Author: Dorothy McLean
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No Dancing Today
Pope Francis died this morning in Rome. Tonight’s dancing workshop at St. Andrew’s Ravelston Catholic Church parish rooms in Edinburgh is therefore cancelled. I have spent a lot of time this morning thinking, praying, seeking advice, and sending messages. It is not an easy thing to cancel an event, however small, after looking forward to…
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Christian Life is Service
I once told a priest about feeling depressed, and he suggested volunteer work as a remedy. Volunteer work was not the answer I was looking for. I had done bibs and bobs of it, beginning in Girl Guides, and found it incredibly boring and even frightening. I hated selling daffodils to strangers outside the supermarket…
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Needs must
In Ontario, Servant of God Catherine de Hueck Doherty (née Ekaterina Fyodorovna Kolyschkina) is a kind of local saint. The founder of Madonna House, she was an aristocrat who survived the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution by fleeing Russia. She had a long life in the USA and Canada as a champion of the poor, but today…
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Catholic Choral Symposium in Canada
I have been hoping readers will send me information about their own events, and yesterday I received a lovely message about a choral and organ training seminar in Canada. It is sponsored by the SSPX but seems to aimed at everyone who loves and sings at the Traditional Latin Mass. The reader writes: The event…
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“And those who like us”
Today I picked up flyers for the Eastertide Dance. I’m going to distribute them among Committee members to disseminate among their Catholic friends in places other than our diocesan TLM. For example, some might go the local Catholic Students’ Union, and some might go to supporters of the nearby SSPX. Some might go to the…
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Rejoice, o Jerusalem!
Christians who observe a liturgical calendar do penance for the 40-day season of Lent, which for Latins (i.e. western Catholics) begins on Ash Wednesday. Some take a break for Sundays, whereas others prefer to keep Lenten Sunday celebrations to a minimum. The official Church rules on penance are a but a light yoke nowadays, and…
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Building Community
Traditional social dancing is all the rage among Traditional Latin Mass communities around the world, and naturally Scotland is no exception. There will be not one but TWO ceilidhs in the Scottish TLM community during Easter Week: the first, of course, is the Eastertide Dance in Edinburgh on Easter Friday night (19:30 – 23:00), and…
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Something Better
As Lent slowly creeps forward, I miss dancing. I think back especially to three fun evenings listening and dancing to live jazz bands and watching the flying feet of Balboa aficionados. Balboa is obviously great fun, but it is a huggy dance. It would be a tough sell to my merry band of moralists. I…
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‘Why dance?’
Yesterday I went to a Sunday Lunch and left feeling a little like an ex-belle of the wild Georgian era who has been to a Victorian tea party. The venue, an attic flat in a rectory, was once in the keeping of a friend who lived there until her wedding almost 10 years ago. She…
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Dancing lets our light shine
Re-establishing the norm that gentlemen ask ladies to dance (which takes courage and drive) and ladies wait to be asked (which takes patience, charity and hope) is controversial. It courts accusations of sexism and misogyny, and my confidence wobbled slightly when I watched a three-part documentary about a conservative Christian (or ex-Christian) commune in New…