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The Fairy Godmother (and Santa)
The vexed question of friendship between the married-with-children and the unmarried-and-childless in the Catholic loop will certainly remain vexed for some time. Parents will struggle with the...
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Saints – Available for Relationships Other than Marriage
The wrong kind of interminable vocation-discussion can have an unintended side effect; it can reduce persons of the opposite sex to nothing more than potential marriage partners. This does everyone a...
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Oddments
I read this line the other day: “If any man has a mind to come my way, let him renounce self, and take up his cross daily, and follow me,” and was struck by the thought that, as Our Lord said this...
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“I do not Promise You Happiness in this Life…”
In an apparition to St Bernadette Soubirous, Our Lady said, “I do not promise you happiness in this life, but in the next.” This was recounted in some biography or another, and devout-but-disappointed...
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The Single Life is Not a Vocation
People – including authoritative people – will tell you that the single life is a vocation. This is irksome for a number of reasons. First of all, if the single life is really a call from God, with a...
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Discerning and Not Discerning
Historically, very few Catholics have discerned their vocations in the way that is now marketed as normal. The majority of Catholics had their vocations chosen for them by their parents or guardians,...
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The Doctor. The Disaster. The Drone. (Three Unrelated Theories)
Last week, while absorbed in the thought that the majestic, aristocratic, nuanced, heart-rending Peter Capaldi is most certainly the best Doctor ever**, I was struck by the extraordinary thought that...
View ArticleOn Turning Forty
Single women raised in conservative communities dread their fortieth birthdays. (I don’t know if the same is true for men; it would be interesting to know.) After twenty years feeling the sidelong...
View ArticleBurying the Cake – and the Alleluia
I’ve been ironing baby-clothes and thinking about this post by Dorothy Cummings McLean, in which she writes about what it means for a childless woman, after ten years of hoping, to bury the portion of...
View ArticleThe Single Life is Not a Vocation – Part Two
I’ve written already about why the single life is not a vocation and should not be thoughtlessly described as such. Two more thoughts occurred to me today. First: irrespective of any brochure published...
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