Category: Controversies
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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…
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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…
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The Cobbler’s Daughter
While I was in Lourdes, I read something very funny online by some folks who confuse transitory pastoral advice with immutable doctrine and are opposed to social dancing. Their post beautifully illustrates the necessity of examining social and historical contexts before citing religious authorities. In this case, not only did one authority (an early Archbishop…
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Or am I Herräng?
Herräng Dance Camp is legendary among swing-dancers. It takes place in a small village in Sweden every summer. Sometimes when I forget I am not in my twenties, I think about how cool it would be to go there and immerse myself in lessons for the low, low price of 6,500 Swedish krona. How this…
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Culture and costume
Lent being over, I went to a Lindy Hop social this week. There I joined a friend, saw many regulars and met a young lady visiting from Switzerland. She had come to Edinburgh with some friends, but they had gone home and, having a night to herself she decided to go to the local swing-dance…
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Restoring the culture
I had many opportunities this week to think about Western Civilisation and its 20th century rupturing. First, I got down to writing my review of Anna Kalinowska’s Clothed with Beauty: A Catholic Philosophy of Dress, a book I recommend to everyone who has ever wondered why Edinburgh’s Princes Street teems with people in almost identical…
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Things that are of edification
Back home in Canada my father has U.S. Civil War battlefield letters written or preserved by some American ancestor. One epistle is dated July 4, and the writer reminisces about their neighbour’s annual Fourth of July picnic. If I remember correctly, he goes into some detail about this good lady’s event, recalling the watermelons and…
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What I wish everyone knew about social dancing
I used to participate in a martial art. Many people have opinions about this practice, but the more they know about it, the more they respect it. And if such fans don’t actually practise it, they respect those who do. They respect our knowledge. Indeed, the people who know the sport best are those who…
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Burning floors
Dancing was so much a part of Catholic social life in the 20th century West, and forbidding dancing so much associated with Anabaptist sects, that it came as a surprise to me to discover that there had existed, throughout the history of the Church, a number of Catholic pastors who objected to the practice. It…
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The Ballroom Competition
For Sunday I planned something very new for MMWP: a trip to the Edinburgh University Ballroom Dance Society’s Inter-College Dance Competition (Waltz and Cha-Cha). It was one of my more daring suggestions, for all but one of our members have eschewed the EUBDS, which adheres to the mores of the Revolution: men can be follows,…