| Written by Dorothy Cummings,
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 It’s amazing what thoughts can come into your head when in the company of “St. Alcan.” (Photo by Michael Swan)
I answered as any pious unmarried Catholic woman my age would answer.
“No, you aren’t,” I said.
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Good heavens, I am a King Midas of religious vocations,” I said, and there is some truth to this. Almost every man I flirt with becomes a priest in the end. If I were a better Catholic, this would fill me with joy. But, oddly, it doesn’t.
“How very annoying,” I said.
“Uh…” said my former favourite flirt.
“I hope they chuck you,” I said.
“Oh, thanks very much.”
“Look,” I said. “We can’t have ALL the amusing unmarried Catholic men in orders.”
“Why not?”
Why not indeed?
Some days it is absolutely intolerable being single. Normally there is not much single women can do about that, although sometimes we crack and join online dating services in an expensive and fruitless attempt to change our state. But after such ghastly social experiments, we are left with the feeling that nobody (nobody sane, anyway) wants us in their lives. Except, sometimes, the religious orders.
I like to be where the interesting men are, and they all seem to be going into the seminary or into religious orders. Of course, if I went into a religious order I would rarely see them, but at least I would know that I, like them, was on the Catholic cutting edge.
There are, of course, worthier reasons to join a community. I thought I’d better have a chat with my spiritual director to be reminded what they were.
I went downtown to seek him. He was busy, so I wandered into the grassy quadrangles of St. Michael’s College. I sat on a bench in the brilliant sunshine and looked at the flowers and the great abstract stainless steel sculpture in the centre of the quad. In my day, it was called “St. Alcan” after the large Canadian aluminum firm. I barely saw it, though, for my inner vocational turmoil.
A little family walked by: bearded, bald young father, bespectacled young mother with a stroller, behelmeted young boy on his first bicycle, blonde girl-toddler toddling behind. (“Don’t run over your sister,” shouted the bespectacled young mother.) They seemed the very picture of vocational happiness.
“Oh, what shall I do?” I silently wailed.
A low banging noise awoke me from my reverie. I looked over and saw the little family standing around St. Alcan. They had all stepped over the protective barrier of begonias. The father was right inside the sculpture, whacking it with the palm of his hand. His son was leaping up and kicking it with his feet. The mother had her back to me, but she seemed to acquiesce to this abuse of St. Alcan. I think even the baby took a whack or two.
I looked around the quad for some person in authority. There was none. I looked hard at the bald, bearded father, but he didn’t seem to notice. He kept slapping away at St. Alcan, who made sad gonging noises. I was appalled. Personally, I was raised not to hammer on public art, never mind religious art. To do so in front of one’s children, and to allow one’s children to do so, is simply beyond the pale. It occurred to me that someone must defend holy St. Alcan in battle. So I got up, wondering what on earth I would say, and approached the little family.
I smiled tightly at the bald, bearded father.
“I bet you’re wondering what it is,” I said.
He looked surprised.
“It’s St. Michael,” he declared, proud to be in the know.
All kinds of reproofs came to mind, e.g. “Well, in that case, I wish you would ask your child to stop kicking him.” But I chickened out. For one thing, it flashed across my mind that these people might be Catholics. And if I had said, “As a Catholic, I am offended by your treatment of my saint,” chances were the man would have retorted, “Well, I’m Catholic, too.” So I walked on and went into the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies. I sat in the cool, quiet classroom sacred to the memory of the great Catholic scholar Etienne Gilson.
And it occurred to me there that, as a Catholic writer, I already have a vocation. That vocation includes telling Catholics funny stories about irreverent people. It is a somewhat disreputable profession, most unsuited to religious life. And it certainly doesn’t make enough money to support married life. So perhaps I had better remain as I am.
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