I have not read very much of this magazine, THE (secret) journal of Young Fogeys, so I do not know if it 100% Catholic compliant. I doubt it, actually, but what I have seen so far I have enjoyed.
I find "The Chap Manifesto" particularly amusing, although I deplore the idea that men should smoke quite that much. My grandfather, himself a snappy dresser inspired by film noir, smoked like a chimney and died of a massive heart attack at 65. Thus my grandmother was a widow at 60 and very unhappy about it. Not that she stopped smoking herself for another 10 years or so, but I digress.
Any man who lives by "The Chap Manifesto" would dismiss my objections as feminine twittering and go selectively deaf, hearing snapping back on only when someone asked me what was for pudding or what it was X said about Y when Z was in the room.
The wonderful thing about the Single men I know in Britain is that they wear Singledom so well. They are very interested in philosophy, theology, politics, literature, art, clothing, conversation, dining out, cocktail parties and all of that, and if the topic of marriage comes up they nod thoughtfully as if marriage is something to which they ought to get around one of these days.
At no point do they sound off against feminism, which they usually pretend does not exist, unless they are teasing someone like me, and this happens but rarely, and usually under the influence of alcohol.I cannot stress enough that the Single men I know in the UK do not react to the whole subject of women and marriage with sudden diatribes against feminism.
No, the Single Young Fogey is calm, cool, and collected. He gives the impression that if he marries, it will be because he was at a country house/Highland cottage party where absolutely splendid girls abounded, and while rowing a pretty girl in linen and a picture hat in a nearby pond, he suddenly proposed and she accepted. Meanwhile, as he has no idea which country house/Highland cottage party this will be, he just gets on with the business of life, hunting down the prefect brogues and stocking the humidor.
I get the impression sometimes that some men think they are not really men unless they have a woman. But this has never been an issue for traditional university men in Britain. I don't know about the 1960s, Guardian-reading, red-brick men: perhaps they feel like the world would judge them harshly if they turned up at parties without trophy women on their arms. But this is not a thought that seems to torture the Young Fogey, I am happy to say.
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