7 Takes: Other Than Bacon

If you’d gotten the impression I’ve spent the last two weeks with no other thoughts than bacon . . . that would be a reasonable guess. Since it’s Friday, I’ll be sociable and make a list of seven.

1. At AmazingCatechists.com, I wrote yesterday about how to evaluate your Christian Formation situation using the Great Commandment. It’s a fleshing-out of this comment I left at William O’Leary‘s combox:

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.

3. Is it a cult, or just weird and stupid? Fr. L. posted an excellent article on the traits that characterize cult-like behaviors.

Readers here will be assured, having reviewed the criteria, that I am in no danger of becoming a cult leader. Whew.

4. Sometimes I wonder whether what I wrote somewhere else is really of interest to readers here, and whether I should post a link. The other month when some people were freaking out because Pope Francis Is Not Pope Benedict, I posted some thought at AC. Naturally I linked it all back to catechesis, since I didn’t want Lisa M. kicking me off her blog. And because it was relevant.

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?

Your Father is Just This Guy

In the past 48 hours I’ve been guilty, more than once, of uttering crude expressions of impatience concerning select clergy. Not publicly, and not out of ill-will, just a general, “Will this guy get with it for a change!”

Lots of us are guilty. We want all these guys we call “Father” — the one we grew up with, or without, and the ones in our Church — we want them to be wonderful. We want them to be holy, and kind, and wise, and good. And we want them to know what to do. To know how to fix things.

But they’re just these guys. They wear funny clothes. They have strange taste in music. They are too indulgent with that child, and too severe with the other one. They didn’t do Christmas / Thanksgiving / Birthdays / Math Homework / Yard Maintenance / The Easter Triduum just the way we think they should. They work too long, or retire too early, or both.

They stink at interior decorating. And most of them snore.

Also, when you get to be a parent of a certain age, you look back and do the math, and realize just how young your father was, way back when, when you as a child thought he was so old. When you thought he knew everything, because you were six? He was barely into adulthood. When you thought he knew nothing, because you were sixteen? He was still just cutting his teeth on the What Do I Do With This Teenager of Mine problem. And when he’s eighty, he’s being eighty for the first time in his life. He’s just improvising.

He’s guessing. That’s what fathers do.

I’ve lost my patience with the Francisco-Obsessing. He’s just this guy. He dresses funny. Guys dress funny. It’s what they do.

I know the Holy Father, and your bishop, and your parish priest, and your dad, they all do certain symbolic actions that send important messages. But you know how there’s all those NFP instructors who make that smarmy admonition that husbands should do the charting, as if the measure of a man’s worth could all be summed up in one glorious epitaph, “He Recorded Her Mucus Faithfully”?

A man is not a symbol. He’s a person. If he doesn’t chart, but he does do his best to earn a living, and help rear the children, and say nice things to you now and again, and maybe even change your oil, doesn’t that count for something? You can be the dad that tells bedtime stories, or the one who reads the Bible at breakfast, or the one who plays ball on Sunday afternoon, or the one who takes a kid along when he goes to the hardware store . . . and you don’t have to be all of them. Being one guy is enough.

Guys who cheat on their wives, or abandon their children, or refuse to support the family, or commit any number of gross abuses of their responsibility? They deserve the harsh words that come their way. Guys who don’t discipline their children, ever, or can’t be bothered to see they get a decent education, or don’t listen and take action when the kids come to them with problems? They need a serious talking to. They need to put on their Man Pants and step up to the plate.

But the guy who dresses funny and dines at all the wrong restaurants? Whatever. He’s not a better dad because he’s so dapper, or so frugal. He’s not a worse dad because he wants Thanksgiving served on heirloom china, or on paper plates.

And you can’t know what it all means, not really. If he surrounds himself with elegant things, he’ll be accused of being self-indulgent, or pompous, and also of being erudite and cultured. If he wears the same pair of jeans for fifteen years straight, he’ll be accused of being slovenly and lazy, and also a “man of the people” who “doesn’t get caught up in appearances”. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.

Maybe he’s just this guy.

Francisco’d better appoint good bishops. He’d better elevate good cardinals. He ought to direct the curia deftly, pay attention to necessary reforms, and teach clearly and accurately. He needs to cultivate his own spiritual life lest he fall into greater sins than the one he commits already (whatever they are, I have no idea what they might be), and in the hopes that he might yet grow further in wisdom and holiness.

Lord willing, he’ll do all this, and do it well.

And if he does, I pretty much don’t care where he lives. I don’t care what he eats. I don’t care about the car he drives, the shoes he wears, or the kind of music he listens to at night. Not so long as none of it’s immoral, and none of it prevents him from doing his real Dad Jobs.

And if he screws it up? He’s accountable for that, too. It’s a false piety to think that “Honor Your Father” means “Pretend Sin Is Not Sin”. Francisco has serious responsibilities. Heresy and dissent are rife within the Church. Corruption, crime, and immorality among the clergy and laity have got to be addressed. What is true and good — whether it comes in more formal or more humble trappings — needs to be encouraged and promoted. No amount of visiting prisoners or chatting with the help gets a pope excused from doing his (other) fatherly duties.

But any man who’s doing his Dad Jobs gets a free pass to dress as goofy as he wants, sit in his favorite comfy chair, and stock his beverage cooler with whatever the heck he wants. He’s a father. Call him to task on his Manly Responsibilities, if indeed he neglects them. You don’t have drink his Pabst Blue Ribbon, or his Glenfiddich, if turns your stomach. More for him. So be it.

Holy Thursday’s tomorrow. Pray for priests.

I {heart} Francisco

Because of stuff like this:

Little facts about his record. Well-rounded. Is the pope Catholic, we always worry? Yes, it turns out he is.

And because a serious attitude towards gospel poverty (at which I utterly absolutely totally stink) and evangelization is what the Church needs. Now and always.

Hat tip to Fr. Z, who gets accused of many things, for calling off the dogs on his end of the liturgical spectrum. And for getting our brains on straight, thank Margaret Rose Realy, who’s posted the Thursday prayer for priests.

Let me just point out that even though I can be the worst of complainers (and I’m sure others find plenty to complain about in me, rightly so), from the day these guys begin to answer their vocation, they spend the whole rest of their lives under constant attack — sometimes from us in the pews, always from the one who hates them most.

Pope Francis

Why would the new pope begin his pontificate by a) praying for his predecessor, and then b) asking us to pray for him? Because it’s what is needed.

Seven Takes: Life, Death, Warped Things Governments Do

No, I’m not back to regular blogging. But I had approximately seven things to say, and it’s a Friday, so that makes this Seven Quick Takes, right?

1. Why yes, that was us you saw at the National ~~Vocations Meet-Up~~ March for Life.

Low point: Children in tears due to experience of being a southern-person whose mother does not know how to dress them for cold weather.

High point: Making a brief retreat into the National Gallery to go potty, rest, and warm-up, then re-emerging to a gentle made-for-TV snow flurry, taking up our signs, and falling into line with these guys. Who sing beautifully.

Weird Point: The Metronome, as my 3rd-grader calls it, is determined not to take my money. I kept trying to pay full fare, but the machines refused me at every turn. Fortunately the kind metro-ladies are apparently used to clueless tourists with five children in tow, and sorted me out with a combination of generosity and exasperation that I think must be the hallmark of the metro system.

2. Petersburg National Battlefield is a good place to run the kids and get your history fix all at once. The ranger does come around checking to see if you’ve paid.

–> Touring tip: Always ask if you’re supposed to pay. Because they expect you to pay, even if they never ever tell you that. And the ranger lady has a gun. Luckily I had asked.

Discussion Question: Any Particular Reason the Union had to engage in war? Why not just let the Confederacy secede, and work on patching things up diplomatically? Put another way: Did the US Civil War meet just war criteria for the Union?

My boy says yes. I’m playing neutral professor-person.

In other US history topics: The essay “Smuggler Nation” in this month’s Harpers is really quite good. One more shovel of fodder for that pirates-vs.-privateers topic that’s always coming up around this household.

Our other airline-miles magazine subscription, Western Horseman ran a great piece a month or so ago on the troubles ranchers along the US-Mexican border are having with Mexican smugglers, and the lack of cooperation from some of the US border patrol in keeping their lands safe. I can’t seem to find an article link. But let me just say right now, that if you purchase approximately one plane ticket every five years, and want a family-friendly periodical to purchase with your miles before they expire, WH is the one.

3. My son objects to the strong language in Dorothy Sayer’s Lord Peter Views the Body. It pleases me greatly to discover I’ve reared a middle-schooler who complains about words like “damn” and “hell” improperly used.

4. My January New Evangelizers column was 10 Ways to Support Evangelization Even When Your Parish is Falling Apart.

Apparently it grabbed someone’s attention, because the Catholic Vitamins people invited me to do an interview for their podcast. Which is exciting, in an I-hope-my-phone-battery-doesn’t-die-while-we’re-talking kind of way. I think I can bribe my kids into being quiet with the promise of Krispy Kreme donuts. Also, presumably this is just one step on the long road towards true fame? By which I mean, of course, being on Rhett & Link’s Good Mythical Morning? My son doesn’t think I’ll ever be quite that good, but he puts on an encouraging face all the same.

5. Helen Alvare nails it on the head in her analysis of the new HSS regulations.

Let me observe once again that there would be no moral objection at all if the government merely required employers to pay workers a sum sufficient to pay for the desired contraceptive services — for example, by putting the necessary funds into a healthcare savings account that employees could then use to purchase supplemental insurance if they so chose.

And how exactly is it “freedom of religion” if insurance companies and self-insurance administrators must sell (or give away, per the new iteration of regulations) products they may themselves object to? Is there no legal right to sell insurance for some but not all health care services? Will insurers eventually be required to pay for euthanasia as well? Apparently there is a religious test required in order to enter the insurance industry.

6. Speakin’ of that constitution thing . . . my boy observes that 2/3rds of gun deaths are suicides. (Wikipedia’s citing 60%.) Which puts a certain corner of the culture in the odd position of wanting to outlaw something they’re trying to legalize. Apparently depressed and disabled people should die, but only at the hands of licensed death-care providers?

If you aren’t from Gunlandia, you probably should not visit gunmemes.com. It takes a special red-state redness to enjoy.

7. You know you live in a warped culture when you feel the need to clarify something like this: “For the record, I’m 100% opposed to all forms of murder and suicide.”

Ooh, oooh, want me to exasperate everybody in one single catechism quote? How about this one? Enough to make everyone you know get all squirmy-wormy:

2269 The fifth commandment forbids doing anything with the intention of indirectly bringing about a person’s death. The moral law prohibits exposing someone to mortal danger without grave reason, as well as refusing assistance to a person in danger.

The acceptance by human society of murderous famines, without efforts to remedy them, is a scandalous injustice and a grave offense. Those whose usurious and avaricious dealings lead to the hunger and death of their brethren in the human family indirectly commit homicide, which is imputable to them.⁷⁰

Unintentional killing is not morally imputable. But one is not exonerated from grave offense if, without proportionate reasons, he has acted in a way that brings about someone’s death, even without the intention to do so.

Happy February.

My vote for Most Important Book of 2012

I just spent 3 days in the largest Catholic bookstore in the world. I bought one book. This is it:

Then I was stuck in an airport for five hours. Perfect timing.

What it is: Tiến Dương is a real guy about your age (born 1963) who is now a priest in the diocese of Charlotte, NC. Deanna Klingel persuaded him to let her tell his story, and she worked with him over I-don’t-know-how-long to get it right. Fr. Tien is a bit embarrassed to be singled out this way, because his story is no different from that of thousands upon thousands of his countryman. But as Deanna pointed out, if you write, “X,000 people endured blah blah blah . . .” it’s boring. Tell one story well, and you see by extension the story of 10,000 others.

The book is told like historical fiction, except that it’s non-fiction verified by the subject — unlike posthumous saints’ biographies, there’s no conjecture here. It’s what happened. The reading level is middle-grades and up, though some of the topics may be too mature for your middle-schooler. (Among others, there is a passing reference to a rape/suicide.) The drama is riveting, but the violence is told with just enough distance that you won’t have nightmares, but you will understand what happened — Deanna has a real talent for telling a bigger story by honing in on powerful but less-disturbing details. Like, say, nearly drowning, twice; or crawling out of a refugee camp, and up the hill to the medical clinic.

–> I’m going to talk about the writing style once, right now: There are about seven to ten paragraphs interspersed through the book that I think are not the strongest style the author could have chosen. If I were the editor, I would have used a different expository method for those few. Otherwise, the writing gets my 100% stamp of approval — clear, solid prose, page-turning action sequences, deft handling of a zillion difficult or personal topics.

Why “Most Important Book?”

This is a story that needs to be known. It is the story of people in your town and in your parish, living with you, today. And of course I’m an easy sell, because the books touches on some of my favorite topics, including but not limited to:

Economics
Politics
Diplomacy
Poverty
Immigration
Freedom of Religion
Freedom, Period
Refugee Camps
Cultural Clashes
Corruption
Goodness and Virtue
Faith
Priestly Vocations
Religious Vocations
Marriage and Family Life as a Vocation
Lying
Rape
Suicide
Generosity
Orphans
Welfare
Stinky Mud
Used Cars
Huggy vs. Not-Huggy

You get the idea. There’s more. Without a single moment of preaching. Just an action-packed, readable story, well told.

Buy Bread Upon the Water by Deanna K. Klingel, published by St. Rafka press.

Book Review: Benedict of Bavaria

I picked Benedict of Bavaria for my latest Catholic Company review book because I had a feeling I should. I didn’t want to. I’ve developed this gut-reaction to all things Pope-Book, thinking that surely it will be a major effort, I’d rather be reading an American Girls mystery . . . you know the fear. But I reasoned that a little work would be good for me, so I took the plunge.

I love being wrong.

This was a fun and interesting read, and not difficult at all. Very enjoyable way to learn more about the Holy Father.

What it is: The book tells the story of Pope Benedict’s life from his birth in Germany through about 2007. The focus is on his German heritage — the villages he lived in, life during World War II and conflict within the Church over how to respond to the Nazi regime, and his career as a theologian and cleric in postwar-Germany. His family life, including the role of his sister Maria in supporting him throughout his life, is a steady theme.

In all it’s a fascinating look at the personal life, career, and heritage of the man who now leads the Church. An appendix detailing “A Day in the Life of the Holy Father” is particularly interesting in light of the Vatican-Leaks scandal this summer.

Included are excerpts from and analysis of his writings over the years, showing his development as a scholar, and providing inspiration and encouragement to the reader. The author writes from a Catholic, faithful-to-the-Church point of view, but without glossing over or excusing problems in the Church.

Reading Level: I’d recommend this for adults who have some basic background knowledge of the Catholic faith, and of recent history. The writing is clear and easy to follow for those who read on a true high-school or early-college reading level, but you do need to be the kind of reader who knows words like “Jesuit” “postmodernism” “celebrant” “ora et labora” and so forth. A map of Germany is handy to have on hand as well — Google Earth would work fine — because there are so many German place-names mentioned.

Excellent choice for someone who knows the faith, but doesn’t know much about the life of the Holy Father. Also recommended for young men discerning a vocation to the priesthood — great glimpse into the kinds of different challenges our clergy face, from seminary on up through the ranks of the hierarchy.

Summary: Very nicely done. This one’s a keeper. Deserves to be better known and more widely read.

***

I’m grateful once again to The Catholic Company for letting me participate in their reviewer program, in which bloggers like myself get great books for free, in exchange for an honest review — though they seem to mostly stock good stuff, so that makes my job a whole lot easier.

They remind me to remind you that The Catholic Company is also a great online store for all your Catholic gift needs, such as baby baptism and christening gifts. You can also find a wide selection of Catholic Bible Studies for both parish groups and individuals, as well as a variety of other Catholic Bible study resources.

Love and Priestly Ministry at the End of Life

On the way home from the funeral vigil, my seven-year-old told me, “This weekend I’m going to give up donuts and playground for Father Fix.” For the repose of his soul.

It had been her idea to attend the wake. Had she had her way, we would have gone to “all the funeral things,” as she put it, even to the point of calculating whether we could beat the hearse to New Jersey for the burial. (No, darling, we are not driving to New Jersey for the burial. If I’m going to drive that distance, we will go to Florida to see your great-grandmother.) She saw all the funeral flowers at the church and tried to figure out where, at eight at night, we could quick go out and buy some flowers of our own to put on that altar in Father’s honor.

She had loved that man.

And I didn’t even know she knew him.

Father Fix was the retired pastor of our parish, retired before ever we joined the parish when my daughter was a baby. He lived in a nearby nursing home, and on Sunday mornings a pair of parishioners would bring him to Mass.

He’d sit up by the front pews in his clericals, and receive Holy Communion right after the priest and deacon, and then during the communion procession, about half the congregation would pat his shoulder or shake his hand as they passed him on their way back to their own seats. During donuts after mass people who knew him would sit with him, and one time I thanked him for donating the (stunning) remnants of his library to the parish. He told me he was glad someone was reading his books. I am not smart enough to read most of his books, but I can admire them.

On Sunday morning before he died, I remember seeing him at mass and thinking, “He will not be with us much longer.” And how sorry we would be at that loss.

Wednesday when I learned he had died, I wasn’t sure whether to attend his funeral services. I had barely known him, I thought. There were so many others who had known him for decades, who remembered him as their pastor and friend. I didn’t want to crowd the church, stealing precious seat space from people who had known him so much of their lives.

But my daughter? She had known him since forever.

He was one of her priests. By her reckoning, he was more reliably present than any other priest to grace our parish. The way she counted it, Father Fix sitting in his nursing-home-issue wheelchair, shaking hands and whispering good wishes to all who wanted his blessing, he was doing as great a work as anything else that happened at mass.

He was doing a work that even a toddler can understand. Long before she could tell you about transubstantiation, or make sense of the Gospel, or figure out that the homily was something that might be meant for her little ears, she could understand the ministry of Father Fix. When I told her he had died, she said to me, “He was always so nice to everybody.”

How could you not love a man who had been kind to you at mass every week of your life?

So we went to the funeral vigil. We signed the guest register, and took extra prayer cards to bring home to the siblings, and sat in a wedge-corner pew perfect for two. She studied the picture of Father Fix on one side of the memorial card, and was delighted when I flipped it over to show her the image on the other side – the Sacred Heart of Jesus. After the eulogy, she directed me to get in line to visit the casket.

When it was her turn, she knelt before Father’s body and prayed.

He was decked out in the gold vestments he’d requested – a request she had learned of on her class’s church tour that week. Her teacher had told them about the liturgical colors, and explained why we wouldn’t be seeing gold again for a while, until new ones could be obtained.

After my daughter prayed, we looked through the the scrapbooks on the table in the narthex. Pictures, newspaper articles, all documenting that other life he had lived.

People will say of someone who suffers great infirmity at the end of life, “He is not the man we once knew.” I felt that betrayal in reverse: Looking through pictures of earlier honors and busy parish events, the man my daughter and I had known was not there. Where was the peaceful, quiet man who loved everybody?

Oh sure, a parish needs a pastor. Somebody’s got to confer sacraments and manage the building fund, and on an ordinary day I’d agree those are essentials of the priestly vocation. Through the sacrament of holy orders, the Holy Spirit confers a grace and a distinctive mark upon a man, setting him aside for these works.

It was not my idea that she make a sacrifice on Father’s behalf. It was her idea, born of her love for her priest, unbidden by anyone.

What is a priest for?

He proclaims the Gospel. In a particular way, through the sacraments, he brings God to us and us to God. The Holy Spirit works through a priest, to share the life of Christ with each of us.

For seven years my daughter was in-between sacraments. A lifetime.

And during those long seven years, God who is Love Himself put a particular priest in our pews. “What is your name?” Moses had asked of God. The answer wasn’t, “I am He who does.” It was: I am.

In those pews was a little girl who didn’t need a doing-priest. She needed a being-priest.

Father put himself at the service of the Lord. His life’s mission was to share the love of Christ in whatever way God required. And he did.

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