Should Catholics Date Non-Catholics?

This was the last Seraphapalooza question, and a controversial one to be sure. I keep writing and erasing everything I write.

First of all, it's just coffee. Just go for coffee. Have a nice chat and drink the coffee. If you discover halfway through the coffee that he absolutely detests Catholicism, insist on paying your half of the bill and smile when you say good-bye. There are a lot of Catholics out there. You do not have to date people who hate what and whom you love.

Second, you don't have to marry someone just because you had coffee with him once and dinner with him twice. In fact, you don't have to marry someone just because you had dinner with him every Friday night for two years. (It would have been kinder, however, to call it quits rather sooner than that.) Indeed, you don't have to marry someone just because you have been his mistress for the past ten years and have had three of his children although you should consider it if he's actually available.

I do not see any problem with befriending non-Catholics. In fact, we probably should befriend a lot of non-Catholics so as to not get all isolated and triumphalist. This does not mean, however, that we should put up with anti-Catholic sneers. Anyone who sneers at what you love in front of you is not a good friend.

Third, if you don't want to date non-Catholics, don't feel guilty about it. One of the biggest mistakes of my life was allowing myself to be bullied into dating a non-Catholic after I had explained that I had been taught not to date anyone I wouldn't want to marry, and I wouldn't want to marry a non-Catholic. From his reaction, you would have thought he was Dante catching Beatrice in the act of killing a kitten.

Fourth, some Catholics can marry non-Catholics and be delightfully happy, and some cannot. It is up to you to figure out what kind of Catholic you are. I myself have spent enough time with Muslim, Jewish, Anglican, Baptist, Wiccan, agnostic and atheist men to know that I would be miserable if I married a non-Catholic. In fact, I did marry a non-Catholic once, and I was miserable. My house was a mini-Belfast. His clergy were horrified when they heard how we sniped at each other in the back of their car one day. They said they hoped we didn't talk like that at home. Ah ha ha ha.

However, my old pal Boston Girl (of my book) married an American mainline Protestant, and she is very happy. She is still a devout Catholic, and her baby was baptized Catholic, and all is well.

At this point you may be terrified and wondering which kind of Catholic you are, and all I can tell you is that you have to know yourself.  You have to understand which are your core values.

Fifth, when it comes to marriage, core values matter more than religion.

I am reading a very amusing memoir about the tens of thousands of Polish soldiers who made their way to Scotland during the Second World War.  The Scots hastily adopted them and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland laid on tremendous suppers for them, astonished and delighted that Catholics were actually eating their food. Of course there were efforts to convert them to Presbyterianism, but the Poles couldn't speak English and didn't mind the Scots chattering on about whatever while they ate.

When the two or three Scottish Catholics around during World War 2 told the Polish soldiers that they shouldn't be taking food from Scots Protestants, they said they'd rather take food from Scots Protestants than from German Catholics, and considering what the Germans were doing to Poland, you can see their point.

The core values of Polish soldiers in Scotland in 1940 were 1) defeating the Germans 2) eating 3) chasing girls. Although Catholicism ran through their blood (and to some extent was their blood), they had exactly zero interest in the terrific resentment of the Scottish Catholic minority for 400 years of marginalization.

Although you may be a devout Catholic, it may be that your core values do not include agreement with a spouse on religious matters (which Catholic couples do not necessarily have either). It may be more important for you to marry someone of your own ethnic group, or someone of your own political party, or a vegetarian, or a fellow Marine. Social or economic class may matter more to your psyche than sectarian solidarity, and that's just who you are. It's okay.

Sixth, we don't choose our core values. They choose us.  As it happens, one of my own core values is indeed agreement with my spouse on religious matters. This is because I am the eldest child of a very traditional, patriarchal family where the default position was always "Obey Dad." (Fortunately, Dad is a great guy, so the family flourishes.) Therefore it was absolute torture to be married to someone who wanted me to stop being Catholic and be something he thought more classy (i.e. Anglican) instead. I was like those robot women on "Star Trek" whom Captain Kirk tricked into attempting to solve a paradox: my head exploded. Ka-blooey. It took about seven years to put it back together. :-O

Today the Biblical verse "Wives obey your husbands" doesn't trouble me because my mother always obeyed hers, and I find it easiest just to obey my proper Catholic one although I wish he would let me have a guinea pig. So it is a good thing he is a Catholic, and I would not have married him if he weren't. "Catholic" trumps wifely obedience in my psyche ten out of ten times, and when the conversation around my table gets rather nostalgically Anglicanish I roll my eyes and make remarks.

I know that many strong-minded women (I am not strong-minded, just enthusiastic about stuff, which is not the same thing) would be horrified by my docile disposition. However, what can I do? I was basically programmed this way, and I congratulate the strong-minded on their firmness of purpose. I am sure the toughest of them could marry a ranting, raving non-Catholic (or even non-Christian) fundamentalist and just continue being themselves and doing what they want to do and saying "La la la" to his protests and generally being happy.

If you are a strong-minded Catholic woman and are completely bewildered by the whole concept of husbands being the heads of families, let alone of their wives, then certainly go ahead and date non-Catholics. When the time comes (as it almost certainly will), give them The Talk with gusto and drama.

Update: My conscience just told me to add that before the Second Vatican Council, the Church very much discouraged mixed marriages. It was believed that mixed marriages could lead to the deterioration of the Catholic spouse's faith and to the eventual apostasy of the children born to the marriage.

After the Second Vatican Council, the Church more-or-less encouraged mixed marriages as a beautiful symbol of Christian Unity or what have you. The result has sometimes been the deterioration of the Catholic spouse's faith and the eventual apostasy of the children born to the marriage. However, I know families in which the strong faith of one spouse has inspired the children to be true to their faith and the combined influence of spouse and children wafted the non-Catholic spouse into the fold. Of course, there is no faster way to make children despise religion than parents who scream at each other because of religious differences.

Those Confusing Foreign Guys

We are nearing the end of the Seraphapalooza questions, and have come to the question about dealing  with confusing foreign guys. What a treat! So exciting and so much to say! Where do I even begin?

I shall begin by saying that although everyone is unique, everyone belongs to a culture and all men are men. Therefore, although everyone is unique, everyone, consciously or unconsciously, acts according to what is normal for their culture and all men are going to be extremely influenced by their masculinity. Migrants can become bi-cultural, and how successful we are at this has something to do with our age. As a mid-life migrant to Scotland, I will always sound Canadian, but I no longer worry I am now surrounded by alcoholics.  

Social life is all about encountering people who are different from you and trying to get along with them anyway. This is particularly challenging, however, when they are so different because A) they are men and B) they are foreigners--real foreigners, born in a country different from your country.  Perhaps they are visiting your country. Perhaps you are visiting their country. Perhaps they are recent  immigrants. Perhaps you are the recent immigrant. At any rate, you and they may have different social expectations. You may have have radically different senses of humour and radically different senses of what is appropriate. My very first boyfriend of the "would you consider marrying me" variety was from the Middle East. He once shocked the stuffing out of me by glaring at an oblivious stranger on the Toronto subway and hissing, "Jewishhhhh....!" 

Yeah. 

Poor old Aziz worked in a hotel and got hit on a lot by women guests, apparently, and so had a very one-sided view of what Canadian women were like. He was greatly surprised that eighteen year old Canadian Seraphic was a lot more like young women in his country than like the women he had met in my country. In retrospect that must have been nice for him although personally I got tired of having to give him The Talk over and over again. Also in retrospect, he might have found The Talk reminiscent of home, too. It probably led to the marriage proposal, to which I replied "We'll see," but even at eighteen I was not so confident Muslim-Catholic marriages are a recipe for happiness. 

But I digress, and the point of that anecdote is to illustrate that foreign guys have ideas about the women of your country that may have been caused by actual sexual encounters with women of your country (or po*n produced there). And this is why I heartily recommend dressing like women in whatever country you may be visiting, so as not to stand out too much from local women. (I don't mean national costumes: I mean the actual reality of what women of your age and education wear.) In your own country or in conversations abroad,  I recommend firmly arguing against whichever misconceptions foreign men may have about you based on what they have heard about or experienced in your country. Just because foreigners have heard Swedish schools have sex education programs that would make our heads explode does not mean Swedish girls are easy.  

[Update: Other men will just proceed according to how women are like in their country. I remember being chatted up after Mass by a Latin American, who took me out on a very job-interview like date at a doughnut shop. I never saw him again until we accidentally met on one of his subsequent trips to the doughnut shop. This time he was with a young woman who looked rather like me. Of course, I have no evidence, but I think he was simply doing what we wish all Catholic boys would do, and simply picking girls out from girls who go to Mass and taking them to doughnut shops for a coffee to see if we were marriageable. Ah ha ha ha! Okay, it is also funny, but good for him. ]

This reminds me that most of us know very little about foreign cultures and mindsets, and I have discovered that one of the best ways of figuring them out--because we don't usually know enough to know which questions to ask the foreign guy before us--is to read travel guides, particularly the travel guides for business people. I hasten to add that these guides are about REAL foreigners, and not the fifth generation Japanese-American you have a crush on. A fifth generation Japanese-American is not Japanese but American.  Same goes for the second generation Polish-Canadian--not 2013 Polish, just Canadian with perhaps some 1980s conceptions of Polishness. The guides may be helpful in the case of young men who have just migrated, and I believe they most definitely are when it comes to foreign students and tourists. 

Another source of information, and quite hilarious information, too, can be found on our dear friend the internet, as adventurous English-speaking girls cut a swath through the men of the world and publish their findings online. If you are lucky, you will find a long comment stream of the reflections of outraged English-speaking foreign men underneath. Here is a very funny Der Spiegel article I read years ago on the subject of German men. It is not exhaustive, believe me. 

(Seraphic's Number One Tip about German men, gleaned from experience and conversations with Foreign Girlfriends of Germans after German class: never say anything bad about Germany. No matter how much a German man complains about Germany--and they do--never agree. Tell him all the things you love about Germany and don't budge. Germany=perfection. Then you'll get along with German men.)

People often behave very oddly on holiday, which they often see as a suspension from reality. And this is why you must be careful about men on holiday you meet in your own cities, and about men you meet when you are on holiday. My best friend in high school was seized by an elevator boy  when she was on the school trip to Turkey. She was only 16 or so, and since the elevator boy was cute and she didn't know what else to do, she made out with him in the elevator. She also got at least one marriage proposal from a waiter. Men who work in service jobs in Egypt, Turkey and other such places are often absolutely desperate to get out and they see female tourists as tickets to earthly paradise, so watch it. 

Meanwhile, some vacation hotspots in the Mediterranean, like the Greek islands, have contests regarding which man has managed to bed the most foreign women that season. Now, if hordes of middle-aged German and British women throw themselves at local men when they are on holiday, imagine young Frenchmen, young Germans, young Irishmen, et alia, when they come to your town. So don't get snookered by a cute accent.  

Of course you will occasionally fall in love on holiday. Come to think of it, that is why I am married now. However, most of the time holiday romances are very short and trying to spin them out past one's departure date just an exercise in frustration. It's much better just to honour the happy memory of a holiday romance and possibly to write a book about it. That reminds me, I just got a postcard from Volker. 

Finally, foreign students. Ah, foreign students.  I once was a foreign student, and most of the time I hated it, although that was because I was a Canadian in the USA, which is completely unlike any other kind of foreignness, unless it is like being Austrian or Swiss in Germany. (I loved being a foreign student in Germany.)  To understand men who are foreign students, it is wise to consult, not only businessmen's guide to social etiquette abroad, but the university literature for foreign students telling them how they may be feeling. Foreign students go through a long and painful psychological thing. 

It is a bad idea to ask foreign students who have been in your country for only six months if they are planning to settle in your country. At six months, the foreign student may be in the grip of homesickness and culture shock and get angrier than he might later at the  very idea that he would give up his own beloved nation for your slum of hamburger-munchers. There really is no reason to ask such a question until you are actually dating and, frankly, I have a lot more hope for European Union relationships working out than transatlantic ones. Europe is a small place and European travel relatively inexpensive. The same goes for Canadian-American relationships, since Canadians and Americans have border-hopping in the blood and most Canadians live within 200 km of the American border. 

I could go on forever, but I don't think the nerves of all my foreign guy eavesdroppers can take much more, so I shall stop now. The one thing I will add, since I married a Foreign Guy, is that B.A, who is Scottish, and I, who have a third-generation Scottish-Canadian mother, have distinct cultural ISSUES that we are still working out. It turns out that anglophone Canadians really do still have a distinct culture after all.  Now, to the combox! 

The Guy Who Gets Stuck at Texting

One of the questions at Seraphapalooza concerned the the guy who keeps contacting a girl--with texts, emails, maybe even phone calls--but never asks her out.

And here is where the techno-generation gap opens before my feet because I have never encountered this problem myself. Men and women of my generation pick up telephone receivers, push buttons or dial a wheel, and talk. When we were teenagers, that was what we had, and so that is what we know how to do.

Sure, in the 80s and 90s, men could write letters, but they rarely did. Postal delivery in my town was such that it would be very eccentric and risky to ask a girl out by letter, and only a complete weirdo would write "What's up?" on a postcard and pay 40 cents for the privilege of posting it to a girl.

But times have changed and no longer do men have to actually pick up a phone, push buttons and talk to a real live girl through the receiver.  They can send endless little notes that many a girl feels she is expected to answer almost at once. Back in the days of verbal phoning, a man might find himself talking to an answering machine instead, and as he would assume the woman was out, she could reply at her leisure. Calling three times or more in rapid succession was socially unacceptable and made a guy look like a lunatic.

Those were the days! And sometimes I remember that I am a member of that generation and just throw aside computer and mobile phone, grab the house phone and just call somebody up. I do this especially when I have a question and I need the answer now.

I happen to know how difficult it is to call the apple of one's eye and ask it out on a date because I have occasionally done that, back in the days before I realized how pointless it is to ask men out on first or second dates. And therefore I do not have loads of sympathy for men who are too timid to call women up and ask them out although I understand that they have been coddled and protected from the scary, scary challenge by texting.

One of the difficulties about the guy who keeps contacting but never asks out is that a girl gets neither the chance to reject or to accept his advances. Possibly that's the whole point. Maybe some guys who just like to hang around getting a buzz from proximity to a girl without having either to go away or  to commit to an actual evening out together. And if you suspect a guy is like this, you might want to consider telling him to buzz off.

Here is a magical phrase: "Well, and what can I do for you today/this evening?" In the days of rotary phones, it was assumed that when a man called a woman, he called not to chat like one of her woman friends but for some purpose, for some business-like task. The phrase "Well, and what can I do for you today?" was a polite way of asking, "Why did you call?"

I recommend, then, that if a guy sends you short texts saying things like "Whtsup" that you reply with "?" In short, derail pointless texting and thus force male interlocutors into actually having a reason to contact you. If you don't actually like the guy who keeps sending you texts, text back "Very busy 2day."

Do remember that your social time is your own and you do not have to lavish it on anyone upon whom you do not want to lavish it. There are time-tested and true ways of telling men to get to the point or to buzz off, should you want them to buzz off.  "And what can I do for you today?" said with a smile or a :-) leaves the door open to a guy asking you out. "Pardon me, Scooter, I'm really busy right now" tells Scooter to buzz right off. Indeed, he will recognize this expression from the primary female in his life, his mother.

I would be particularly grateful today for the suggestions of readers with well-honed text management skills.

***
By the way, I thought this article was spot on, so great thanks to Cordi for sending it in. In my auntish opinion, it should be required reading for men. In a sane world, health teachers would be allowed to hand it out in high schools without both the Junior and Senior branches of the Feminist Brigade going into hysterics because reality is so embarrassing and politically incorrect.

Over to You on the Subject of "Nice Guys"

I am in active auntie mode today, rushing about doing active work of a motherly nature for 20-somethings in slight difficulties, so I have not been able to blog. Therefore, I will pass on today's question to you: How to deal with so-called "Nice Guys" who are not so nice?

One example of a Nice Guy who is not so nice is the guy who says, "I'm a Nice Guy, but I don't think I should be anymore because women  like only men who are rotten to them."

I am reasonable sure I have written about this twice before, but it was one of the Seraphapalooza questions, so I throw it out there today.

By the way, in honour of the two gentlemen who donated to my Emergency Canadian fund, I will have an Eavesdropper Edition on this blog on March 19, for it is St. Joseph's Day. Eavesdroppers are welcome to submit topics they think I should address, and only men will be able to comment that day. How exciting!

Of course, how foolish I will look if no Eavesdropper takes up this extremely generous offer.

Happy Mothering Sunday...

...to all the spiritual mothers in the UK and Ireland.

I shall spend it feeding a dozen or so people, so now I must go and make a lot of food.  In the UK and Ireland, Mothering Sunday always coincides with Laetare Sunday, so some of this food will be liturgical pink.

Happy Laetare Sunday to all (except Cath who holds that every Sunday is Easter and the liturgical year a papist pomp, not that she would use those words.)

:-D

Like a Brother

One of the questions asked at Seraphapalooza concerned girls who act imprudently towards a man because "he's like my brother!"

This was one of the more disapproving questions, i.e. one obviously about Other Girls and not about the questioners, so I will proceed carefully. For one thing, many girls and guys do indeed have "brother-sister" relationships which they both acknowledge. Sometimes when a girl says "he's like my brother", the para-brother is all smiles and quick to assure any other pretty girl around that "she's like my sister."

He's only like your brother if he thinks you are like his sister.  And unless he has actually told you (or other women) that you are like a sister, you aren't. You are a potential mate. (Oh, how exciting to write the words "potential mate" at 9:36 in the morning. That should wake everyone up.)

And, therefore, if you do not have a scrap of romantic interest in some guy, it is not kind to shriek "Snuggles!" and throw yourself in his arms unless he thinks you are "like his sister" or his heart is covered in rawhide. It is also not kind to wander about him in a state of partial undress or, if he has no wife or girlfriend, to pour your heart out to him about your man troubles. 

Because I can hear Alisha's shrieks of protest from afar, I will acknowledge that the entertainment community is incredibly huggy and kissy and snuggly and, for all I know, whole casts of musicals cuddle down under a duvet together to watch "A Star is Born" on TV. But I don't think this is such a great idea for anyone else. I realize that I am ruining the fun for various Catholic guys who think actually it would be great to cuddle with a whole lot of girls under a duvet watching TV, as long as another guy didn't touch them by accident, but too bad. I live in the UK, where no guy but my husband ever hugs me, so I have no time for your polygamous duvet yearnings. 

In short, just because a girl thinks a guy is (or should be) as sexless as a muppet doesn't mean he actually is, so take care and have some respect. This does not mean creeping about in fear because some innocent soul will be damned to hell if he sees your knees. It mostly means not rubbing up against a guy like a cat and then dashing his erotic hopes by saying, "Oh, but you're like my brother!"

For the record, I have a super-formal Anglo-Saxon family, and the adults hug about twice a year. If I laid my head on one of my brothers' shoulders, he would think there was something seriously wrong with me. Meanwhile, if in close quarters and scantily clad, we wrap ourselves in long Afghan blankets crocheted by my mother which trail behind us like the more dramatic togas. I never got why brother = super-casual affectionate behaviour, but I realize families are different.

Single Women in China

Second post of the day, thanks to a male fellow blogger, whom I will not name, lest he be embarrassed to be discovered reading a girl blog.

As you can imagine, the one-child-only policy of China has led to a shortage in women, something very sad for Chinese men who have discovered that there aren't that many women available to marry. And therefore there is a new kind of pressure on Chinese women to marry.

It is pretty disgusting for a supposed women's magazine to tell women that they are "old" by the time they are studying for an MA or PhD, old like "yellowed pearls." Outrageous.  Dear Chinese dictators, thanks to your stupid policies, Chinese women are in relatively scarce supply. Your little mind games will not change this situation, and who would want to marry a completely spoiled "Little Emperor" anyway?

My fellow blogger found the chart "scary" because it shows how many Single British women there are, although I am not sure why this is scary, unless one envisions those British women as desperately alone and sad eating peaches in tins over the sink after a luckless night down at the bars. However, that's not how I envision most British Single women, at least not the ones I know.