Joe Wetterling, who is one of my all-time favorite presenters for the Catholic Writers Guild, has relaunched his catechetical website, Ho Kai Paulos. Which means something to some of you, and the rest of us can look here for the explanation. I always have to remind myself it’s not a Hawaiian island or a Korean pork dish. (But there could eventually be a mixed drink by the name, I’m sure.)
Joe W. makes my favorites list because he’s well-read, and insightful, and hilarious, and as best I can tell a nice guy on top of all that. He re-opens his site with a 101 on Objective vs. Subjective. Which reminds me of the other thing I like about the guy: He explains things that matter in plain English. If you need to bring a catechist up to speed, this is the place.
Up at Amazing Catechists, my review of the short DVD Remain with us Lord: Reflections on the Mass in Christian Life. Something that struck me as I was watching was how seamlessly the production integrates catechesis and discipleship. And, fitting with today’s other topic, Catholics in the pew share glimpses of their personal relationship with the Lord. Great resource. Nicely done. And high time someone put together such a thing. Perfect for RCIA and all that.
Or not. Re-reading my post a week after I wrote it, I see that it really is important to read this post first. None of my thoughts at NE make a whole lot of sense unless you’re party to the conversation in progress. Which is maybe not the conversation you think I’m having.
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And about that column at Circling Jericho, which is the same one I link to in the NE post: Don’t say mean things about it in any combox of mine, because I’ll know you either didn’t read the whole thing, or you’re outing yourself as a violator of rule #1.
Homeschool Connections is a catholic online school. Includes an option for unlimited access for the whole family to all their pre-recorded courses.
Fisher-More (the college) has an online Catholic school for elementary and up.
I have no direct experience with any of these, but I’d wager they’re all good. Credible sources. Worth a look if you need some other adult to keep your student moving forward. Or if you need to make the switch to homeschooling, but really you can’t homeschool, it’s just that there isn’t something else.
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Have another good tip? This is your explicit invitation to share worthwhile homeschooling links in the combox. For your own program or anyone else’s. Have at it.
It’s BADD time again, May 1. Of course I forgot, again, even though I knew it was coming up. But look, over at New Evangelizers, I reviewed Theology of the Body for Everybody. Which hits on exactly this topic. The whole living-in-a-body experience we human persons get to enjoy. Go look.
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And now you’re back, and here is my annual BADD comment, 2013 Edition:
People don’t want to be treated like dirt.
Profound, I know. (Hence Leah Perrault’s whole book on the topic. See “book review” above.)
When you read around at crotchety disability-rights sites, there’s a lot of conversation about how to think about disability. Something that confuses bystanders is the insistence that it’s not about the medical condition.
Which puzzles, for several reasons. The first is the happy-sad problem. Given the choice between hearing and not-hearing, seeing and not-seeing, walking and not-walking, everything else equal, we go for the ability every time.
Now someone might say, “I’m so glad I had this stroke, because it caused me to learn so much about __{insert profound revelation here}__.” And what they mean is typically not, “I always wanted to know what it was like to slur my speech!”
Rather, the “I’m so glad” is usually code for, “I discovered there was this whole part of my life I’d been ignoring, and now I’ve grown in ways that matter far more than any physical ability, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” People say that, and they mean it. For good reason. But still, if they could have the spiritual growth and the ability to remember words on command, yeah, they’d take both. Nothing wrong with being able to talk. We know this, instinctively.
But here’s the other thing we know instinctively: Humans deserve to be treated with respect. And the disrespect of disablism falls into two big lumps:
1. Can’t be bothered to have you around. Too much work. So terribly haaaaaarrrd to put in a ramp. So coooooomplicated trying to have one Mass, anywhere in the diocese, ever, with an ASL interpreter. So very, very overwhelming, having to change the seating arrangement, or modify the assignment, or find one more volunteer to assist the kid who needs assistance.
The message is pretty clear: It’s not that we don’t love you. We just don’t love you enough to go through any inconvenience for you.
2. Your kind of suffering is not my kind of suffering. This is straight out of the eugenics playbook. It’s no surprise that the recent fashion for killing off disabled children before they see light of day is always couched in terms of “avoiding suffering”. Better to be dead than to be you.
The feeling may well be mutual, but that’s no solution. The solution is to quit being such a wimp. To quit dividing the Fates of Man into a two-part list, labeled Normal Problems and Pitiful Freaks. This isn’t 1930. Get over that nasty notion that you must be ranked among The Fit in order to deserve life and respect.
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And since BADD is the annual day for airing our pet peeves, I’ll share one with you: If you never really appreciated your kid-job-marriage-finger-toe-brain until it was gone . . . could you keep it to yourself? Or just let everyone know you have a gratitude-deficiency-disorder. I guess I could cultivate some compassion for that.
Couldn’t agree more. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your *mind*, and all your strength.
Which means the more your mind is capable of, the more it needs to study the faith. If you don’t love Jesus, you’ll love something else. If you don’t worship Him, you’ll worship something else. If you don’t work for Him, you’ll work for something else. –> And if you don’t use your powers of reason to know and understand Him . . . that blank space in your brain will be filled with something else.
We’re made to know God, and know Him fully. No other way to be happy.
-me.
2. At CWG today, I tossed up a couple links on writing competence and the new evangelization. Something we struggle with at the writer’s guild is that fine line between “encouragement” and “enabling”. If we had a narrower focus, like “only literary fiction”, or “only professional authors with trade-published credentials”, it wouldn’t be so difficult. But since we represent all faithful-to-the-Magesterium Catholic writers, from aspiring amateurs on up, every genre . . . it’s a bumbly boat.
I like the bumbly boat, of course, since it’s the only one that’ll let me in.
I re-read my post and thought it wasn’t that bad. So you could go look, if you wanted.
5. A non-bacon recipe: Venison stroganoff. So good you can eat the leftovers cold for breakfast. What to do:
Use the recipe for beef stroganoff from the Joy of Cooking.
Skip the beef step. Toss your hunk of venison roast in the crockpot with a little liquid (water is a liquid), cook on low all day. Take it out and chop it up.
Start up the Joy recipe.
Crazy Innovation: Add parsnips — yes parsnips! Peel and shred them (you have to shred the onion anyway), and toss them in after the onion but before the mushrooms, and let them saute a bit before you put in the mushrooms.
When the mushroom mixture is all cooked up, toss in your diced venison, then the white whine wine, and then the sour cream. I’m sure it’s possible to use too much sour cream, but I don’t have any proof.
You’ll be serving this over rice — oh wait, most people do noodles, but actually rice tastes better. Yes, I said that.
Regardless of what you put your stroganoff over — or nothing at all, if you’re having it cold in the morning for breakfast — you’ll want to make gravy with the venison drippings. Chunk of butter in the bottom of saucepan, melt it, dump in a bit of flour and mix like a crazy person, and when it’s a nice pasty-paste, pour in the cooking liquid from the venison, mix it up. (Immersion blender is your friend.) That’s it. Best gravy in the world, easy-peasy.
6. I know. It’s not deer season. Too bad. Ask your friends to open up their freezer to you.
7. I had a long train of thought (hanging out laundry), and ended up with this thought: If there one thing — and only one thing — I could ask bishops and priests to do over the next year towards the reform of the Church, it would be this:
Make the Catholic Faith the Non-Negotiable Minimum Standard for Those in Ministry
People freak out when you do this.
So I completely get that it’s an unpleasant task, and clergy want to be all pastoral, and all that. And to be clear: I want the pews packed — packed — with tax-collectors and other sinners. That’s what not what I’m talking about. I’m speaking only to those in ministry. The DRE who tells the confirmandi that gay marriage is AOK. (Didn’t happen at my parish, whew.) That kind of stuff.
And that’s something only those in authority can actually enforce. We lay folk can do all kinds of helpful things to make up for a pastor who can’t read a contract, or doesn’t know how to hire a good plumber, or whose fingers freeze when it comes to dialing 9-1-1 . . . but we the laity can’t really do a whole lot when the hierarchy decides to be indifferent to the practice and teaching of the faith.
So that’s my new one thing. I figured out it’s the source of my chronic grumpiness about these or those other little hot-button topics. So I’m resolving to at least keep my temper-tantrums focused on the real issue.
Meanwhile, since what comes around goes around . . . What do you think is the one thing clergy wish laypeople would do?
My monthly column at New Evangelizers is up this morning. FTR: I’m absolutely no good at telling whether my daughters’ pants are too tight, and their skirts too short. So if you read my column, and you get this vision of me as one of those people whose daughters are always dressed with perfect modesty, and then you meet my kids and you think, Wow, that’s an amazingly sleazy outfit that child is wearing . . . It’s okay to voice your vote. Because yep. To quote myself:
” . . . we ladies don’t instinctively understand modesty — we’re no more aroused at the sight of a bare shoulder than at the sight of a naked Golden Retriever.”
1. My CatholicMom.com article for March is up. It’s on homeschooling when you struggle with self-discipline. It’s one of those topics where I wish I could be showing off my tremendous compassion for those poor people who just can’t seem to get it together.
I drew the line at posting a snapshot of my kitchen for the photo. Instead, you get a picture of men hitting each other with sticks. Same concept, seemlier illustration.
3. I set the kitchen timer to tell me when to pull SuperHusband’s dress shirt out of the dryer. (Yes. Dryer. I know.) It worked. I just went and pulled it out and hung it up right away. I can be very diligent about laundry, IF I’m supposed to be doing the taxes.
4. Taxes, episode 2. That’s today. Backside of the 1040, and yeah, it’s the Schedule A I don’t feel like dealing with. Tired of being responsible. I get tired of that very quickly. But I’ll do it, of course. There’s nothing like, “We will seize your house if you don’t mail in this worksheet” to really motivate a lady. UPDATE: DONE. WOOHOO!
7. You can discourage the Friday meat demon by quick throwing all your meaty leftovers into the freezer Thursday night. (Or give to dog if close to spoiling, but not quite inedible yet.) Pull them out and return to fridge Saturday, when the coast is clear.
And something I’m happy think about:
Señora M., my catechist friend from down the road, reports a big milestone: She led her first English-language religious ed class the other night. We first met in the Our Lady of Guadalupe room at the big Advent event in December, and since then she’s been helping out as a classroom assistant at her parish. She phoned me this morning, and I made it through the greetings in Spanish, and then I had to plead, “No entiendo.” She gave me the big news in English. But she isn’t giving up on me that easy, she’s determined to get my Spanish into working order. I’m honored.
*Some people equate “mercy” with “giving them a pass.” Those who have been privy to my ire know that the moment you start bungling on sexual abuse prevention and prosecution, is the moment I become a lady you do not like. Do not confuse mercy with tolerance. It’s not about overlooking the trivial flubs. It’s not about saying, “Really it wasn’t so bad.” Mercy only has meaning there where we want to give it least.
1. My book as available for sale! That is, you can’t actually *have* the book, but you can pay for it. So I guess it’s not so much a sale, yet, as a series of financial transactions straight out of 2nd 3rd year financial accounting, which is the year when nothing is ever just bought and sold, but always, always, passes through a whole series of special accounts that make perfect sense, I promise, if you can just keep ’em lined up right.
I think sometime this summer it graduates to an Accounting 101 exercise, where you can just pay money and have a book, done.
2. My favorite review-book supplier, MTF, seems to feel I need to get into the Year of Faith thing in a serious way. I broke down when I realized that there was no way I could ever remember on page 962 of Introduction to Catholicism for Adults exactly how I’d felt about Chapter 1, no matter how many little notes I penciled into the back inside cover. So I’m reviewing it a chapter (or so) at a time, over at the Happy Catholic Bookshelf. Chapter 1 is up. Hint: So far, so good.
4. The post you really want to read at AC this week is this one.
5. I’m trying to improve my Spanish, which is more difficult if you don’t have cable TV. So I’ve resorted to mining the Spanish-language section of my local Catholic bookstore. I think you could make a sort of Catechist Spanish Language Evaluation test that grades you by which sections of El Youcat you can read, and which ones leave you absolutely puzzled. To give you an idea of my junior-linguist credentials, the bold print on Youcat #374 is no trouble at all. In contrast, that Blaise Pascal quote on the sidebar of p. 191? No comprendo. (I’m okay with that. I don’t think I much understand Pascal in English, either.)
6. I wish all catechisms came with flip-book animation on the bottom right corner. Sometimes I just watch the guy doing cartwheels in Spanish.
7. What I want to do is phone my Spanish-speaking catechist friend and arrange a play date for tomorrow. What I should do is start on my taxes. I think?
We made it to Naples and back with exactly the same number and kind of children with which we set out. Thank you St. John Bosco, whom I did ask for assistance from time to time. St. Augustine, by the way, is completely awesome.
UPDATED to clarify: Both the saint and the city in Florida are awesome. Where they each rank within the category of People, Places, and Things Called “St. Augustine” I leave to the reader’s discretion.
Bookstore Management Tip: Consider not charging admission to your retail venue.
At Castillo de San Marcos, you have to buy admission before you get into the fort, where the bookstore is located. (This did not stop me from buying books, but not everyone feels the same way about books as I do. Also, we were going to see the fort anyway.)
In contrast, the Pirate Museum has its gift shop built into its entryway. Which is handy for parents who do not want to pay admission to the museum, but feel pretty lucky to get off with just looking at the Pirate Merchandise and buying one small pirate book for the trip home.
On the other hand, if early-modern marauders attempt a raid on the seashell-identification books at San Marcos, there are three lines of defense to keep them at bay.
Digital Devices = Road Trip Fever
What with recorded books, DVD’s, and iPods, twenty hours in the car was really quite peaceful. Causing me to come up with the ridiculous, husband-exasperating plan of going to the national March for Life next week. Friends with ulterior motives are aiding and abetting. So I think we’ll go.
And look at this: Pro-Life Feminist Hot Chocolate. It’s a super-bonus . . . and I get a glimpse of the reportedly lovely and delightful Helen Alvaré, and the kids get hot chocolate? See, if that doesn’t convince you of the worthiness of the pro-life cause, I don’t know what does.
A Missal.
I’m beside myself with excitement, because MTF slipped a shiny new super-gorgeous Daily Roman Missal in with the other review book I was expecting (Introduction to Catholicism). You’ll recall I had to glue the old one’s cover back together. But I’ve been virtuously resisting shelling out for a new edition, even though every time I hear the elegant, poetic lines of the new Mass translation, I’m dying to get my own copy.
The new book is about twenty-time awesomer than I had guessed, because the new edition is beefed up with a pile of handy tables and indexes and bits of mini-catechism. So soon very soon I’ll have a post up at AC reviewing the new Missal, and explaining why exactly my old one needed to be glued back together, because I always, always, shove it into my bag on the way to religious ed, because if you have that one book, you can teach the Catholic faith to anybody at all, ever, no matter what weird scheduling surprises come your way when you arrive at class.
Virtue.
I did not make a single pun on the word Missal in those previous paragraphs. We’ll just mark that down on in the big white space where my virtues are tallied. I am the picture of self-restraint. The St. Therese of resisting bad puns. Or something.
This photo taken a different, icier year. And yes, the power was out. For a week. I did not like it. I prefer the beach.
So here’s my experiment: I’m going to write a column for NE (due this week, runs next week), and I think the topic is “Things You Can Do To Evangelize When You Think You Can’t Evangelize”. Will this cause me to suddenly have many opportunities to evangelize?
You Might Be An Accountant If . . .
You’re goofing off browsing the Mid-Atlantic Congress catechetical conference page (which you are not planning to attend), and you notice all these financial management sessions:
Are you not dying to attend? I am. Seriously. Has anyone sat in on any presentations from these speakers (John Eriksen, Peter Denio, or Dennis Corcoran), and have an opinion on how good the workshops will be? For all Darwin doubts the use of an MBA, I begin to think that pastoral associates are the one class of people who might could benefit from such a course of study. Some reputable seminary ought to make a joint MA/MBA program.
Oh That Homeschooling Book
I printed out the whole giant nasty sprawling draft, stuck it in a binder, and it’s waiting for me attack it with my tin of magic markers. So I’m making progress. Slowly.
Castello San Marcos:By National Park Service (http://www.nps.gov) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
