I Ponder Enlisting in the Eco-Army

Between reporting for LSN and writing to our solicitor about the New Flat, I read a lot of books and articles on four subjects: Minimalism, Escapology, Self-Sufficiency and Zero Waste Living. I have come up with a clever acronym that you can pronounce only if you have some acquaintance with Polish: MESZ.  

To sum them all up: 

Minimalism is about living with as little stuff as you practically can. Escapology is about living as you please, getting by on your clever investments or thanks to a cottage industry, instead of trading at least a third of your time for a salary. Self-Sufficiency is, as far as I can tell, running a very small farm.  Zero Waste Living is about producing almost no trash for the landfill and precious little for the recycling bin. It is minimalism on speed, and it is also deeply rooted in reality. 

I very much like all these ideas. One seems to lead to another although perhaps not in that order. I hasten to say that they are all nigh impossible to put into practise without familial or spousal cooperation. That said, the very non-Minimalist B.A. and I have been living out of a suitcase for four months, and he has not uttered a word of complaint. 

Escapology for me is not about us quitting our jobs but making sure we are not miserably poor when we are old thanks to our jobs (and to highly impractical career choices made along the impecunious way).  Minimalism, budgeting and thrift are key. 

Self-sufficiency seems to involve gardening and tiny houses and other fun things. I do not know very much about it yet although I have a colleague who is pretty amazing at raising food for his family. 

Zero Waste Living is not something you can do all at once. However, it is something to work for once you have forced yourself to confront the reality of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other horrors.

All of these concepts seem to me to be deeply rooted in reality and require the discipline of eyeballing reality, even if that reality is that your family and/or spouse are/is going to take some convincing. Meanwhile I am enjoying the thought of being a jolly environmentalist as well as a liturgical and doctrinal traditionalist: a crunchy trad, if you will. Naturally this would not include vegetarianism--except on fasting days, of course. 

Pink Sunday

It was lovely to find myself in the choir stalls at the back of church again. Naturally I do not really belong in the stalls, not being in the minute choir, but the choristers stick to the right side, leaving the left side free for interlopers. And as the choir stalls are slightly raised, there is a view of the congregation from there. I have always liked to look at the congregation,

It was Laetare Sunday, so rose vestments were the order of the day, although the only actually pink thing I remember at Mass was our priest's stole. Such cheerful things as liturgical colours were driven from my mind by the news from the pulpit that one of the tea ladies had been hit by a double-decker bus and was lying very badly injured in hospital. It is a terrible thing to have happened to a very sweet old lady who is not only a pillar of the TLM community but a tireless campaigner for noble causes.

When I got back to the Historical Tenement I looked up "pensioner" "hit by bus" and "Edinburgh" on the internet and discovered that this was not a unique occurrence. I swiftly found news stories about two other pensioners and a heavily pregnant woman who were also hit by Edinburgh busses recently.

After Benedict Ambrose had a nap, we went back out into the city and got on one of its lethal busses towards Portobello. Our destination was a Laetare Sunday supper, and according to tradition, all the food was pink.  In the sitting-room, we had pink lemonade-and-gin cocktails with slices of delicious Serrano ham and "ham"-flavoured crisps. Then dinner began with pink soup (beetroot, cream and red onion), followed by boiled pork and pink potatoes and then raspberry fool and "Cherry Lambrini."

The "Cherry Lambrini" is a Pink Sunday joke, really. It tastes a lot like cherry Kool-aid, and a teenager could drink a bottle of it quite innocently and not understand afterwards how she got so drunk. For once I was a bit sad I have (mostly) weened myself from sugar because otherwise Cherry Lambrini would be a wonderful drink. If I were still interested in clubbing (and could still drink sweet things), that is what I would drink before a night on the tiles.

Cherry Lambrini seems to have made me quite nostalgic for my youth--or some imagined youth that featured Cherry Lambrini instead of Mike's Hard Lemonade, a rather disgusting Canadian concoction that fuelled my dance floor exuberance when I was in my late twenties.

The entertainment during supper, besides our own highly amusing company, was youtube videos of processions and masses in Spain, and also Dudley Moore's splendid spoof on Benjamin Britten's folk song arrangements:

This last was thanks to my brother Nulli's and our friend Red Mezzo's concert in rural Quebec when my mum and I were there a week-and-a-half ago. I mentioned their programme in the hopes of eliciting a musical conversation I might actually understand, and said that I didn't like Britten's folk song arrangements, which opinion did not enrage my hearers although they clearly thought his folk song arrangements are fine. What got them agitated was my statement that Widor's "Toccata in F" is secular and was written not for a Mass but for concerts, which is just about the only thing about music I actually know.

See How They Love One Another

Since the Second Vatican Council, great effort has been made to stop Roman Catholics from despising any religious group--except other Roman Catholics.

My childhood parish church was run for decades, I now suspect, by highly Marian crypto-trads, but over the years I have heard this or that other priest slagging off  his 'conservative' bishop, the 'conservative' pope, or "the bad old days", meaning Church history between Pentecost and 1963.

All this does not fall upon deaf ears. When I was six or seven--very small indeed--a Catholic teacher in my Catholic school told me the Society of St Pius X (the SSPX) were a bunch of dangerous crazies, and I believed her. I think I must have been asking what had happened to "the Old Mass", for when I was a child I couldn't understand why my experiences of Mass didn't match up with the descriptions of Mass in books.

My childhood priests (or the Archdiocese of Toronto) loaned the Church to the small Armenian Catholic community, and nobody thought about them much. Their celebrations must have been late in the afternoon, after all our Masses and our Coffee Hour. Occasionally I would find in the church hall incomprehensible literature in a strange script. The Armenians were a mysterious and invisible presence, but I thought no ill of them until some Armenians threatened to set off a bomb in our subway (metro) system. My mind flew to the cryptic messages in the church basement. Hopefully my mother sorted out my childish fears about the innocent people who met there.

Given this childhood memory of loaning the church to the Armenians, I am all the more staggered by the attitude of some parishioners at the Edinburgh church where the local FSSP priest says Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. They scowl at Catholics who come to this Mass, and then complain that we do not acknowledge them.

They have made witty jests at our expense after the Novus Ordo Mass in the church in loud voices while those who have come early for the Old Rite (like me) take their places to pray.

Someone has turned the heat on on warm days, and someone has turned the heat off on cold days.

An archdiocesan priest was overheard in the sacristy bad-mouthing the Old Rite--our Old Rite--to some doting laity.

If as much as a crumb is left on the parish hall floor after our Coffee Hour, there is much moaning about our iniquity.

Baptisms and meeting have again and again been scheduled during the Coffee Hour, so that it is cancelled or--if nobody tells the FSSP priest--we are told to leave.

What makes this particularly pathetic is that sectarianism was, until recently, part of Edinburgh daily life. Good Edinburgh Catholics sneered at the Prots. Good Edinburgh Protestants reviled the Fenian scum. Those days (and most church-goers) are gone, but I get a strong impression that some Catholic Scots really, really miss having someone to hate. And who better to hate than those people who cling to that fancy-pants Mass? Surely it's not as if any of us can actually understand Latin. Who do we think we are?  We're all liturgical fur coat and nae living faith knickers. They kent our fathers. Et Edinburgh cetera.

Generally we just put up with it. The FSSP doesn't have its own church, and those who love the FSSP Mass are growing in number, so we don't all fit in the chapel. It's not like we're living before the Penal Days Summorum Pontificum, but all the same we don't want to rock the boat. We understand that the "parishioners" think they own the place, and maybe, morally, they do.

However, I've had had quite enough. Yesterday it was rainy, so those who go to the Old Rite on Sundays scooted into the church hall rather more quickly than usual, and we had a wonderful Coffee Hour. There is a new American family with six lovely children, and a new French au pair who hopes to improve her English while she is here. There were two men--a local and and Austrian--in smart Highland dress eating a quick packed lunch before embarking on a motor trip through the Highlands. There was a young newly-married Anglo-American couple. There were university students, undergrads and grads, including a young married Portuguese couple. An English girl washed up the cups, The atmosphere was friendly, hospitable and joyful.

And then the word went around: the Parish Council were about to have a meeting and they wanted us out.

Sluggishly, we began to move. Those sitting at the tables got up and moved towards the exit. However, we didn't stop chatting. Chat, chat, chat. We bottle-necked at the door and continued chatting as we waited for space to move. I barely noticed the small group of sixty-somethings take their place at a table. Chat, chat, chat. But then a furious little white-haired man suddenly stormed up to us and began to splutter. "Could...could you... PLEASE LEAVE!" he barked, his voice cracking hysterically.

An awful hush fell over the crowd. We stared at him and at each other. Behind him a large old woman stood as if to back him in some physical battle. She scowled. He scowled.

I tried to think of something witty to say, but the only thing that came to mind was the old song "My father he was Orange and my mother she was Green", and I invariably get that mixed up because it was my mother's parents who were Orange. The message my mind was giving me was this was JUST MORE SECTARIAN NONSENSE, only, bizarrely, the two sects were Roman Catholics who go to the Noon Mass and Roman Catholics who go to the 10:30 AM. 

Anyway, we Noonies slouched out the door, and in the car park I observed aloud that the average age in the parish hall had gone up by 30 years. The young American bride confessed that she had been just thinking that herself. Nevertheless, I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it stayed there for hours.

I don't know what on earth the secular clergy are teaching people at the early Mass, but if they are teaching brotherly love, the Parish Council hasn't got the message.

***
Diet-Vocab Pact Day 4: Squirrel managed to eat about 800 calories yesterday, and here is what she reports. Recall that she is 5' 4". I caution Squirrel to drink a lot of water to replace the water she is no longer getting from food. That is 150 lbs.

10 stone 10  (That is, 150 lbs)

Bust 36

Waist 31.5

Navel 34.5

Hips 42

Thigh 24

 As for me, I studied my 15 words (Polish, Italian, and Classical Greek) yesterday, and will make another list to study today. 

The Significance of Pancake Tuesday

When one is already on a punitive diet, it is a challenge thinking up an appropriate Lenten penance. Is it still a Lenten penance if your original goal was not personal holiness but fitting into that dress you bought at Phase 8 last summer? My guess is "No" although it is still training in self-denial.

It is Pancake Tuesday, the Anglo-Saxon world's modest and humble Carnival. No wild partying in the streets for us! When it comes to pre-Lenten binges, the Polish Fat Thursday custom of eating as many doughnuts as possible makes more sense than eating the relatively humble pancake. However, as we are frequently told, pancakes were (allegedly) a way of using up the last eggs, milk and fat in the house before Lent began. 

I am frankly astonished that members of the Latin-speaking wing of the Church ever gave up eggs and milk for Lent. Fat I can understand, but hens lay eggs and cows need milking in and out of season.* I suppose, though, that one never HAD to drink the milk: it could be made into butter and cheese instead. I wonder what happened to the eggs. 

Anyway, I like the practical, pantry-cleaning aspect of Pancake Tuesday.  I was going to buy ricotta cheese for ours, but I have suddenly decided that I will make normal carby pancakes for B.A. while making almond flour ones for myself, a la Blood Sugar Diet Recipe Book. Naturally there will be bacon.

(By the way, I hope I am not getting terribly boring on the subject of the BSD. Food, grocery shopping and cooking are suddenly fascinating. For seven years I have allowed B.A. to burble about in the kitchen after work, making very masculine, high-carb suppers, and now he sits in the warmest corner of the sitting-room reading online Catholic news while I wield the Thai fish sauce bottle.) 

Here's a cheerful post by an Evangelical at Patheos about what Christian fasting used to look like. Meanwhile, since B.A. and I have already severely cut the calories and gone teetotal at home (madness!), we will have to come up with another penitential plan. Ironically enough, it may involve cutting back on Church news. 

*Update: Or not! See Clio's scholarly comment below. 

A Trad Catholic Holiday

Benedict Ambrose and I are soon going on holiday to Italy. I have studied earthquake survival tips, for we are going to Norcia, the town in Umbria near the epicentre of the St. Bartholomew's Day disaster.

By the way, it turns out you are NOT supposed to stand in a door frame. If in bed, you stay in bed and hide your head under a pillow. If out of bed, you dive under a sturdy table and hang onto the leg. If outdoors, you stay outdoors as far from decorative elements and shaky walls as possible. When the quake is over, you go outside because suddenly buildings are not your friends. During the 6.2, the Nursini fled to the piazzas.

This may sound rather stressful for a holiday, and you may well wonder why we do not return to the beaches of Santa Marinella instead. Well, the answer is simple: the Monks of Norcia. We want to go to the Extraordinary Form of the  Mass with the Monks and hear the Monks sing the Traditional Benedictine Offices. We also want to drink the monastery beer, and see what is new in the monastery shop, and contemplate the statue of St. Benedict in the piazza.

St. Benedict and his sister St. Scholastica were born in Norcia in 480. A shrine was later built over their birthplace, and Benedictines first came to live here in the 10th century. One Benedictine community or another lived in Norcia until the Napoleonic suppression. The monks were driven out, but almost 200 years later, the Nursini petitioned for their return. (See my article here, with the correction that the monks are celebrating Mass and praying Vespers in the Scavi, not the crypt.)

Norcia's tourist industry--which took a big hit, thanks to the earthquake--centres on the wonderful produce, wine and cured meats of the region. It is on a plane surrounded by hills, just adjacent to the Sibylline national park (yes, where the Sibyl lived), so it also attracts hill-walkers and fresh air fiends. Benedict Ambrose and I both love regional Italian food, and we both enjoy hill-walking, so Norcia provides us with many opportunities to share our mutual interests.

Of course, I am not quite as excited by the Offices at B.A. is. For our Norcia Christmas I bought him a monastic diurnal, which was the perfect present, but I haven't got one for myself yet. Benedict Ambrose is a church musician through and through, so he takes a special artistic as well as spiritual joy in monastic chant. Me, I'm still exulting in the fact that I'm married to such a good Catholic. If this means I'm in church more often than I like, so be it.

For his part, the language study-adverse B.A. actually exchanges greetings in Italian. He even used his small store of Italian vocabulary to buy my Christmas present, which meant more to me than the thoughtful gifts!

Norcia is a good place to celebrate Christian Christmas if you loathe the trappings of the secular jamboree. Christmas is not the principal midwinter feast in Italy; their big day is Epiphany. B.A.'s idea of the perfect Christmas is romantic solitude in the countryside, and my idea of the perfect Christmas is being surrounded by family and friends, so Norcia--a favourite retreat of Rome-based friends--provided a bit of both. I recall the Norcian December as cold (but not too cold, unless the heating is off) and a little noisy--as children kept setting off firecrackers in the piazzas--but friendly.

There is at least one crook--there's a café I like, but in future I won't be paying with notes any larger than I can possibly help--but the vast majority of townsfolk seem gracious, not grasping. I was horrified that the 6.2 quake affected them, deeply relieved that none of them were killed, and determined that Benedict Ambrose and I would return and give them our business again.

What Norcia is like in the autumn, I do not know, but I am looking forward to finding out!

Black Camisole in the Sanctuary

This post may definitely leave me open to accusations of mad traddery. I am not sure. However, we all love a discussion of women's dress, do we not?

When I was a teenage Trekkie, my mother remarked that the heating system on the Starship Enterprise must have been rather strange, as the men wore heavy jerseys and trousers whereas the women wore mini-dresses. I thought of this yesterday in a Catholic church as I listened to a choir sing Vespers and noticed fumed that although the men were soberly attired in black button-down shirts, covered from neck to wrist, there was a young woman in the very center wearing what appeared to be a black camisole. There was also two female instrumentalists with bare arms. Really, I had not seen so much skin on display in a Catholic church, let alone in the sanctuary, for so long, that I was seriously taken aback.

Bare arms, bare shoulders... It really doesn't seem like much to cause a distraction. They're just arms. They're just shoulders. (We'll get to the upper chest later.) And yet the male choristers didn't appear in the sanctuary in tank tops. I couldn't see their arms or their shoulders, and I would certainly have found it startling if I could. I am just no longer used to seeing bare arms and bare shoulders in church. Indeed, I am no longer used to seeing women in the sanctuary, so seeing women--women under the age of 60, that is, for I occasionally go to Mass in the Ordinary Form--in the sanctuary was itself a bit of a rarity. Speaking as a woman, I wish all the women had dressed as decorously as the men.  Speaking as a woman, I was embarrassed.

To be strictly fair, I should note that B.A. didn't even notice. He was much more interested in which composers' works were going to be used for this Vespers, which was both a Christian celebration and yet also a performance in an arts festival. And also to be strictly fair, the woman showing the most flesh had a lovely, professionally-trained voice. For a moment, it made me forget the vast expanse of pale flesh contrasting so dramatically with all the black clothing. I suppose it would be most charitable to assume that she didn't know she was going to be performing in a Christian church, or at least, that she didn't know she was going to be appearing at the very front of the Christian church. However, I doubt such an assumption would be intellectually honest.

It is much more likely that neither she nor her conductor thought there was anything wrong with women choristers wearing black camisoles during Christian services (although presumably they would have objected to male choristers doing the same), and if any Christian were offended by this, that was the Christian's problem, not theirs.

And maybe it is. However, I can't get past the contrast between the men who were covered from neck to wrist, from neck to floor, and the women who weren't. I feel something similar when I see a man wearing shorts and a T-shirt while his wife, clad in hijab and a black abaya, pushes a pram beside him. Why does the man wear western clothes when his wife does not? Why don't women cover up for church when men do?

I mean, really. Put yourself in my shoes. I am in a large Catholic church, and all the men and women I see in the congregation seem to be soberly dressed. It is not a hot day although I certainly feel warm wearing my coat indoors. There are perhaps 15 men on the altar, a half-dozen in clerical choir dress, perhaps three of those in chasubles or dalmatics as well. The rest of the men are in decorous black. The women, too, are in black, except for the flash of arm playing the cello and--in the very centre, right behind the altar, right before the tabernacle--an expanse of bare female chest.

Am I getting old? Would I have noticed this ten years ago? Is this what happens when you habitually worship among men who wear jackets and women who wear veils to Mass? Is human flesh really THAT distracting in a place of worship, or am I suddenly oversensitive?

As certain instruments demand freedom of movement, I could understand that musicians would prefer to wear sleeveless shirts during performances--except that men musicians don't. Somehow a convention has sprung up that men must not show any flesh but their faces, necks and hands in formal settings, but women may show our legs, arms, shoulders, cleavage, stomachs--anything at all, really, as long as it is not "bikini area", or too much all at once. Why? If it is to express proud femininity--well, there is such a thing as a skirt.

There are overwrought young Catholic men (or at least I know of an overwrought young Catholic man) who think women should dress as the Blessed Virgin Mary is depicted on statues, which I imagine would be extremely uncomfortable and inconvenient in urban Scotland, if sensible for first century Palestine. Let's not be ridiculous. However, let us not entirely discount the testimony of men who say they are distracted--quite against their will--by what flesh women flash in church. I am a middle-aged married woman and yet I too was quite distracted by what flesh women flashed in church. It entirely ruined any enjoyment or edification I might have experienced or true worship I might have expressed. To a certain extent, this is probably my fault. But only to a certain extent.

See the Scottish Catholic Observer...

It is Traddy Tuesday, but I wrote two articles from a traditional perspective in the past three days, and I now am all tradded out.  I am tempted only to write inanities about the really pretty dresses in Polish films of the late 1950s. Why do today's women prefer to look like sticks than like bells?

Whenever I look from the bus down upon Princes Street, I see hoards of people just scissoring along in their drab, dark outfits. The biggest different between men and women is that men don't wear leggings. In the Middle Ages men wore skin-tight leggings to show off the shape of their legs, and now it is women who do this, even when the shape is clearly "waffle cone".

The photo is from a Polish film called  Do Widzenia, Do Jutra  ("Good-bye, See You Tomorrow"), which I watched on Saturday night while my mother was at an open-air performance of Hamlet and my husband was at Vigil Mass. If you take to post-war Polish Film as a way of combating pseudo-intellectuals at department parties, it is a must-see. If you are studying Polish, you will be charmed that the principal female character is French and has a very imperfect understanding of Polish. (She regularly forgets to add the 'się', which is indeed something with which all learners will identify.) The poor hero falls back on his halting schoolboy French whereas his friends chat the girl up in advanced French and fluent English. Oh dear. How like life.

Traditional Guiding

Yesterday I received a letter from the Girl Guides I left behind (with their leaders) in the Perthshire wilderness last week. They often sing the song I taught them; they have continued the improvement to camp hygiene I suggested; they have played positively epic games since I left; so-and-so fell asleep on watch, was 'kidnapped' by two woodland beasts and had to be rescued. They very much miss me. Bless their girlish hearts.

One of the questions of my childless life is what on earth to do with all this pent-up maternal instinct, and a solution has come in the form of traditional Guiding. The establishment of Guiding in our TLM parish means two different age groups who sometimes need an old auntie to pitch in: the tween/teen girls and their twenty-something leaders. Thanks to an eight year stint with the (non-traditional) Girl Guides of Canada, I know a lot of stuff, and in Guiding situations it slowly comes back to me. But the same time, I know that nothing is more annoying to a twenty-something leader than a woman old enough to be her mother sticking her oar in at the wrong time, so I save my expertise until it is needed. Wisdom of age, y'all.

Meanwhile, traditional Guiding is different from the Guiding that I did in many ways, and none of my leaders knew her way around a hatchet, saw, chisel and awl the way our girls' Captain does. I barely ever used my knife in my Guide career, and yet during the three days I was at this camp, all the Guides had their knives out constantly to help turn our patch of Scottish forest into a colony of France. (The Guides' branch of Traditional Guiding and their Captains come from France.)

The most obvious difference between Traditional Guiding and Canadian Guiding As I Knew It is the emphasis on the Guides' Catholic faith. The girls were amazed that my parents didn't send me to Catholic Guides but to the geographically nearest Brownie troupe, down the street at the Anglican church. I reassured them that in those days, it was okay (by which I silently mean we weren't yet a branch office of Planned Parenthood). And it was, really. A sort of lukewarm  mainstream Willowdale Anglo-Saxon Protestantism still lingered, except when the dirty books came out at camp, which--come to think of it--was in direct violation of Guide Law 10: "A Guide is pure in thought, word and deed." Meanwhile, I doubt the Guide company at my parish church was half as devout as this Traditional Guiding Company. While collecting firewood, I overheard dishwashing girls seriously discussing some saints and the liturgy. Each of the two patrols built its own oratory.

Another obvious difference is that Traditional Guides wear skirts to camp. Okay, they do have "play uniforms", which is when the (rather long) shorts come out, but for such camp ceremonies as morning assembly, they race to the parade ground in dress uniform, which means berets, button-down shirts, navy skirts, sturdy boots and blue pullovers. In Scottish July, one is glad of that pullover, believe me. In my Canadian Guiding days, camp uniform meant a soft, brimmed camp hat, a T-shirt, shorts and running shoes. The shorts were rather flimsy, come to think of it; I much prefer the dark-navy, knee-length denim skirt I managed to find myself in a charity shop while packing for Trad Guide Camp. Camping in skirts is rather fun, and as traditional Scottish dress for men involves kilts anyway, traditional. The theme of the camp was the history of Robert the Bruce, and to play the Bruce convincingly--as our French Captain rather did--you need bare knees, let's face it.

Guiding everywhere involves a "campfire" meeting at the end of every day, and the girls cheered when they were told the leaders would take care of "campfire" that first night at camp. Their campfire always involves songs, hymns, a comic sketch, a dramatic sketch, boisterous games and five decades of the rosary. The girls half-kill themselves preparing it, so I understood their relief, but at the same time I felt a bit stressed. These are very talented, very enthusiastic, very creative girls, so I wasn't sure how I was going to do a sketch up to their standard. Fortunately, I had remembered to do as the Captain bid and brought a "fun story" about Robert the Bruce, which is naturally the apocryphal story of his being inspired by a doughty spider.

We quickly decided that the Captain would be the Bruce and I would be the spider. The Captain had a splendid tunic with a lion on it, and I gave myself four extra limbs by way of plaiting my hair into four braids. But best of all, I had brought a big ball of green twine, which would serve me as spider silk. I stuffed it down my shirt with the end sticking out my collar, and felt rather pleased by this special effect.

If you don't know the story of Robert the Bruce and the Spider, basically the Bruce had failed six times to establish his rule over Scotland/liberate Scotland from the English, and he was lying in a hovel wondering if he should make another attempt or pack it in and join the Crusades when he saw a spider trying to swing from one beam to another. The spider tried six times to attach its silk ot the opposite beam and six times failed. The Bruce decided that if the spider made another attempt, he would make another attempt to free Scotland. And lo. The spider succeeded on its seventh attempt, and Bruce never again lost an important battle.

Anyway, when I succeeded on my seventh attempt to reach the tree across from the one attached to the end of my string, I enjoyed myself winding a web around all the trees within reach, Robert the Bruce, etc., while shouting high-pitched spider cries of "Wheeee!" But then, as Robert the Bruce, continued  the campfire by leading some complicated comic song about a moose, I discovered I was stuck. Somehow the string inside my clothing had wound itself around my underclothing in such a way that I was permanently attached to my web, and I had to gesture helplessly to a Guide that she cut me out.

"What I like about you, Your Grace," said some Scottish Catholic to some Scottish bishop (Cardinal Winning, actually) in a story frequently repeated by the Schola, "is you've got nae dignity."

Yeah.

However, I made up for this glitch (I hope--campfire is almost a professional affair with this company) with my store of traditional English-language Girl Guide songs, my subsequent lesson on fire safety, and my open-fire cooking. It seems to me that my open-fire cooking has vastly improved since I was 14, probably because I have since then learned to cook at all. Meanwhile, open-fire cooking takes patience and a determination not to serve food that is either half-raw or burnt. It really puts one's theological education in perspective. Nobody really cares that I have an M.Div, but the ability to serve perfectly cooked potatoes can be crucial to the happiness of all around.

The Archbishop's Visit

June 19, 2016 will go down in the annals of our little Traditional Latin (Extraordinary Form of the) Mass community as a festal day of purple and gold, for that was the day the Archbishop of St Andrew's and Edinburgh, i.e. our bishop, came to our Mass.

This was the first time any ordinary of Edinburgh had ever come to the Edinburgh FSSP Mass, and so--despite the end of the university term--a record number of trads turned out to welcome him. B.A., with the Schola in the back, gave up counting after 90. (If you live in a city of Catholics you will laugh at that number, but Catholics make up  only 15% of the Scottish population, and Catholics who go to Mass are a minority of this percentage, and so Catholics who ever go to the EF... Well, you get the picture.)

I was delighted when I saw taxicabs of Glaswegians arriving from the railway station, for I had been haunted by the fear that the Archbishop would look out over a mere fifty or sixty of us (or fewer, if some families had gone on holiday or retreat) and think, "Is that it?" Some people can make it to our Mass only once or twice a month, either because of transportation difficulties, or because they have duties at other parishes, or because the after-Mass social scene is so beguiling elsewhere, e.g. the Edinburgh Uni CSU. (Well, that is where most of the eligible girls are, let's face it. The Girl Guides are as yet too young.)

Edinburgh regulars stood about outside or hurried in, most of them looking happy and some even excited. Someone official had asked me to take photographs, so I brought our new camera, which I was uncertain how to use. I'm not really a picture-taker, and I dislike being distracted during Mass by extraneous stuff. However, poor B.A. has to sing almost all the time, and the altar servers spend Mass run off their feet, so I suppose it is fair.

While the Master of the Schola played a prelude, the Archbishop came out of the vestry door, preceded by John the Grizzled MC, into the car park, and went in the door to the porch where he blessed a crucifix and was inexpertly photographed by me.  Then he processed up the aisle to where our priest and the altar servers where already waiting for him, while I scurried up a side aisle taking more photos and feeling like a lemon. He genuflected and sat in a chair over on the left, i.e. the Gospel side, and everyone looked at him. He, however, kept his eyes on Father for the whole mass, except when he had to acknowledge a genuflecting altar server or bless something or give us the homily.

Just before the homily, Father introduced him and gave the announcement that Elaine, one of our tea ladies had died. Elaine, a large round lady with white hair, had been a part of the Edinburgh Latin Mass community for over thirty years. Father said that today's visit was a fruit of her work for the TLM, which intrigued me for mostly what I had seen Elaine do for the TLM--and this is actually very important--was heft a heavy teapot at the after-mass Cup of Tea of Peace. I don't remember Elaine ever taking holidays, and she was rarely ill, so she has been inextricably part of my Sunday life. From the pew beside me, our most frequent Glaswegian visitor gasped.

I thought about Moses, who was allowed to see the Promised Land and yet died before he could go in, for Elaine had known about the Archbishop's visit, but had died a week before he came. However, this is a false analogy for the supernatural end of human life is not episcopal blessings but the true Promised Land of union with God.  And then the Archbishop gave his homily, which was a good, juicy, stern one, with lots of Latin quotes from the Gospel, which was the one about laying down your offering before the altar to go and make peace with your neighbour before continuing worship. He told us that it was not enough to love the Mass; we had to live in charity with our neighbour. Being trads,we lapped it up, and when he was done, we sang the Credo at the top of our 90+ voices.

After Mass had ended and the Archbishop had followed the rest of the sanctuary party down the nave and up the side aisle into the vestry, the MC came out to chivy the altar servers (or something). He was grinning from ear to ear. Was he relieved all had gone well? Was he flushed with power of being allowed to boss a bishop around a sanctuary? Perhaps he was just reflecting the general mood.

The Archbishop stood in the sunny car-park and greeted the flocks that hung about shyly, in twos and threes, in couples and in family groups, getting up the courage to go and shake his hand or kiss his ring. I was so busy taking photographs, I couldn't think of anything to say when my turn came except, "May I introduce some of our friends from Glasgow?"--which totally ruined the impression that  all 90+  sheep were his sheep. Bien lá, as my nephew Peanut would sigh.*

I took lots of photos in between greeting and chatting with fellow parishioners (as we aren't really, but parishioner is such a useful word and we don't have a real parish of our own, weep weep) and then pursued His Grace to the parish hall where I took more photos. I do hope he didn't mind, but it just meant so much to us that he came to visit.

Many of us keep up with our "parishioners" who go to London or abroad, and I put my photos on my Facebook page so they could see them. A trad mother of two now living in South Asia wrote to me that she almost jumped out of her chair when she did.

The Archbishop mentioned in his homily that he has been trying to meet everyone in the past few years he has been our ordinary, perhaps so we would not get the wrong idea, but as a matter of fact, I think we were just so pleased that we were being treated like everyone else, instead of merely being tolerated or ignored as those embarrassing people, as in years (and bishops) past. And of course as trads we were highly enthusiastic about having the Peter of  St.Andrew's-Edinburgh among us. Personally, I enjoyed hearing the Archbishop's Scottish accent laying down the law (in English and Latin) from the pulpit. Not to put too fine a point on it, there are not a lot of Scottish priests, let alone bishops, in Scotland.


*Nulli, Ma Belle Soeur, Peanut and Popcorn are all at the Historical House, currently sleeping off their jetlag. They are staying with us for a bit before continuing their trip to Berlin. Peanut and Popcorn are the most Frenchified Canadian children I have ever met. Their parents shout at them in parks in both English and French and the children reply in either Anglo or Estrie. Pierre Elliot Trudeau, that great architect of Canadian bilingualism, among much worse things--hopefully he made it into  Purgatory at least, poor man--must be proud.

Fasting, Abstinence and Compassion

It's Traddy Tuesday, and so a good time to repeat that the traditional fasting and abstinence laws are not only penitential, they are good for human health. As I am not a doctor, you can take what follows solely as an amateur's enthusiasm.

The best known contemporary proponent of fasting is Dr. Michael Mosley whose 2013 "Fast Diet" propelled a fasting craze among dieters so widespread that the expression "5/2" is a household expression in the UK. The diet is popular because it assures dieters that they need only restrict their calorie consumption twice a week and "just eat normally" on the other days. When the dieter has achieved his or her goal weight,  he or she is expected to restrict calorie consumption only once a week--but for the rest of his or her life. The dieter can pick whatever day he or she wants to fast in, so naturally Friday comes to mind.

Dr Mosley claims that the health benefits of intermittent fasting include protection against diabetes, dementia and cancer, which makes me think of stories about monks and nuns who live very long and healthy lives.

This year's Mosley diet craze is called the "Low Blood Sugar Diet", which regular readers all know about, since I am on it. In this diet, the poor dieter is supposed to get by on 800 calories a day, every day, for eight weeks--a bit longer than Lent---and abstain from sugar, white bread and anything made from white flour. As most prepared foods--even stock cubes, I discovered to my chagrin--now include sugar, the dieter eats a surprisingly natural diet.

Sugar is so terrible for you, it turns out that giving up sweets and puddings for Lent was a very good and useful discipline after all.

What does not jive with tradition is the inclusion of meat in both diets. Vegetarians (and those who abstain from meat on Fridays) can still follow them, of course, as long as they consume enough vegetable protein in place of the necessary meat protein. Meat-eaters will probably find themselves consuming smaller amounts of meat, so as not to eat too many calories. (I see that there are 239 calories in 100 g of chicken, which is how much chicken I consumed in Sunday's chicken soup. Weighing your food is important in calorie-reduced diets.) Meat-eaters will consume less meat if they give thought also to animal welfare and consume only those birds and animals who were raised humanely, for their meat is rather more expensive than the meat of their less fortunate brethren. However, there are ways around the expense, and you can shop like a traditional grandma, looking for the "cheaper cuts" of  ethical meat, which turn out to be even more flavoursome than the expensive cuts, if you cook them properly.

Naturally there are convents and monasteries where the monks and nuns never or almost never consume animal flesh, which is something to consider, and I do consider that at Lent. A low-carb, sugar-free, meat-free Lent strikes me as challenging, but it's still Pentecost, so I shall put that thought aside. Meanwhile, Lent at the Historical House can never be fish-free, for my husband has put his foot down on that. (He's from Dundee. He cannot cope without the flesh of something.)

I suspect we would all be better off at a healthy weight, eating a healthy number of calories, with some fasting (e.g. on Friday) to ensure we aren't going overboard on the calories and then some periodic long-term fasting or abstinence from sugar and other unhealthy foods (e.g. fast food, ready-meals) during Advent and Lent. There is quite a range of "healthy weight", I see from the NHS's BMI tool. Apparently someone my age and height has a 30 lb range to play with. Thus if I, being at a healthy weight, were to lose a bit of weight during Lent, and then gained it back before Advent, I should think it no big deal. Meanwhile, there is always a bit of suffering in not eating tasty things you would really like to eat, so there is the necessary Lenten penitential component. Learning to live with discomfort is a crucial Christian discipline.

There is another spiritual challenge involved in successfully returning to a healthy weight, and it is refusing to feel smug and judgmental about one's overweight neighbours.  After all, it turns out that to return to a healthy weight you don't even need to spend money for a gym membership, trainer or club. You just need to reduce calories and stuff as much nutrition as possible in every calorie you do eat. It would seem that anyone could do that, so why don't they? And surely that almost spherical young Polish woman on the Rough Bus didn't arrive in the UK that way? What would her grandmother say? Tsk, tsk, tsk.

The cure for such self-congratulation and small-mindedness is a book called Fat Planet: The Obesity Trap and How to Escape It. It begins with the female co-author getting into a fat suit and living as an obese woman in England for a day. Not only was she incredibly physically uncomfortable, people kept staring at her and making rude remarks. It left her thoroughly depressed. Many obese people are depressed and one easy way to feel better is through comfort eating. Some people get addicted to comfort eating, but naturally to get the "high", as with all drugs, they have to eat more and more. Incidentally, some nutritionists think chocolate should be reclassified as a drug.

Meanwhile, Fat Planet makes a very good case that the overweight and obese are only marginally responsible for their predicament. In short, society is to blame. This is a society that seriously messes with our natural cues regarding food consumption through advertising, food additives, and delicious smells cynically pumped into the air. If the High Street were all clothing shops, it would be much easier to maintain a healthy weight than if the High Street didn't feature a dozen fast food restaurants, cafés, pie shops and bakeries. Whenever we watch television or walk down a shopping street or in a mall, we are barraged by subtle messages of "EAT. EAT. EAT."  A current McDonald's advert on UK TV is selling McDonald's as a locus of family-, friend- and even first romantic love. Well, it certainly may be, but only because it has spent a gazillion dollars of advertising itself that way.

In the United Kingdom, there used to be strong cultural conventions about when it was time to eat. If you were a working-class person (and we would most of us be working-class people), you had your supper (or "tea") at 6 PM. If you were a woman of leisure, you might not eat until 8 PM, which explains the popularity of the 4 PM meal, called "afternoon tea", invented by the Duchess of Bedford in 1840. At its inception consisted only of tea, bread and butter.  Meanwhile, snacking was not a thing. I have just discovered that in the USA snack foods were once considered shameful.  I suppose children have always consumed sweets and snacks when they could get them (robbing apple orchards, etc.), but adults weren't supposed to do that.

However, traditional conventions regarding self-control in the UK have thoroughly broken down, as you can see on the High Street of any British city any Friday or Saturday night, and so UK residents, whatever our origin, are in danger of becoming fat, drunk, and chased around a table in Marseilles by a fascistic Russian wielding a metal chair leg.* The best way to prevent this is by cultivating self-control though the traditional tools of fasting and abstinence.


*Update: Okay, some people won't find that funny. Naturally it was not the fault of the majority of the English fans who were set upon by Russian football hooligans. However, it may have been the English reputation for hooliganism that led to the apparently premeditated attack. Is this reputation out-of-date? I was in German during the FIFA 2006 World Cup tournament, and English fans behaved atrociously. It was if English civilisation had completely collapsed, and somehow it was 594 AD again.

Chartres Pilgrimage in CWR

Just in time for Traddy Tuesday, my account of the Chartres Pilgrimage is up at Catholic World Report.

I left out the part where the Irish brought a flag commemorating the centenary of the Irish Easter Rising. It was the only overtly political symbol I saw there. The Scots marched beside a banner of the Queen of Peace.

Traditional Marrage

I like shoes. I suspect that for women shoes are a symbol of financial prosperity or at very least stability. There were times in my student life when I simply did not go adequately shod. I am still grateful for the small pair of police boots my friend Trish scared up for me when I was an undergrad.

Now that the bony deformity has asserted its presence in my foot, buying shoes has new, unforeseen difficulties. The principal one is finding comfortable shoes that don't look like "comfortable shoes." When I was in a charity shop the other day, I picked up a pair of England-made navy blue loafers. Although they were not overly feminine, they weren't exactly gender neutral either.  I thought I had a problem solved, and all for £5,

But on the way home from a dinner party--as soon as we left, as a matter of fact--the sole began to flap off my right shoe. At first it was just the toe section, but then the sole peeled away right down to the heel, leaving me taking huge flapping steps like a clown. As I was wearing nylons, just walking along the pavement--and through the woods--without my shoe was not a comfortable prospect.

Fortunately, B.A. was  with me, and he nicked a strand of ornamental grass from a front garden and made a thong for my shoe. This was tricky, slippery work--especially at midnight after a boozy supper---and the sharp grass cut his finger. Polish Pretend Son looked down pityingly at B.A. kneeling on the pavement trying to lasso together my shoe and said, "Today I was thinking, 'Should I get married? And now...."

"Hey," I protested. "This is a beautiful argument in favour of marriage. My gift of love was not to spend more than five quid on a pair of shoes, and B.A.'s gift of love is to mend them with grass when they fall apart."

The grass thong survived to the other side of the street, after which B.A. and PPS found a plastic tie affixed around a lamp-post, cut it off, and made it into a more durable lasso. This one worked much better, and did not come off until I had climbed a flight of the Historical Stairs.

I think it was rather like a story out of the oeuvre of the American author O.Henry (of 'she sells her hair, he pawns his watch' fame). All the same, I may  make myself buy some proper new dress shoes, somehow both feminine and comfortable at the same time. The sad thing about women's clothes and shoes is that quality--real quality, quality like in men's good clothes and shoes-- costs a small fortune.

Baking note: I entertained a lot this week, so I baked a lot this week, and I highly endorse the healthy recipes of Hemsley + Hemsley. Their peanut butter cookies, the ginger cookies, the apple crumble with ginger cream and, to throw in an actual meal,  "Pablo's Chicken" are all excellent. The very small amounts of sugar--i.e. maple syrup, date syrup or honey--may come as a disappointment at first, but I discovered I quickly grew used to the new taste. Everything is flour-free, which means both an increase in nutrition, but also in calories and in price. I may have to start buying ground almonds in bulk.

Abstemious Living 2: Traddy Tuesday Edition

This morning I got up at 6 AM, for I knew B.A. would be trying to get up at 6:30 AM, and I wanted to shower first. Then I got dressed, had breakfast and drank a lovely cup of coffee while B.A. rushed around as if he really were going to catch the 7:13 train.  We took the next train together, and then he went to judge a student contest and I walked up Arthur's Seat. 

It was very windy and, despite the optimistic weather forecast, very cloudy and therefore a bit cold. Happily I once again took the advice in Survival and wore a cotton T-shirt under my long-sleeved shirt and fleece jacket. I didn't take any of the rough and fancy routes around the Salisbury Craigs that B.A. likes. Instead I just took the most obvious path ad followed it to Arthur's Seat and climbed on up. Since the hymns of the Chartres Pilgrimage started working in my head, I said the rosary on the way up. I popped in at the ruin of St. Anthony's chapel and sang the Regina Caeli. 

Amid all the preparations for the Chartres Pilgrimage, I read about the life of Saint Catherine of Siena and the first part of her Dialogues because I promised my Chapter Leader that I would give a meditation. I made a lot of notes on her life, but I didn't read from Dialogues until I was on the actual plane to Paris. And that's when I realized it would be better just to let Saint Catherine speak for herself.

The part of Dialogues that I read to the Scottish Chapter--rather breathlessly and with great screeches from the megaphone, alas--was about knowledge of self, love for God and sorrow for sin. I was impressed that she began with knowledge of self, as it reminded me very much of the philosophy and theology of Bernard Lonergan, SJ, who was very interested in how we come to know things, particularly our own thought processes. Also, as long as I have been blogging, I have been interested in the concept of being rooted in reality instead of in wishful thinking, where I spent too much of my youth. 

Saint Catherine examined herself and realized that she was a sinner, which disturbed her very much, for she believed her sins were an offense against God. Indeed, her sins seemed so dark to her, that she felt that she was somehow personally to blame for all the evil in the world, and she prayed that God would punish her for her sins. In her subsequent vision, God told her that there would be no point to this, for not finite punishment could make up for offending against the Infinite. However, what did please Him was Catherine's infinite love for Him and Catherine's infinite sorrow for her sins. 

Later in the Dialogues, Catherine reflects that sins against God were sins against neighbour, either as sins of commission (e.g. stealing from the poor) or sins of omission (e.g. allowing the poor to go hungry), and I reflected this morning that this is what Christianity is about, really:

1. Love for God.

2. Sorrow for One's Sins.

3. Care for One's Neighbour.

You don't have all three, you don't have Christianity. 

Love for God is easier when you reflect on all the good things and people you have in your life a lot more than you reflect on what and who you don't have. As a married woman, I have a lot more to be grateful for than I did when I was Single, but on the other hand, it was when I was Single that I learned to be truly grateful for my friends and family and to try to accept them as gifts enough. Of course, I have been very blessed and therefore am a spiritual wimp next to Job, who loved God even when he had nothing but boils and a nagging wife. 

Love for God is also easier when you are in the countryside or wilderness away from urban distractions and dangers. I wonder if the rise of atheism isn't directly tied to the rise of the cities. Is there something spiritually wrong with being more than a stone's throw from a field or a shore? At one of the worst times in my life, I went down to the shore of Lake Ontario, and asked Lake Ontario, as a fellow creature, to help me out. Hey, if the priest can talk to a bowl of water during Easter Vigil, I  can certainly talk to Lake Ontario. (It has not occurred to me to talk to the Firth of Forth, but then I'm from Toronto.)

Love for God is probably tied in some way to love for God's creation, so when you are in a landscape shaped by God, not by man, then perhaps it reflects Him more directly.

Sorrow for One's Sins hurts a lot and is that part of Christianity that everyone seems to want to skip nowadays. I took some ex-Catholic boyfriend or other to Mass once, and he complained that there was too much about sin. I was confused, for other than the "I Confess..." there hadn't been much about sin. One might conclude  that ANY reference to sin was too much for him. He told me later than he didn't believe in sin, which was quite a remark from someone whose grandfather was shot by an occupying army. 

Love for God naturally leads to Sorrow for One's Sins in the same way that love for your parents leads to grief for whatever heartaches you put your parents through. The better your parents, the worse it is that you were rotten to them or simply thoughtless, and God is infinitely better than even the best parents, oh--and as the Son also died for you on the Cross. Can you imagine your own dear dad giving himself up to be crucified to save you, even though you did that terrible thing that gave him grey hairs? Horrors. (This may actually be a lived reality for someone in Syria or Iraq.)  

When in the grip of Sorrow for One's Sins, penance may come as a relief. The above-mentioned ex-Catholic ex-boyfriend once confessed a mortal sin, and the priest gave him only three Hail Marys. The lightness of the penance so shocked the young man, it was a watershed moment in the loss of his Catholic faith. No, I 'm not blaming the priest for that; I wasn't there, and I don't know if he tried to move his penitent to real contrition. But I am thinking about the fact that the Chartres Pilgrimage was a penitential pilgrimage, which meant that it was supposed to hurt. I' m also reminded of how in The Mission, Rodrigo Mendoza (played by Robert de Niro) undergoes a frightfully heavy penance, and he hangs on to it until the survivors of some whom he has harmed free him from it. 

When thinking about Sorrow for One's Sins, too much luxury feels like nausea. Too Much. Too much food, too much drink, too much sleep, too much fun, too much leisure. And this brings us to the final consideration, which is Care for One's Neighbour.

Care for One's Neighbour can be really difficult and frightening because there are just so many neighbours nowadays. It's not like we live in a small village with a countable number of very poor who need help in being fed, housed, educated and moved to contrition for their error and sin. There isn't just one village atheist to be enlightened. Yesterday I couldn't decide whether it was a failure of charity to abstain from telling an Anglican woman who left a patronizing comment at the Catholic Herald that she is neither a deacon nor a priest (as she claims, not only because she is a woman, but because she is an Anglican and Anglican orders are  absolutely null and  utterly void. (I'm still worried about it.; what if no-one ever tells her?) 

Care for One's Neighbour is also difficult because whereas everyone agrees (in principal) that this includes giving food, drink, clothing and--perhaps--some form of social interaction (e.g. visiting the sick, visiting the imprisoned)--to others, the spiritual works of mercy are left by the wayside.  The only Roman Catholic I know personally who regularly warns strangers that they are  in danger of hell--because she really cares, because she really does love her neighbour that much--is Ann Barnhardt, who has been condemned by the SPLC as a professional hater.  (No, I will not link to those so-and-sos. If Ann--one of the most generous people I've ever met--is ever killed, her blood will be on their heads.)

Advice on this tricky issue is best found from the saints, not from me. However, I am inclined to think that what is needed is attention to the people with whom one personally comes into contact as well as to some faraway, over-there group of people. Personally, I have always preferred  chaste (or trying to be chaste) Singles who read the internet as my "faraway, over-there" group, although I think any western Christian would have to have a heart of stone not to answer the cry of Middle Eastern Christians somehow.  

That reminds me: if you are feeling particularly enriched by my writings lately, would you hit the button in the margin and give a shekel or two to our brothers and sisters from Iraq? And would you pray for the conversion of  the world to Christ? Thanks very much. One of the Chartres Pilgrimage  meditations seemed to ask us to consider what we are doing right now for Christendom, and it seems to me that what I mostly do is blog. 

A Pilgrim Returns Home

I have returned from Chartres full of stories--and blisters. Blisters, aches and pains and weight loss. Sad to say, after three days of prayer and hymns of praise and mortification that you would hardly believe, plus masses in Notre Dame de Paris, in a  field of gravel and in Notre Dame de Chartres, the first thing I did when I got home was see if I fit into my blue Hobbs spring dress. And lo.

A plenary indulgence AND I fit into my Hobbs dress!

Seriously, though, it was an awesome experience. It really hurt, but it was amazing all the same. I learned a lot spiritually, that is for sure. I also learned about the human ability to adapt and survive in pre-modern conditions. Soon I will write a list of what to bring (and what not to bring) on the Chartres Pilgrimage.

Thank you for all your prayers. My cold never worsened, and it mostly went away after Saturday night. Possibly the freezing air of my tent killed it. Thank heavens I paid a little extra to get the (child-size, as I am apparently the size of the largest type of child) sleeping bag that is comfortable to 5 degrees C and keeps you alive at 0 degrees C.

The French revision (review) paid off, too, for this moring I saved myself a long walk on very painful feet by saying to a friendly looking older woman, "Bonjour, madame! Excusez-moi de vous déranger, mais oú est la gare?" (Good morning, madam! Pardon me for troubling you, but where is the railway station?"

The Polish came in handy for making peace with a neighbour who, despite being Polish, addressed me in German during a territorial dispute in the foreigners' section of the campground. It's a long story, but it has a happy ending, which was the Polish lady returning to her tent to tell her daughter all about our subsequent Polish conversation and how nice it was. Their tent wall was right up against my tent wall, so I could hear everything. Goodness, how they giggled.

Ego Linguam Latinam Amo

I am reading Michael Erard's Mezzofanti's Gift, which is about hyperpolyglots like the eponymous Cardinal Mezzofanti. Like many anglophones, Erard bewails being locked in by English--having the world's current business language as your native tongue is as much a curse as a gift--and I was silently agreeing when I suddenly realized I functioned in four languages today: English, Polish, Latin and--if only a snippet--Greek.

As it's Traddy Tuesday, I will emphasize Latin and the snippet of Greek, which I heard at Mass this morning.*

Whenever I extol in print Latin as the language of the Western Church, some armchair linguist always writes in to say that the first language of Christian worship was Greek, so why don't I suggest we all pray in Greek? Or how about Aramaic? I don't doubt he thinks this a terribly clever put-down, but I do doubt he knows much Greek or more than five words of Aramaic, i.e. Talitha, kum, Eli (or Eloi), lamach and sabbithani.

Christian Latin is the first western language used only by Christians. St. Augustine, who did not enjoy Greek studies at school but absolutely excelled as a Latin orator, defended Christian Latin from fellow Classicists who sniggered at its borrowed Greekisms. "Ecclesia" was one such word, as is "presbyter" (from presubos).

It is true that the earliest Christian communities were Hellenic and that Greek was the business language of the day. However, in the West Greek was soon supplanted by Latin as the universal language. From Latin come several Western European languages, including French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Romanian. English is a strange hybrid of Germanic and Old French, and therefore Latin at secondhand, but a lot of Latin was added to English over the centuries in the realms of religion, law, governance, philosophy and science. 

Latin, shared more or less intimately by all Christian Europeans, therefore became a language that anyone who went to school in a western European country had to learn. Sure, you could learn French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, and on top of that German, Dutch, Norwegian, etc., but no doubt it was simpler for the average schoolboy (and girl whose parents thought she ought) to learn Latin. (I haven't the foggiest how many languages your average 11th-19th century European merchant's son was likely to know, but if he was going to know one, it was Latin.) A thousand years (or more, come to think of it) of pedagogical insight have gone into the teaching of Latin, which was taught universally to schoolchildren in the West until my mother graduated from high school. Après Mom, le Deluge. 

I am painting in broad strokes, as is my wont. As you may object, Latin did hang on in some schools and in fact I was taught Latin in Grade 9 and then in summer school, where I spent a blazing hot July. Whether or not I yet knew that the Roman Rite used always to be said in Latin is an interesting question. I strongly remember getting up the courage in Grade 13 to ask my history teacher how the Church was different before Vatican II, and he had to admit that he didn't know. (When the Toronto Catholic School Board was granted full government funding, it had to hire non-Catholic teachers.) 

I had been interested in Latin since age 12 upon reading Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Eagle of the Ninth, which my father had brought back as a present from a business trip to Britain. Goodness, how I loved that book. Anyway, I had a look at the first chapter of Wheelock's Latin Grammar, and my father explained to me how the Nominative and Accusative worked (Nauta Dorotheam amat; Dorothea nautam amat ), and I even had a (very) brief stint in a university night school Latin course.  Thus, it was a no-brainer that I would sign onto Sister X's Grade 9 Latin course.

Sister X was a tartar, well-hated by most (if not all) of the 800-900 girls in the school. I got the shock of my life when I discovered Catholic girls of my mother's generation had loved her. What on earth happened? Surely Vatican II cannot be to blame for that although nobody with eyes in her head could have supposed Sister X dressed better in 1985 than she did in 1963. To get a sense of what Sister X looked like in my day, conjure up Dana Carvey as Church Lady. 

I disliked Sister X along with everyone else, loathing her sneering sarcasm and her habit of giving you a mark of  0 if you did your homework in pencil. In fact, come to think of it, I wrote a story in which she featured as the villain, and it was published in a city-wide paper. However, Sister X did do one thing that stuck with me forever, and it was that she taught us how to sing Salve Regina in Latin. Rarely do I sing Salve Regina after Mass without remembering poor old Sister X, who (if she is still alive) has slipped into the twilight world of dementia. In fact, I went to see her some years ago, and although she didn't remember me, she certainly remembered how unhappy she was just before she quit teaching. Poor old soul. 

Sister X might have given me something else although the circumstances are not clear in my mind. I think it may have been a reward for writing a Cambridge Latin Exam; it may have included a sweetie, but maybe not. For sure it included a button (the pin-to-your-jacket sort) that read "Ego Linguam Latinam Amo." I absolutely adored that button. 

Where am I going with this? Oh yes. Let's jump forward twenty years (or, ahem, more) to St. Peter's Square, where Benedict XVI, still the pope gloriously reigning, was having a Wednesday audience. Father O, whom I knew when he was a 17 year old schoolboy, was on the balcony with His Holiness, introducing the English-language pilgrims. There were two or three other such useful factotums, introducing Italian-language pilgrims, Spanish-language pilgrims, et alia. And every time a group was introduced they cheered and waved their national flags like mad.  After a while of this, I started feeling a bit ill. There's a time for proud nationalism, no doubt, but during a Roman audience with the Vicar of Christ is surely not it. Benedict being Benedict, bless his red shoes, led the whole gathering in a recitation of the Lord's Prayer----in Latin, naturally, which meant that all the Canadians, Poles, Mexicans, Slovaks, et alia, prayed together, not as a sort of Junior UN conference, but as Roman Catholic Christians. 

Now skip ahead to today when I sat on the train in Waverley Station and contemplated the anglophone prison. There are people (although probably only Americans) who honestly think English should supplant Latin and (let's face it) Italian as the Official Language of the Church. I think this is a horrible idea, and it stinks of Anglo-American imperialism. English is (ha ha ha) the official language of the Asian Bishops Conference which gives Indian and Filipino heretics the edge over orthodox Koreans and Chinese. 

But that is a whole other can of worms.  Suffice it to say that I am delighted that when I go to Mass, I escape the limits of being a native English speaker and of having been born after 1970. Not only am I sharing in the experience of all other living Christians who attend the Latin Mass, I am sharing in the experience of countless generations before mine. This linguistic unity especially beautiful when there are altar servers of various nations on the altar, all saying the Confiteor together, not one having a national-linguistic advantage over another. 

*Lest I appear holier than I deserve, I should explain I don't usually go to Daily Mass, but I'm in training for the Chartres Pilgrimage. Quote from Latin-praying priest: "You walk too much!"

What Earlier Generations Held as Sacred

It's Traddy Tuesday, and I have traddy news. The podiatrist says a 70 mile walk won't exacerbate the condition of my faulty toe, and so I'm officially going on the Chartres pilgrimage in May. Benedict Ambrose will stay at home, lounging in comfort as I slog... Well, actually he has to work.

I'm very excited as I have never been on such a long or hard pilgrimage before. Also, I haven't been to Paris in sixteen years, and I've never been to Chartres. It will certainly be an adventure.

But today I thought I'd write about the Apostolic Letter "Motu Proprio Data" Summorum Pontificum (July 7, 2007), a document so important to the lives of liturgical traditionalists. I had fled theology school two or so months earlier, and so all the news and drama passed me by.

However, this short document--the English translation is fewer than 1,900 words--had an enormous effect on the liturgical life of Catholics whose hearts cried out against what the Pope Emeritus (then Benedict XVI) called "arbitrary deformations of the liturgy." I wish now that I had been around for the parties.

This, by the way, reminds me of a very funny story about a college pal of B.A.'s who literally wept when Benedict XVI was elected. The story goes that a Catholic of a more "progressive" disposition was furious when he heard the news and went ranting and raving about. He came across our pal, infamous for his scoldings of the heterodox, who was visibly moved. In fact, Mr Orthodoxy was weeping.

"So even you are upset by this terrible news," snarled the 'progressive.'

Mr Orthodoxy lifted his tear-stained face.

"This is the happiest day of my life," he said.

Anyway, looking at this letter now,  I see that it is addressed to the bishops. I learned in theology school that when reading papal documents, you must always note to whom it is written. Anything written to the bishops is to the bishops and the bishops are supposed to write their own letters to their priests and laypeople to explain the document. However, Summorum Pontificum is so simple and concise, I don't imagine the bishops would have needed to explain much, if they did. The Archbishops of Toronto and Ottawa talked to Michael Swan at the Toronto Catholic Register here. (The information given in the yellow panel to the left suggests that its compiler had very jaundiced view.)

These Canadian bishops seem upbeat and relatively open to the 1962 liturgy. Certainly it seems that Archbishop Collins (now Cardinal Collins) would not have had a problem with priest saying their own private EF Masses or for small groups that request it. The tricky thing would be the EF used in a parish in place of the regularly scheduled OF Mass.  This is no doubt because of the potential of strife between people who prefer the OF and those who prefer the EF. I remember being shocked by young trads myself in the early 1990s. "This Mass is all wrong" does not go down well with rank-and-file Catholics brought up to venerate Mass (ANY Mass) as sacred.

So I did come across the "we few, we happy few, simply know better than anyone else" style of traditionalism before Summorum Pontificum, and I suspect Summorum Pontificum largely squelched it by returning the "Old Mass" to the mainstream. Well...if it didn't squelch it, it certainly attracted large numbers of Benedict-loving, mainstream Catholics, who were--and perhaps still are--less, er, eccentric and more, er, conventional. By definition, most people are conventional, and perhaps because it is easier to be a conventional person, conventional people tend to be more easy-going.

Really, it is neither clever nor funny to slag off the Novus Ordo, and doing so is no advertisement for traditionalism, just as slagging off the "Bad Old Days" (e.g. the Church between Pentecost and the alleged "New Pentecost" of Vatican II) was no advertisement for Catholicism in general.  Shockingly, there are priests to this day who tell their congregations how awful the Extraordinary Mass is, how disrespectful to women, to laypeople in general, yadda yadda. What are they saying, that the Catholic Church was All Wrong until 1970? Frankly, it looks like worry that their dwindling congregations will dwindle further thanks to rumours of the liturgical majesty to be found across town.

However, the number one threat to the continuation of the Catholic faith in Scotland, for example, is certainly not the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. If I had to guess, I'd have to say it was being converted to the worship of Feeling Good by hours and hours of watching television, watching films. listening to pop music and reading newspapers online. If you feel a new sense of holy revelation having watched Milk, you're not going to be thrilled when your boring old priest reads out your boring old bishop's embarrassing letter against "g*y m*rriage."  Milk had a budget of $20 million. Imagine a £10 million campaign to preserve the faith of Catholics in Catholicism.

Dear me, I meant to do a close reading of Summorum Pontificum, not ponder why Catholics stop going to Mass. Catholics stop going to Mass because Catholics stop being Catholics. Seriously, though, both Communist and Protestant regimes tried extremely hard to make Catholics stop being Catholics, and it never worked without extreme violence until now. Why is it that media has succeeded in doing what the Commies and Protestants couldn't do?

It's a question. And the answer may be linked to SP because if there's anything we 21st century people get, it's good spectacle versus bad spectacle, and the more people fiddle with the Mass, the less Mass-like it's going to be. The Mass supported the people spiritually for hundreds and hundreds of years---and that was back in the "Bad Old Days." Here's a once-famous post on the topic.

The Traddy Calendar

It's Traddy Tuesday, so I shall write about that most traditional of household organizers, the wall calendar.

I come from a family of seven, so for decades the calendar on the kitchen wall has been filled with my mother's notations of who has a dentist's appointment when, etc. There is still a calendar on the go, but there is now less ink and rather more non-Christian holidays on it. My mother's calendar has always come free in the (I believe) Toronto Star; presumably it's free because it is printed by the Milk Marketing Board. The "Milk Calendar", as we call it, features photographs of meals made with hearty amounts of milk, butter and/or cheese. If it is meant to encourage the consumption of gallons and gallons of milk, it sure works in my parents' house.

Now that I have married and moved to the other side of the Atlantic, I have quite a different kind of calendar on the hall wall. April has two notations--"Imien. B'a" and "Apt 4 FOOT 9:50"--representing an anniversary and a doctor's appointment. However, instead of being illustrated by super-luxury macaroni and cheese with lobster or Thai-style fettucini alfredo, April features a photo of Br. Alfonso Maria pollinating the apricots in the Papa Stronsay greenhouse. Apparently Papa Stronsay has no bees, so the monks have to be their own bees. It would be more fun if Br Alfonso Maria were wearing a black and yellow striped jumper to do his bee duties, but apparently he's not on a windy island in the North Atlantic to have fun.

Meanwhile, there are no non-Christian holidays on this calendar: it is wholly Christian in tone. It is also very judgmental, branding some days to be first class and others only second, third or even fourth class. On the other hand,  April 23 is recognized to be I Class in England, if IV Class everywhere else, because it is the Feast (or Comm.) of St. George, M., so the calendar clearly recognizes regional diversity. Goodness, it's even got Pope Emeritus Benedict's Birthday in 1927 written in red italics. Have they got Pope Francis' birthday marked down, I wonder. Hmm.

This calendar took on new importance when for the New Year B.A. and I decided we would drink alcohol (and I would drink coffee) only on first and second class feast days in 2016. This was suspended for Easter, and goodness, I never knew there were so few first and second class feast days. Occasionally I would feel that a special saint (like St. Dorothy) deserved to be upgraded to I Class at the Historical House. Anyway, before Lent there was a lot of checking of the calendar, as if we were engaged in a sort of alcoholic NFP.

Of course the one tragic thing about the Traddy calendar aka the Old Calendar is that it contradicts the New Calendar. I can just see the argument for having Year A, B, and C for the liturgy*,  but not at all with moving the ancient feast days around, if  any argument was ever made. For one thing, it disrupts our ties to the Anglican communion, which gaily keeps on celebrating saints' days the days they have for centuries been commemorated in Britain and its Empire. Moreover, it disrupts our ties to the Catholic Church of centuries past. As Chesterton so quotably pointed out: "Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.... Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."

One of the curious thing about Anglicanism is that it unwittingly preserved a lot of Catholic culture--Catholic art, Catholic architecture and Catholic liturgical timing (e.g. "Stir-up Sunday") and the Catholic Calendar---even after the Catholics began (c. 1960) to junk their heritage. (Ironically, the anglo-papalists thought they should follow Rome even in this, and there was a lot of fussing and wailing among them.) There are a hundred anecdotes of High Church Anglicans rushing into the streets to rescue copes and statues from bins behind the Catholic Churches in that iconoclaustic decade. No wonder Evelyn Waugh died of chagrin. Surely it would have been an ecumenical gesture to stick with the other western Christians in terms of celebrating our common calendar, but the 1960s were terribly triumphalist while pretending they weren't.

In the 1970s, most people didn't talk about this to Catholic children. The rupture between what was in old (and not-so-old) books about Catholicism and what was all around was never explained, which is no doubt why I later got so terribly interested in it. Occasionally there were references to "the bad old days" which was greeted by kindly filial chuckles from the pews. The laity who still go to church are, in the main, a docile, obedient and trusting lot, if rather given to birth control. (It's very odd. The post-1963 laity will put up with absolutely any liturgical shenanigans but all but a minority in Canada draw a line at Humanae Vitae. It is, however, a relief that they also draw the line at pastors with convictions for sexual offenses. "But he's sorry, matured and gotten so far on his journey" just does not cut it in Calgary.)

Anyway, my parents accidentally infected me with traddism by giving me Father Lovasik's Heroines of God and each story mentioned the feast day of the saint at the bottom. Saint Dorothy's Day is clearly February 6, so I was terribly disappointed when I discovered she was supplanted, after Vatican II, by Saint Paul Miki and Companions. Naturally Saint Paul Miki and Companions are very important saints, particularly in the Church in Japan, but surely there was no need to shove out little Saint Dorothy who has been loved by Catholics throughout Europe (and perhaps even her native Cappadocia) for 1800 years. But I think I wrote about this in February. If your name is Mary or Elizabeth, you can have no idea how thrilling it is to hear your patron saint actually named at Mass.

Back to the Calendar. When we were in Norcia over Christmas, B.A. suggested that we buy the Benedictines' lovely traddy calendar, but I put my foot down and insisted on the Papa Stronsay calendar because of "our shared Scottish context", as theology students I know would argue. The Papa Stronsay calendar lists quite a few Scottish saints that others may have forgotten about (e.g. St Egbert of Iona) and they list important civil holidays in the English-speaking world, including Martin Luther King Day in the USA and Australia Day in the Antipodes. I see that they do not mention Robbie Burns on January 25, but as all trads in Scotland know, he was a Mason and therefore shouldn't be in our sacred calendar.

Naturally another fun thing about the Papa Stronsay calendar is seeing it in other Scottish traddy homes. It is a cultural artifact of traddism, just as traybakes are an artifact of Free Scottish Presbyterianism. (Okay, other people make traybakes and eat them on Sunday but when I asked Calvinist Cath to name a Wee Wee Free cultural artifact, that was the only clear thing she came up with.**)

Today is a Feria and IV Class so even though it is  still Easter maybe I shall not have any wine today. However, according to the Papa Stronsay calendar, it is the 1300th anniversary of the first Easter celebrated by the monks of the Abbey of Iona, so maybe a drink is in order.

*Needless to say, Year A,B, and C also represent a rupture in the Catholic sense of times and seasons.

**She could have mentioned  strictly unadorned psalm-singing, which is really unique. But then of course Presbyterians don't think of that as "cultural" but as liturgical....as I suppose the Calendar is.... You know, culture and religion are not always so distinct. Incidentally as the FPC is so vociferously against Catholic worship, you can see how brilliant it is that Cath has devoutly and equally vociferous Catholic friends. Paradoxically, I have a lot of respect for the FPC, the traddiest trads of Protestantism.

Update: In case you miss them or want to read more posts about Catholic traditionalism, here is a whole collection of Traddy Tuesday posts.

Traddy Scouting for Girls

Our Guides fly the Saltire, however.

So I was in a rustic Georgian cottage on a Boy Scout campground 20 minutes south of Aberdeen when a desert monk I had never before met said, "You're Edinburgh Housewife!"  And I thought with guilt about my deplorable habit of shutting down blogs and starting new ones, etc., and the priest added that he loved Traddy Tuesdays. He thought they were funny and did a lot of good as much online traditionalism is sad. Apparently he really liked my jokes about people in the TLM community, so I will REVEAL that I have DISCOVERED that our FSSP priest took advantage of my absence on Sunday to preach against losing sleep over Amoris Laetitia.

Naturally the Girl Guides were absent too. Since I am naturally a motherly woman (see also Mulieris Dignitatem), one of my happiest moments of Edinburgh parish life was seeing Girl Guides suddenly come marching into church in their homemade blue uniforms.  Of course I am content that the altar servers are always male, but here at last was something for the GIRLS.  This amazing development was thanks to one of the mothers, a Frenchwoman who had somehow imported a young French traditional Catholic Scouting leader, so after Mass I congratulated her and suggested that the Guides come to the Historical House some time for tea.

This was an outrageously presumptuous invitation, for the Historical House is a business first and my home second, and I ought to have asked my husband, but I got carried away in my spiritually maternal joy. And somehow "tea" turned into "camping weekend", and eventually I had to confess to my husband what I had done. Fortunately he was terribly good about it. He even organized the Guides' nature walk; really, he was splendid. Sadly, camping is absolutely forbidden in the Historical House grounds, so we cleared out our dining-room and the Guides slept there. In the morning, B.A. and I marched our temporary family of French and Scottish daughters to the bus stop and we all went to Mass.

This year I was invited to join the board of the tiny independent Scout/Guide organisation, and to my joy I was invited to go along on the April camp. I suspect there are sneaky plans afoot to make me into a future Brown Owl for future Brownies or a Guide Captain when we run out of French ones. However, for the time being I was just invited as me, and one of the reasons I just got up at 5:30 AM on Saturday was to finish my analysis of Amoris Laetitia before I was due to join the Guides.

I was, of course, a Guide myself once upon a time, which I suppose means I have just been a lapsed Guide since I was 14 or 15. However, I was a Brownie and then a Guide from the age of 6, which meant 8 years of Brownie-Guide training and therefore the ability to pack a knapsack with everything necessary for Guide camp and to roll a decent (if sadly fat) bedroll within an hour's notice. I even had a long denim skirt--okay, I know I have made fun of the long denim skirt but I admit it is an essential piece of tradwear, especially when camping.  Off I went to the bus stop, with B.A. carrying my bulky bedroll, bless him.

The trip to Aberdeenshire was done in stages. First we all went to Pittenweem to visit St. Fillan's cave. The Guides had to find it through clues given to them during some elaborate game, whereas two of the driving parents and I just obtained the key and visited it first ourselves. Then the car I was in went to Stonehaven where we picked up two more Guides from the railway station. Finally we arrived at the Scout camp and, as we were late and it was now raining miserably, the decision was made that the Guides, like the leaders and I, would sleep indoors on bunk-beds, not in a tent on the soggy field. Naturally we would all spend a lot of time outdoors, rain or no rain, sog or no sog. So we did, the girls and I (making up the numbers) running about playing Speed Noughts and Crosses.  At some point one of the leaders drove off to fetch the chaplains, already down from their wee Orkney island to say Mass in the Extraordinary Form for the faithful of Aberdeen and us.

They came for supper and the Campfire. As all Guides (active or lapsed) know, Campfire is the Most Important Part of every Guide meeting or camp, featuring songs and sketches and, if the company is religious, prayer. Ours was in the rain, and I was very impressed that not only had the Guides had created a splendid fire, they had built a little shelter, complete with bench, for their Redemptorist guests and me. There were songs, dances and a funny game of "Freeze"and, most impressively, a "multi-media" presentation of the story of King Robert the Bruce and the relics of Saint Fillan. This involved actresses both in front of and behind a flash-lit screen and a musician playing a flute. Father Chaplain said a few words and a few prayers and then, goodness gracious, we prayed a five-decade rosary, which began with such prayers as "Sacred Heart of Jesus--SAVE RUSSIA."

After Campfire, the Guides and leaders all had various duties, but I didn't, so I betook my damp and bone-cold self to the leaders' dorm. When the Guides trooped off to their room, I was sure the night would be punctuated by giggles and chatting and leaders getting up to shout "Girls!", but it was not. Our Guides were told to be quiet and sleep, and so they were quiet and slept. Excellent respect for Guide Law, I must say. We adults slept like dead stones thrown from the seat of Moses.

After breakfast (grace before and after), the Guides were quizzed on Guide Law, which they recited in unison, and then I taught them the Guide Law marching song, which pleased everybody very much, especially me. The Guides had a lesson about Scouting and Catholic Scouting history, and Guides to make their formal Guide Promise were prepared for the ceremony that would take place after Mass in Aberdeen.

We struck camp in time to get back into cars and get to church. When we arrived the Aberdeen devotees of the EF were praying a pre-Mass rosary and Father Chaplain was hearing confessions. The white handout/booklet with the Propers was available in both English and Polish, which I found delightful. The homily was on the necessity of joining religious orders, and I would have felt very challenged had I not been married. I suppose I could put B.A. aside and go into a convent, but I very much doubt anyone would want me to do that.* After Mass there was After-Mass Tea and then the Promise Ceremony in the garden. This was followed by lunch in the church hall and then a 20 minute reflection on the Guide Laws by Father Chaplain. We tidied up, said our good-byes, and went back to our homes, wherever they were.

The weekend was highly edifying. There were so many prayers that when B.A. said grace before Sunday dinner, my first thought was "That's it?" However, this didn't dim the joy and fun of camp in any way. Lord Baden-Powell himself had been to that campground when it opened (!), and although he might not have approved of our Catholicism, he would certainly have approved of all the Christian reverence, to say nothing of the emphasis on Guide Law. On the other hand, he may have pointed out the lack of military smartness in our muddy skirts at church. (Actually, he would have had a heart attack.) Still, it's a very young company, and there is time for improvement. As our Guides seem to be growing in discipline and other Guide virtues, it is certain that their uniforms will one day take on a Baden-Powell approved smartness, even after camping in the rain.

Speaking of smartness, as I have volunteered to give the Guides a few cooking, baking and hostessing lessons, I must scrub the kitchen today. I don't think the lessons will be in my kitchen, but anyone who volunteers to teach Guides anything ought to show a bit more pride in the state of her spice shelf.

*There is an order of traditional Benedictine nuns in Missouri who have the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. If anyone knows of other religious orders of women who love the EF, please give links in the combox. Naturally, I am a big fan of the Benedictine Sisters of Saint Cecilia in Ryde, but unfortunately they do not have the EF.

Meanwhile, if I were a young man with a call to Benedictine religious life, I would visit here. (It's where I would send B.A. on my deathbed, should I die sooner rather than later.) However, if I felt most drawn to the life of a desert monk, I would visit Papa Stronsay. Yes, it may be in the North Sea, but it's still a desert. It's a damp desert.

UPDATE: Edinburgh Housewife is up again for those who feel like reading old posts. You have a nice Son of the Most Holy Redeemer of Papa Stronsay to thank for this!