tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7534539169157708222.post3540313951934072097..comments2024-03-26T12:19:52.801-04:00Comments on Tea at Trianon: Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingenelena maria vidalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129629173535139807noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7534539169157708222.post-21136360680209804482012-10-09T10:19:52.312-04:002012-10-09T10:19:52.312-04:00Thanks for your insightful and powerful review whi...Thanks for your insightful and powerful review which I found to be quite educational. <br /><br />I also read and enjoyed Mary Sharrett's excellent novel,"Daughters of Witching Hill" which skillfully portrays the trials of mediaeval peasant women struggling to live a pious life amid the persecution and hardships of that era. julygirlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07008279978165536349noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7534539169157708222.post-14157637873637854872012-10-08T22:20:41.582-04:002012-10-08T22:20:41.582-04:00That is so sweet of you, my dear Diamantina, to th...That is so sweet of you, my dear Diamantina, to think so well of me, but things were not that simple. My mother was not Catholic when I was growing up and my parents separated when I was a teenager. My father lost his faith (he came back many many years later and my mother converted as well). Many of the people I went to school with behaved like total pagans or worse. I was surrounded by vice in high school, college and grad school. But God protected me from any number of terrible things and led me to the nuns and other staunch Catholic friends. I started really studying the faith when I was in grad school and my study intensified once I joined the Carmelite order at age 24.elena maria vidalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17129629173535139807noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7534539169157708222.post-85146341729993237412012-10-08T21:57:49.682-04:002012-10-08T21:57:49.682-04:00Elena,
I am a few years younger than you, but my ...Elena,<br /><br />I am a few years younger than you, but my Catholic education was similarly sketchy. (I was baptized in infancy, largely at the insistence of a devout grandmother; began to attend CCD classes in 1977, when I was 11 years old and was old enough to actively want to do such things on my own; and received my First Holy Communion at Easter 1979.) Since my parents were and are not churchgoers (my father is a lapsed Catholic, my mother a non-churchgoing Methodist: they were civilly married and are now divorced), I pretty much had to bring myself up in Catholicism, which was very difficult to do and I felt lonely in the large suburban parishes I attended by myself. I was well into my twenties that I realized that missing Sunday Mass without due reason was a mortal sin, or not fasting during Lent was a mortal sin, or non-penetrative heterosexual premarital genital expressions were mortal sins (I knew that premarital penetrative sex and homosexual sex were mortal sins, of course). By that time, I had converted to Orthodoxy (which gave me a deep love of the Psalms and the Mother of God, as well as Church history), and did not revert to Catholicism till my mid-thirties.<br /><br />Yet I was not a <i>perfect</i> heathen as a young girl: people seemed to have considered me quite Victorian and devout, even when I was in high school. So I suspect that you, with your love of history, would not have been a <i>perfect</i> heathen if your parents had not been devoutly Catholic. I think that you would have attended Sunday Mass more often than not as a young woman, gone to Confession at least once a year, and avoided having premarital penetrative sex or living together romantically before or outside of marriage. Maybe not a very good Catholic, but a Catholic nevertheless.Diamantina, aka Gentillylacehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11233399922548504389noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7534539169157708222.post-30754112494699674802012-10-08T08:10:11.782-04:002012-10-08T08:10:11.782-04:00Some comments for this post have been left here:
h...Some comments for this post have been left here:<br />http://teaattrianon.blogspot.com/2012/10/trial-by-fire.htmlelena maria vidalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17129629173535139807noreply@blogger.com