Darlingses! I am not sure this is a "Dear Auntie Seraphic" letter as much as a cri de coeur letter, one I enjoyed very much because, although men in general are the caffeine in the cappuccino of life, some of them would pop if you stuck a pin in them. Although I know this letter will test the patience of some of my male readership, the girls will find it hilarious. So here we go:
Dear Auntie Seraphic,
If you don't mind (and you're probably used to this anyway), I have a serious gripe about a majority of traditional Catholic men.
Why do so many of them act so stuck up, as if they are thinking that since they are a rare find, they are automatically a 'hot commodity'? Furthermore, why do they act less than masculine in the sense that they should be picky over the most insignificant things? They seem to be looking for a woman that will accomodate their inflated sense of self-worth due to their rarity. Please, let me give you some actual examples and let you be the judge. Here is just a sample of some of the objections I have come across:
* She's travelled abroad
* She's borderline diabetic (OK, so that's a rare one, but it's happened, and it's an example of some of the odd excuses that only seem to come from 'trads')
* She doesn't know enough about British actors (this came from an American)
* She's too pious *(i.e., she actually enjoys reading theology)
* She wears makeup
* She probably doesn't wear any makeup (can't tell from picture)
* She isn't a career woman (not very traditional, I know)
* She's been married --- must have issues
* She's never been married --- must not take marriage seriously enough
* She's not under the age of 30
* She's probably not exotic enough (many seem to prefer a woman who is young, foreign, and interested in them because they are American, where they can be the one to form them in the traditional ways and the traditional Latin Mass. I've seen this many times, actually. It's as if they assume that you are a naive, American, farmgirl, especially if you live in the midwest and you are a devout Catholic lady.)
Of course, however, most of these (except that last one) largely only apply to meeting men online. For some reason, men are often more ammenable when they meet a woman in person, perphaps simply because they are more visual.
I think traditional Catholic men are a lot more unfair to traditional Catholic women than vice versa. What are your thoughts? Have you heard similar complaints from other "traditional" Catholic women?
This is getting ridiculous. Really. I meet men in person who are traditional Catholics (just a few single ones) and they often have heresies (one is into eastern meditation but thinks it's Christian, another is a sedevacanist, another is just a neo-con --- all of them are pushy and a bit over-the-top narcissists).
Yours,
Fed-up Trad Girl
Dear Fed-up Trad Girl,
I feel your pain. No--that's totally untrue because in 2008 I managed to snag a Trad Catholic Man and before I met him I had gone to only one TLM in my life and zzzzzz.
However, I felt your pain when I was heavily into the pro-life movement when I was much younger and--eeek! All the boys seemed to be into this one girl, and she was so kind and sweet and holy, it was if she were made of vanilla ice-cream, only warm. And what made it almost kind of worse was that she didn't take any of these boys seriously. She was on a mission from God and therefore spent a lot of time in minimum security prison, a confessor of the faith. Argh! Argh! Who could compete? Definitely not me, someone weekly denounced by her principal crush object for being a feminist.
Anyway, Trad Girl, thank you for your letter because I always enjoy a laugh at the expense of Catholic dating websites. The problem, my dear fellow Trad Girl, is not with the men in themselves. It's with the dating website culture. Dating websites are exactly like CATALOGUES. And I anticipated this bizarre culture in 1986, when I wrote a story about three schoolgirls who dreamed of finding a "Man Catalogue" from which they could choose dates based on hair colour, etc. This story was published in the school newspaper, and one of my religion teachers thought he and I should have a Serious Chat about A) my attitude towards men B) my character's preference for blue-eyed blonds, which my blue-eyed and blond teacher thought suggested neo-Aryanism.
But--hey, presto--it is 2010 and the internet is covered with Man Catalogues and Woman Catalogues, ones aimed at every taste and market. And just as I poured over "Consumers Distributing" catalogues as a child, dreaming over the jewellery section, now adults pour over "Catholic Singles" catalogues, peering at the photographs and examining the self-promoting blurbs. Is it any wonder that men and women are now quite open about their consumerist judgments of each other?
But even these days, there is one reason and one reason alone why an unmarried traditional American Catholic man will not pursue an unmarried traditional American Catholic woman. No, wait: there are three. One is that he is called to the priesthood and/or religious life. Another is that he has SSA. But the third, the one that all women should keep in mind is, that he is just not that into her. Borderline diabetes, forsooth.
Women, in general, are complex. Men, in general, are simple. Women can talk themselves into love. Men can't. I got interested in B.A. because he wrote funny, intelligent comments on my blog. I found his photo, and I thought, "Eeek! He has a beard and is therefore so not my type!" However, he was funny and intelligent, so I suspended judgment on his looks until I could see a better photo or him in the flesh. And when I met him he was wearing this BLINDING tweed jacket, and I thought, "Eeek!" once again. But then he said funny and intelligent things so often that the tweed jacket began to look like angel raiment.
A man, however, doesn't operate like this. He toddles around and then he sees a woman (perhaps even one he's known for awhile) and a bomb suddenly goes off in his brain, and he's in love. The bomb goes off and he's in love, or it doesn't and he isn't. End of story.
This God-given simplicity, however, can get warped if he's shopping on the Catholic Dating Catalogue, stoking harmful fantasies of ignorant French/Thai peasant girls longing to be gently initiated into the mysteries of the Traditional Latin Mass and sex. He needs to get off the internet. ASAP.
Now, let's talk about you. You, my dear, are being picky, too. Let's go back to eastern meditation boy. Is he hot? No, seriously. After kindness and basic religious compatibility, this is what counts. You spend a third of your life in bed, you know. Is his thing yoga? Because if it is, I bet he is hot. Flexible, anyway.
Heresy-shmeresy. All of us have lurking in the corners of our minds weird ideas that might startle the CDF, ideas that we might think are 100% Grade A orthodox. Speaking as a tradition-loving Roman Catholic, as long as a guy is a tradition-loving Roman Catholic and thinks Benedict XVI is a great guy, I don't see where the problem is. This, of course, shuts out the sedevacantists, but they might be fun to meet for coffee occasionally. Incidentally, one word, and I want you to remember this word: Episcopalians. The Anglo-Catholic ones make great husbands--I mean, converts. Convert-husbands. Convershands.
When all is said and done, the problem with narcissist trad men is not that they're trad or even actually narcissist. It's that they're young and afraid and hiding behind a lot of snotty-sounding bluster because they want to BE a hot commodity and think ACTING like a hot commodity will make them so. Their model is not our risen Lord but Tupac Shakur, poor things. They don't have an inflated sense of self-worth. They have an deflated sense of worthlessness. They need women around them to be comparatively "lesser than", so that they can be "more than." And this is sad. It's all so unnecessary. If only they would just be whomever God is calling them to be.
Bless their little hearts. Say after me, "Bless their little hearts." The only way to deal with men-in-general when we are becoming furious with men-in-general is to allow our Inner Mothers to silently embrace them all. They all start out as sweet little boys with innocent, happy smiles, and those little boys are often still in there somewhere. So think about that and say "Bless his little heart" every time you see a man (online or in person) for the next three days.
I hope this is helpful!
Grace and peace,
Seraphic
P.S. I had a sudden brainwave. Are you basing your judgment of narcissism on first dates? Because dollars to doughnuts, these guys think they should act on first dates the way they act during job interviews. Between their ads on Catholic Catalogue and their job-interview-style first dates, no wonder they look like arrogant twerps! They're using the wrong tools for the job at hand.
UPDATE: Internet Dating Tips:
1. Meet in real life sooner rather than later. This nips harmful, wrongheaded, exploitative fantasies in the bud.
2. Accept a second date unless s/he's really awful. Few of us are at our best on a first date.
3. Tell a friend where you're going and tell them you'll call when you get back. Never go anywhere private with a man/woman you barely know.
4. Listen more than you talk. For one thing, too much talking overwhelms the other person. And for another, people seem to blurt all kinds of interesting, personal stuff on a first date.
Friday, 9 July 2010
Thursday, 8 July 2010
So Sleepy....
Stay tuned tomorrow! Now that the fickle internet is back up (knock on wood), there can be new posts.
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Swamped Today So Chat
Today I am swamped. Utterly swamped. So I will take the lock off the combox and let you all chat.
I was wondering just now about all my long-term readers/commentators--and you know who you are--and how far you have come in the past three years in terms of your vocation wait. I know Hip 2 B Square got engaged and then, wisely, disengaged. Sheila got married. Clio just got married. Boeciana is in a Benedictine convent, hoping to make her next vows.
So how are you doing, my dears? Give us an update. Anybody else get ordained, married, sworn in as a Consecrated Virgin? Anybody feel better (or worse) about being Single?
I was wondering just now about all my long-term readers/commentators--and you know who you are--and how far you have come in the past three years in terms of your vocation wait. I know Hip 2 B Square got engaged and then, wisely, disengaged. Sheila got married. Clio just got married. Boeciana is in a Benedictine convent, hoping to make her next vows.
So how are you doing, my dears? Give us an update. Anybody else get ordained, married, sworn in as a Consecrated Virgin? Anybody feel better (or worse) about being Single?
Monday, 5 July 2010
Goodie For Him
I don't know why the memory of this guy has swum to the surface of my consciousness. I think I talked to him for something like five minutes, although he might have been in the waiting room for an hour.
Anyway, I was working in a government office, behind a counter, trying to sort something out for a woman with three or four children. She was a veiled woman, from somewhere in the Middle East. The father of her children was dead, and she had a new husband. There were documents to read and questions to ask. But the person I was supposed to be talking to was her, not her new husband, who nevertheless wanted to be the focus of my attention.
I won't even pretend to remember how this conversation started or what he said exactly, but at one point it was along the lines of, "Don't you think I did a wonderful thing by marrying a widow with four children? These are not my children, and yet I married this woman. Am I not a generous man? I, who married a widow with four children?"
He wasn't joking. He honestly thought that he was the Duke of Earl and the Hero of the Hour because he had married this woman, this woman with four of another man's children. And he was happy to brag about it while beside him the widow stood there looking at me, outwardly as meek as a mouse. He seemed to think I would applaud or coo and smile and agree.
Maybe where they came from it is mind-blowingly generous to marry a widow with kids. In Canada, nobody thinks much about it. Men often die young, so hey presto, widows. Of course in Canada widowhood is not the one-way ticket to starving to death it might have been for the woman in front of my counter. But I wasn't thinking of that. I was wondering what it was like for this woman to be married to a man that thought he was a superhero for having taken her--and her fatherless kids--on. Every time she did something wrong, like burn the bread or not iron the shirt he particularly wanted that morning, would he look at her reproachfully, saying, "I married a widow! Is this my reward?"?
Anyway, off they eventually went, she in her Middle Eastern clothes, and he, though from the same country she came from, in his hip Western clothes. I doubt I ever saw them again.
I said it when I was Single-and-Divorced, and I say it now: there are worse things than being Single. Being Single--in the free world--is infinitely better than being yoked for life to a jerk.
Anyway, I was working in a government office, behind a counter, trying to sort something out for a woman with three or four children. She was a veiled woman, from somewhere in the Middle East. The father of her children was dead, and she had a new husband. There were documents to read and questions to ask. But the person I was supposed to be talking to was her, not her new husband, who nevertheless wanted to be the focus of my attention.
I won't even pretend to remember how this conversation started or what he said exactly, but at one point it was along the lines of, "Don't you think I did a wonderful thing by marrying a widow with four children? These are not my children, and yet I married this woman. Am I not a generous man? I, who married a widow with four children?"
He wasn't joking. He honestly thought that he was the Duke of Earl and the Hero of the Hour because he had married this woman, this woman with four of another man's children. And he was happy to brag about it while beside him the widow stood there looking at me, outwardly as meek as a mouse. He seemed to think I would applaud or coo and smile and agree.
Maybe where they came from it is mind-blowingly generous to marry a widow with kids. In Canada, nobody thinks much about it. Men often die young, so hey presto, widows. Of course in Canada widowhood is not the one-way ticket to starving to death it might have been for the woman in front of my counter. But I wasn't thinking of that. I was wondering what it was like for this woman to be married to a man that thought he was a superhero for having taken her--and her fatherless kids--on. Every time she did something wrong, like burn the bread or not iron the shirt he particularly wanted that morning, would he look at her reproachfully, saying, "I married a widow! Is this my reward?"?
Anyway, off they eventually went, she in her Middle Eastern clothes, and he, though from the same country she came from, in his hip Western clothes. I doubt I ever saw them again.
I said it when I was Single-and-Divorced, and I say it now: there are worse things than being Single. Being Single--in the free world--is infinitely better than being yoked for life to a jerk.
Sunday, 4 July 2010
And Twice as Pink
O my little Singles. Today I saw my interview in the Messenger of Saint Anthony magazine (International Edition). The photos of me seem as large as life...and twice as pink. Nobody is going to look at those photos and say, "Well, of course, she got married! Look at her celestial beauty, etc!" Uh uh. Not going to happen. (I suppose men who love pink-faced women with orangey hair--B.A., for example--might say this stuff.)
I'm slightly less pink in my wedding photos, thanks to Albus, the man at the MAC counter who assured me I would thank him one day for selling me tinted moisturiser to eliminate redness on my wedding day. THANK YOU, ALBUS! But there was nothing Albus could do about my other photos, boo hoo hoo.
Anyway, if you live in the English-speaking world*, see if your mum or your grandmum or your local Catholic bookshop has a copy of the July-August edition of Messenger of Saint Anthony, International Edition.
Then buy my book (if you haven't already), for that, not sending my husband's pals into roars of cruel mirth, was the whole point, for me, of this interview.
*I'm not sure if this includes the USA. The letters seemed to all come from places like Bath, UK, Hamilton, Canada, Ghana and New Zealand.
Update: The Messenger of Saint Anthony has a monthly circulation of one million. I am going to go lie down now....
I'm slightly less pink in my wedding photos, thanks to Albus, the man at the MAC counter who assured me I would thank him one day for selling me tinted moisturiser to eliminate redness on my wedding day. THANK YOU, ALBUS! But there was nothing Albus could do about my other photos, boo hoo hoo.
Anyway, if you live in the English-speaking world*, see if your mum or your grandmum or your local Catholic bookshop has a copy of the July-August edition of Messenger of Saint Anthony, International Edition.
Then buy my book (if you haven't already), for that, not sending my husband's pals into roars of cruel mirth, was the whole point, for me, of this interview.
*I'm not sure if this includes the USA. The letters seemed to all come from places like Bath, UK, Hamilton, Canada, Ghana and New Zealand.
Update: The Messenger of Saint Anthony has a monthly circulation of one million. I am going to go lie down now....
Friday, 2 July 2010
Hope
The other day a tipsy friend said, "I've never held anybody's hand, and I've only ever kissed my mother."
This was not a complaint. It was a boast. The boaster was well over thirty years of age. The boaster was a devout Christian and, I think I may safely surmise, a Serious Single and happy with it.
One of you has asked for a post on hope, and I worried what I might say about hope. But then I remembered the tipsy boaster, and I knew where to go with hope.
My hope is that you will become content with being Single. Yes, you could get called out of Singledom at any moment. Mr. Right or Miss Perfect may swan into your life tomorrow or is lurking incognito right now amongst your current acquaintance. But you have no control over that. In fact, you have little control over most things. Your kingdom is you. Walls do not a prison make--it is your own mind that makes you happy or sad about your Single state.
If you are Single right now, then it is God's will that you are Single right now. Why? I have no clue. I'm sure it must be for a good reason, though. Somewhere in the warp and weft of history, your current Singleness matters. It matters that Dorothy Day, after her conversion, was Single to the end of her life. It matters that Jean Vanier may very well be Single to the end of his life. It matters that Christ was Single throughout His earthly mission--and because Christ was Single, no Single need be ashamed to be Single ever again.
Christ is the model of the Single life. Christ mapped His human will onto the divine will, the will he shared with His Father. Christ said, "Your will be done," and on that occasion, this was about the Passion, not about a relatively good old life without a spouse in it. There is no scourge and no nails waiting for most of us; "Your will be done" should be comparatively easy to say.
Christ "got out there"--but not to find a spouse. He got out there because He had a mission, and He made friends along the way. He made a lot of surprising friends, too. Working class, middle class, upper class, possibly even Romans. People he freed from demons. Formerly crooked tax collectors. Formerly loose women. Just about every sort of person, and yet it was His relationship with the Father that counted most.
What's your mission?
Christ did not sulk at weddings; He saved one. Christ, implored by His mother, chose--in concert with the will of His Father--to perform his first "sign" or miracle at the wedding at Cana, and that is why today we recognize marriage as a sacrament, not just the boring old natural end of the breeding human being, but as another place where we meet Christ.
Where do you meet Christ?
I say "another place" deliberately, and in his congratulatory letter, a friend in a Franciscan monastery couldn't help but remind B.A. and me that marriage is the "least" of the sacraments. We giggled, but our friend was right. Baptism, Eucharist, Penance--these are the sacraments we most fiercely need. And two of those depend on someone, usually someone else, receiving the Sacrament of Orders.
"The Lord is my light and my salvation; of whom shall I be afraid?" (Ps. 27.1) Or, as it says on the cross I bought on a mini-pilgrimmage to visit St. Hildegard, "Der Herr ist mein Licht und mein Heil, vor wem sollte ich mich fuerchen?" I used to look at this cross in my cold student's bedroom in Boston and repeat this with my teeth gritted and my eyes filling with tears. When I was not writing or going about with Volker or Boston Girl, I was not very happy in Boston. However, I managed to say, "Your will be done" from time to time. "Your will be done."
It did not occur to me that God's will was that I would return home amid the wreckage of my PhD, crank out four manuscripts, visit Scotland, marry BA and live in a Historical House. I dreaded the first item, and I didn't as much as hope for the other ones, unknown possibilities too wild even for my febrile imagination. My one hope, the last I was left with, was that eventually I would accept what God had in store for me.
Practise makes perfect.
This was not a complaint. It was a boast. The boaster was well over thirty years of age. The boaster was a devout Christian and, I think I may safely surmise, a Serious Single and happy with it.
One of you has asked for a post on hope, and I worried what I might say about hope. But then I remembered the tipsy boaster, and I knew where to go with hope.
My hope is that you will become content with being Single. Yes, you could get called out of Singledom at any moment. Mr. Right or Miss Perfect may swan into your life tomorrow or is lurking incognito right now amongst your current acquaintance. But you have no control over that. In fact, you have little control over most things. Your kingdom is you. Walls do not a prison make--it is your own mind that makes you happy or sad about your Single state.
If you are Single right now, then it is God's will that you are Single right now. Why? I have no clue. I'm sure it must be for a good reason, though. Somewhere in the warp and weft of history, your current Singleness matters. It matters that Dorothy Day, after her conversion, was Single to the end of her life. It matters that Jean Vanier may very well be Single to the end of his life. It matters that Christ was Single throughout His earthly mission--and because Christ was Single, no Single need be ashamed to be Single ever again.
Christ is the model of the Single life. Christ mapped His human will onto the divine will, the will he shared with His Father. Christ said, "Your will be done," and on that occasion, this was about the Passion, not about a relatively good old life without a spouse in it. There is no scourge and no nails waiting for most of us; "Your will be done" should be comparatively easy to say.
Christ "got out there"--but not to find a spouse. He got out there because He had a mission, and He made friends along the way. He made a lot of surprising friends, too. Working class, middle class, upper class, possibly even Romans. People he freed from demons. Formerly crooked tax collectors. Formerly loose women. Just about every sort of person, and yet it was His relationship with the Father that counted most.
What's your mission?
Christ did not sulk at weddings; He saved one. Christ, implored by His mother, chose--in concert with the will of His Father--to perform his first "sign" or miracle at the wedding at Cana, and that is why today we recognize marriage as a sacrament, not just the boring old natural end of the breeding human being, but as another place where we meet Christ.
Where do you meet Christ?
I say "another place" deliberately, and in his congratulatory letter, a friend in a Franciscan monastery couldn't help but remind B.A. and me that marriage is the "least" of the sacraments. We giggled, but our friend was right. Baptism, Eucharist, Penance--these are the sacraments we most fiercely need. And two of those depend on someone, usually someone else, receiving the Sacrament of Orders.
"The Lord is my light and my salvation; of whom shall I be afraid?" (Ps. 27.1) Or, as it says on the cross I bought on a mini-pilgrimmage to visit St. Hildegard, "Der Herr ist mein Licht und mein Heil, vor wem sollte ich mich fuerchen?" I used to look at this cross in my cold student's bedroom in Boston and repeat this with my teeth gritted and my eyes filling with tears. When I was not writing or going about with Volker or Boston Girl, I was not very happy in Boston. However, I managed to say, "Your will be done" from time to time. "Your will be done."
It did not occur to me that God's will was that I would return home amid the wreckage of my PhD, crank out four manuscripts, visit Scotland, marry BA and live in a Historical House. I dreaded the first item, and I didn't as much as hope for the other ones, unknown possibilities too wild even for my febrile imagination. My one hope, the last I was left with, was that eventually I would accept what God had in store for me.
Practise makes perfect.
Thursday, 1 July 2010
The Gentle Art of Single Self-Defence
If it weren't bad enough, some days, to be Single, you Singles have to cope with Marrieds or Act-Like-Marrieds asking you why you're Single. Even worse, they give you--unasked--their private theories of why you're Single. How annoying is that? Can you imagine people giving me their theories as to why I don't have any children?
"You know, maybe you should invest in some nicer lingerie."
Really, people can be a pain.
Anyway, the reason why you're Single right now is that this is God's will. End of story. It doesn't matter if you are cranky, overweight, poorly paid, or whatever, because lots of cranky, overweight, poorly paid people get married. The Lord of History plunks the right people in each other's path, and there you go.
Look at me, I didn't even have to leave the house to get my future husband's attention. We met because he read my blog. I didn't HAVE "to get out there" or buy new clothes or change my hair or whatever. When he first laid eyes on me, I was wearing battered old glasses, and if I told you how crappy my outfit was the day he proposed, you would cry. Really, the one day I didn't wear a dress.
But telling people about me would take too long. A good defence is short and snappy. One of the best ones I know was Mae West's: when asked why she was Single, she said "Because I was born that way."
Now, as most of you guys are religious, you can just tell your naggers and well-wishers the real reason, which is that your Singleness is God's will. This should shut up a lot of people, either because they are religious and they have to admit you are right or look impious, or because they are not religious and God-talk embarrasses the snot out of them.
I hear in my mind's ear a conversation in South Bend, Indiana:
"Goodness, Mary Kate, how can such a beautiful girl still be Single?"
"Well, Aunt Joanie, I've prayed about this, and I've concluded it's God's will for me right now."
"Oh, um," says Aunt Joanie, totally embarrassed by the G-word. "Well, you know what they say: God helps those who help themselves!"
"Gracious," says Mary Kate. "Is that in the Bible? Anyway, that sounds like Pelagianism to me."
"Whatism?"
"You know, the idea that if you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, independent of the help of God's Grace, you can reach perfection. St. Augustine was really down on that."
"Who?"
"Oh, Aunt Joanie, you're such a joker!"
With completely benighted atheists, you might not want to bother trying to feed them the strong meat of Christian truth. Instead you can impress them with Stoic fatality. "Che sera, sera," you say. "Whatever will be, will be. The future's not ours to see. Che sera, sera. Besides, all the good ones are either taken or gay."
This part is not true, incidentally. I wandered around for years saying all the good ones are either taken or gay, and there was B.A. on the other side of the ocean, bustling about, teaching philosophy, dating various Misses Wrong and wondering if he would ever make the jump to the Una Vera Fides, which he did two days after I arrived in Scotland. However, people love the line "all the good ones are either taken or gay" because it is a materialist cliche and unreflective people like atheists love materialist cliches.
Update: I see that it is the special day of "the land God gave to Cain." Happy Canada Day, mes amis!
"You know, maybe you should invest in some nicer lingerie."
Really, people can be a pain.
Anyway, the reason why you're Single right now is that this is God's will. End of story. It doesn't matter if you are cranky, overweight, poorly paid, or whatever, because lots of cranky, overweight, poorly paid people get married. The Lord of History plunks the right people in each other's path, and there you go.
Look at me, I didn't even have to leave the house to get my future husband's attention. We met because he read my blog. I didn't HAVE "to get out there" or buy new clothes or change my hair or whatever. When he first laid eyes on me, I was wearing battered old glasses, and if I told you how crappy my outfit was the day he proposed, you would cry. Really, the one day I didn't wear a dress.
But telling people about me would take too long. A good defence is short and snappy. One of the best ones I know was Mae West's: when asked why she was Single, she said "Because I was born that way."
Now, as most of you guys are religious, you can just tell your naggers and well-wishers the real reason, which is that your Singleness is God's will. This should shut up a lot of people, either because they are religious and they have to admit you are right or look impious, or because they are not religious and God-talk embarrasses the snot out of them.
I hear in my mind's ear a conversation in South Bend, Indiana:
"Goodness, Mary Kate, how can such a beautiful girl still be Single?"
"Well, Aunt Joanie, I've prayed about this, and I've concluded it's God's will for me right now."
"Oh, um," says Aunt Joanie, totally embarrassed by the G-word. "Well, you know what they say: God helps those who help themselves!"
"Gracious," says Mary Kate. "Is that in the Bible? Anyway, that sounds like Pelagianism to me."
"Whatism?"
"You know, the idea that if you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, independent of the help of God's Grace, you can reach perfection. St. Augustine was really down on that."
"Who?"
"Oh, Aunt Joanie, you're such a joker!"
With completely benighted atheists, you might not want to bother trying to feed them the strong meat of Christian truth. Instead you can impress them with Stoic fatality. "Che sera, sera," you say. "Whatever will be, will be. The future's not ours to see. Che sera, sera. Besides, all the good ones are either taken or gay."
This part is not true, incidentally. I wandered around for years saying all the good ones are either taken or gay, and there was B.A. on the other side of the ocean, bustling about, teaching philosophy, dating various Misses Wrong and wondering if he would ever make the jump to the Una Vera Fides, which he did two days after I arrived in Scotland. However, people love the line "all the good ones are either taken or gay" because it is a materialist cliche and unreflective people like atheists love materialist cliches.
Update: I see that it is the special day of "the land God gave to Cain." Happy Canada Day, mes amis!
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