The Importance of Community

The mystery of happiness and longevity has been solved: the chief worldly good that keeps us happy and alive is social relationships. This, Dr. Jordan Peterson might say, is why you want to "raise kids you actually like." If you like (not just love) your children, then other adults will like them, and the children will get the message that they're likeable, and this will bolster their capacity for, er, likability. This will make them capable of sustaining family ties, making friends, and developing other social relationships in the wider community. 

Finding people who like you

Of course, not everybody likes everybody else, and we should not seek to be liked by everybody. In fact, we should accept that we don't like everyone, and so that it is fair (or inevitable) that not everyone likes us. When we really love, for example, the Traditional Latin Mass, we accept that there are people who dislike us for expressing our devotion to it in ways they consider challenging or unkind or even just because we are not getting with their program. 

There are also going to be people who dislike us simply because they were taught to hate Catholics at Granny's post-Protestant Communist knee. Or because they learned at school that a Good Person believes in a whole list of medical atrocities and carnal behaviours that faithful Catholics deplore. By the time you are my age, you are used to this and either avoid those people as much as possible or learn to manage conversations so they never fall into the pit of discord. 

And because it is dreadful simply to skate on the surface of social life, we seek places where we can plunge in deep. If you are a committed vegan, that is going to be with fellow vegans. If you spend all your leisure hours thinking about the Lindy Hop, that will be with fellow swing-dancers. And if you are a Catholic who loves traditional Catholic life, including the Traditional Latin Mass, that very well may be the people who frequent the nearest church where the TLM is said. 

That community may be rather small, though, so the TLM Catholic will probably want to be open to spending social time with Catholics who on the whole prefer some other form of the Catholic liturgy, like the Anglican Use, or the Novus Ordo, or the Alexandrian, Armenian, Byzantine, East Syriac, or West Syriac Rites. (They will also be interested in divining if their companions' interest in the Christian Church is limited to the aesthetics of her liturgies or social-climbing.) 

Thus, the TLM Catholic seeking to expand their social ties should be on the lookout for social and intellectual events and groups of interest to Catholics. If a college or university student, you should find your institution's Catholic chaplaincy or Catholic Student Union. If not, you should look at church bulletin boards for (or simply call up the pastor and ask him about) interesting events. There will almost always be a welcoming soul--or several welcoming souls--to greet you because Christians want our Lord to say, "I was a stranger, and you welcomed Me," not "I was a stranger, and you were too caught up in your iPhone to notice." 

The most likely welcoming souls will probably be, all appearances to the contrary, the organizers of the event or the people behind the tea table. The organizers will be rushing around, but the success of their endeavour depends largely on the happiness of those attending, so if you catch them in a rare moment of standing about, you might introduce yourself, congratulate them on the event, and tell them you don't know anyone. Could they suggest someone to talk to? You could say this to someone behind the tea table, too. Another safe bet: clergy and religious. 

Nota bene: Invite likely people to meet your friends in your primary communities. Take a merely vegetarian friend to your charming vegan cafe. Invite a new jazz-loving pal along to Lindy Hop. Take your Novus Ordo buddies to the TLM. Shield them, the first few times, from any notorious cranks. 

Controversial advice for travellers

If you are a foreigner, do keep in mind local social standards. Hopefully you have read about them before turning up in Scotland, or Australia, or wherever. Europeans studying in Canada are surprised when the warmest welcomes, the deepest effusions, and the most serious confidences do not betoken lifelong friendships. Their shock when, returning a few years later to the site of their golden scholarship year, they discover their Canadian pals have moved on and have no time to meet up is very sad. And Americans who come to Britain are confused at first when their generous suggestions about how to do things better are not adopted and when their new friends are not as forthcoming about their emotions and family traumas.  

Here is a brief explanation for better understanding: most people in the New World by definition come from immigrant stock. And we are now used to travelling long distances without thinking much of it. For generations we have moved state or province or city for work. We make new friends wherever we go, but somewhere in the back of our minds, we know we will probably leave them one day. (Look at me: I left my entire family for a man across the ocean.) But in the meantime, we want to be happy, helpful members of the community, so what can we do for you? May I suggest a better way of making tea?  

In the Old World, most people do not move quite so much, or if they do (a recent phenomenon) they keep the bonds to their old home strong. They make their friends at school and, if applicable, at university, and over the course of years may develop friendships at work or--thank God--church. They are slower at making friends because when they do make friends they keep them for life. They do not want to share the contents of their heart, or be stuck forever, with weirdos. They can't just move town to escape them.

Or so is my pet theory--particularly about German-speaking countries. You may reject the above, but I strongly advise Old Worlders not to lose your heart to shallow locals while visiting the New World, and New Worlders to maintain a friendly reserve when first introduced to strangers in the Old World. (You may discover that most of your friends in an Old World capital have also come from abroad.) I credit the fact that I am married to the happy coincidence that I caught a very bad cold on the plane to Scotland, which left me unable to talk very much or too loudly. Of course, it was also very important that I strongly resembled my now-husband's favourite singer when she was young and, of course, that I was a Catholic. I was a Jesuit-trained, lifelong Novus Ordo Catholic, but I was charmed both by Benedict Ambrose's TLM community and by B.A., so here I still am. 

 Marriage stuff

In case it is possible you don't know, I will mention that I wrote a book about being a 30-something Catholic Single, which is called Seraphic Singles in Canada, The Closet's All Mine (yes, I know) in the USA, and Anielskie Single (no, ja wiem) in Poland. In that book I explore the possibility that some of us just aren't getting married, and so the way forward is to find meaning and happiness regardless. About three years after I came to that conclusion, I was married--probably because I had striven to find meaning and happiness regardless. 

Most Catholics who want to get married do, in fact, get married. We just some of us get married later and older than others. This is only a problem if we want children, but most of us do want children. Childlessness is a suffering I would prefer the young people of my community called to married life to be spared. Therefore, I hope they do take part in as many social activities as that community offers, slowly develop friendships, and expand their social circle to other young traditional Catholics in the United Kingdom (or abroad, if they return to their homes abroad). 

They have the advantage that our community believes in marriage, motherhood and fatherhood, whereas increasingly the rest of the UK does not. Naturally our young people share many of the disadvantages of their generation (e.g. the economy, infantilizing pop culture), but I cherish not unfounded hopes that they, at least, will flourish. 

Meanwhile, I hope they do not feel pressured to do anything they do not want to do, knowing when they are not ready for marriage, and not being afraid to say so. It would be splendid if our families and societies were such that we were all ready to take vows by the age of 25, but they aren't and we aren't. 

This is why I have always stressed friendship and repeated "It's just coffee" in my writings.