The Huggy Priest

It's been a long time since I had an "Auntie Seraphic" letter, but this one was so brilliant and touches upon a problem is probably experienced by many that I thought I would share the outlines.

In short, a single woman active in her parish hates being hugged by her priest. The priest hugs everyone, and she wonders if any of them also dislike it. This priest hugs her at the Sign of Peace, and she's too embarrassed to stop him. She tries to avoid him, but when she can't, he at least squeezes her arm. He also says the equivalent of "You are the sunshine of all our lives" (I won't repeat the original in case it would identify him and her) which she finds odd.

My advice was for her to tell him, to his face or by phone or by email, that she doesn't like being hugged or squeezed by him and she wants him to stop. If he hugs or squeezes her again after that, she should remind him that she asked him not to. But if he does it again, she should go to the Safeguarding Officer at either the parish or the diocese.

I'm a three-strikes-he's-out kind of Auntie. Personally I'm uncomfortable with a man who wields (whether he likes it or not) as much spiritual and psychological power as a priest hugging people who are not his personal friends and relations. I also wonder who and what these hugs are really for. Does the priest, living alone as I assume he does, long for human touch?

But that said, I don't think it is necessary for your fellow reader to go to the Safeguarding Officer unless the priest proves that he does not respect her boundaries. My reader is over 24. If my reader were under 24, I would have suggested she consult the Safeguarding Officer sooner because I believe the under-24 set needs more help in asserting their rights before authority.

I wasn't born in a huggy culture, but my high school, which teemed with the daughters of Italian immigrants, was huggy. Now that I live in Scotland, which is not at all huggy, I have to judge which of my friends is huggy and which is not, and sometimes I get them mixed up, just like I mix up who gets one air kiss (old-school Britons I've known for years), who gets two (Britons who like France), and who gets three (close Polish friends).  Therefore I am giving the huggy priest the benefit of the doubt--either he comes from a huggy culture in which the good spiritual daddy gives all his spiritual children hugs, or he thinks he is now in one.

Still, no-one should have to submit to any kind of embrace he or she doesn't want. Sadly, social codes meant to protect people from unwanted physical contact have fallen into disuse.  For example, a man  could only shake a woman's hand if she offered it to him first, and she didn't have to take her glove off. Another useful custom that has fallen into disuse is showing marked reverence for the hands of a priest. (I am suddenly entranced by the thought of a devout-but-desperate Catholic burglar hitting a priest on the head but being very careful not to touch his hands.)

However, the social codes have fallen apart, and so it is up to men and women to swallow our embarrassment and to tell each other what we do or do not welcome. The sooner, the better, too, so it does not come out in an agonised "STOP HUGGING ME THIS IS SCOTLAND NOT YOUR ITALIAN-CANADIAN HIGH SCHOOL." Worse, it could turn into a whispering campaign against an innocent, if clueless, person.

Meanwhile, it never ceases to amaze me that some priests still risk violating the boundaries of their parishioners. Once again I am so grateful to my mother for training me in the priests-are-men school of thought. When, at the tender age of 14, I told her that Fr X had used bad language at me over the phone, she told me that I should have hung up on him.

"But he's a priest," said I with awe.

I wish I could remember her exact words. However, they were along the lines of "A priest is a man and don't have anything to do with men who swear at 14-year-old girls on the phone." That said, decades later, I have been yelled at by three intemperate and vulgar priests over the phone, and in the words of Sophie Scholl, I'm proud of it.

Method for Healing Sorrow 2, 3, 4

Once a month I have a work-sponsored retreat day. This is not a "day-off" but an opportunity to reflect on work and come up with insights for improvement. Yesterday I also discovered three other methods for healing sorrow.

As usual on retreat day, I went to 8 AM Mass and spoke to a priest about work for an hour. At Mass I palpably felt my mood lift, in part because I need feel no guilt or worry about the number of stories to be written. I could just read something that wasn't news.

After chatting with my priest, I went to Edinburgh  Central Library to read Newspaper Journalism: A Practical Introduction. As this was published in 2005, it is somewhat out of date. However, most of it is still relevant. It reminded me, too, that thousands of people do the same job I do, only usually better qualified.

At noon I met a friend for lunch at Brew Lab. One of the owners of Brew Lab knows my name, which is very gratifying, especially now that I don't go there every week. My friend brought me eggs from her hens, a wonderful treat. Afterwards we went to a good bookshop, and browsed the Classics.

When my friend had made her purchases, we said goodbye near the George IV Bridge. She went to the Grassmarket, where her car was parked, and I went to Edinburgh University to continue reading Newspaper Journalism and wait for Language Tandem at 3. It is "Europe Week" at the Uni, and so there are various multicultural and multilingual events.

Unfortunately, I did not understand that one had to find a language partner in advance, so when I turned up in the correct room, I discovered that there were no Polish or Italian speakers.  Thus, I continued to read Newspaper Journalism and discovered that British journalists are all supposed to know shorthand.

Seeing it was 4 PM, I walked back to Central Library and asked for a book on Pitman New Era shorthand. It was so entrancing, I took out a notebook and began to learn the first "outlines" (phonetic codes) right away. It's such a brilliant tool, I don't know why I didn't think of this before.

At 5 PM, I was in Tiger Lily's cocktail bar, which may seem weird for a retreat day, but I had arranged to meet a friend who is a very busy primary school teacher, and when we do meet, this is usually where we go. We had a good long chat, and I had two cocktails whereas she stuck to lemonade, and then we did a bit of window gazing along fashionable George Street on our way towards the train station.

When I got home at 8 PM, I felt that I had had a thoroughly splendid and profitable day. The methods for healing sorrow were public prayer (which stops private prayer from becoming self-absorbed), pals and Pitman--which is to say, something new and useful to learn.

Methods of Healing Sorrow 1

Italian class. Discovering again how beautiful the language is.  Noting that I usually remember the "irregular" stresses without having to think about it. Bouncing my sorrows off my Italian tutor, since he asks how I am. Telling nothing but the direct truth because it's easiest. Remembering being 18 and confronting the passato remoto for the first time.

Fighting Sorrow

Well, I should have known better. A week or so ago, Benedict Ambrose suggested that we watch a BBC comedy called "Fleabag." He didn't suggest I watch the first season, and when I viewed it on my own, late at night, I understood why. The nameless heroine--referred to by all as Fleabag--has a lot of sex. She's a species of English Carrie Bradshaw--only heartbreakingly sad. Sex is her way of fighting sorrow, and she's as compulsive as an internet addict.

But Season 2 isn't sex-drenched, and even Season 1 was enormously clever and well-acted. Viewers were introduced to a kindly but foul-mouthed young priest who was invited by Fleabag's stepmother-to-be to an engagement dinner. The priest is very happy to have been invited to the dinner, even though the air bristles with family tension, because he is so lonely.

PLOT SPOILER FOR THOSE WHO WATCH BBC COMEDIES

Fleabag is erotically attracted to the young priest, whereas he shrewdly perceives that what Fleabag needs, most of all, is a chaste male friend. Unfortunately, this chastity lasts only until the end of Episode 4 when he is discovered by Fleabag at 9:45 PM drunk in the vestry, looking for a hidden bottle. Because he is determined to find out Fleabag's secret sorrow, he persuades her to enter the confessional---and here I became very uncomfortable.  To make an excruciating--and jaw-droppingly sacrilegious--scene short, I'll just say that Fleabag delivers a heartbreaking monologue and the priest kisses her. There is a lot of panting and snorting before, mercifully, a painting falls off the wall, and the priest rushes off in sorrow. 

It was a while before I saw that part, though, as I was out of my seat, across the room, and yelling about cancelling the TV license a split-second after the priest pulled aside the curtain. Poor B.A. gave me a running commentary.  B.A. doesn't wade through the sludge of the clerical sexual abuse and coverup scandal every day. 

Here's the thing. For THIRTY YEARS ("If boys could have babies, there'd be a clinic in St. John's," sneered Canadian pro-aborts in the late 1980s) ordinary faithful Catholics have borne the brunt of the clerical sexual abuse scandal. Most damaged are the ordinary faithful Catholics who were themselves sexually abused or seduced: not just the tiny minority who were under eleven, but the boys aged 11-18, the young men, the young women, and helpless elderly in hospitals. But the rest of us haven't escaped entirely.

For thirty years non-Catholics and ex-Catholics have mocked the faithful, especially the entire brotherhood of priests, with the sexual sins of a handful of perverted criminals. And when Catholics, trying to get to grips with the problem, observe that the largest group of victims were teenage boys and young men and therefore homosexuality must have something do to with it, other Catholics start screaming about the women. Well, yes. We Catholics all know about the women. I know at least three women who have been molested by priests, and two women who had affairs with them. It's painful. 

And I haven't even mentioned the corrosive anti-catholicism that has been part and parcel of life in Great Britain for over four hundred years. It's still here because Catholicism is still against the state religion, which is now Sex. And that's painful, too. At cocktail parties--when I still went to cocktail parties--I went through verbal contortions not to have to name the newspaper I wrote for.  Never mind the fact that Great Britain is, on paper, so much against hatred for minority religious and so much for religious diversity. 

What do I do to escape the sorrow of wading through the swamp that is the decline and fall of Western Christendom? I sit down after supper with my husband and watch clever, funny television shows. And I honestly thought that I was watching a show in which Catholicism would be allowed to speak firm, kind words against the sexual libertinism that is making so many post-Christians so miserable. 

But no. Fleabag's writer--an enormously talented woman--did not allow that. That wasn't her intent. Her intent was to eroticise chaste Catholic celibacy, to eroticise the Catholic sacrament of reconciliation, and to show Mighty Aphrodite defeating even the mighty Catholic priesthood. 

Have a look on Twitter to see how much British television audiences liked that. They LOVED that. They terribly want Fleabag to have sex with that priest. Terribly. They think he is the perfect man for Fleabag, yada yada, and yet when women start suing British dioceses, they will tut-tut about Catholic priests seducing vulnerable women ("although at least it isn't boys").

It was a long time before I could sleep, so angry and disappointed was I. And this led me to reflect that I am angry and disappointed every day, and that when Hilary White had my job, she longed to write about marine biology. 

Clearly the BBC is no escape from sorrow. 

A Good Film

I stayed up late last night watching Denial on Netflix.  It is a dramatisation of the libel case the English military historian David Irving brought against Penguin Books and the American Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt. The film was very well written and had a brilliant cast: a who's who of splendid contemporary British actors.

Irving (played by Timothy Spall) objected to a book by Lipstadt (played by Rachel Weiss) that described him as a Holocaust denier, but the trial centred on Irving and the very serious question of whether or not he had intentionally suppressed or twisted what he knew to be the truth to advance his racist, anti-Semitic ideology.

A secondary theme in the film was the battle between reason and sentiment. Lipstadt wanted to present emotion-laden arguments and even allow Holocaust survivors to tell the judge their stories; her legal team didn't want to give Irving, who represented himself, a chance to humiliate Holocaust survivors in court. He had done it before. The film also contrasts the loud New Yorker Lipstadt with her old-school, very British representatives, at least one of whom was also Jewish.

Afterwards I clicked to Youtube and watched footage of the real David Irving and the real Deborah Lipstadt being grilled by journalist Jeremy Paxman. It was a bit of a shock, revealing the one injustice of the film, which was that Irving was not as ugly as Timothy Spall and Lipstadt was much older and less attractive than Rachel Weiss. I suppose there is some sort of cinematic rule that the racist baddie must be ugly and the damsel-in-distress must be beautiful, lest the audience be confused.

Nevertheless, the film was a love-letter to defeating bad arguments with good arguments and exposing lies with truth. It showed in an even-handed fashion that the mob outside the courtroom yelled abuse at both Irving and Lipstadt. This, too, provided a contrast to the careful intellectual battle being waged within the courtroom.

I doubt Denial would change the minds of Holocaust deniers, but aesthetically speaking, it is a good and thoughtful film.  

Incidentally, Holocaust denial takes some surprising forms. This morning I was astonished to see that an author named "David Horowitz", apparently to annoy Poles, had tweeted "I've been to Auschwitz, and you would hardly know a Jew died there."

Well, I went to Auschwitz in 2014, both Auschwitz 1 (which has the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign) and Auschwitz 2 (which has the railway tracks). At Auschwitz 1 sets of placards written in several languages, including English and Polish, made it clear that hundreds of thousands of Jews, among others, died there. The information is very detailed and precise, and shows where the Jews came from, both in terms of nationality and of any camps they had been transferred from.  At Auschwitz 2, there is an English-language memorial stating that over a million people, mostly Jews, died at Auschwitz.

What surprised me, and perhaps surprised Mr Horowitz, was that Auschwitz 1 was originally a small Polish army base which the invading Germans had taken over and converted into a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners. This early history of Auschwitz is also preserved and clearly explained to visitors. Thus, when you first make your way through the indoor museum, you are confronted with the photographs of a good many Polish Catholics, including young monks.

I don't see how it could be helpful to anyone to denigrate, resent or lie about the memorials of anyone who died at Auschwitz.

Back to Italian classes

Work duties have necessitated a return to my Italian tutor.

Hoorah!

I started today, la festa di San Giuseppe. My poor tutor has been plunged back into the world of Vatican politics. Naturally I had to fight through great thickets of mental Polish to get at the wandering flock of superannuated sheep that is my Italian vocabulary. Amusingly--for my tutor--I invariably said "ale" (Polish for "but") instead of "ma", just as I used to say "o" (Italian for "or") instead of "lub" or "albo" to my Polish tutor.

Afterwards I went to Elm Row and Leith Walk on a hunt for zeppole di San Giuseppe. I bought some cannoli in case I couldn't find the zeppole.  As a matter of fact, I did find zeppole, but the cannoli--from The Sicilian Pastry Shop--were better.

On the bus home with my pastry boxes I listened to Max Pezzali and 883 on my phone, but I had a weird feeling of 1980s dejà vu more in keeping with this song:

Once again I was back in Mrs Angelini's senior Italian class on the third floor of the Tudor-Gothic fort that was my high school, wool plaid kilt sticking to my thighs. Someone in class wrote an essay about "Terra Promessa." I could probably write an essay on Italy in the 1980s even though I didn't get there until 1998.

Grzegorz has cancer.

My language study ground to a halt last month when I discovered a small scandal about plagiarism that turned into a big scandal about fraud and may yet turn into an enormous scandal about clericalism. 

At any rate, I became so wound up by the scandal that I decided the best thing to do to take my mind off it was to listen to my next Polish lesson in the "Real Polish" series. It was about Grzegorz (G'sheh-gosh) who has smoked for 20 years. Grzegorz' doctor told him to quit. Grzegorz didn't listen. Then Grzegorz' wife and children told him to quit. He didn't listen to them either. Everyone begged him to quit, but Grzegorz told them to stop worrying because nothing would happen to him. 

Are you acquainted with Polish film? If so, you already know what happened to Grzegorz.

Yes, Grzegorz has cancer, and his doctor can't help him: it's too late.  Good-bye, Grzegorz. Good-bye. 

So depressed was I by this mention of the C-word (which in Polish, rak, is presumably the R-słowo) that I hit a mental block and stopped studying either Polish or German. I use up all my free time on plagiarism-scandal research because I don't want to think about Grzegorz and his stupid cancer. Incidentally, reading the tax returns of registered charities is a lot of fun. 

I spent too many Italian and Polish classes in 2017 talking about my husband's brain tumour and how he was mysteriously turning into a living skeleton. It was probably cheaper than therapy, mind you.  And as a result I already know the Polish words I need to deal with cancer, e.g. the ones that mean "My husband cannot go through the X-ray, for he has a tube in his brain." 

Yesterday, however, I forced myself back into Grzegorz's terrible story. I wrote it out from two different perspectives. Then I wrote it a third time on printer paper and cut it up for reassembly on the kitchen table. Tonight I will finish studying Grzegorz's fate so that tomorrow I can move onto Lesson 33. 

Life is conspiring to prevent me from becoming fluent in other European languages, but I will not permit it. One day I will be fully fluent in both Polish and Italian and be able to cope in German, French and Russian. Urdu will have to wait until I am retired.