Author: JenniferFitz

Another Good Book: Operation Mincemeat

If you have seen the film The Man Who Never Was, you can now get the rest of story via  Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre (Harmony Books / Crown Publishing, 2010).   Detailed accounts of all sides — the English counter-intelligence group, the corpse, the submariner, the Spanish & Germans who variously either nearly derailed the mission or who swallowed it whole.   Also details of the subsequent invasion of the Sicily, or why mincemeat mattered.  Plus photos, including images of all the original documents.  And “where are they now” follow-ups on all the major players.

Very fun look inside a great spy story.   Did I mention Ian Fleming is in there?  (Yes, that Ian Fleming.  Though he doesn’t do a whole lot.)  Most memorable passage:

The all-night negotiations went well, but at one point the visitors were forced to hide in a dusty cellar to avoid an impromptu visit from the gendarmes.  Courtney suffered a coughing fit, which threatened to give them away.  General Clark passed the choking commando some chewing gum.

“Your American gum has so little taste,” whispered Courtney, once the spasm subsided.

“Yes”, said Clark.  “I’ve already used it.”

For grown-ups, both for content and reading level.

PS: Watch the movie first.  Or you’ll get lost drowning in the detail.  So to speak.

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Finished reading Eric Sammon’s new book Who is Jesus Christ ages ago, and can give it an unqualified recommendation.  Had a few test-readers evaluate it for reading-level.  My ten-year-old, who can read anything at all so long as it is about guns, told me it was “Not hard to read, but not very entertaining.”  Don’t listen to him.  Parish Secretary, who is a normal catholic person who is pretty happy diving into Scott Hahn (as am I), says: Easy to read, but you have to go slowly because there is so much detail.  Official review coming soon.

More good books – medieval history

Two library finds:

Life on a Medieval Barony by William Stearns Davis (Harper & Brothers, 1923).  Suprisingly good information — I’ve seen far, far worse in more modern works.  Non-fiction, but uses a fictional barony in northern France circa 1220 to ground the descriptions of medieval life in a cast of characters.   Much of the narrative material is pulled from period sources, ie the telling of our baron’s hunt is actually borrowed from a medieval hunting account.  Makes for a very dashing baron — bit larger than life, as will happen with hunting stories.

–>  The narrative style packs in a lot more detail than you could get away with otherwise and still keep readers awake and even flipping pages to find out what  happens next.

Given the amount of information (400 pages)  and the references to mature topics, I’d say this fits better for teens and above.    Would make a good parent-teen book to read together, as it raises all kinds of theological and moral issues for discussion fodder, and using someone else’s era maybe helps take a step back and see things more clearly?

Fine as an introduction to medieval life for a teen or adult reader, but enough good details to be worth a look for any amateur medievalist.  A knowledge of catholicism in general would be helpful, since there is a quite a lot of describing medieval religious practices.

 

My second lucky find was an audio lecture series,  Heaven or Heresy: A History of the Inquisition by Thomas F. Madden.   If you are catholic, sooner or later someone’s gonna bring up the inquisition.  This set of does a good job of distinguishing the facts (sometimes sordid, sometimes not) from the legend. Gives you enough detail that you could reasonably hope to explain not just the differences between the different inquisitions (Spanish versus Roman verus medieval Papal verus medieval local, etc etc), but also how, say, the Spanish inquisition changed over time.

SuperHusband has listened to some of his other lectures in the series, and found them informative and balanced.    (Recall: SuperHusband = SuperProtestant.  Not a guy who would go in for catholic propaganda.)    I found this to be the same way.  If you are Torquemada, well, your reputation isn’t helped.

Pre-requisites: It is expected that you are familiar with the basics of the catholic faith, including vocabulary like “Dominican” “mendicant” “encyclical” “anti-pope” etc.  Madden generally offers a brief definition of these types of words, but you’ll be on much firmer ground if you aren’t hearing them for the first time.  You’ll also want a general idea of the outline of European history from the time of Christ forward.

I’d give this one a ‘buy’ recommend if your budget allows.  Though I wish the man would write a book on the topic.

 

The Better Part

This year both of our candidates for governor were close to my own age.  Would have known them at school, if I had gone to the other state U.   So the election forced the same thoughts as whenever I read the alumni news blurbs in the back of the ol’ college newsletter.

–> Having laid aside my career-ish activities a decade ago, I am always surprised, and a touch envious, of how much  my classmates have accomplished since then.  Partner of this law firm, director of that state agency, etc. etc.  Naturally no one’s sending in announcements along the lines of “Bill Smith, BA Philosphy 1994, was recently promoted to assistant-janitor at Target Store #3581 . . .” — I know there are plenty of us non-accomplishers, and we keep our news a little lower-profile.

Being a homeschooling mom, there’s no real credential to report.  Everyone (who can) has got kids, everyone manages to educate their kids.  Homeschooling isn’t some guarantee of a superior child-product:  I know plenty of great teens out there who grew up attending the local public schools, both parents working full-time.

On a good day, though, I’m Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, while the other ladies bustle in the background.  It’s sort of selfish, honestly.  My peers are running the wider world, and I’m sitting out on the patio table reading Beatrix Potter to a six-year-old.  It’s a sacrifice yes.  Give up something good in order to have something better.

New Review Book – Who is Jesus Christ? by Eric Sammons

My new Catholic Company review book arrived yesterday, and I’m tearing through it.  Super good.  It’s Who is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew by Eric Sammons.

–> Whose blog, The Divine Life, is the one I click on in my feed reader second, right after Dr. Boli.   So I guess I should have known that I would like the book, but somehow with the title and Eric’s smartness and all that, I thought it would be too difficult for me, or sort of dry, or something like that.   I thought this  because I am pretty stupid that way.

Not boring at all.  Not one bit.  Eminently readable, no big words so far (I’m on p. 74), and the chapters are short, too.   Just plain enjoyable.  But jam-packed solid good.  You know I have no patience for touchy-feely watery blathery stuff.

So that’s my mid-book pre-review, which I had to post because SuperHusband is getting sick of me saying “wow, this is such a good book”, so I thought I’d plague the internet instead.  Full official review coming soon.   Meanwhile, I think you can safely ask Saint-a-Claus to get you this one for All Saint’s Day.

Two New Michelle Buckman Books – Recommended

This summer I got to pre-read two new novels by Michelle Buckman as part of the Catholic Writers Guild’s “Seal of Approval” program.  (Both books passed).

They are now in print:  Rachel’s Contrition and The Death Panels.  Two totally different stories, but both are fun, readable, and thoughtful.  And challenging.

–> By “challenging” I do not mean “artsy prose that borders on incomprehensible” and “long passages inserted as a test of your perseverance as a reader”.  MB’s writing is fast-paced, page-turner stuff.  What intellectual-types read when they have the flu, and the rest of us read without having to make up excuses for why we’re allowed to enjoy ourselves once in a while.

But FYI, Rachel’s Contrition leans to contemporary women’s lit (but it’s good!  it is!), and is the more literary of the two.   The Death Panels is a dystopian pro-life thriller.  Lotta fun, but you’ve got to get into the whole dystopia genre, which will require varying amounts of suspension of disbelief depending on which way your politics run.

Don’t say you weren’t warned: Adult topics.  (Fine for mature teens.) –>  If you hear the term “catholic fiction” and imagine some kind of horrid saccharine drivel, you have been hearing wrong.    These books actually are, wait for it . . . . inspiring.  But in a demanding, I-have-seen-the-dark-side-of-my-own-soul way.  No excerpt from one of these two will ever be reprinted in any chicken-soup themed collection.

Good stuff.  Recommended.

More like an Ephesian than I’d like to be

So yesterday in the daily Mass readings we were back to that famous passage in Ephesians, which provokes so many hearty explanations about how it either means that she must obey, or means that she need not.  So naturally I had to think about that.

” . . . as they regard the Lord” seemed to be the key phrase.  Not, “as you regard the President”, or “your boss”, or “your feudal master”.  Jesus.  Not a wife-beater.

Well.  Hmmn.   How exactly do I regard the Lord?

I informed SuperHusband that I was really quite equal in my treatment of the both of them — I talk to him a lot, and listen very little.

SuperHusband thought that was maybe not what St. Paul was hoping for.

 

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For a good Christian role model on this topic, take a look at Mother Theresa of Calcutta in her biography C ome Be My Light. Complete submission to the will of God is also complete confidence in the will of God.  Alignment of the wills.  I think that might be more the goal.

 

NFP and the Non-Catholic Spouse

This post is for Entropy at Just Between Us, who asks:

There are a few rules to being open to life. How do I manage these sexual “restrictions”? Sure I could lay down the law and then I might not be married anymore or at least not happily so. It is easier for me to implement these things than him, one, because I’m a woman and view sex differently, positively, but differently from a man, two, simply because I believe it’s true, and here I am asking him to buy into something he just doesn’t. He’s not a jerk, he’s just not Catholic. And this is not what he signed up for.

I don’t want to get too personal in this quite public format (and maybe I’ve already crossed that line) but I do need advice

SuperHusband is not Catholic, and despite his general superness, this particular issue was not an easy one for us.  Here are a few thoughts — kind of tossed out of the top of my head, but these are the big things that mattered for me:

First of all, You should know that the church recognizes the reality of your situation.

From  PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR THE FAMILY VADEMECUM FOR CONFESSORS CONCERNING SOME ASPECTS OF THE MORALITY OF CONJUGAL LIFE:

13. Special difficulties are presented by cases of cooperation in the sin of a spouse who voluntarily renders the unitive act infecund. In the first place, it is necessary to distinguish cooperation in the proper sense, from violence or unjust imposition on the part of one of the spouses, which the other spouse in fact cannot resist.46, 561).] This cooperation can be licit when the three following conditions are jointly met:

1. when the action of the cooperating spouse is not already illicit in itself;47

2. when proportionally grave reasons exist for cooperating in the sin of the other spouse;

3. when one is seeking to help the other spouse to desist from such conduct (patiently, with prayer, charity and dialogue; although not necessarily in that moment, nor on every single occasion).

Translation:  If your spouse puts on a condom, and you’ve told him you think it’s wrong, and you weren’t going <<wink wink “honey whatever you do don’t put on a condom” wink wink>> but rather he knows that you genuinely do believe this is wrong (and perhaps you’ve even given him the reasons), so long as *your end* of the act is moral, you may be okay.

Now if he’s good with abstaining, abstain.

–> And remember, take this one night at time.  If he’s willing to abstain tonight, that’s good.  Just go with it.  (Unless you are definitely in the infertile time, in which case you should seduce him like a crazed vixen.  Did I say that out loud?  Anyway, he won’t mind.)

But if you have a really serious reason (such as saving your marriage) for cooperating with the act despite his immoral decision, it may be licit.  Which is to say:  “not a mortal sin”.

That said, there’s  a serious responsibility on you to do everything you can to make it so that he can do the right thing.  Which means learning NFP like nobody’s business.  And yeah, just ignore that chirpy voice from the NFP Establishment saying “your husband should be involved in charting blah blah blah”.  Hello, no, unless your husband has a thing for mucus, he’s not going to help you chart.  The measure of a man is not his eagergness to write down a temperature recording.

–> Do note that once you understand NFP, contraception gets a little laughable.  Because it comes to your attention that 100% of condom failures occur during the fertile period.  So if you are serious about avoiding pregnancy, DO NOT HAVE INTERCOURSE WHEN YOU KNOW YOU ARE FERTILE.  Which you can know, thanks to NFP.   I don’t care what he’s wearing, that’s the only time of month babies are made.

(I should add: Babies are just lovely.  If you want to conceive, you can use NFP to help him know exactly when his condom is most likely to fail.  But then, if wants to conceive, he should take that thing off.)

You also have to really learn the why’s of your faith.  Because it just is not going to last very long any other way.  He should be challenging it.  Catholicism is nuts — my goodness, the Incarnation, the Resurrection — who can blame the man for doubting?

But that process of him testing the faith, and you putting in the work to really know the reasons for your beliefs, is going to transform your life.  He may or may not end up catholic (SuperHusband is a really Super Non-Catholic), but he will understand more over time, and that will be a help.  And you will be firmer and more mature in your faith, which will help make all this much more clear.

Finally, here’s something to know about contrition:

When you walk into that confessional because, once again, you have totally blown it, all you need is the resolution not to sin again.  Yes, you need to really mean it.  But you do not need to know how you are going to carry it out.    You do not need to be convinced this is something you can somehow magically muster the ability to resist for the indefinite future.

Yes yes, you should develop a plan to avoid sin if you can.  Yes, many sins can eliminated by sheer hard work.  But when your occasion of sin is your own husband, you can neither avoid nor eliminate.  (And you should not want to!)

–> The part of your situation that involves your husband, that part is God’s job.

So when you make that resolution to amend your life, it is okay to remind the Lord that you will be needing some assistance.  And that you will do everything in your power to avoid the sin, and are simply going to trust Him that He will do what is required on His end.

So that’s confession.

And then if you find yourself back there again, because you screwed up (so to speak) again, please note: There is a reason they keep regular hours for this sacrament, and they’ve been doing it a whole lot longer than your or I ever became Catholic.  We aren’t the first members of the church who actually need a Savior.

Take heart.  There is hope.

Timeline Update – zut.

Nuts.  I logged out of google so I could view the timeline as an anonymous viewer.  Which worked.  Then I downloaded the file to my PC as an excel document.  Formatting was a little weird.  I had to expand the first two rows row heights to make them show up properly.  Then mess with the page layout setting to get it ready to print nicely.

Hmmn and then I tried printing directly from the google file.  It would only ‘print’ into a PDF, not my printer.  (That could be a personal problem.)  And the PDF file doesn’t quite work, because the cell labels don’t overwrite blank cells, and the page breaks cut up my centuries.

So, er, it’s a great timeline spreadsheet. For anyone who knows how to work a spreadsheet well enough they could have made their own anyway.  Hint: Look at mine on google for ideas, then quick go make your own at home.

Did I mention I was so bored the other night I watched TV?

(No and I’m still not blogging.  This is all your imagination.)

My Timeline File.

No, I have not resumed blogging.  Pretend you don’t see me.

But I got a tip on how to post my timeline spreadsheet as a google doc.

Here is the link to c&p if need be:  https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Asn_1d0UfHx-dG5nTEJSYWpsQWF2SjV4bm5iVXpvLVE&hl=en

I will tell you that in the original Excel file on my PC, it worked great. Makes a classroom or hallway-sized timeline, to fill in with whatever it is you want to study.  Whether I successfully exported it to google, remains to be seen.   But it’s there if you need such a thing, so someone let me know if it works for you.

Jen.  <– still on typing ban.  Did I type this?  Shhh.

 

PS: I do not love google’s spreadsheet software.

PPS: I originally made this for my Religious Ed class.  But I chose the “Before Christ” and “Anno Domini” labels mostly because kids never seem to know what B.C. & A.D. stand for, so I thought posting it on the wall all year might help that.  You can of course (I hope Google lets you) save a copy of spreadsheet to your own computer, and then play with the labels and centuries all you want, per your preferences.