Let Justice Roll

From an email I just sent:

I've never thought lads who shout out the windows of moving cars to startle ladies were that swift, but the lad who shrieked at me from the passenger side of one of your vans on his way to X today at 14:10 struck me as particularly stupid.  

I just thought I'd let you know what the public face of your business looks like today.

Sincerely, &c. 


Update: Justice rolled. Two apologetic emails from the company, and then a phone call from a supervisor to say that he had carried out the investigation and impressed upon the lads, including the malefactor, how unacceptable such behaviour is.

And, also in the spirit of justice, I informed my husband of this excellent phone call because, as a matter of fact, that business does business with the Historical House.

The moral of the story is that it is worth calling thoughtless young men--or the people who employ them--to account, and if you do, women's lives might become a little better and the young men a little less...er...thoughtless.

Gdańsk Redux

A Canadian poet read this column and told me there was a blank verse poem of about 120 lines hidden in it. He dared me to find it.

Well, I am not a poet, but I have a lot of respect for that one, so I opened the file and had a look. The poem was there, so I tried to lift it out of the article, like a skeleton from a fish.

When I got it out, I sent my poem to the poet. He said it was vivid and painful and matters, so I'm posting it here. You'll recognize some of it from a blog post.

The poem matters because the West has a blank spot in its memory when it comes to the Polish experience of the Second World War. Poland was the wounded soldier whose buddies left him behind enemy lines. We don't like to remember that the Allies did that; it tarnishes our shiny stories of heroism and grandeur and triumph over a totalitarian nightmare. That our forgotten war buddy suffered another one...Well... Hiroshima seems so much more important. And perhaps the violence of victory hurts us less that the acknowledgment that the biggest winner was Stalin.

To add insult to injury, some people in the West speak as though the Poles were at all responsible to what happened to the Jews in Poland once the Nazis were in charge. The name for this is "blood libel", and I suspect it is mixed up with fear and resentment of Poland's Catholicism. It is definitely mixed up with ignorance of Polish history and of how Poles existed as a people "without a country" for centuries.

But here is the blank verse poem that was once a column:
   
                                            In Gdańsk
                                                    by DCM

English is the lingua franca of the young of Europe;

perhaps they forget it is understood by older people, too.

Or so I thought as Marta and I walked along the Motława River

one evening behind a young foreign tourist determined

to impress upon the young man to her right

how sexually liberated she was.

Her voice was shrill; it carried.

“I don’t believe in marriage,” she bragged.

“People ask me how you can be 22 and not married, but I don’t need

marriage for sex. I have boyfriends.”

The young man, who seemed more interested

in the silent girl to his right,

asked the loud girl

in quieter tones

what she believed in.

“I believe in freedom,” she snapped and

I thought, “Oh, honey.”

Gdańsk is a city of memorials to freedom,

to Polish freedom lost

and to Polish freedom won.

There is the memorial at Westerplatte

where the German Navy opened fire

and at the Polish Post Office where

at that very hour

the SS also attacked.

There is the Gdańsk shipyard

where the Solidarity movement was born

and St. Bridget's Church

where tortured steel shows how its chaplain died.

Every child in Canada is taught that

six million Jews were killed

between Hitler's rise to power and the end of the Second World War.

But although we may be told that

three million of those Jews came from Poland

and that Auschwitz was in Poland

(Occupied Poland),

we are not usually told that 

three million Poles

mostly Catholics

were killed alongside the Jews 

and that the Nazis' ultimate plan for the Poles 

was to make them slaves.

Slaves!

Actual slaves.

To work in the fields

and in factories

and down mines

and as domestic help.

And this is why

secondary schooling

and post-secondary studies

were banned for Poles

in Occupied Poland.

And why

Polish professors

were rounded up and shot.

And why

since the Soviets were in cahoots with the Nazis

at the start of the war

22,000 Polish officers,

basically, the aristocracy,

were murdered,

most infamously but not only in Katyn Forest.

Officers, aristocrats and professors:

not only were they lousy slave material,

they were proof that the Poles had

a culture of their own,

an inconvenient truth

troublesome to both Moscow and Berlin.

That P on the shirt worn by St. Maximilian Kolbe in the icons

does not stand for "Political"

--that's the red triangle--

or "Priest."

It stands for "Pole".

The Nazis did not wish to wipe out all the Poles;

they just wanted their

beautiful and strategic country

and to use the Poles

(as mentioned above)

to till it

and mine it

and serve the German settlers the Nazis would send out there

once the war was won.

However, the Nazis did want to exterminate all the 

troublesome Poles,

even simple peasants

who would hide Jewish neighbours out of kindness,

so when a Pole was caught hiding a Jew,

the Pole and his or her entire family were

killed:

children,

grandmas

and all.

But the Poles were not enslaved long-term

not exactly

because the Nazis were defeated and

Occupied Poland was liberated by the Soviet Union

albeit in the same way the Soviet Union generally liberated countries: 

with strings attached.

Poland was run by a Communist Polish criminal gang

controlled by the Soviet Union until 1990,

when the gang ceased to be either

Communist or controlled by the Soviet Union

although, depending upon whom you talk to,

it might still be quite criminal.

History lies heavily on the city of Gdańsk,

and it was beginning to lie heavily on

me.

By the time I got to the twisted sculpture

commemorating murdered Father Popiełuszko,

I was ready to throw myself

down on the floor of Swiętej Brygidy and weep.

And this is why I was so aggrieved

the next evening

at the young lady who called her sex life

freedom.

Freedom, I wanted to tell her,

is not taking off your clothes and having sex with any guy

just because you want to.

Women have almost always been able to do that;

it’s talk about it afterwards that got you into trouble,

and not usually with the police.

Sure, people might call you names,

but that's not like not being allowed to go to high school

because you're a Pole, is it?

It's not like shutting the curtains on May Day because

if your child looks out the window at the tanks rolling past,

the police will come upstairs and beat up your husband.

But of course I didn’t say anything.

Canadians don’t do that; it’s rude.

Instead I thought about my friend beside me

who, when she was a little girl,

stood at the gates of the shipyard with her father.

Marta didn’t say anything either.

I think she was praying. 

A Terrible Addiction

Goodness gracious. So today in the Telegraph journalist Byrony Gordon admits to having been seduced, after a long and intense campaign, by Russell Brand.

Russell Brand is famous in the UK for seducing ladies. I think he is also a musician or a comedian or a radio DJ or something like that, but mostly he is known for convincing ladies to go to bed with him. Soon after he got fired from a job for making an abusive and obscene call to an elderly actor, I saw a sheet hanging out an Edinburgh window scribbled with something like, "You can stay with me, Russell."

Russell Brand is also famous for having married Katie Perry, a rock star. Katie Perry actually impinges more on my life because she appears on the TV at my health club, singing okay dance tunes in trampy costumes. He apparently ended their marriage by text message. If true, this strikes me as cowardly. Meanwhile, I met B.A. almost five years ago, and I think it is sad that RB has robbed himself of the experience of sticking to one person, through thick and thin, birthdays and squabbles, for five years.

He has now been seen around with another famous lady, and I feel sorry for him because I think he must be in the grip of a terrible compulsion: he seems to be addicted to the early euphoria of love.

When I did my M.A. in English Literature, I took a course called "Irony" and it made an enormous impression on me. There is an arguments that the opera Don Giovanni is deeply ironic, and we watched snippets of a film version that underscored this. The opera presented the Don, not as a jolly seducer of woman, admirable because he is powerful, rich and handsome, but as an increasingly pathetic slave to compulsion. There was a wordless scene with a pretty fourteen year old who stares coolly at the Don, and the Don looks back from some internal hell.

Promiscuity does not strike me as normal, "secular" behaviour. Promiscuity strikes me as a form of insanity. Going gangbusters after a woman, with phone calls and goofy behaviour, only to dump her shortly after she is "won" also strikes me as a form of insanity.

Normal guys, said the nice campus police officer at the sexual harassment office, as I sat there, trembling like a leaf, give up at the first, second or third "No." They don't usually carry on their seduction campaign for weeks on end. And, I have discovered, a not so subtle mention of (or visit from) the police can put an end to the shenanigans of those who do.  Ms Gordon jokes about having either to go out with Russell Brand or get a restraining order, but actually it's not that funny.

We talk about alcoholics being controlled "by the bottle",  but there is no help for alcoholics before they stop putting the blame on "the bottle" or anything or anyone else besides on their compulsions. And I don't think there is much help for promiscuous people either before they stop putting the blame on "women" or "smooth dudes" for their sexual compulsions. And, frankly, although I'm no longer afraid of alcoholics, but I am afraid of compulsively promiscuous people. If Russell Brand fixed his glittering, dark-eyed gaze on me at a party (whose?), I would run. Coat, husband, taxi.

According to Slate--and I won't link in case any of you are teenagers because the article definitely contains TMI:

The average American man has had more partners than the average American woman. Recent CDC data shows that men between the ages of 25 and 44 reported having slept with a median of six women, while women in the same age bracket said they had slept with a median of four men.  And while more than 27 percent of men ages 25 to 44 have had sex with more than 15 women, only about 10 percent of their female peers have had sex with more than 15 men.

Math is my very rockiest subject, but what I am trying to say is that it isn't normal even for "secular" people to sleep around*, and I think the numbers reflect that. (28% of American men is still fewer than a third of American men.) Of course it is a shame that human beings aren't as monogamous/monandrous as swans, but "six/four" isn't the Sodom-and-Gomorrah tally I was expecting when I googled the topic.


*How might an American woman aged 44 have slept with four men? Well, here is one plausible scenario. She lost her virginity in high school to a steady boyfriend after much earnest discussion and a trip to the doctor to be kitted out with the Pill. She broke up with the steady boyfriend shortly after they went to college. She slept with her college beau after more earnest discussion and blood tests. They broke up. She married the next guy. They divorced when she was 39. Now she's got a "partner" after some internet dating of guys who really didn't strike her fancy. Total: four. Whereas, as Catholics--and a lot of girls at my high school would have committed group suicide rather than suffer such a polyandrous fate--we have a serious problem with premarital sex, you'll notice that (in this scenario) there is at least some form of long-term commitment.

I cannot stress enough to Catholic girls that non-Catholic girls ALSO have reasons to be careful about premarital sex and therefore ALSO make informed, if often different, decisions about it. And they too have the capacity to feel disgusted/judgmental/shocked about other women's sexual decisions. Don't confess your sexual sins, large or small, to a "secular" girl assuming she will be more "tolerant"than a Catholic friend. She might be, or she might not be. Whisper, whisper, whisper, how could she, that's just not right, whisper, whisper, shhh, here she comes, giggle.

Auntie Seraphic & Had a Lousy Date

This is the saddest thing I have read since I read about the poor baby elephant whose mother stomped on it. It's just so.... What is wrong with the world? Argh! Sexual Revolution, I hate you so much!

Note to men: Girls won't slap you. Women don't slap men anymore. We're afraid if we slap you, you will punch our lights out. (That said, I have been known to take that risk.)

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

I'm not really asking for advice, now that it's after the fact, so much as relating a story thinking you may have some advice to cull from it and post on your blog for other girls, since I wish I had had some (or a reminder, if you've posted on this already) beforehand!

I recently started a new job, and there was an orientation meeting for all the new hires.  There was a guy there, with whom I didn't have much interaction during the meeting.  But on our lunch break lunch, we both ended up at the same fast food place.  He was sitting at a table nearby, and because we were supposed to sort of know each other, and because I thought it'd be nice to get to know someone, I went over to his table. 

So, we chatted a bit-- the normal "get-to-know-you" stuff like where we had lived previous to our current town, previous jobs, that sort of thing... 

Later, before the meeting ended, he asked if he could give me his number.  He was pretty cute and seemed like a nice guy (a little over-the-top gentlemanly, even), so I took his and went ahead and gave him mine as well.  I was pretty excited and flattered about it, and hoped he would call or text at least some time that week. 

Well, he texted me later that evening. I was surprised, but still happy to be receiving attention from someone I would consider dating.  He continued texting me over the next couple days until he said, "It would be nice to see you again," and asked me to go to dinner and a movie with him that weekend.  This seems innocuous enough, but I think such a standard date may have been a small, red flag in retrospect. 

Well, I was very excited. I even bought a new dress.  He offered to pick me up, but I declined and we agreed to meet at the theater. 

Now, I just want to remind you that I have met this person once before in my entire life, and the sum of our conversations could fit within 45 minutes, excluding texts. But the first thing he did when he saw me was hug me. I don't like being touched by people I don't know well, but I told myself that that is probably a normal thing to do, so I went with it.  Then, when I turned to walk toward the ticket booth, he walked next to me and put his hand on my lower back/hip.  I literally jumped and tripped because it was so surprising.  But I didn't know what to do, and I didn't know if I didn't like it, or if I was just not used to it, so again, I went with it. 

But, Auntie Seraphic, the boy did not [fail to] have some hand on me for more than a few seconds the rest of the night.  I could barely walk. During the movie, he immediately put his arm around me and stroked my arm the entire movie.  But again, I wasn't sure if I disliked it because it was objectively weird, or if I disliked it because I have deep-seeded issues with intimacy.

After the movie, we went to dinner, and it was incredibly awkward.  We didn't have much to say to each other, and I was bored out of my mind. He made a comment that implied he took my taciturnity for shyness rather than boredom, which wasn't totally off base as I can be pretty shy when I am not comfortable with a person. He asked if we could get together again the NEXT DAY. 

After dinner, he walked me to my car, and as we were saying our "goodnights" and "thank yous," he leaned in for a kiss. And I kissed him back. But it wasn't just a sweet peck; there was tongue. And I just kind of stood there, wondering when he was going to be done and trying to decide if I was enjoying it or not, and wondering if we were bothering the other people in the parking lot. 

After I pulled away, I didn't say anything and just started to get in my car. He made the quip, "mind if I get in there with you?" and I said, "Haaah. No." And I left.  I was near tears on the drive home, because I was so disappointed, and felt so guilty that I didn't like him. 

He texted me later, calling me sweetheart, and asking when we could get together again.  I never responded. Mostly because the next day, I had sunk into a depression coma and stayed in bed most of the day, feeling like a bad person because I didn't stop him when I should have, and wondering if there was something wrong with me for not enjoying his attention. If it needs to be said, I am not terribly experienced in formal dating. I've had boyfriends, but they always evolved naturally, out of friendship. "Dating" in the 1950s sense, is fairly foreign to me. 

It wasn't until I talked to some friends who were in unanimous agreement that his behavior was objectively weird and creepy, and that he shouldn't have put me in a position where I would have had to tell him I was uncomfortable in the first place, that I started feeling less awful about it. 

One friend made a great point that this guy didn't treat me like a human being who he was trying to get to know and earn the privileges he took, but he treated me like a DATE. As if he had a script for how "dates" are "supposed" to go, and just followed that. That's what I meant when I said the standard Dinner and a Movie Date was a little bitty red flag. 

I don't think this guy was predatory; I think he was just confused.  I ended up writing him a very succinct text telling him I would prefer not to go out with him again, because I didn't feel a spark, and because I thought he came on too strong for a first date. 

So, I have definitely learned from this... Mostly, to not be so compliant, and that I don't need to fool myself into believing I enjoy attention that I only think I should enjoy.  That it's okay to not be into someone who is into me, and that a bad date isn't the end of the world. But I also decided I really don't like dating. It seems so unnatural to me! I really prefer my more "European" approach to relationships that grow naturally out of friendship. I don't think I will go on a date with a stranger like that again any time soon. 

Anyway, if you have any other thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Had a Lousy Date

Dear HALD,

I am so sorry that happened to you. I think the worst part was you just allowing this stranger to keep touching you, thinking that maybe you were "supposed" to enjoy it. Nobody has the right to touch you without your permission, and it is very odd for a complete stranger to think he can do it without asking. It would be unusual (and perhaps disturbing) for a young woman to enjoy any young mn she barely knows stroking her in a dark room for two hours. And personally I really HATE the hand-on-the-back routine, which is so patronizing--the big man pushing the little lady in the direction he wants her to go.  

I can't even begin to imagine what was going through the man's head, but I think your friends were right. Perhaps he wasn't thinking of you as "you" but as "A Girl." And it is indeed like all he knows about Girls is what he sees on TV and in the movies. 

The story is so sad that it strikes me that many readers could profit from reading it, so I'd like to put it on the blog, if I may.   I think what all girls could stand to learn is how to get out of hugging someone, and how to speak up and say, "Hey, it's a little soon for that" AS SOON AS they feel an unwanted touch. It can be so hard to do this comfortably and graciously. And your friends are right: men shouldn't put us in this embarrassing position. But who is going to tell them? Their parents? They certainly aren't going to learn it from Great God Television.

Another thought that comes to mind is that we can always say "No" to "dinner and a movie". As a first date. We can always say no, and we SHOULD say no to anything that surprises us or makes us feel uncomfortable. In future if a cute stranger asks you to "dinner and a movie" as a first date, you are well within your rights to say, "No, thank you. But what about a coffee?" 

I hope this is helpful. And I hope you don't jump a mile the next time you are asked on a date in a "traditional" way. I'm not sure "dinner and a movie" is a red flag in itself--I guess it depends on the cultural context, or if the guy sounds like he got the idea out of a comic book. 

Just have a game plan: ask yourself what you're comfortable with, suggest a "low time commitment" first date and hold out your hand for a handshake before anyone comes at you with a hug. Look anyone in the eye when they do something to you you don't like, and tell them you don't like it.

Again, I'm very sorry you had such an uncomfortable experience. It almost hurts me personally that your response to this unlikable guy was to feel guilty for not liking him. 

Grace and peace,

Seraphic

  

Don't Be His Cooky-Baking Slave

It is a brand new year on campus, so I think it high time I write another post admonishing you all not to bake boys cookies, make them dinner, do their laundry, tidy their disgusting rooms and all those other things some of you do for free, to be "nice."

How well I remember my first High School Party with Boys. It was way across town at the house of a girl who was not very popular at my school, but she seemed nice enough, so I went to this party, and across the room from a few shy girls was a sniggering group of Bad Boys. At 14 I had all the social smarts of a four year old, so I was quite terrified of these boys. They were discussing some girl I didn't know, and I have never forgotten the breathless excitement of the one who exclaimed, "I hear she gives, man. She gives."

What this girl was believed to give I would rather have died than ask, but I am sure it wasn't chocolate chip cookies. And whatever it was that this girl gave (if she really did), it clear was that her generosity wasn't something that brought her respect.

Well, you might be saying, obviously. That's sex stuff. Although it is now The Most Important Thing in the World ™, we know men don't respect women who offer or give up their favours generously and indiscriminately. We know men never have conversations that go like this: "Wow. So-and-so is a great girl. She never lets a guy go without, no matter who he is or how lousy he treats her. Respect." "I hear you, man. The man who marries her will be really lucky. And she'll make a great mother, too." "You bet. She's a living saint." We know that doesn't happen.

Because knowledge of this strange male reaction to getting The Most Important Thing in the World™ for free was hammered into young women's head from the beginning of human sentience until the 1960s, it does not come as a surprise. What does come as a surprise--indeed, often as a nasty shock--is that there are all kinds of generous deeds that backfire.

These include baking cookies for a guy who hasn't as much as bought you dinner, making a special dinner for a guy who isn't even your boyfriend, doing the laundry for a man who tells you he doesn't understand how, and getting on your hands and knees to clean his messy place. In short, anything that Single men used to hire servants to do.

If you are the same age as some guy, you can never be his mother. And you probably don't want him to think of you as his mother, as that would be weird. If you really, really like him, and have honourable intentions, then you probably want him to see you as a potential wife and mother to his kids. And what better way to do that, you think, than some wifely and motherly activities like baking, cooking, laundering....

But strangely no woman goes to the altar dressed in an apron holding a bouquet of wooden spoons and toilet brushes. No. Most brides go to the altar dressed like princesses. Some dress as fairy princesses. Some dress as Hollywood princesses. Some, e.g. the ones in red, dress as rock'n'roll princesses. Some dress as Personifications of the Christian Church as the Bride of Christ. And why? Because men want to marry princesses, not servants*, and deep down we know that. Our mistake is thinking that a woman can simultaneously serve a man and be his princess without him being totally in love with her first.

Meanwhile, I know how tempting it is to do all that cooking, baking, cleaning and blah blah because I love to do it for guests--especially young guests whom I can pretend are my children home from college. But socially I can get away with it only because (A) everyone knows you have to be extra-nice to guests not related to you by blood and (B) I am way old and married and totally non-eligible. And if I don't get at least a bread-and-butter note, I get mad, a truth which cannot be too widely known.

*Occasionally men have married their housekeepers. Laicised priests, for a more contemporary example. Those housekeepers earned wages, though. They weren't scrubbing for love.

Holy Celibacy

The secular media got all excited this week because the new Vatican Secretary of State told them that priestly celibacy was a discipline, not a dogma.  So in their usual spirit of creating realities by reporting them as fact, the secular media said that mandatory priestly celibacy may be on the chopping block.

Cue people, even people in Catholic media who should know better than to trust the secular media, to to get all excited. Married priests! Wow-wee! The solution to the priest shortage!

So far the media buzz around Francis' papacy is reminding me of what I've read of the buzz around the Second Vatican Council. "Everything's going to change," was the watchword then and now, and of course nobody bothers to read what was and is actually said.  You can search the Documents of the Second Vatican Council pretty thoroughly, and you will find absolutely nothing about ripping out old altars and shoving the statues in a broom closet. If you want to see what churches after Vatican II are supposed to look like, go to Poland. Bling, bling, bling, far as the eye can see.

As for the priest shortage, I think we all know who is not having a priest shortage. Tradition-minded dioceses, tradition-minded seminaries, tradition-minded orders.  Oh, and tradition-minded countries. My friend Berenike told me that Poland supplies Europe with a quarter of Europe's priests. (Or was it a third?)

There are so many Polish priests that apparently relatively few of them are gay. Personally I do not enjoy writing about how-many-priests-are-gay, but that is sort of an issue in Scotland right now. Not only has Edinburgh's former archbishop Keith Cardinal O'Brien all but confessed to making sexual advances to a seminarian and to priests, a 48 year old priest in Motherwell has alleged that his seminary was rife with gay bullies who went apoplectic if he shrank from their kisses. If two percent of priests had a homosexual orientation, well, that would be commensurate with the general population. But Wiki, at any rate, is saying that it's somewhere between 15 and 58% in the USA.

Many of my readers may be saying "So what? Maybe a homosexual orientation carries some good stuff with it, like a tendency towards compassion, solidarity with the oppressed, greater sympathy for women, better listening stills, and an appreciation of beauty." Maybe. But I wonder if, just as it seems that altar girls dissuade boys from serving at the altar, a disproportionate number of gay men in the priesthood dissuades ordinary boys from going into (or staying in) the seminary.

Is the solution to import men who are proven, by their relationships with wives, not to be gay?

In English-speaking countries, the entire notion of the celibate Catholic priesthood has been overshadowed by the tiny minority of twentieth-century priests who have sexually abused boys and, even more rarely, girls. Rather horribly, those who think married men should be priests have floated the idea that "celibacy is to blame." This is completely unscientific because sexual abuse of children and teenagers is usually committed by laymen, married or single, and not by vowed celibates. Families, schools, TV studios, backstage at rock concerts, group homes. Anywhere where adults have unfettered, unsupervised access to children and teens is a potential locus for abuse.

Meanwhile, the notion that marriage is a sort of sexual dumping ground where potentially abusive men relieve their sexual tensions is pretty disgusting. That's not what Saint Paul meant by "Better to marry than to burn."

The Eastern Churches, Orthodox and Catholic, have a place for married priests, it is true. These married priests can never become bishops, and they are supported and supplemented by monks. Unless I am mistaken, the monks are the, for lack of a better phrase, spiritual elite. And the Eastern Churches have developed a culture around married priests, one mysterious to me, but it works for them. As a matter of fact, though, I have met only unmarried Eastern Rite Catholic priests.

We in the Latin Rite Church don't have a model for married priests--unless we are in minority-Catholic countries where, of course, there are Anglican vicars. Personally, I would be interested to find out how many Anglican vicars are still ordinary married men with families unregulated by artificial birth control. When B.A. was a Scottish Episcopalian, he knew a zillion Anglican Communion "priests", and they had three children max. Sometimes they got divorced. And the "higher" (more trad-Catholic looking) he went, the fewer married Anglican Communion "priests" there were. Celibacy in the Anglican Communion was part of the rediscoveries of  the Oxford Movement.

The Oxford Movement found real richness and grace in traditional priestly celibacy, and indeed John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI have all rewritten on the importance of virginity and celibacy in the priesthood. If they sound at times defensive, that is probably because--in the climate of change for change's sake--it needs to be defended from people who just don't get it.

The Second Vatican Council inspired thousands of men, perhaps a hundred thousand men, to quit the priesthood. That thought should make any of us pause before we cross our fingers hoping for yet another drastic change to the Latin priesthood. And even if it were advisable to lift the discipline of mandatory celibacy, is this really the time to do it? I cannot think of a more difficult time for men to attend to their marriages, care for a large family--for surely our priests would not be availing themselves of contraceptives--and be entirely devoted to the Lord's service, e.g. pastoral care of us.

We live in the most outrageously sexual degenerate times the world has ever known. (The Ancient Greeks and the Ancient Romans would gag.) Priestly celibacy stands out in stark contrast against them, and so of course the times hate it.

Sunscreen Story

I tell this story only because one of my missions is to save your beautiful skin.

So I was walking down Edinburgh's Rose Street, which is just for pedestrians, with a grocery bag in one hand and a Lakeland bag in the other, looking in vain for a shop with bright green shoe polish. And in a right-hand beauty shop, a Mediterranean-looking lady (from her accent, I'm guessing Greek) called me over while waving scratchcards.

The prize on my scratchcard, I now see, is a complimentary consultation, but I think I had it already for the lady peered searchingly at my face and told me my skin looked flawless. What was I using?

"MAC foundation for fair-skinned people," I said meekly.

"Is that it? Do you use moisturizer?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"How old are you?" she demanded.

Readers, I told her.

The Greek lady, who I think was in her 30s, or maybe in her late 20s after a youth spent roasting in the sun, took the name of Our Blessed Lord in vain. (I'll try to make up for that next Benediction.)

"Come back and see me when you're eighty," she said.

May the Lord bless her and keep her and let His light shine upon her. But as for the direct rays of the sun, girls: hats! sunglasses! sunscreen!

(And, if you need it, two drops of MAC Mineralize Moisture SPF 15 foundation.)

Update: Proper post of the day below.