Auntie Seraphic & Need Pep Talk

Birthday/Girls' Night. Had sudden flu. Went to Goth club anyway. 

Dear Auntie,

I've written you a couple times before and have always loved your advice. And I love your blog! I was wondering, if you need a topic idea, could you post a pep talk of sorts for the searching singles? Not so much a don't list, but a you're doing okay list? And not so much a "watch out for this type of guy" thing as a "it's not your fault you're pursued by weirdos" thing (two of my roommates have been bombarded with really weird men pursuing them, to the extent that these fellows have made more than a few events awkward and unpleasant). 

All the single women I know (and there seem to be so many of us) are struggling right now: there aren't any weddings, or engagements, or boyfriends. The pool of NCB is limited to just CB, completely missing the N part, and it's really starting to get old. Okay, to be entirely fair, there are a few NCB's here and there, they're just not interested in us, or they have recently announced plans to enter the seminary. To top everything off, it seems like every sermon this entire summer was about being faithful to your spouse, raising children, etc. Nothing for the spinster Aunts! 

We're trying to to keep on trucking, work, be happy and enjoy the privileges of being single (and there are so many! don't get me wrong!), but there isn't much caffeine in our lives and there is a feeling of lethargy in the air. 

Thanks for everything you do!

Need Pep Talk

Dear Need Pep Talk,

You don't mention how old you are, but my usual recommendation for the under-30 set is to scamper straight to the mirror and admire your beautiful under-30 skin. Say, "I love you, beautiful under-30 skin, and I promise to protect you from the wicked sun with hats and sun screen!"

Possibly this is shallow, but I don't care. You 20-somethings have beautifully fresh faces; enjoy them while you have them and preserve them for the future. 

Meanwhile, if there are no men on the scene, you and your friends are in a Golden Era of Singleness upon which you will look back fondly, and one day you will all desperately try to figure out some day you ALL can meet up, even for two hours, or just dream that this could ever have been a possibility. 

This spring, for example, there was a Mostly Married Lady Miracle when five of my old crowd, nicknamed, "Les Girls", managed to meet in a Toronto restaurant, all together for the first time since E's wedding. 

K had recently flown in from the West Coast, bound for a conference. E drove down from the city limits. L couldn't quite get away from it all, so she brought the baby. Half-Pint was... Actually Half-Pint is still only 22 or something and currently still Single, so it wasn't that hard for her. And I was visiting from Scotland. For the first ten minutes, we barely spoke. We just sat looking at each other, grinning foolishly. We were all together!

We spent all our time catching up and eating, so we didn't have an opportunity for "Remember Whens?" But had we the whole night to chat, we would have definitely got to the "Remember Whens." And there is a lot to remember from those days when we sprawled around the "Les Girls" house, moaning "Why are we still Single? Aaaaaaaah!"

There was, for example, the time we went clubbing with the sweet Muslim housemates, who refused to leave us when we got drunk, even though they were somewhat disgusted that we were drunk. And then there was the time E and L planned this amazing Goth Birthday Party for me, and I came down with flu in the middle of it, but made myself sick so my stomach would stop hurting and we could go to the club anyway. And then there was the time E and I went to Montreal with silly old Der Guter (see book), and Der Guter told my brother he was going to marry me. And there was the time.... You see where I'm going with this.

You Single Time is your Single Girl time, and by enjoying it together, you are laying up wonderful memories for the future. The future is there, fixed in the mind of God. You're travelling towards it, and although things you do today help determine it, God already has a Plan for you. So although naturally you are worried about what this Plan may be, or when you're going to see the Truly Life-Changing part of it, make sure you take a break from worry to simply have the fun of being girls together.

Because, you know, that is what I loved best about Single life. It wasn't the travelling--I travel more now! It was just being with the other Single Girls. And our caffeine came from the parties we threw--even if half the boys there were male religious--and from rushing off to clubs in the freezing dark--and from baking muffins and impromptu pyjama parties and checking out sales and discussing our studies. And now, as I sit in my attic in Scotland, I think back on those days, and I am so glad that I had fellow Catholic Single girls to share them with.  

Meanwhile, the absolute best book I ever came across about Single Life is called "Live Alone and Like It" by Marjorie Hillis. It was first published in 1936, so it assumes you're either going to live a chaste life or to have to pretend you are, and it also assumes, as I do, that most Singles are going to eventually marry, so you must seize the opportunities being Single gives you. It has a wonderful tone, so if you need an extra lift, do get this marvellous book

I hope this is helpful!

Grace and peace,

Seraphic

P.S. You're not really responsible for what goes on in the heads of the weirdos. You can, however, head the weirdos off at the pass with firm "No's" as soon as they appear. I don't know what you mean by weirdos, so let us just call them "eccentric or socially awkward men whose advances you wish to reject." A kind but firm "No" in time saves nine. Speak to them loudly and offer them unsolicited advice, like a mother or schoolteacher, nun or aged aunt. 

   

Auntie Seraphic & Vocations Victim Part 2

I don't usually post replies to my replies, but this touches on a subject that I bet is near to many of your hearts: Catholic women in ministry. There are many unmarried Catholic women doing jobs that nuns, brothers or only priests used to do, many earning a salary that barely keeps a roof over their heads and food in the larder. I remember my own official ministry placements (mostly unpaid as  it was part of my M.Div. study) with feelings ranging from joy to abject horror.

Dear Auntie Seraphic

Thank you for this very extensive and helpful reply! I appreciate it a lot. I too (as a theology student myself, missionary and parish worker) have spent a lot of time around priests and seminarians, so I am learning some of the confidence you describe. 

It is very affirming to hear that it's OK to treat priests as people -- ie. respectfully but still expressing one's own opinion and not having to feel like they always know more than you (I think they usually do -- just not necessarily about my own life/personal experience). 

Others who have not had the same experience however, continually tell me to "be more respectful" (ie. shut up). And sometimes I feel like I don't know where the line is anymore. 

I will share your comments with some very dear friends. We all experience it a lot and aren't sure what to do. 

Feel free to use any of this (without names of course! :-) for your blog if you think other readers would find it helpful. At least here in the USA it is a very common situation for those of us who are practicing Catholics/work in the Church/volunteer/go to retreats etc. 

Thank you for everything!  

God bless,

Vocations Victim

Dear Vocations Victim,

I'm sorry to read that you are being told, in so many words, to shut up , especially if you are in your mid-20s.  I wonder if anyone told St. Catherine of Siena, who wasn't even a nun and yet told the pope what to do, to shut up. I hope not, but I bet she probably was. Many people feel intimidated by young women speaking their minds. 

(And not so young, too. I just found a "thank goodness Jesus isn't as judgmental as you" comment on the internet version of the Catholic newspaper I write for--signed with a pseudonym, of course. Did I care? Yeah, for half a second.)

Anyway, don't shut up. You are a Daughter of God. The best way to respect a priest is to treat him like an intelligent human being who can handle truthful, reasonable adult conversations, and maybe make sure you aren't exposing any cleavage or too much leg when he's around. (I throw that in because sometimes I discover a priest across from me at a dinner party and I am, like, "Oooh. Could I borrow a lacy hanky to stuff in my dress?")

Grace and peace,

Seraphic

Now that I think about it, I don't know what "missionary" or "parish worker" means in VV's context. But I do know that it can be a very tough situation when your faith is also your job. 

One of my most horrible memories of parish work is standing next to the priest and the seminarian after Mass to shake hands with the People of God, and the People of God, terribly embarrassed, mostly avoided me. I was hurt  and envious of the seminarian, whom they embraced and patted and made much of, even though he was politically and socially to the right of Generalissimo Franco and possibly drank the blood of slaughtered liberation theologians.

But I now think, of course they did. The People of God dread the imposition of "lady priests" (to quote a man who ordered me away from his hospital bed), and I looked suspiciously like a "lady priest." I honestly believe the People of God draw the line at lady priests. They want real priests, young priests, even (or especially) priests like Semininarianissimo Franco.

Every time a soi-disant "womanpriest" gets ordained, life gets worse for ordinary Catholic women in the ministry trenches. I heard so much moaning about clericalism in my pre-Trid days, but thinking that only clerics are first class Catholics, and therefore women are doomed to the second class, is a pernicious form of clericalism. It just isn't true. What is true, however, is that many priests are scared of women, not so much now because they are afraid of women tempting them into sexual sin (as some women have always tried to do), but because they are afraid of women--or laypeople in general--taking over and bossing them around.  

This can leave the young woman doing what used to be nun-work or even priest-work (like chaplaincy) in the difficult position of having to prove all the time that she does not secretly harbour a desire to be a priest, or in some cases, e.g. she reports to an older woman, to pretend that she does. And of course she does not get all the perks and shortcuts that the priest's collar or the nun's habit brings when dealing with people. Collars and habits make all but the most militantly progressive churchgoing layfolk smile. 

Personally, I could not hack an official church-approved ministry career, unless the new archbishop of Edinburgh wrote to me asking that I become the Official Auntie to Singles in the diocese. That would be extremely awesome, and I would do my job rather like how I did my college chaplaincy internship: basically I hung out with Catholic undergrads and a Muslim undergrad, drank tea, listened to their problems and gossip and talked about their theological interests. I think my boss (female) wanted me to be more pro-active, whatever that means, but I know the undergrads just liked having me around to talk to.  I would turn my office into a sitting-room: an overstuffed Victorian one with comfy battered couches.

However, I know some of you girls are indeed in church careers, so please feel free to chime in about how to be you and how to be taken seriously in your ministries without frightening Father Sensitive or being ground down by Father Snarly and Wannabe Womanpriest Wanda.

Auntie Seraphic & the Vocations Victim

I spent some time this morning answering this letter, so it is the only Single topic on my mind. Hopefully it will not be a shock to the letter writer if she finds my answer here before she finds it in her in-box.

Dear Auntie Seraphic, 

Hi! I enjoy your blog very much. I just shared it with a friend of mine who appreciated it too! 

So, I'm wondering what to do when priests cannot seem to find another topic to talk to young women (people) about than "Wow, you would make a good nun. OR maybe you should find a boyfriend. Have you LISTENED to God about what he wants for your life?" 

In all respect to their (probably) kindly and fatherly intentions ,I find this insulting  because it seems to imply 1) that I'm in my mid-twenties and haven't even THOUGHT about what God wants from me or 2) that somehow I am weird and less a person/Catholic/devoted to God because I'm not in some kind of life-long commitment yet. 

So how does one respectfully and yet abruptly end such conversations without appearing rude/getting angry/bursting into tears? 

I'm of the opinion that even priests don't need to know your whole life story unless they are your confessor/spiritual director or close friends. It just makes life too complicated when you have to answer off the cuff "Yes I have thought about it but discerned X was not for me and was then dating Y but he broke up with me to join the seminary" etc etc. 

How does one kindly and respectfully but firmly end such conversations? 

Does that question imply in it the hopelessness for our generation that it seems to? 

Thanks! 

God bless,

Vocations Victim 

Dear Vocations Victim,

As someone who married at 25 and divorced at 27 and got an annulment at 28 and didn't marry again until 38, I do not like the panicky climate of vocation angst that has prevailed since the 1980s. 

I think it stems from the loss of thousands of priests and nuns in the 1960s and 1970s, who abandoned their responsibilities, communities and vows, either to get married or, in some cases, to have a good time. Somehow subsequent generations are expected to pick up the slack. And I suspect we are are expected to pick up the reproductive slack for two generations of Catholics on the Pill, too. And all this without the wider, confident culture of the pre-1963 era that honoured priests, religious life and large families.

If you restate this in your own words to the next priest who gives you a hard time for not being a nun or a married lady, that might give him pause for thought.  

I see that you are worried about having appropriate respect for a priest. As a fellow Catholic I understand this. However, as a fellow Catholic who has been around priests quite a lot, in theology school, for example, I understand that the best way to respect a priest is to speak to him as truthfully as you would to any other adult. Say exactly what you think, and make it short and snappy, with no hemming and hawing or life story.  Anger--which can be a virtue (see Thomas Aquinas)--is useful here. 

If you think you would love to be married, but the men of your generation all seem to expect premarital sex as a normal part of dating, tell him. 

If you think you would love to be a nun, but your parents despise nuns, tell him that.

If you think he is being terribly rude and inappropriate, tell him you think he is being terribly rude and inappropriate. 

If you wonder why he would assume you have not thought about your vocation, ask "Why do you assume that I haven't?" If you feel insulted, say "I feel insulted."

If you feel like bursting into tears, there are few things men hate more than women bursting into tears. I think women underestimate the power of our tears. Of course, this can be manipulative, so only do it if you can't help it or it is the only way to express yourself without shrieking. Crying is okay; shrieking is not.

You might also ask him what he personally is doing to help his young Catholics meet each other or religious communities. Has he thought of organizing a parish dance? Has he thought of organizing a parish visit to the local monastery? How old was he when he was ordained? Were his parents supportive? What if they hadn't been?

What I am suggesting takes an awful lot of confidence. However, part of becoming an adult--and how the post-Vatican II era bangs on about the laity "becoming adults"--is asserting oneself before officious adults. 

I realize what you want to do is stop the conversation without rocking the boat, but acting as though a priest were just an ugly but precious piece of china you'd prefer to keep at a respectful distance is not the Christian, Catholic way. It's his job to help you, and if he's doing it all wrong, it is respectful--and loving--to tell him that. 

I hope this is helpful. 

Grace and peace,

Seraphic

Sociologists would have a field day if they examined the ways priests and young people, especially young women, interact. (Actually, that would be a field day for a sociologist.) If a middle-aged man you barely knew told you you would make a good nun or asked why you didn't have a boyfriend, I very much hope you wouldn't feel you had to tell him your life story. Of course you don't. And, indeed, you shouldn't. In fact, I bet the average Scottish twenty-something lassie  would look at such a man with venom and say, "P*** off." And off would toddle the middle-aged man with his tail between his legs. 

Now, obviously we can't say "p*** off" to a priest because a priest does not deserve such a curt (but effective) dismissal just for doing his job. His job is saving our souls, and he has been taught that the way to do this is to get us to hear God's voice calling us to religious life or marriage, not just to love Him with all our hearts, all our souls and all our minds, and to love our neighbours as ourselves. And, to give the seminaries credit, both marriage and religious life do indeed free us up for the Commandment of Love because once we get the Sex and Marriage Questions settled, we can stop worrying about them.  

As Catholics who want to have our souls saved, we have to help priests do their job. And the only way to do that is to speak to them honestly, as adults. That does not mean telling them our life stories. That does not mean apologizing for ourselves. That certainly does not mean uttering a few platitudes as if stuck with our father's most boring friend at a cocktail party.   

By the way, one of the most simple and devastating questions in the whole world is the word "Why?" If any priest, inspired by my obvious and perhaps distressing lack of children, told me that I would make a good mother, I would say, "Thank you. Why?" I would not feel I had to tell him how I old I was when I married, or how old I am now, and what the doctor said, and if I have considered adoption, and blah blah blah. 

That reminds me, "You would make a good nun" is not in itself a bitter insult in Catholic circles and should not be regarded as such. It is not the same thing as saying "You look like a sexless being no man would ever want." That is not what a nun is, no matter what pop culture says. If anyone tells you that you would make a good nun, say, "Thank you. Why?"  Unless, of course, it is a complete stranger whose advances you have rejected, in which case, if he looks too old or timorous for violence, consider your local version of "P*** off."

Auntie Seraphic & Young NFP Fan

Ah, the things boys say. Here is a very good and useful letter from someone under 25, somewhat edited by me:

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

I am one of those readers who is at the age where my brain is not yet fully developed apparently, and so I think I would like to vent to you. I'm not really upset by this event, but I have dwelt on it somewhat so I ... just want you to confirm what I already thought. 

There's this NCB  I have known for a very long time...  He is a person I have a lot of respect for and [recently] we  talked about many different pro-life issues; [this] led into also mentioning NFP and NaPro technology. 

I have been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), and the only reason I know and am being treated is due to NFP so I'm very grateful. I don't fit the classic profile, so people wouldn't expect it and it would probably take the average doctor much longer to have figured this out. Obviously it's somewhat disconcerting to me but because of my station in life and the fact that I'm pretty young it's not something I worry about a lot. It's also not something I throw around to everyone, mostly because not many people like to hear about people's health issues, but I'm not embarrassed about it and I'm grateful for the knowledge.

So because it fit into the conversation we were having I mentioned my diagnosis and that I was able to know pretty quickly because of Creighton charting and was lucky to have done it. He didn't know what it was, and so I gave a brief explanation and mentioned that infertility is a possible factor. 

His response was jokingly "Maybe this is one more sign you're supposed to be a sister" (There is a running joke among my friends that I am meant to be a religious sister.) It didn't even register at the time but every once in awhile it still pops in my head a month later. 

I'm sure he has no idea it bothered me, but I'm not crazy that it did a little, right? God doesn't work like that even if I somehow do end up a sister. It might be a ways off, but I don't like to think I can't have babies or that this will deter men. Like I said, I'm sure he simply spoke without thinking but maybe you could just tell the eavesdroppers that women--at least a NCG-- doesn't ever like to hear that they would be bad mothers or may not be able to have kids which means God is telling them they should just enter [religious] life. 

I'm sorry because this must hit a bit of a nerve with you. You are in my prayers and you are an amazingly wonderful spiritual mother to us all. 

Blessings,

Young NFP Fan 

Dear NFP Fan,

As this happened a month ago, the NCB probably doesn't remember what he said. In fact, I bet he couldn't have remembered if you asked him about it half an hour later. My guess is that he said whatever just came into his head because he was embarrassed. (You will never know, though, as guaranteed he can't remember.) 

Teenage boys--and maybe boys in their very early 20s--think about sex all day long--they can't help it--sexual thoughts just flow through like a river through a river bed--so it really isn't a good idea to talk to them about your reproductive system. You're a girl. They're guys. You aren't interested in them, and maybe they're not interested in you, but sexy thoughts about you will pop into their heads anyway because they can't help it. And that will embarrass them.   

Meanwhile, the easiest and best way to keep boys from blurting out foolish remarks about what infertility might mean for you is NOT to tell them that you could be infertile. This is not information you should share with anyone except someone who is courting you for marriage [i.e. a boyfriend who loves you]. It is serious TMI.  

Will some boys be deterred if they think you are infertile? Yes, definitely. And as you are not, as far as you know, infertile, you really must not talk to boys or to gossipy girlfriends about your Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.

Does the fact that you have PCOS mean God wants you to be a nun? No, definitely not. Religious life is not where women go because they can't [i.e. might not be able to] have babies. Religious life is what women embrace when they are so excited about serving God, and making a whole gift to themselves to God, while living with a community of women who love God as much as they do. Fertility or infertility has nothing to do with it. God is not a eugenicist. 

I hope this is helpful.    

Grace and peace,

Seraphic 

***

By the way, it's not that adolescent brains are undeveloped, it's that they are rewiring themselves for adulthood. When you're a kid you have a really astute kid brain, and hopefully by the time you're an adult, you have an astute adult brain. But getting from kid brain to adult brain is a difficult journey over which teens have little control and can, incidentally, completely screw up with drugs and alcohol.

(I doubt my reader above is using drugs and alcohol, but I'm just throwing that in there because a recent Catholic school graduate back home, a habitual pot smoker, recently flipped out, pulled out his genitals and a knife on some girls on a streetcar, yelled obscenities at an armed policeman who raced to the scene, made a very ill-advised step forward and died in the proverbial hail of bullets.) 

One great life lesson is that young men are usually not as smart as young women about young women's feelings, unless they are gay or unusually manipulative. And, therefore, it is really not a good idea to tell young men super-sensitive stuff about anything--as young men themselves know. When I was in my late twenties, I told a male friend, an ex-boyfriend in fact, that I felt sad that I had never met Mr Right, he joked that I should give up and try women.

It wasn't that he was mean or stupid. In the five seconds before I got enough breath back to start crying, he began to apologize profusely. No, it was because he was a guy, and embarrassed, and to cover his embarrassment he told a joke. Ah ha ha.

Talking to men about super-personal stuff as if they were women opens you up to a world of hurt.  And, meanwhile, since men in the pro-life movement are the men who care most about babies, it is really, really, REALLY a bad idea to involve them in the drama of your own reproductive issues. Men gossip so much, and telling one guy that you have ovarian cysts could mean him telling any guy who asks him about you that you are actually infertile. Would you date a guy who was known for being sterile? Maybe you'd be okay with it at 40. Maybe not so much at 20.  

Auntie Seraphic & the Reader Who Dreams of Happiness in Marriage

Poppets! Never forget that I am not an expert on marriage. I am rather more well-known for having been Single for a long time and not having forgotten what it's like. I'm kind of new on marriage stuff. Meanwhile, I can't just write whatever I think about marriage because (A) if I write that it is absolute bliss, I risk rubbing my Single readers noses in it and (B) if I write that I want to wallop my husband with a frying pan, he (and his friends) will read it and feel sad.

MEANWHILE, whenever I write about how fabulous female friendships are, and how girls rule, and how life is not worth living without female companionship, consider that I live four thousand miles away from most of my female friends and relations. I work from home, and I go to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass which is, incidentally, where all the boys are. I have no children. My only pet is a basil plant named Paweł, and he's looking rather peaky.

ALSO, I have been married for 4.5 years, and therefore see marriage rather differently than Single readers, or readers who have been married for 6 months, or readers who have been married for 45 years, or Alice von Hildebrand and other widows.

You must keep all these things in mind, and if you ever feel really lousy after reading one of my posts, I recommend snorting, "Ah! What does she know?" and finding a cute kitten video at once.

Dear Auntie Seraphic, 

Thank you for running this blog. It has a lot of good advice. This email originally started out as a comment, but once I realized that it was turning into a depressing monologue, I decided to Ctrl + C and post it into a good old-fashioned e-mail. :-)

May I say that I become increasingly sad (I am usually sad to begin with) whenever I read one of your posts on men & women, ESPECIALLY in marriage?

Frankly speaking, I have never witnessed a happy marriage. However, the little fairy-tale loving section of my soul just will not die, and I continue to hope that there IS such a thing as a happy, passionate, understanding marriage. 

I don't think you *intend* to do this, but you are slowly but surely convincing me that there is not such a thing.  To clarify, I know that love is not the way it's portrayed in Taylor Swift songs. I know that emotions come and go.  But you have shown me that: The passionate feelings experienced within the first couple years of a relationship will go away - and not come back.  A man will never understand you. This one BREAKS. MY. HEART. As an emotionally abandoned/abused child, all I've ever wanted in my life is to be understood. Also, I watched my parents "misunderstand" each other for 25 years. 

I do not know what to think. I am so sad. :-(

Reader Who Dreams of Happiness in Marriage

Dear Reader Who Dreams of Happiness in Marriage,

Don't be sad. Well, you can be sad, but there is no real NEED to be sad. The complete and total joyful understanding that you long for is available. 

The thing is, it comes from God. Your heart will be restless until it rests in Him, i.e. after you die. [Actually, some saints manage to be perfectly content with Him in this life, too.]

A good husband is a wonderful creature and a very great gift from God, but at the end of the day he is just another fallible human being and no husband (or wife) can fill the God-shaped hole in any human heart. Still, there's a reason we use "husband" as an analogy for God and "bride" as the analogy for Church, although I have to admit that these are problematic from a woman's point of view. (It helps that male mystics talk about even their souls being female.)

There are happy marriages, indeed! And as for understanding, understanding is built over time. But this understanding is not just "a feeling"or an understanding of a spouse's good points, but a deep understanding of his or her faults, too, and ultimately a coming to peace with the faults, or a noticing that the faults have gone away with work or time. Honestly, this takes TIME [and patience, humility, courage, patience, humility and courage. And patience. Also humility. And patience.]

As for "passion", the honeymoon craziness does wear off, but it flares up here and there, and anyway, it usually [with God's Grace, I should have said] leaves behind a kind of spiritual glue. The spiritual glue gets stronger and stronger. I think the reason why sometimes widows or widowers just turn over and die a week or so after their spouses die is this spiritual glue. Don't think this spiritual glue is less important than "passion." No way, Hosea. 

Meanwhile, if B.A. still acted and felt the way he did when we were engaged, he would probably starve to death: every time I went away on a trip, he would stop eating. And every time I went on a trip, I would cry and live for his phone calls and get nose bleeds, etc. Although that may sound romantic, eight months [actually, two years] of that was really enough. 

Crying for the passion of the early years of a marriage is like crying because it is June, not the first gloriously sunny day in April. For everything there is a season, even the passion of newlyweds. And in fact it is dangerous to think that passion is the be-all and end-all of a happy marriage because people who do tend to get divorced or run around until they realize that it is not. It is necessary to kick-start a marriage (a western marriage, anyway), including the sexual side of marriage, which continues with enjoyment, good-will and jokes, even if without the breathless passion everyone writes about in songs.  

I hope this is helpful. I like marriage very much, and I love my husband very much. I still think he is the perfect man for me, although I know that he is not perfect, and he most definitely knows I am not perfect either. If I sound rather more cranky than I should about the inadequacy of men to be more than just "a part of this complete breakfast", it may be because most of my female friends and relations are far, far away most of the time. 

Grace and peace,

Seraphic

I hope I got across the "spiritual glue" part. Passion is like a basil plant; it springs up and it dies (and you can get more). But love is like in the Song of Solomon: "strong as death." That's the spiritual glue.

Auntie Seraphic & the Befuddled Eavesdropper

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

I know I'm not supposed to be reading this blog, but having read it, I find that I can relate somewhat easier to NCGs. Your work is wonderful, and I pray it continues.

However, as a single-ish Catholic young man (I've been on a few dates with an NCG, but I get the feeling as if I'm Mr. Emotional Rebound after her rather nasty breakup with her ex-boyfriend, though they're now on speaking terms, so I have no idea where it's going), I notice a distinct lack of advice on the Internet in general for Single Catholic men. 

Truth be told, many NCBs are just as clueless about the issues you elucidate as the girls are (which led to the breakup I mentioned earlier, incidentally). Where would a guy in that situation go as to advice or resources? The want of such seems to be a factor driving them into the hands of the PUAs and all the horrors it entails.

Yours sincerely,
Somewhat Befuddled.

Dear Somewhat Befuddled,

Thank you for your email. You are absolutely right. One of your fellow eavesdroppers, the kind I have to see in person drinking a gin-and-tonic shortly after I write something extremely personal, keeps threatening to start a blog called "Beatific Bachelors." Unfortunately, he is just joking. 

I will post your letter soon. Meanwhile, you may continue sneakily reading my blog for insights in the the feminine psyche and I recommend a blog called "The Art of Manliness." "The Art of Manliness" is pro-family and subtly Christian and not-so-subtly American. However, I know at least one man, not American but from a macho culture, who thoroughly approves and recommends "The Art of Manliness." http://www.artofmanliness.com/

Grace and peace, 

Seraphic

Not a particularly adequate answer, I see now. What I should have added is something like, "Tell little Miss Emotional Rebound that you don't want to hear her talk about other men when she's with you." Life is much more exciting and clear when men just speak up about what they want and what they don't want and what they like and what they don't like. 

I'm not saying men should say, "I don't like you in that purple dress." I'm saying that they should feel free to say, "I don't want to hear you talk about other men when you're with me." Such forthright language tips off Emotional Rebound Girls that you're not just a sexless teddy bear she can cry into because Mr Macho was mean.  It suggests a chap is also a kind of Mr Macho, only better. In general, women like manly men who say manly things. Nagging, of course, is something we associate with our mothers and therefore femininity, so don't nag. Just say "I want to see that film. Do you?" and "I'd like to take you to dinner Friday. Okay?" and, especially, "I don't want to hear you talk about other men when you're with me. I want you to think about me."

Personally I think the Beatific Bachelor Blog idea best left to a man, although suddenly I am struck by the idea of starting a mock blog by the same name in which I pretend to be characters based on one or two of my Young Fogey friends, e.g.:

Question

Dear Beatific Bachelors,

My girlfriend makes me take her out to expensive waterfront cafes and then tells me to shut up while she watches the sailors. What should I do?

Reply

Continental Fogey: You should slap her.

English Fogey: No, no, no. You cannot slap women in this country, you barbarian.

Continental Fogey: What do you mean? I have a hand. I can slap.

English Fogey: I mean you may not slap women in this country.

Continental Fogey: If I do not slap them, how can I make them behave?

English Fogey: That's what this letter is asking, you troglodyte.

Continental Fogey scowls, looks up troglodyte in the bilingual dictionary on his phone.

Continental Fogey (twisting end of moustache): Humph! It is the same. And that is not very respectful! Chhhuh..... (Puts away phone.) Well, if he cannot slap, he can shout at her.

English Fogey: Maybe he should take the chair facing the sea so she has to take the chair facing the café. That way she couldn't see the sailors. 

Continental Fogey: Faugh! He might as well shoot himself in the head right now!

English Fogey: That's not very helpful. 

The only drawback to this amusing enterprise would be the ever-present threat of lawsuit--which reminds me that I should state for the record that this is an admittedly outrageous caricature and as far as I know not a single one of my friends would ever slap a woman.  These fictional scenes just develop in my head, and I have to write them down or die. 

Auntie Seraphic & Confused-Clueless II

This is the email I received in response to the answer I posted yesterday, and my response to that. Again, I will end with a few general observations

Dear Auntie Seraphic, 

You are so lovely. Thank you for responding to my msg! You are correct: I am 20 now but was 19 at the time when I was with him. He is 2- now and, yes, I know, we're both young.

Yes, I have gone to confession. That confession was very painful for me, but I needed it. It was freeing. Our faith is so beautiful! But it's been almost a year, and I still haven't forgiven myself, and it just kills me. I look at myself with such disgust sometimes, and I can't help but give in to the tears... 

I completely hear you about not telling my friends every detail about our relationship, and yes I honestly do feel like they treat it as a soap opera! "Oh! What does [C-C] have to say about [Scooter] today". And not really interested in why I'm really confiding in them. I do owe it to him to keep things confidential, but it wasn't my intent at all to betray him, I'm just desperately searching for words of wisdom and guidance.

I like him--a lot--and that's why it's difficult to talk to him as a "friend" when so many times that "friend" line  is crossed in conversation. What I don't understand is how he can so easily forget about the past and pretend that nothing ever happened. It's extremely difficult for me to talk to him and push the thoughts of the past out of my head and focus on just being friends. We rushed things when I was [at my college town], but as he said "we don't have a choice" because we had to see if we could be something together. And if we didn't try then we'd never know.

Telling you what I like about him could go on for quite a while. He is wonderful to his mother, and his relationship with his sister makes my heart melt. He takes her to movies all the time, they're so close and they are X years apart! He protects her and that's so beautiful to me. A man who can honour the special women in his life to me shows that he will do the same for his future wife, hopefully. 

I don't know if it's just the age aspect, or because his relationship with his father isn't very good, but I can't seem to figure out why he's so afraid of commitment. What blows my mind is, who travels to another city that is a 20+ hour drive away to see a "friend" who is a girl? He's been seriously working on trying to come see me, and his effort has surprised me. Does this mean anything? I still feel like he has feelings, but is too afraid to admit it and deal with them.

As you said, would I still look forward to talking to him at parties? I would. I would be very interested to see how he continues to grow in his faith, and what his dreams are, and what he's accomplished. What I love about him is that he has hopes and dreams now, that aspect reminds me of myself. We compliment each other very well, he's a little quiet and I'm crazy and outgoing and love adventure where as he'd rather stay home and relax. But when we were together, he wouldn't say "I don't want to go downtown and explore!" He'd willingly come with me because he knew it would be amazing and it's something he's never experienced before. I opened his eyes to the city he's lived in for years. Which leads me to where he's from. 

He was born in [a poor, non-English-speaking country] and I know that he is worried about what my family's reaction would be if he were to come to see me. Half of my family is [Southern European], and that's the side that he is worried about, even though I don't see [his background] as an issue. My brother [might]. Ah, I just don't know. I shouldn't even be thinking about that, because he is simply not mine. Because we are "friends".

But now I feel a dilemma. I know God has told me that I haven't been patient, so I am trying. Especially right now, when [Scooter] and I haven't talked in X days, which is absolutely mind blowing because we haven't gone a day without talking. I know you're probably laughing but it really drives me nuts! He knows I've been thinking a lot lately. Maybe he's giving me space, or our mutual friend mentioned what was on my mind to him, and he's backed off now. Either way, I am waiting "patiently" for him to msg me... 

But I'm getting anxious because I am leaving for Brazil on Wednesday! For World Youth Day! I'm sure you've heard! :)  But anyway, hmmm I just am not sure if I should even bother to msg him before I leave. I'm really quite shocked that he hasn't msged me yet.

Well, there is another novel for you to read. I won't continue to bug you after this, though, but when I stumbled upon your blog I just thought, "Wow, this woman has lots of wonderful words, maybe she can offer me some advice."

I will seek more advice from the older friend I've been talking to because I really don't feel like there's anyone else who can help me, especially not my mother!

Thank you for listening to me! God bless you!

 ,

Confused & Clueless

Dear Confused & Clueless,

One more email from me. If God has forgiven you, and you know He has, for you have felt sincere contrition, made your confession and no doubt done the penance you were assigned, you must forgive yourself. At least, you must stop regretting whatever it was. Perhaps you are mourning your image of yourself as "super-pure." Well, very few human beings have ever been that "super-pure." In this case, what should comfort you is the humility of accepting that you are prone to sexual temptations like anyone else and have given in to some, and then the joy that God has forgiven you and doesn't care about that now. He just cares about you. If you feel that much disgust with yourself, I recommend you speak with a Catholic-positive counsellor or with a priest or nun who works with young people. 

The devil hates us, so he wants us to hate ourselves, too.  Then when we are tired of hating ourselves for our sexual sins, he tells us that it is the Church's fault for lying to us about sexual sin, and we should just get with the program and do whatever we think we want. This is why it is so important for you to let God's forgiveness fall on you like cooling rain on a blazing hot day.

The reason [Scooter] can forget about the past and pretend nothing happened is because he is a guy and guys are different about these things. He has probably been committing the sin of self-abuse since he was 14, so one more minor (as you did not actually have sex) sexual sin is not going to be that big a deal to his psyche. Also, society in general has never cared that much about the minor sexual sins of men. Society shrugs and says, "Well, that's men." It's women who (A) brood (B) have historically been judged harshly. Men often just do not get that women can't just do stuff and then completely forget about it, like they do.  

I don't think your feelings about [Scooter] are laughable at all. I think they are painful and they remind me of when I was 20. But I do encourage you to imagine putting all your hurt and worries in to a big bag and leaving them at the foot of the Cross for our Lord to take care of, while you get ready to go to Brazil. When you come home, it may be different, but right now the important thing is that you concentrate on the excitement of World Youth Day. It would be terrible if, when you are 30, someone asked you how World Youth Day in Brazil was and you said, "It was totally ruined for me because I spent all my time thinking about a guy and crying over him."

So don't message [Scooter] or try to contact him in any way before your trip. It could be that he himself needs time to retreat from all the drama--men often do that; have you ever heard of the "man cave"? Some men thrive on drama, but others get tired of it very swiftly. Meanwhile, what [Scooter] says about coming to see you means nothing. [Scooter] actually at your door means a lot. With men, it's most definitely their actions, not their words, that matter.

But, as I say, [Scooter] doesn't matter right now. Put him in a bag in your mind and put the bag at the foot of the Cross for our Lord to take care of, too! What matters is that you get everything you need together for World Youth Day in Brazil--your Portuguese phrasebook, your passport--and start to feel the excitement of this amazing opportunity in your life.

Grace and peace,

Seraphic

General Observations

1.  "We don't have a choice" is seducer talk, a line straight out of the movies. And there's a kind of man whose interest is sparked by the convenient fact that a woman is going away very soon.  

2.  The sentence "I owe it to him to keep things confidential" makes me uneasy. What I was talking about was preserving someone's modesty and dignity. Women are terribly hurt when the men we kiss make us the subject of locker room talk. Well, it's not nice to make men we kiss the subject of powder room talk, either. As far as I know, all my friends' babies were created through parthenogenesis. They got married or got some boyfriend; they got pregnant. There's some connection there. Hmm...

3. Making out is dangerous for women because it can make us feel more attached to a guy than is at all reasonable. Once upon a time, cavemen just picked cavewomen and dragged them off, and it strikes me that making out might have been nature's way of helping a cavewoman cope with having to have sexual congress with a complete stranger. Many a time women wail to one another, "What does she SEE in him?" Well, it might not be him. It might be the chemicals zipping and zapping around in her brain. 

4.  Guys are different. Guys are different. Guys are different. And they have really short memories regarding things they want to forget, like all those really sweet things they said last week that they honestly sort of believed at the time.   

5. A man can be great to his mother, aunts and sisters and treat all other women like trash. Although a man being nasty to his mother or sister is definitely a red flag, all his being nice to them proves is that he is nice to his mother and sister. Men in many cultures protect their own sisters while scheming to get their hands on other guys' sisters. This is why men have to have a little chat with each other before they court each other's sisters. Otherwise someone sometimes ends up dead.  

6. It's a bad sign when a man tells you he thinks your family's ethnic group is racist. It means he's racist against your family's ethnic group. It's also a convenient excuse for him not to see you. "It's not my fault I don't come to see you. It's your racist family's fault." Race and ethnicity stuff can make dating an even bigger headache, speaking as a mangia-cake maudite-anglais cracker gora dead-ghost Taig from Toronto.  Red flag.

7. Men are very much afraid of commitment to women they don't want to commit to. Occasionally men are also afraid of commitment to women they sort of do want to commit to, which is why mothers and sisters should yell at their sons and brothers about getting a move on and why girlfriends should try to make a good impression on mothers, sisters and even the nice old ladies pouring tea after Mass. However, men who are simply scared of marriage don't say "Just friends" to a girl they want as a long-term prospect.

8. There is no cure for unrequited love like international travel. And WYD must be the biggest meeting of Catholic marriage enthusiasts in the entire world.  

9. Any consensual sexual sin any of us committed privately a year ago, as a one-off, and have subsequently confessed, and has no long-term consequences, matters less now than the new scuff on our best shoes. As sexual, it is imprudent and maybe even unchaste to think about it, so don't. Almost nobody knows, and nobody cares. Every Christian knows you're a sinner. If Catholic, you say so during the Confiteor at Mass every Sunday.

10. I'm really sorry girls don't trust their mothers more. But this weird post-1919 division between mothers and daughters seems to be so widespread, all I can say is that it is so important for women in positions of authority or in the public eye to be good role models and to tell younger women the truth as it is, not as we wish it were. And younger women must train themselves to always ponder the questions "What is it?" "Is it really so?" and "Knowing that, what should I do?"  Many a time I have stopped myself from a slide into hysteria by reminding myself, "But I have no evidence. I do NOT know that."

Auntie Seraphic & Confused-Clueless I

I alluded to this post yesterday. There were two emails, so it's a two parter. Girls! It would be helpful if you put all the relevant details in your first email. For example, if you're stuck on a guy, it would be helpful to know why, beyond bonding hormone. 

Meanwhile, my unusual gentleness is because of her age.  I have some extra observations underneath for older readers. By the way, in Canada and the USA, "school" can mean "college" or "university."

Dear Auntie Seraphic, 

I hope you can offer some words of advice for me. I will summarize as best and as fast as I can.

Last year I left home and moved to a different city for school. Before heading back home I met a guy and he blew me away. He made me feel so loved, so wanted. He especially blew me away when he started to ask how I would feel if I fell in love with someone [with his career plans]...and then proceeded to discuss how I felt about marriage. 

I was very nervous about getting involved with him because I didn't want to start something and then leave to go back home. He convinced me to "just try this" because we'd never know if we didn't try and we both knew we were running out of time. Now, I am a young Catholic striving to be a saint and he is a young Protestant who struggled with controlling his desires as a young man. 

Eventually we got into a "relationship" and I compromised my values the night before I left to come back home. Thankfully the good Lord saved me, and we did not go as far as having sex, but I still felt like something was taken from me that I can now never get back again. 

He came with me to the airport and we said our teary-eyed goodbyes, thinking that in our hearts, this wouldn't be the last time we'd see each other. We continued to work on our relationship when I arrived home, but we struggled to keep it together. It fell apart one night when I had told him that I had a really deep conversation with my girl friends about what had happened the night before and he got angry and he was hurt. He felt so ashamed and he felt so guilty that my friends now looked at me different and were not happy with my choices. He started to push me away and it all fell apart. 

He ended communication very abruptly but somehow we'd get back into talking, then it would fall apart and come Christmas Day, I sent him a msg and he never responded. From then on, I was disappointed especially because he didn't have the decency to msg me Merry Christmas.

I'm sorry this is a novel, I'm just trying to grab all the important pieces.

After the many times my friends picked me up off the floor and told me he wasn't worth my time..and all the times I tried to hide when I was thinking about him out of fear of being scolded by my friends, I struggled to push him out of my mind. [But then a] month ago,  I received a msg from him. I proceeded to get text after text after text from not only him, but from [the friend who introduced us] saying "u just gotta talk to him, he won't shut up about u, tonight pushed me over the edge, he was crying because he misses u so much". 

I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to think, or say, so I didn't do anything. I let him continue to pour out his 16 apologies and [I messaged him] 2 days later. I didn't know why he was back, I was angry and confused why God has let him come back into my life and distract me. 

I thought, maybe we are supposed to be together, but I wasn't patient in the beginning, so now I am meant to learn patience,  something I struggle with every day.  Now we've been talking and trying to work on the "getting to know one another" that we had missed completely in the beginning. We have skyped numerous times and had some serious discussions.. And I feel torn now because my feelings for him are not just of that of a friends. They are more than that and its hard for me to push those aside and act as if we never had anything in the past. I am confused by what I am supposed to do because he says he just wants to be friends, and he hasn't come back to "get back together", or "be my boyfriend."

Deep down, from our discussions and our skype conversations, I truly feel he's bluffing. I feel he's scared of the feelings he has for me and isn't ready for commitment which I know he's said before.

For the past couple of days I have been seriously discerning cutting off all communication with him because I can't "just be friends" with him. I talked to my friend, the one who introduced us, and I felt I had made up my mind, and the decision was to cut him off. With that in mind, I went to the nearest chapel, and knelt before the Lord with the hopes of guidance and direction from Him, asking how I can go about cutting him off in a nice way. But instead what I received as my knees hit the floor is "you haven't been patient" and the tears just fell from my eyes. I was so overcome by emotion out of pure confusion. I felt I had made up my mind! And was thinking clearly! Yet the Lord gave me an answer of what I would have normally been ecstatic to hear!

Now, I am asking for your thoughts on the matter. I know that I care about him, truly a lot. I have thought about marriage, and I can see myself with him, but I try to push that out of my head in fear of getting hurt and being vulnerable.

Please help!

Confused and Clueless 

Dear Confused and Clueless, 

If you just left for college last year, you are probably only 19 or 20 now. You probably won't get this now, but from an adult perspective, you are very young and vulnerable and, above all, deserve forgiveness* for your sins a hundred times faster than a thirty-year-old does. It is very hard to be between the ages of 17 and 25. Your powers of reasoning, prudence and patience have not caught up yet with your desires, particularly the desire to feel loved by a man.

If you have gone to confession, what you did the night before you went home doesn't really matter. (If you haven't gone to confession, go to a good priest for it, and let that be an end to it.) All it was, from a practical point of view, was evidence that you are a human adult female who felt very sexually attracted to that human adult male. Sexual desire is one of the most powerful forces on earth, which is why human beings have created a lot of taboos and disciplines to fence it in, to help us obey God's request/command/invitation to us not to have sex outside of the one safe, just place for it: marriage.    

During this relationship, you have learned many important lessons that will stay with you for life. One is that when you have an intense experience, you want to tell all your friends about it. Another is that when you do, the other person involved may feel betrayed. (And so either you tell your friends, and don't tell the man you told your friends, or you don't tell your friends. Many married women disappoint our Single friends by suddenly clamming up when we get married. It's because our loyalty to our husbands now outweighs our need to connect with our female friends.)

The question for me is if this man is your friend. You are worried about being hurt and vulnerable, but you are hurting and vulnerable already, so leave that aside for now. A man-friend is not someone you look at and say, "Will this guy hurt me and how bad?" A man-friend is someone you look at and feel happiness because he is there. You think, "I like this man! He's a straight-up guy! I'd feel proud if I walked into a room arm in arm with him, and people thought he was my boyfriend." A boyfriend, or a husband, should also be your friend. 

What I am not getting from your email is what you LIKE about this guy. I get that you are overwhelmingly sexually attracted to him, and I get that--like most women---you want a great man to love you,  but what I don't get is whether or not you LIKE this man, so that even if you were married to someone else, you would still look forward to talking to him at parties. 

If the Lord tells you you need to be more patient, I won't contradict! And I think you need to be more patient, especially with yourself, because you are so young. He is very young, too, and he probably has many of the same worries and fears you do. He's a guy, so he's different, but that doesn't make him from an entirely different species. He's confused, clueless and vulnerable, too.

I also think you should stop talking about your business with your same-age friends. At your age, your friends will find it all an absorbing soap opera, with you as heroine and him as villain, but if you want to have a kindly, mature, Christian friendship/relationship with this man, you must develop a comparable loyalty to him. If he is not abusive in any way, you owe him the dignity of discretion and privacy. Yes, you may need advice and guidance, but I strongly suggest discussing anything that needs to be discussed about your boyfriend with him, first of all, and then perhaps with an adult mentor, like your mother or favourite aunt or priest.  

I hope this is helpful. 

Grace and peace,

Seraphic

Observations for Older Readers

1. Beware the man who pressures you into "a relationship" (and what does that mean, anyway?) or anything else because you are "running out of time." Time is the one thing you are not running out of. You have all eternity before you, and the little bit you have on this earth determines how the rest of it plays out. 

2. If you don't want the time, don't do the crime. Of course you want to do sexy stuff with sexy people. But you don't because you would feel simply terrible afterwards. You know Jiminy Cricket will sit on your shoulder yelling, "Bad Pinocchio! Bad!" If Catholic, you will have to go to a confessional and tell it all to a man behind a mesh screen who will say such kind and gentle things you may feel even worse and cry. This is better, however, than telling yourself you HAVE BEEN ROBBED. See #3.

3. You can get everything except virginity back. If you lose Grace, you can at least humbly ask for it back, and if you are really sorry and God is merciful, you will get it back. If you lose face, you can get that back, too. If you lose your dignity, you can get that back in time. Virginity, however, is a historical state, and you can't rewrite history. If you make a free act of will to have sex and you have it, hey presto, you're not a virgin anymore. (St. Augustine ruled that rape of a virgin does not entail loss of her virginity, as it does not include her free act of will. Of course it is still an atrocious thing to happen and to recover from, and rapists used to be executed.) 

Make sure you understand the difference between Grace, face, dignity and virginity. And stop using the word "virginity" for every new experience. I once broke a date with a young man because he said we were losing our rock concert virginity together. And twenty years later I was bereft of speech when another young man told me he had lost his "black pudding virginity." Stop this at once, young people!   

Incidentally, if you do something of your own free will, you were not robbed. Nothing was taken from you. You did it yourself. Let us take responsibility for the stuff we do, and call a spade a spade, and a sin a sin, and physical acts deliberately leading to sexual excitement of both parties physical acts deliberately leading to sexual excitement of both parties. Outside of marriage, these are sins.

4. Keep it classy. You did it. You feel bad. Now you don't love yourself, so you reach out to others to see if they will still love you if they too know What You Did. So you tell all your friends, and they are, like, OMG! They are all embarrassed and, like, "u gotta dump this bf, grfrd!" and when they meet up they discuss What You Did in exasperated undertones. 

Your plan to repair your self-esteem with the esteem of your posse has backfired. You are angry and hurt, and misery loves company, so who better to share in your anger and hurt than your Partner in Crime? And how better to make him angry and hurt than to tell him you told all your friends What You and He Did and how they let you down.

Sadly, this passive-aggression will backfire, too, because if there is anything men hate, it is losing face and being told to feel guilty. If you want to hang onto the delicious morsel guy whose charms you savoured succumbed to yesterday, don't yell at him about it today. Just go to confession and don't put yourself in a position where you do it again. Tell the truth, which is that it felt great at the time, but you're not doing that again because you don't want to go to hell. ("God doesn't send people to hell for stuff like that." "Yes, He does. It's in the Bible. Anyway, it's not Him sending, it's us choosing, and I need you to respect my sexual choices if this is going to work out.")  

If this is possible, do NOT tell your friends What You Did. I realize how hard this is, so if you really can't help it because you feel that bad, then pick the smartest, quietest one. If you tell two, pick two who don't know each other, so they can't discuss it. 

5. Do not tell his friend your secret plans regarding him because his friend will tell him.  Guaranteed. And then he will be angry and hurt and withdraw and say he just wants to be friends and complain about women to his friends and say we are good for only one thing, etc., etc. Bless his little heart.

6. If he says he just wants to be friends, it's over.  Keep it classy. Say "Okay, if that's what you want" and then don't text him first ever again. If you find his facebook updates seriously irritating, wait a month and then subtly defriend him. Don't discuss him. Don't skype him. Don't write to him. Don't for a minute think he was the ONE and you have lost all chance of earthly happiness and are doomed to sexual frustration and eventual insanity and death surrounded by mangy cats. Rewrite the script by saying, "Ah! He was one of the really hot ones," when your friends say his name. Wink and smile.

*I just heard Calvinist Cath have a heart attack, so I concede that it is theologically risqué to suggest anyone deserves God's forgiveness for his/her sins. What I mean is that the young are less culpable for their sexual sins than the old because they are untried soldiers in the war against sin, not battle-hardened veterans comme moi.