Welcome to Mrs McLean’s Waltzing Party

This project is dedicated to restoring the valuable traditions and conventions of Catholic life, especially those attached to social dancing in Europe and the New World.

Mrs McLean

The role of social dancing in Catholic family life is now the stuff of legend–and charming scenes in Hollywood movies like Brooklyn. Many Catholic grandparents–or great-grandparents–first met and fell in love as young people at their local parish dance.

As the author of a 2009 book entitled Seraphic Singles (Anielskie Single in Poland and The Closet’s All Mine in the USA), I know that many unmarried Catholics wish that parish dances were still an institution in their dioceses.

I believe married and widowed laypeople have a duty to help single Catholics–of whatever age–meet as many of their fellow faithful as possible, to strengthen them in their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church, to confirm them in their roles as men and women in society, and to reassure them that their cultural heritage is good. One excellent way to do all this is through offering them both lessons in traditional social dances and events in which to dance with one another–and with their parents, siblings and married friends.

In Scotland, where I now live, children are still taught their national country dances and introduced to their traditional music. Not only does this help root them in the land under their feet, it frees them from the tyranny of contemporary pop music when they wish to dance.

Both Ireland and Scotland have a claim on the institution of the “ceilidh” (KAY-lee). The ceilidh is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a “social event with Scottish or Irish folk music and singing, traditional dancing, and storytelling.” Ceilidh dancing, usually a simplified version of Scottish country dances, is still a feature of Scottish social life, from weddings to proms to race meetings.

Other countries have their own social dance heritage. In Austria, secondary school students are all drilled in the figures of the Viennese waltz. In Poland, everyone writing final exams is expected to dance the Polonaise (Polonez, or chodzony) at their graduation ball. Sadly, my own class of Canadian schoolgirls was not trained in any partner dance, and our prom was just another opportunity to flail about to Top 40 hits.

Today I am dedicated to helping Catholics who have already claimed their birthright to their ancestral liturgical traditions, especially the Traditional Latin Mass, to be enriched also by their social dancing heritage.

I hope this website will both attract more tradition-minded Catholics to Mrs McLean’s Waltzing Party events in Edinburgh and encourage other Catholic married ladies d’un certain age to organize their own social dances for the young (and-not-so-young) Catholics of their communities.

If you are interested in contemporary–and yet traditional–thought about music for traditional Catholic social dancing, I highly recommend Dr Peter Kwasniewski’s Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence: Three Gifts of God for Liturgy and for Life .