Category: Christian Life
-
Farewell to September
Michaelmas marks both the end of summer and the early days of autumn. (This year in Scotland the Autumn Equinox took place at exactly 1:05 BST on September 23..) The nights, as Mr McLean will inevitably say, are fair drawing in. We have eaten most of the apples on our early-bearing tree. However, all is…
-
Community Centred
A young relative spent the end of her summer holidays with her uncle and me in Scotland. Naturally we took her along with us to the Traditional Latin Mass and then to the Tea-and-Coffee-Hour in the parish rooms. I introduced her here and there, and she was amused and pleased to see the numerous infants…
-
A Whole Day of Traddery
It doesn’t always happen, but sometimes one traditional Catholic priest or another appears at our Michaelmas Dance, our Eastertide Dance, or a simple Waltzing Party. He doesn’t dance. Instead he accepts a glass of wine, or eats a pice of cake, or nibbles a biscuit. Sometimes he has an errand to run, a newcomer to…
-
Hilaire Belloc on Dancing
On June 6, 1901, the great Catholic apologist Hilaire Belloc (1870 – 1953) went on a walking pilgrimage to Rome. His resulting travelogue The Path to Rome, written in a stream-of-consciousness style, was published in 1902. In this, his most acclaimed work, Belloc mentions dancing as something everyone should do. In fact, he joked that…
-
Dinner parties
When I first arrived in Scotland, I was invited to a munchie box of dinner parties. These combined elegance with heavy drinking and generally followed a common plan: drinks and nibbles in a sitting-room, then soup or fancy salad in the dining-room, next main course(s), then pudding (dessert), then coffee, often with chocolates, and finally…
-
The dreaded cardboard box
“I thought marriage would make my life easier,” said my then-colleague, many years ago, in a different country, and at an awful workplace. She had met her husband on vacation, spent a lot of money on his immigration, and helped him to get a job. But after he did, his workmates teased him over his…
-
The Depths of the Sea
“What do women want?” I demanded of a wise man after hosting yet another dance party with 10 men and only 4 women. “If I could answer that, I’d be rich,” said the wise man and munched a biscuit. It’s Just A Coffee Classic Man is simple and straightforward; Classic Woman is not. Therefore, I…
-
Pretty/Handsome, Kind-hearted, Etc.
This is the third article in my Auntie Seraphic Comeback series about love stuff. I’m going to continue doling out advice to TLM-loving Catholic women, but don’t worry: I have many things to say to Trad Cat men, too. (For example, we all think your pipes are stupid.) Part One here. Part Two there. To…
-
Men are who they are…
…and not who you want them to be. (Part One is here.) Pity the bookish girl, for the contrast between boys in fiction and boys in life is stark. Our bookish girl spends her happiest childhood hours with Frodo and Sam, Peter and Edmund, Frank and Joe Hardy, and perhaps the Famous Five. On Monday…
-
The Caffeine in the Cappuccino of Life
I was once famous among women on Catholic campuses (like Notre Dame, Indiana) as “Auntie Seraphic”. The source of my notoriety was my blog “Seraphic Singles” where I wrote whatever I believed about men and dating in an unbridled fashion. (N.B. My book on Catholic single life was published in three countries.) One fan could…