They placed high emphasis on being a gentleman, as all-boys Catholic schools should. One day, the principal gave an impromptu talk, and I remembered nothing from it other than this.
“If you ever meet the queen, you would never lay a finger on her, let alone shake her hand, without first seeking her permission. And that is how you should treat every woman.”
That stuck with me until got to a lousy secondary school and lost all my chivalry to the delinquent environment.
Since Her Majesty’s death coincides with the nativity of the Queen of the Universe, it got me thinking about various things.
They all had one thing in common: fading.
1. The fading ideal of a queen/princess. Gone are the days where they represented the ideals of femininity. Grace, kindness, beauty, why else do we call the special girls and women in our lives princesses and queens?
2. The fading demand for chivalry. In primary school, I had this ideal that when I finally got to interact with girls, I would be the finest gentleman. But I soon found that girls did not want to be princesses anymore. They wanted to be strong independent women, and if I as much as held a door open, I’d get looked at funny.
3. The fading of Christian devotion to Mary. Catholicism and our devotion to Mary would make perfect sense to anyone familiar with monarchy. Perhaps it is the American emphasis on individual rights and democracy, or progressive disdain for colonisation. Either way, it makes sense that with the fading exposure to a system modelled after the monotheist Christian authority structure, all of these other “fadings” follow suit.
In a world where gentleman seem to be undesired, where “nice guys finish last”, it’s a higher standard to hold oneself to.
But at the end of the day, Mary truly is the solution.
For women to emulate, and men to live up to.
May Her Majesty’s soul find favour with the Lord.
