The sorriest, most desperate, worried Orthodox thing on earth is the bachelor seminarian in his final year of study. A joke I heard about this: “His theological clock is ticking.”
You probably already know this, but I’ll explain the predicament anyway: A married man can get ordained a deacon or priest in our church. An unmarried man also can, but then he’s stuck unmarried. A seminarian in his final year of studies has some options:
- Get monastic tonsure and become a priest-monk
- Delay ordination and find profitable employment with a Bachelor’s in Classics and a Master’s of Divinity until the right lady comes along.
- Propose marriage to every bare-fingered creature in a skirt and headscarf
Mostly, they take option No. 3, although I know of a couple who found work as choir directors. The poor saps.
My best friend and I graduated from the same university. He was getting ready to enroll at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in New York. He thought the fact that he hadn’t found anyone to marry yet meant that the curtains were really going to pull – in a cloistered environment such as a seminary, he’d have no hope of meeting girls. Two months later, he met a girl who in the seminary’s library, and he married her.
Actually, one of the things that scared me most about enrolling in seminary (which I had considered) was hearing the bachelor seminarians moan and whine about the martyrdom they have to endure when girls wouldn’t go out with them. Being single myself, I figured I would drown in that ocean of self-pity. (As an aside, St. Vladimir’s does usually have around 10 single women enrolled who are studying music or education. But they learn to get picky really fast.)
A lot of really great marriages start at seminaries. But, there’s one danger that male seminarians may not realize that they have to worry about – cassock hunters. Yes, believe it or not, there are some women out there whose ambition in life is to become a matushka (or presvyteria). The best day for cassock hunters is the annual open house of a seminary. At St. Vladimir’s, the day is Orthodox Education Day on the first Saturday of October. On this day, they have 2,000 people at the seminary, and they set up a big tent on the lawn so that they can have space for all of the pilgrims at liturgy. The day I went there, Metropolitan Herman was there with four other bishops.
The cassock hunters are pretty easy to spot. They’re very well dressed, but they still are on the make, so they have to look memorable. They have bright, elegant headscarves, blouses and skirts. They wander the grounds, hoping to make eye contact with one of the over-worked seminarians, who are responsible for keeping this huge event going.
At St. Tikhon’s Seminary, I believe the big pilgrimage is Memorial Day weekend, where thousands of people come. I have talked to some graduates of St. Tikhon’s who have said the same kind of coupling goes on.
The one time I went to Orthodox Education Day at St. Vladimir’s, one of them actually found me. I wasn’t in a cassock, but I was in my nicest suit, which I guess was close enough for a girl in search of a church boy. She talked. A lot. She accidentally insulted the cooking of a friend of mine.
While we were chatting about the seminary, I said, “It’s amazing how many young families there are here.”
She said, “I guess there aren’t that many forms of entertainment for the seminarians.”
She sent e-mails to me for a couple of weeks after that, and I tried to keep the conversation innocent, although I guess I talked too much. I eventually got rid of her by telling her that I was thinking of becoming a monk (which was kind of lame). Then she got mad at me, and sent a sharp e-mail: “You should have known that if you write openly about your feelings that a girl will mistake it for intimacy!” I hadn’t even kissed her, but I still seem to have broken her heart.
It’s not just Orthodox Education Day for the cassock hunters – every Sunday, there are young women there who drive from as far as Connecticut and Rhode Island so they can “be with people their own age.” My best friend’s wife was trying to set me up with one of them, but I was thinking, “Can I really fly that far for a first date?”
7 comments:
I may be in the minority on this but I would find a young woman in the United States this day in age wearing a heard scarf to be kind of weird.
Boy, I would love to meet these cassock hunters. I seem to have the oppositte problem, girls that are very scared of the black uniform.
Coming from a female master's student at Holy Cross, I am more than a little put off by the connotation you are perpetuating by labeling ladies open to being the wife of a priest, "cassock hunters."
By all means, I do not know if that is what God would have for me, but I do know that over the course of the last year-and-a-half, that my attitude toward such a calling has certainly come full circle. And, I find it hard to believe that when there are women who are open to that calling that you would have the audacity to belittle them in such a manner. Just because we are looking for a man who will choose the anteri over a suit does not mean we are flailing or as desperate as you suggest.
The truth of the matter is that we could do much better for ourselves in practical terms if we sought a relationship with a man doing his master's in business, medicine, or even education. (As God knows, even a master's in education will pay one's bills as sufficiently as a priest's salary AND assure many more hours at home.) But, by God's grace, we chose, in our own way, to embrace the higher calling of being open to becoming a Presvytera.
I have a hard time understanding why you've used such a derogatory phrase when referring to the very women who are willing to stand behind, support, and care for the men most important to the liturgical life of our faith. Following the train of thought of the previous commenter, I would think that women of such caliber would be celebrated. --Especially as most women I know realize the challenges the priesthood places on marriages and families and run in the opposite direction accordingly.
So Anonymous, if you read this, I am here. Though I am scared, I am not afraid... Though I am open to that calling, I am not desperate to impose it.
Kyrie eleison!
Re: aagapemou
Wow! My first flame! This is an honor. :-)
I can see that you feel very strongly about this and you take it very seriously. First, I need to point out that comic writing is an art of exaggeration.
You are quite correct that it would be inaccurate to stereotype women interested in being presvyteras as all being cassock hunters. Priests' wives come from a variety of backgrounds and go through a great deal of sacrifice, which I could write about, but it wouldn't be nearly as funny.
Funny. Well, it was supposed to be funny.
I would define a "cassock hunter" more narrowly than you interpreted it -- a cassock hunter is one who goes to an open house at a seminary and tries too hard to meet men. The compression of this effort, the short amount of time, and all of the activity going on the day of the of open house can make for some very silly behavior that I have observed and heard about. That's the part that's worth writing about for a humor blog.
Thank you, Thomas, for your clarification. I did not mean for that to come off as snippy as it did and for that, I apologize. However, I do think the clarification was needed--especially as a female studying side-by-side with The Church's future priests.
Thank you again.
Another site that may be of interest here is the "M.M. Club" on Facebook. Log in to Facebook and run a search on "M.M. Club," which stands for "Matushka Material." The wall has an assortment of posts from women, the funniest of which are from Mat. Anna Lardas of Connecticut.
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