "About that thing I wanted to ask you about?"

Katie composed her face into a look she hoped conveyed mildly ironic and detached womanly sophistication.

"Uh huh?"

"I was wondering. I mean, because we're Catholic and all, and go to the same stuff, and have the same friends, and get along great, if you'd consider being my VDP?"

Katie made a strange squeaking noise, turned red and stared at Mike blankly.

"Your what?"

"My VDP. You know, Vocation Discernment Partner."

"I'm sorry," said Katie. "I don't know what that is."

"Oh," said Mike. "Maybe it's not that popular here yet. Well, it's when you're trying to figure out if you're called to be married or a priest or what. I mean, obviously as Catholics we totally reject that whole stupid campus hook-up culture and just, you know, concentrate on discerning our vocations. And it's way easier to do that with another person. It's, like, by going out with you, I would figure out if I'm called to be a husband and father, and I think I would make a great husband and father, or a priest, who, you know, technically should have made a great husband and father if he hadn't become a priest, and you would figure out if you were called to be a nun or what."

"A nun?" said Katie. "Me?"

"Sure," said Mike. "Why not? Lots of women your age are becoming nuns now. Real nuns, with habits. Anyway, what do you think? Would you like to be my Vocations Discernment Partner?"

Katie became vaguely aware of some sort of interior shrieks, and wondered who was shrieking. It was her heart, but Katie didn't have time to attend to that right now.

"You're going to think I'm awfully stupid," she said, "but I still don't know what this entails. I mean, do we go out to the movies and stuff, or go to Mass together, or go to vocation discernment lectures together and talk about them afterwards?"

"All of that," said Mike enthusiastically. "I need to give every vocation a fair shake: marriage, priesthood--heck, even monastic life."

"I don't know how I can help you discern monastic life," said Katie.

"Well," said Mike, "say I go on retreat, to Kentucky with the Trappists or whomever. Then if I miss you really a lot, then that might give me a clue."

"A clue to how you feel about me?"

"Sure," said Mike nervously, "or women in general."

Katie's heart gave another wail.

"I don't know if that's flattering or not," said Katie, "standing in for women in general."

"That's the beauty of it," said Mike. "You represent women in general for me, and I represent men in general for you."

"Like in hook-up culture," said Katie.

Mike blinked.

"Excuse me?"

"Well, it's like hook-up culture, isn't it? You use me--as a woman--for something, and I use you--as a man--for something. As a means to an end."

"No, I'm sorry," said Mike, not sounding sorry but actually annoyed. "That's not the same thing at all. Hook-up culture is about sex without strings, which is a mortal sin, and vocation discernment partnership is about finding out God's will for your life, which is awesome."

"But I already know God's will for my life," said Katie.

Mike blinked again.

"You do?"

"Yes," said Katie, standing up. "It's to spend time with people who want to be with me for me, and not just because I'm some woman."

"Hey," said Mike. "Sit down. You're not just some woman. There are tons of women on this campus. You're a, well, you're a nice Catholic girl."

"No, I'm not," said Katie, getting her coat. "I'm a fantastic Catholic girl. See you around, Mike. I hope you find your vocation soon."

Mike held his coffee cup with both hands and looked at the evenly divided brownie.

"I'm confused here," said Mike.

"Yes," said Katie, picking up her bag. "I can see that."

This was too big for texting. She left the library and began to walk to her dorm. She walked swiftly for a block, and then she began to run. She ran as if all the Vocation Discernment Partners in the world were after her. And when she got to her room, she pulled out her phone. As she turned it on, her eye fell on the crucifix.

"Just one," she promised.

She speed-dialed her best friend.

***
Update: Part 2, "Katie Weakens" here.

Update 2: Willkommen, der Lederstamm von Ecce Sponsus Venit! Ich spreche kaum Deutsche...

Vocation and Valentines

And how are you spending the night of Valentine's Day? If you are a Single woman, I hope you have a nice indoor plan--meeting with Single friends or renting a good movie and buying yourself a yummy treat. Just as long as its something to look forward to at the end of a red-pink-and-white day, when all about you are having roses delivered to their desks. If you are a Single man, I suggest you pop into a fancy restaurant and notice how high the prices have been jacked up for that night. Valentine's Day is a restauranteur's license to steal.

I will be spending Valentine's Day all by my little self. Well, no. I suppose I'll be at home with Mum and Dad, unless Mum and Dad go out for Valentine's Day dinner. Maybe I'll watch Moonstruck again. Of course, I now have it memorized, so maybe I will recite Moonstruck. The thing is, I will be in North America, and my husband will still be in Britain. I have the Notre Dame conference on February 11 and 12th, and when I fly north on February 13th, it will be to Toronto, not Glasgow. My husband, meanwhile, has a very busy month in February. He makes most of our money; he cannot go junketing off with me.

"Cry me a river," I hear someone say. "At least you have a husband."

Very true, and that is why I am going to spend V-Day all by my little self. There's no point in going to a Valentine's Day Singles' Solidarity Supper when I cannot fully participate in Singles' Solidarity. Sure, I could hang with girls who say, "Oh, how sad that you are so far from your husband on Valentine's Day," but the words "At least you have a husband" would bounce above us all in an invisible thought balloon, so forget it. I can't even hang with widows. Maybe I could find other women on business trips.

"It's not a business trip," said a cantankerous woman at church on Sunday. "It's a holiday, and you're abandoning your husband."

Yes, I'm afraid that even at my beautiful Traditional Latin Mass there are cantankerous types reminding us all that perfect happiness is only possible in heaven. And I suppose in a way she was right: first I decided I would go to Canada to see my family and friends, and then I hinted broadly that I ought to be invited to Notre Dame. Still, only a non-Canadian could call three weeks in a Canadian February a "holiday."

Actually, my life in Scotland feels like a holiday. It's going to Canada that feels like work because my husband, whom I didn't get to meet until I was 37, won't be there. I don't function well without him these days. The last time I went on a trip without him, I broke down within 24 hours and cried like a little girl.

"I'm so looking forward to going home," I said on my last trip to Canada. "I haven't seen my husband in weeks."

This was at a wedding, to a woman I know slightly. We were in a queue for the roast pig. She looked at me severely.

"I haven't spent a night apart from my husband in nearly thirty years," she said.

I thought that was marvellous. It's like Paul and Linda McCartney, who before Linda's death spent a night apart only because Paul was briefly jailed for marijuana possession. I hoped B.A. and I would be like that, too, but I am a writer, and these days what sells writing is appearances. So occasionally I make appearances in places where my husband is not.

Vocation is a falling in love. I am stealing the phrase "falling in love" from Bernard Lonergan, S.J., who rightly said that religious conversion was a "falling in love." But vocation is, too. In state-of-life vocation, you fall in love with a life of prayerful Singleness, either with the community you have fallen in love with (the Dominicans, perhaps, or L'Arche) or alone, or you fall in love with a person, or you fall in love with priesthood and say, "Here I am, Lord." But there are other kinds of vocation, too: you decide to do missionary work in Gambia, and you fall in love with Gambia. You pick up a crayon, and you fall in love with visual art. You feel an urge to write about the Single Life, and you end up writing a speech to give at Notre Dame in mid-February, thereby sacrificing your Valentine's Day.

I don't really mind sacrificing Valentine's Day, since what I really mind is leaving my husband for three weeks. It is the absence that will annoy me; the disapproving clucks of other married women are just silly. For most of his career, my father has gone on at least two business trips a year, and I would be flabbergasted to discover that some stalwart of the Knights of Columbus upbraided him for it:

"Australia for two months? That's not a business trip, that's a holiday, and you're abandoning your wife and kids!"

And even if you take the business part out of it, my father has on occasion headed south to his native U.S. to visit aging relatives while my mother held the fort at home. The idea of never spending a night apart from your beloved spouse is a beautiful one, but life doesn't work out like that for everyone.

No, the hard part is the separation, but although being married to B.A. is my numero uno vocation, I have been called to speak and write to Singles, too. It's ironic. It's a mystery. But it is true.

Discern This, Drama Boy!

I wrote this in 2008, and most of it still applies. I'm dedicating it out to every Nice Catholic Girl in the world who has had her heart handed back to her, bleeding, on a tray by some self-absorbed moron who thinks maybe he really does have a vocation to the priesthood after all, oops.

Discern This, Drama Boy ! (Archives)

A younger friend emailed me saying, "Everyone I'm interested in ends up discerning the priesthood! What IS that!!!! Madness! Argh!!! Blaaah!!" I thought that that was a most articulate way of summing up the human condition of actively Catholic girls in their early twenties. Of course, the kicker is that precious few of those "discerners" will ever feel the oil of consecration on their hands. When I was this girl's age, I knew a lot of Catholic boys. And a lot of them discerned. And only two of them became priests.

Now I don't want to kick discernment. Discernment is great. When I was 21 and my boyfriend began to explore a call to the Scalabrinians, I said, "You go on ahead, honey" and fired off an inquiry to the Daughters of Saint Paul. Ha ha! So there.

Where was I? Oh yes, discernment is great. However, it is not so great if your discernment becomes a soap opera starring you. Discerners get the kind of attention that others only dream of. You have special meetings. You have special advisors. You have special weekends away. You get fancy brochures. You get the attention of Nice Catholic Girls, but it isn't scary, 'cause you're discerning. Of course, the real test is if you tell your mother. Actually, I wouldn't take any "discerner" seriously who hadn't told his mother. Of course, the Fear of Telling Mum can be spun into a whole separate drama in the Saga of My Discernment.

I love other people's dramas. It is a great problem. If there is a great dramatic secret that everyone hints around, I go nuts until I find out what it is. And if it is dramatic enough, I hang around the edges, watching the drama unfold. However, then I care too much. It's like beginning to care about the Toronto Maple Leafs at play-off time. The agony! So personally I would keep a strict distance from any discerner to whom I was attracted. Of course, now I am in my mid-thirties, and any guy my age who is still discerning simply cannot be attractive to me. I mean, come on. When at the tender age of 32 I suggested to Jesuit friends that I might become a nun, they burst out laughing and all but rolled on the floor.

Nobody should waste their youth dreaming of men who have no interest in them. Thus, we Catholic girls should hear "I'm discerning a vocation to the priesthood" and translate it into "I'm just not that into you." And at this point, we should drop the discerner like a hot potato. After all, he is thinking of foreswearing the greatest sweets of human love; we should give him a hint of that loss pronto. Once he's actually in the seminary, we can be nice to him again. But not too nice. And if he doesn't go into the seminary (for so few of them do) we should cold-shoulder him until he shows up, weeping, with flowers, at our door. (Incidentally, make sure a discerner really is discerning before shunning him. There are a lot of mums and priests out there who hint to pretty girls of their darlings' precious vocations when these vocations exist only in the minds of the mums and the priests.)

Now my tone might be too flippant for the subject. Apologies in advance. I really do think it is important for young men and women to consider the religious life or ordination. I would even go so far as to say that it is your duty. However, don't let your discernment stretch on for years, and don't bore everyone around you with your internal struggles. In fact, if it's such a struggle, the religious life/priesthood is probably not for you.

The reason why I am so cranky on the subject is that I am tired of vocation-discernment homilies in which the homilist tells us of the Girl He Left Behind. One character even admitted that he dated his girlfriend all through the seminary, and then said, "Honey, I've gotta tell you this. I've decided to be a priest after all." Well, all I can say is that any guy who strings a girl along for three years is a cad. And I want to hear her side of the story. We never hear her side of the story.

Thus, young ladies, treat all discerners as if they are boring and elderly priests, and gentlemen, you're not really discerning until you've told your Mum. Otherwise, spare the women of your circle your vocational discernment highs and lows, thanks. And if you do go into the seminary, stop handing girls your phone number.

--Seraphic Singles Archives, April 4, 2008

Update: I know a girl, a very NCG, who was dumped by two seminarians. The first seminarian left the seminary "for her" even though it was clear to everyone including me (at whom he had made a pass) that he hated the seminary. Then he claimed that now that he was out of the seminary, he wanted to see what dating a lot of women was like. He had lost so much time, etc., etc. The other guy dumped her to go into the seminary. Then, a few years later, he dropped out mere days before he was to be ordained to the diaconate. One of his greatest (male) friends was utterly astonished that he didn't go through with his ordination. Not so Seraphic, not so.

Update 2 (May 27, 2013): Welcome readers from the Callaxaty Files. And thanks to Lizzy B for the kind words.

St. Andrews Cath Soc Lecture Update

As February arrives Monday, I will be putting in some long hours in the National Library of Scotland to prepare for my upcoming lecture (to the Catholic Society) at the University of St Andrews about the vocations to the Single and the Married Life. You see, I don't have a vocation to the permanent Single Life, and I only got my vocation to the Married Life in October 2008, so I will have to do some research about what theologians think these vocations mean.

Having studied Dogmatics (Systematics), I only went into vocational stuff as a sideline. My particular specialty is waiting for your vocation, and I got so excited thinking about that, I wrote an article about it and sold it to the Toronto Catholic Register instead of saving it for St A's. Whoops.

It would be a lot of fun just to show up at St Andrews and tell hilarious stories about seminarians who date and the drawbacks of Catholic dating websites, but it's a respectable university and so I must roll up my sleeves and come up with the brainy stuff.

If you are at or near St Andrews, you might enjoy hearing what I have to say! The lecture is on Wednesday, February 10 in The Canmore House, The Scores, St. Andrews, and it is sponsored by the Catholic Society.

The schedule is as follows:

7:00-7:30 PM : Mass
7:30-8 PM : Biscuits
8:00-9 PM : "Seraphic Singles, Seraphic Spouses"
9:00-9:30 PM : Questions, Group Discussion, Seminarians Who Date Anecdotes, Etc.
9:30-10 PM : Compline
10 PM-onward: PUB!

As a special bonus, B.A. will be there, too. Maybe I'll get him to read a haiku or something.

It would be nice if anyone of university age (fresher to post-doc) asked me some questions in the com box right now, so I can get some kind of idea what people are likely to ask. If you want to know if I think the right way to go about telling someone you fancy them is to stay up late at a boozy party and then confess all drunkenly at 4 AM, the answer is No. Not even in the U.K.

Called into Singleness

I just wrote an 821 word article about Vocation for the Toronto Catholic Register so my daily thoughts on the Single Life have been mostly used up already. But you won't get to read it until next week, so I will squeeze out some more Single thoughts from my brain.

The most important one is that we are called into Single Life from birth. As Mae West replied to a query about her singleness, "I was born that way." Single is what we are and what we should be unless and until definitively called to something else.

Of course, there are some principles governing this. Singles are not supposed to be stealing the pleasures that belong to married life while, being Single, happily dispensing with its responsibilities and challenges. The big three are, of course, sex, parenting and playing House together*, none of which should be done with an escape hatch. Singles seem less inclined to steal the pleasures of priesthood and religious life--although I know one chap who lived for free in a vocations retreat house, enjoying the downtown location and the services of a maid and a cook, all while dating a girl and, quite blatantly, serving her tea in the parlour.

So Singles are called to live with integrity, and to the poverty, chastity and obedience proper to your state, until you get called to some other state, if you are. And even then it may be temporary. Married couples rarely die at the exact same time. The widowed half may spend decades Single. And there are nuns who find themselves living alone in an apartment, working at a secular job, physically separated from their proper communities, living quite as if they were Single women, with perhaps the Office thrown in. Most secular priests are, I argue, Single men. So one can live Single not just in the first twenty years of one's life, but in the last twenty, and sometimes in all the years in between. And therefore, Single life is pretty darn normal. We're going to be Single in the Kingdom, too.

Of course, the building block of society is still the family, so this is not a brief for rampant individualism. What gave meaning to my life when I was Single, and what will still bring meaning to my life if I become Single again, is that I belong to (1) a biological family and (2) to the Church family. Both families have very long histories and hopefully have quite long and bright futures. A Single, straight or gay, is a child and grandchild and very often a niece or nephew, great-niece or great-nephew, uncle or aunt, cousin, brother or sister. Singles belong, and they belong in history, to two things way bigger than yourselves: family and Church. So you're never "just a Single"--never, never, never. You owe us. We owe you. No man is an island. Etc.

There is no God-given reason to forsake your natural from-birth Single state in a blind panic or under family or social pressure. True vocation is a "falling in love with", not a "running away from" something else. I am very fond of three nuns in Toronto (and two of their order in Slovakia), but I didn't fall in love with them, so I didn't join up. I must say I was tempted. Ah, the temptation for my life to be settled for once and for all! But I stuck it out and finally got my true vocation, with all its joys and challenges, gifts and sacrifices.

Finally, there are people who love being Single and discern a call to the permanent Single Life. They should be supported in this by the rest of the Church. This call is considered unusual, so among the challenges and sacrifices of permanent Single Life may be the need to defend and explain it to other people.

The permanent Single also has the challenge of defending him or herself from being taken advantage of at work and in voluntary activities where married folk say "Well, you don't have a spouse/children, so you should work the worse shift, longest hours, for the worst pay" or where priests and nuns use their status as a form of spiritual coercion over other unmarried people. But, at the same time, of course, the permanent Singles have a boatload of personal freedom, for them to enjoy wisely and according to their call.

The photo is of my nephew "Peanut" and me. He's Single.

*I changed this from "setting up house together." There seems to me no reason for two friends or relations not to set up house together, like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, as long as neither person fondly thinks of the situation as "practically married," interfering each other's chances for real marriage, should that be either's calling, or creating a dangerous-to-them-not-just-to-their-neighbours'-fevered-imaginations situation of occasion for sin.

Update: This is the most beautiful thing I've seen all day: a religious order for women with Down Syndrome and those women called to live in sisterhood with them. Hat tip to Berenike at Laodicea