The US Catholic Bishops are leading a Fortnight of Freedom from June 21st to July 4th.
Feeling shy? Freedom’s not just for Catholics! The whole point of religious freedom is that you get to choose whether and how to practice your faith. Is it really so important that your employer set aside money for birth control only, instead of giving you the same amount of cash into a general-use health care savings fund? (Or just cash, if you run libertarian.) We all love to see a ‘win’ for our own cause. But regardless of where you stand on contraception, healthcare, or organized religion, the Bill of Rights just rocks. Defend it now.
Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, this bringing old meaning to Man, you’re sick.
Dozens of takes, 3.5 at a time.
1.
The reason I’m asking internet strangers, instead of my dearly beloved, for advice on teen boy chastity, is this: The SuperHusband has ample experience with “Teen Boy”, but neither he nor I had much exposure to the whole “Chastity” thing until well after our teen years. So while we can tell you all about the Marriage-NFP Experience, if we were to draw on our own high school experiences for guidance on how to parent our boy, well, that would not be the most successful method.
And since this is the AoA 3.5 Takes, the Man Event to exceed all Man Events, I’m going to keep on asking.
2.
Here’s the round-up of answers so far:
Darwin wrote from his own experience: Avoid Porn, Develop Aesthetics. That was very encouraging — we have both the porn-free household and the collection of art books (really just two or three, but it’s a start). And I never would have considered the topic this way. I’m really glad I asked!
I’d tell my boys that all the trash you see on the net or movies or mags has nothing to do with real men, real woman, and real sex. It’s just a way to get money out of morons. In fact it’s the opposite of those real things, and only idiots waste time on it and screw up any chance of meeting and loving a real woman like my wife, who as my children know is The Most Glorious and Beautiful Woman God Ever Created.
If you teach young men to value their first born, they will get in the habit of thinking about whether or not they’d want whoever it is they are looking at (and attracted to) to be their kids mom. It is very effective, especially if you imagine a smart little five year old berating you for your lack of foresight.
Valuable reminders, and it is so helpful to hear this from a man’s perspective. Larry D. assures me he has a post in the works (give him time, he’s got the plague), and I’m looking forward to that.
3.
So here’s a two-part question I still need you guys to answer for me:
How should a boy deal with the, shall we say, overwhelming physical urges, that are known to afflict young men?
And how does a mother, or father, provide these bits of practical advice without making the boy die from embarrassment?
The going advice in popular culture is not so helpful, since it tends to run exactly counter to CCC 2352 and 2396.
So guys, you know how ladies fill magazines with practical tips on cutting calories and avoiding over-eating at holiday parties? We need the pocket guide to keeping it in the pocket. I’m going to temporarily open this blog up to anonymous comments, and as long as they are Catholic* and on-topic, I’ll let them through the moderation queue. What works?
Please tell.
3.5
. . . Anna knew right away: Slugs. If you ever need a cheap date, invite a slug.
Well that’s all for today. Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, not just chastity and garden pests. Help yourself if you are so inclined. Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know**.
*By “Catholic” I mean “all that is true and good”. Your own faith or lack thereof is not the question. A commitment to purity suffices.
** If your perfectly good comment gets stuck in spam, please TELL ME. My e-mail in the sidebar works. I get too much spam to check the spam folder post by post, but I will happily go fish out your misfiled comment if you let me know it’s in there.
QUICK UPDATE: I’ve turned off the anonymous comment feature (6/7/2012). Amazing how much spam this one post generated — apparently hit all the right keywords. I don’t *think* any honest humans were caught in spam (yes, I read it all), but you are always welcome to e-mail me if your comment gets eaten by the spam dragon, and I’ll rescue you. Thank you to everyone who answered, here or elsewhere. I’ll do a round-up post soon.
Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who’s got all your Apocalypse needs covered. Especially Robot Apocalypse.
Click and be amazed.
1.
Yesterday was our 17th Anniversary. We had dinner on the screen porch — steak, tater tots, spinach, cantaloupe, champagne. Even the kids were full before dessert. I can’t remember when it started, but we’ve taken to having a family dinner for our anniversary, and pointing out to the kids that it marks the founding of our family. Which makes it their holiday, too. After the kids went to bed, parents finished the champagne and got into the cheesecake.
2.
Best Water Meter Ever. It takes several layers of those cheap all-paper plates from Aldi if you’re serving steak. Why paper? Because the septic system is old enough to run for president, which in septic-years is much more than a little stately silver around the ears. We’re avoiding all excess water usage until we can get a new drain field cut in sometime next week. And so the SuperHusband installed one of these on the back patio:
It’s connected to the hose for a water-supply, and underneath, instead of drainpipe there’s a one-gallon bucket. It’s fascinating seeing exactly how much water you use to wash hands or brush teeth. Major incentive to conserve water so you don’t have to keep hauling the bucket off to some suitable corner of lawn. Can I count this as school?
3.
Bleg: Boys, Porn, and Chastity. Had a friend in for tea Sunday afternoon, and she gave me a timely head’s up on the reality of tweenage boys and the very rapid transition into Exceedingly Immature Manhood that is somewhere on the horizon for our boy. (Right now, the only girl he likes is the dog.) Since I know that at least a few of my readers are:
Men.
Fathers of teens boys and former teen boys.
Catholic of the Chastity is Good, Sin is Bad type.
Remember what it was like to live inside the body of a teenage boy.
or:
Are married to such a person.
or:
Are the grown son of such a person.
Want to offer any advice? Practical. Links, comments, a post of your own and link it back here. I’m all ears. Anything helpful. Thanks!
3.5
On Saturday I bought an 18-pack of Busch Light. I tasted some, warm. It’s kind of sweet — sort of a malty fruity seltzer product. Interesting. But it’s not for me. It’s for
***
Well that’s all for today. Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, not just beer, chastity, and laundry tubs. Help yourself if you are so inclined. Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know.
Faced with so many Catholics, even the leaders of many Catholic institutions, openly rejecting the teaching of the Church, I had to ask myself last week: Why shouldn’t I go the same way? If Georgetown and Notre Dame are allowed to call themselves Catholic, why should I feel compelled to avoid their purported errors? If you can be Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden and not be excommunicated . . . maybe they are the ones who are right after all. Maybe the Catholic Faith is about our finding our own path, and each doing what he feels is right, and the Catechism is just so many suggestions, helpful to some, not required for all. Maybe.
Having entertained that thought experiment, what convinces me to persist in my catechism-slinging? Here’s my list:
1. Jesus was crucified. If Jesus just wants people to go their own way, do their own thing, why die on the cross? Those words: “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” The Jewish leaders who campaigned for the cruxifiction were, by Jesus’ own words, only doing what they thought they should. If that’s not a sin, why forgive?
And if truth and the will of God can be molded to fit our situation, and there’s really no need to worry about fine details and firm definitions, why sweat blood in Gethsemane? If the Father’s will is merely that we each do our own will, Jesus could have slipped off in the moonlight the way he’d done plenty of times before.
There’s a branch of dissenting Catholics who deny the crucifixion and resurrection, treating one or both events as mere myth. In which case, sure, a mythical God feels no pain, the blood and the anguish must be just as fictional. But I don’t think the Incarnation is nothing more than an especially glorious fireside tale, because of the next reason on my list.
2. The Martyrs died for their faith. An agonizing death for the sake of a little incense? I don’t think so. If the ancient faith were a mythical faith, Roman officials wouldn’t have written letters advising each other how to deal with those cantankerous Christians. A mad man can gather a few suicidal followers for a short time; no one persuades synagogue after to synagogue throughout the whole Roman empire to face death rather than recant a myth, generation after generation.
It is possible the early Church was wrong, and Christianity is not true — plenty of men have shed their own bled in defense of a mistaken cause. But those who give their lives freely, for the martyrs were never coerced by the Romans — the Romans urged them to spare their own lives with a few simple gestures — those who give their lives freely do so because they believe they must. That the faith of the Church requires an absolute loyalty to Jesus Christ and no other. A Christian can, and should, respect the honest unbeliever; but respect is something different from agreement. In the early Church, “find your own path”, or in the Roman style, make Jesus just one more god in the pantheon, this it’s-all-good-enough Christianity was no Christianity at all.
3. I’m not ready to throw the saints under the bus. Were all these martyrs and saints who insisted on one Lord, one Faith, one Truth — were they kindly people sorely mistaken? Did the Holy Spirit’s promise to lead us into all truth tarry a while, and we didn’t get the real faith handed on until 1960-something? When we canonize someone, we don’t claim their every word was Gospel, their every action impeccable. Saints err. This saint didn’t reason into the Immaculate Conception, that saint had a bad temper, and there’s an alarming amount of disagreement about dress codes and attachment parenting. (I suppose the modern Church is very saintly that way.)
But every single saint, all of them, wrong about the same basic facts about the faith? Saint Thomas Aquinas as a jolly old fellow who gave it his best on theology, buy the man a beer and tell him that really there’s nothing particular to know about Jesus, but thank you for getting so many Dominicans off the streets and into the university? Saints Isaac Jogues and Kateri Tekawitha showing their remarkable pluck, and hey, there’s room in the celestial sweat lodge, relax and try some pantheism for a while, you look like you could do with a change — it’s all the same thing anyway — hey, what happened to your hands, buddy?
Nope. My brain just won’t go there. Because of my final reason.
4. I’m sane. I mean that in the most charitable way. (And the most limited way.) I spent two decades in school, learning “creativity” and “critical thinking”, which was education-code for “outlandish is good” and “If you can convince people, it must be true.” I had a harrowing moment in business school when I persuaded my accounting professor the wrong answer was in fact correct — the assignment was to argue the assigned position, so I did. It was wrong, and anyone with half a brain could see it. But I could argue well. I persuaded her. It was my first brush with the darkness of dishonesty. After that I quit going along so nicely with inane assignments. I graduated anyhow.
But I didn’t really learn how to reason — that is, to find the truth — until after I reverted. In returning to the Church, I was beseiged by arguments against the Catholic Faith not from the anything-goes crowd, but from sincere and fervent evangelical friends. The stakes were high: My own spouse was now a born-again evangelical (protestant) Christian. Try telling someone five years into a happy marriage that he’s gotta start using NFP, and by the way, our marriage isn’t valid and we need to get a priest to fix it. The man had good reasons to doubt the credibility of the Church before; now the ol’ Mother-n-Teacher is intruding into his bedroom and making his wife think crazy-wacky-papist-talk.
You can’t buy into “it’s all the same thing” when your good friends are giving you books telling you the Church is the Dominion of Satan. You have to answer the question. You have to examine the evidence, and decide one thing is true and another is false. No quantity of parables about blind men feeling the elephant can make Satan and Jesus into the head and tail of a big grey spirituality that squirts water out its trunk.
I could choose not to know the answer about God — to be agnostic about Christianity the way I am agnostic about evolution. (I don’t care enough about evolution to have an opinion on it, nor to bother forming one.) But whereas I could in good faith believe that knowledge of God is unimportant, I could not in good reason believe there is no single answer about God. Either evolution happened or didn’t, and if it did, it happened in either this way or that. Species didn’t evolve for those who want that to be their truth, and get plopped down as-written for those who prefer a younger and more predictable planet. Either Jesus is the Son of God, or he isn’t. Either He founded a Church, or he didn’t. Either the Pope is head of that Church, with the ability to teach authoritatively, or he isn’t.
A Catholic can in good faith be unable to answer these questions — to lack the mental capacity, or the free time, or even the knowledge these questions exist. But to know these questions abound, and in sound mind believe there are no absolute answers to them? No. As certainly as a child knows either the dog ate the cupcake or it didn’t, sane Catholics know that facts are facts, whether we know the facts or not. Good faith demands good reason.
How? How does the modern church read the same scriptures as me and MISS that Christ is Lord, He is The Only Way, The. End. ???
The Church is made up not of partisan chunks, but of individuals. Anna and I agreed it was unwise to speculate on what might make any one person lean this way or that in their approach to the faith. But I don’t need to speculate about myself. Before I was a pope-loving, catechism-slinging revert, I was agnostic. And before that? I was one of those other Catholics. The catechism-optional, find-your-own-path types.
(Which is how I found my own path out of the Church — and later, following the same method, found my way back in.)
So, to answer Anna’s question . . . What was it that made me, in 1991, a Georgetown kinda Catholic? (At heart, if not in wallet.) Thinking through it, my response is very simple: It was the religion I’d been taught my whole life.
My parents were both Catholic, but we barely went to church when I was little. After I received my first holy communion at age 7, we quit attending Mass or CCD. It was one of those parishes where they didn’t do confession until later, so I spent the next decade receiving communion, but never going to confession, or even knowing anything about that sacrament, except what I saw in movies.
Every year at Easter, my mom would say, “And we’re going to start going back to Mass every Sunday from now on,” and every year we wouldn’t. But she didn’t give up. In 1988 we moved from metro DC to a small Bible-belt town, and my mom argued it was social necessity for us to turn out a church every Sunday. She was 50% southerner by birth, which gave her some authority as an expert on these matters, and plus you could count the baptist churches and know she was right. We went to Mass.
It was kinda fun, after I got over my snotty teenage attitude. Being Catholic in a baptist-methodist town was countercultural. In your face. Also I loved the God part.
We didn’t do anything crazy though, like praying at home, or reading the Scriptures, nothing Bible-Thumper like that. We read the same newspapers — Wall Street Journal, the local paper, the diocesan paper. We watched the same TV shows — heavy on the MTV during the day, sitcoms at night. My sisters and I read good wholesome magazines for teen girls, like YM and Elle. I thought the USCCB’s movie reviews were awfully uptight — I just ignored them. If someone suggested maybe certain music wasn’t so edifying, I would have scoffed. Paranoid types. Throwbacks. Idiots.
Our parish did offer Catholic sex ed, and we attended, but we also did secular sex ed — both at school and via everything we read and watched and listened to. My parents no doubt wished they could instill a few Catholic moral values in that department, but they had no notion that it was possible — not even, perhaps, entirely convinced it was necessary. One evening our Catholic youth leader did a presentation about Catholic teaching on sex. Birth control wasn’t a topic — neither for nor against. I raised my hand and asked her this: What if two people had promised to marry each other, and they were faithful and they really were going to get married and stay faithful — would it matter if they had sex before hand?
She was literally stumped. Unable to say it was wrong. Unable.
After all, she’d been raised in the same religion as me — the religion of the popular media and public schools and rosy planned parenthood commercials. This was the faith of our nation. Our religion was Modern American, flavored Catholic.
***
Why be a Catholic-favored American? Well, for one thing it’s a beautiful faith. The liturgy, the art — we had a gorgeous parish church, wonderful musicians. There’s the sense of history. There’s the McDonald’s factor, too — when you travel, you always have a place to fit in. And just as I’d proudly say I was part-Irish or part-German, it was a pleasure to have a Catholic identity. I expect I would have made just as fervent a modern American progressive-Muslim or progressive-Jew. It’s a heritage. You love your heritage the way you love your grandma, even if she does sometimes let slip a racist remark, and you know your better, but you never say anything because she’s your grandma.
And here’s the other thing, and this is the truth about many good Americans, whether pagan-flavor or Catholic-flavor or gay-flavor or you name it: Nice people. Kind people. People who do good things for others. People who try their best to be the best person they can be. Faithful catechism-reading Catholics don’t have the corner on the Niceness market. Nice is universal.
So why stick around a Church that I thought was wrong? Well in the long run I didn’t, but my departure had more to do with being out of town on the weekends and falling in with non-religious friends than it did with an active dissent from the Church. So what kept me claiming the name of Catholic for many years, until I finally gave up on the Christian thing altogether?
There’s God. Humans are spiritual. We don’t walk away from God easily.
There really wasn’t any conflict.
Oh, sure, you sometimes maybe heard or read some Catholic thing that you disagreed with. But when find-your-own-path religion is the voice of the entire wider culture, and a prominent voice within the Church? You go with it.
And that’s it. I left for college (State U, no money for Georgetown) an exuberant, rosary-praying, sometimes-Bible-reading Catholic teen, but one who had no serious Christian discipleship, no serious training in the faith, and not a single voice pointing to a faith that was something other than American Mainstream Culture with incense and candles attached. State U did the rest of the work to finish off that remnant of a faith.
And interestingly, it was the hardcore, this-is-not-mere-culture, Do You Accept Jesus as Your Lord and Savior evangelicals who both cemented my final separation with Christianity . . . and brought me back into the fold. Whence a baptist deacon unwittingly plopped me down at Mass on a Wednesday morning in 1999. And with a little help from Jack T. Chick, I stayed. And started doing what the Catechism said.
The US Bishop’s campaign for religious freedom, and the Vatican’s pending reform of the LCWR, have been met with skepticism by much of the mainstream media, and by a good chunk of the Catholic population as well. Why? Would we hear this same outcry against another religious group, however weird and wacky, that sought to assert its beliefs and practices?
We could guess at any number of nefarious reasons for all this alarm at Catholics acting Catholic, but I propose one common thread: No one thinks Catholics really believe this stuff.
(For the record: Yes, we do.)
The American church has spent I’m not sure how many decades wallowing in a lukewarm faith — my entire life, at the very least. Do an exit poll after Mass this Sunday: How many parishioners really believe all that the Church holds to be true? In many quarters, the simple act of asserting that the Church holds some things to be true incites an outcry of protest about rights of conscience, and personal discernment, and accusations of judging other souls*.
And we’re still wallowing.
On one hand I get it: Patience. Pastoral Care. I appreciate all that. I’m certainly glad the CDF inquires thoroughly and charitably before taking action.
But what’s the reality we’re living with, here in the US and elsewhere? Do I have any confidence that my local Catholic hospital (where, incidentally, I first learned NFP) will stick to Catholic teaching in its medical care? No I don’t. I have no idea. I could ask around and get the lowdown, but until I check, I don’t know. Are my local Catholic schools really Catholic? I think they might be, because I’ve known a few good folks associated with them . . . but I don’t know. I don’t know. The brand name is no guarantee. You have to check every institution one by one. Some are excellent. Some are positively shining beacons of the Faith. But you really can’t know until you check for yourself.
My new pastor? Great guy. Fabulously Catholic sermons, right to the point — every reason to believe he’s spot-on in his faithfulness to Church teachings. (And a decent person besides. Wish he had more free time to hang around and have a beer or something.) But there was a tense time wondering — now who have we got? The fact that someone is an ordained priest, or professed religious sister or brother, or DRE, or catechist . . . is no guarantee they actually believe and teach what the Church believes and teaches. You have watch and see.
I don’t mean, here, that you have to watch and see in the normal sense of prudence and discernment about the weaknesses and failings of all men. We all sin. We all struggle with our faith. We all grow in our understanding and practice of our faith over time. What I mean is something more insidious: The Catholic faith as taught in, say, the Catechism, is not something everyone in the Church assumes is the standard.
And those who take the Catechism-optional approach are, in a sense, correct to do so. They are only guilty of believing what the Church practices. The practice of Catholic institutions not following Church teaching is so widespread that those religious orders who do stick with the magisterium make sure they mention the fact in their advertisements for vocations. It is so rare for a homily to explain Catholic teaching on contraception that if it should happen, Catholic bloggers talk about it for days.
This isn’t about pant suits or folk guitars**. The investigation into the LCWR isn’t about legitimate theological or practical disagreements on the innumerable topics about which Catholics are free to disagree. It isn’t about emphasis of ministry — there are topics that might never come up at the food bank, but that matter very much at the hospital, and vice versa. No one expects the ladies sorting boxes of pasta to explain to you the details of licit and illicit fertility treatments. (Also: Don’t necessarily ask your doctor to cook for you.)
This about the fact that a lot of Americans, including a lot of American Catholics, think the bishops are making this stuff up. That noise about birth control and sterilization? Well, that’s not really Catholic teaching, it’s just this optional extra, like saying the Rosary or wearing a hair shirt, that we can do if we feel called, but we don’t really have to, right? This business of Jesus and the Church being the only way, and myriad new age practices being in fact demonic? Oh come on. Yes, Catholicism is a Jesus-Brand spiritual path, but don’t we each have to find our own path? And anyway, who believes in Satan? So 12th Century.
That’s the faith Americans have been practicing. That’s what people really think the Church teaches. The average American has a better idea of what the Amish or the Muslims believe and practice than what comprises the Catholic faith. That is, at the very least they’d be willing to consider the possibility that the Amish have religious objections to birth control, or that Muslims think their faith is in fact the one true faith. Catholics? That birth control and catechism-stuff is just one extremist current in our multi-faceted approach to the spiritual life, right?
I read too much history to worry much. Heresy happens. Jesus wins. We each try to be faithful and do our best. It’s all pretty simple, other than the details. But for goodness sakes, let’s quit acting shocked at the outcry when we suddenly care about this stuff so publicly after so many years of stealth witness.
***
Also while we’re at it: Politicians are creepy. Professional hazard. Quit acting like you think one side or the other is going to suddenly get all Catholic on you, just because of what they said at that speech. There’s a reason we’re told to be wise as serpents, eh?
*The Church does not judge souls. FYI.
**Full disclosure: I like pants suits. And folk guitar. Also long skirts and Gregorian chant. I like everybody.
Nine out of ten bunnies surveyed agree: You should look at the other quick takes.
1.
I know the SuperHusband loves me, because he built BunnyLand. (As if the bookshelves hadn’t clinched it.)
#3, suitably nicknamed “The Bun” since before ever we met her, wanted bunnies. #1 has a dog, and #2 her cat, and #3 longed for bunnies. Sweet, soft, fuzzy little bunnies.
As an Easter surprise we worked out a timeshare arrangement with our bunny-owning friends: We could have guardianship of Bun-Bun and Jennie-Bun as long as we liked, and still be confident of bunny-sitting and bunny-sabbaticals as needed. The perfect solution, especially after we calculated that there was more venison in the freezer than we could eat in a year, so acquiring a breeding pair of bunnies was not strictly neccessary.
2.
And though #3 does all the daily bunny-feeding and watering, we discovered the two most ardent bunny-lovers (I am loathe to admit this) are the two most curmudgeonly, un-cuddly residents of the castle — Mr. Boy and I.
The porch was fine for temporary lodgings, but for a longterm stay, the bunnies needed room to roam and a place to relieve themselves at will. After several false starts, we prevailed upon the SuperHusband to create BunnyLand, a sheltered, predator-resistant enclave under the apple tree. It’s big and leafy, and the bunnies have space to hop around in giant zig-zags, and hide under the virginia creeper, and loll in the dirt pile left from setting a post for the bunny-gate.
In the morning I can sit out in the garden with a cup of coffee and a missal, and watch bunnies until I remember to pray, and then watch more after. And usually in-between. Somewhere about the psalm I end up taking a bunny-watching break. Maybe not the best thing for my prayer life, I admit.
3.
Last Friday evening we were sitting out in the garden watching the bunnies, and Mr. Boy hopped the fence. He desperately, desperately wants to pet the bunnies, and sometimes they let him. Other times, no. “You need to sit quietly and peacefully, and let the bunnies come to you,” I told him.
So he held up his hands, two fingers in the air: Peace signs.
4.
I can’t remember the exact sequence, but this being the four of us, late in the evening . . . soon two children and I were making some comment about the sixty-something ladies at Mass who finish their handshakes during the Sign of Peace, and for good measure bless the remainder of the parish with peace-signed hands.
SuperHusband had failed to ever notice this practice, mark of the Business-Casual Parish. We filled him in on what he’d been missing in his devoted attention to the Agnus Dei*. And then chuckled.
5.
But you know what? I know it’s popular among a certain kind of neo-Cath blogger to mock the aging hippies with their groovy worship habits, and I’m here to tell you this: Lay Off.
Have you ever spent a day with these ladies?
Do you not know that they held your parish together when all the rest of our culture was trying every possible social experiment in the name of freedom unbridled license? Do you not know that they who wield the folk guitar and bless children shamelessly during Holy Communion, they are the ones feeding the poor at St. Vincent de Paul, and making meals for the funeral supper, while you sit at home reading imprimatured titles from Ignatius Press?
Do you not know how much they love your children? The hours they spend — the decades they have spent — teaching religious ed, with no more support than a love of Jesus and a desire to share that love with whomever He sends them?
Do you not understand that whatever their shortcomings, they have prayed into this Church — at the cost of night after night, year after year, of tears for a wayward generation they did not know how to teach, but tried their best anyway — you and I? Who now sit at our computers, bickering and griping over what this law means and how this rubric applies?
Lay off the old ladies. They belong to St. Therese. If you have no sense in you at all, at the very least you know not to mess with the Little Flower. You mind your manners, and she’ll get them straightened out.
By all means make good arguments for good art and good liturgy. But gently, if you can manage it. I stink at gentle. You have my sympathy. And too often, my company.
6.
I can’t wait until the next time Allie Hathaway’s in town, and we can show her the bunnies. Please pray for her and all her family.
7.
But I give you permission to make funny faces when the choir sings those heartfelt but, shall we say . . . not my favorite? . . . Okay nevermind. We’re not supposed to make funny faces at Mass. The Little Flower thanks you for just offering it up.
*Yes, I always end up in confession mentioning my inability to pay attention during Mass. I’m working on it.
Today for my Quick Takes I’m reviewing Sarah Reinhard’s new book, Catholic Family Fun. This is a stop on Sarah’s virtual book tour, so she should be lurking around the combox ready to answer any questions you have.
FYI, Sarah is not only a super-friendly person, she is also an extrovert, which means that her life as a writer is made tolerable by finding people to chat with. So say “Hi Sarah!”. She’ll be excited.
2.
This is what the book looks like:
It’s about 140 pages, paperback, nice sturdy glossy cover. It’s designed to float around your house and be abused.
3.
What’s inside?
You know how women’s magazines have those little articles about fun things to do with your family? This is like 10 years of those ideas all in one place. Only you are spared those obnoxious photos of pristine toaster ovens and closets organized by that sect of hermits who take a vow to own nothing but three pieces of splashy, sassy, ready-for-spring ensembles to pair with their strappy heels. Also, no perfume ads.
Instead you get page after page of practical, realistic ideas for unplugged family activities that you can customize to match your kids’ ages and interests. The chapters are organized by types of activities (crafts, meals, outdoor adventures, etc.), and there are several easy-to-read indexes in the back to help you quickly find the ones that match your budget and energy level. Most of the suggestions are either free, or involve money you were going to spend anyway. (You are going to eat today, right?)
Other than the chapters on prayer and on the saints, the activities themselves can be purely fun family time, or they can be explicitly tied to the Catholic faith. Every activity includes suggestions on how to make the faith connection.
4.
What if you aren’t crafty? Don’t panic on the crafts, there aren’t that many and they are very low-key. Indeed, I’d say this is the perfect book for people who don’t do glitter glue, foam art, or anything involving popsicle sticks, ever. Did I mention Sarah R. is a real mom of young children, with a farm, and a writing job, and . . . you get the picture. You may find yourself wanting an internet connection to pull off a few of these activities (I see you have access to one, very good), but no glue gun will ever be needed.
What if you are, in fact, the grumpy, curmudgeonly type? See the next section. I advise letting your kids pick the activities. That way you never need fear you’ve gotten all goofy and relaxed for nothing. Also you could tell the kids you aren’t going to do Chapters 1 and 2 yourself, but you’ll give them five bucks if they’ll just be quiet while your finish reading the paper. (Um, wait a minute. No, that’s not how the book’s supposed to work. Oops.) Chapters 3-9 are Curmudgeon-Safe, though the one idea about a backyard circus makes me a little nervous . . .
5.
Who could use this book? Three groups of people come to mind, and last was a surprise to me, but it’s true:
1. Parents, grandparents, and other relatives.
If you’re trying to think up new ways to connect to the kids, and get out of the rut of doing the same old things.
If you have a long summer vacation ahead, with stir-crazy children and no money for expensive camps and activities.
Or if you didn’t have a satisfyingly Catholic childhood, and you want to find ways to share and practice your faith without being all stodgy and dour about it.
2. Kids. My daughter is fighting me for custody of our copy. The book is eminently readable, so you really can hand it to a late-elementary or older child, and say, “Pick something out for us to do Saturday.” I like that because then the onus is on the kids to decide which activity sounds fun — and I’m always surprised by what kids come up with when given the choice.
3. Catechists, VBS volunteers, scout leaders, and anyone else charged with keeping a group of kids busy for an hour or two. Some of the activities will only work in a family setting, but very many of them are well-suited to using in a classroom. The suggestions for faith tie-ins make this an awesome resource for religious ed and VBS. If your parish doesn’t have money for a high-priced pre-packaged program with talking pandas and cheesey chipmunk videos, you could seriously just go through this book and pick out activities to assemble a home-grown series of your own.
6.
You know who loves a good VBS program? Allie Hathaway. It’s Friday, so we’re praying for her. And hey, offer up a quick one for Sarah Reinhard’s intentions as well. Thanks!
7.
What else do you want to know? I’ve wrestled the book out of my daughter’s hands, so I’m happy to look stuff up and answer questions. Sarah’s around here somewhere, and if she doesn’t get to you today, she’s a very reliable combox-attender, so feel free to ask her questions as well.
Click the picture to find out where the book tour is going next.
PS: This and a package of pre-cooked bacon would make a great Mother’s Day gift.
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Updated to toss in three bits of full disclosure, which together give the most accurate picture:
7.1) Pauline Media sent me a review copy.
7.2) You might have caught on, Sarah & I are friends, and perhaps you’ve noticed we work together at the CWG blog. Which means that if she wrote a lousy book, I just wouldn’t review it. I’m very grateful she doesn’t write lousy books, because that saves us a lot of awkward moments.
7.3) See “free book” above. I gave a copy of this book to my DRE, who is a mom and grandma of 10 bazillion children, and always griping observing that all the grandkids do is play Angry Birds. I knew she’d love to pass it around her family, and I was thrilled to see she could use it for religious ed ideas too. But you know what? I did not give her my free copy. See, that’s what I would have done if this was a so-so book. Instead, I paid cash to buy her a brand new copy of her own.
Hey and a gratuitous 7.4: Let’s just clarify: If you want a collection of pom-pom art ideas, this is not your book.
My Hail Mary post at Sarah R.’s place is up. What I discovered writing it, is that I’d been looking at this question of feminine genius all backward. Our culture wants us to look at men, and try to guess how women compare. But just ask Adam — it’s the other way around. He was adrift until he discovered Eve. What, after all, is the purpose of tending the garden and taking care of creation, and all the other amazing and wonderful things guys do? What is the work of Christ, the bridegroom, done in service to His bride, the Church? He makes her mission possible. That is, Christ and the Church have a single mission.
BTW I stuck the photo up big, here, so you can see that girl-smile. It doesn’t quite come across when posted in moderation, the way sensible blog-owners do.
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I’ve got an article in the new issue of Mater et Magistra. I haven’t seen the final (edited) version, so I can’t tell you exactly all the parts that made the cut. [You never know how many words there will be room for, once all the articles for the month are gathered together. So I submitted my article divided into sub-sections so it would be easy to edit down in chunks.]
But anyhow, it’s pure accountant-frugality meets homeschool-desperation: How do you decide what books to buy? Don’t panic, I don’t advise anyone to act like I do and buy waaaaaay too many books. Instead I actually talked with a bunch of much more sensible and practical homeschool moms, and found out what does and does not work in real life, for staying sane and under-budget, and still getting school done.
Let me know what you think when you read it, I’ll happily post your thoughts here.
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I haven’t figured out how to get my Amazing Catechists feed working quite right, but one day I will. Meanwhile, I posted about Journals & the Sacrament of Confession this week. Because a real live human being (who I don’t know personally, and I have no idea when or where or how the incident took place) asked my opinion on this:
Is it appropriate for religion teachers to ask students about their sins? In my friend’s religion class, the teacher asked him to write in his journal about one of the sins he would be confessing at his next confession. What do you think?
No, seriously. I didn’t make that up. I can write fiction, but there are limits. And anyway, I don’t do horror.
This morning as I stumbled down the hall, coffee in hand, the fourth grader handed me A Bridge to Terabithia.“Mom,” she warned me, “don’t let anybody read this for school. It is terrible. It has very foul language.”
“Oh?” I had read it way back in elementary school, but hadn’t looked at it since. I couldn’t really remember what was in the book.
“Yes. They use the d-word. And the parents say things like ‘crap’ and ‘crud’ and ‘you stupid’. And that’s just in one chapter.”
We’re so used to seeing our own children, so used to the idea that they’re under our care, that we sometimes forget that the angels rejoice when a young person goes out into the world armed with truth and love, instead of going forth with their hearts cramped and crabbed by an acceptance of abortion. This is where the battle is fought: in individual hearts. Each abortion is a tragedy because it ends an individual life—but each heart that is taught how to love is a true and eternal victory.
Yes, raising our children lovingly is commonplace, a duty, nothing new. So what? It’s still a big deal. It’s still the way to save souls. This is the great thing about being part of the Culture of Life: everything counts. You don’t have to save your receipts! Your good works have been noted, and they will not go to waste.
2. Bearing reminds me, I’m not the only mom who got paid to go to graduate school, in order to prepare for a rewarding career in the ultra-non-profit sector. I don’t typically feel guilty about this. Back when I was applying for fellowships, I assumed I’d ultimately end up in some kind of field that was a natural extension of my start in accounting — maybe moved out of staff and into operations, or teaching accounting 101 at the community college, or who knows what — who can really predict how a career will turn? I also knew that I wanted to be a mom, and that I was intentionally picking a field that lent itself to momness. Ditching it all in order to stay home and raise kids? If only I could be so lucky.
At the fellowship interviews, I was asked, “What do you see yourself doing in five years? Ten years?”
I answered honestly. “Solving problems.”
Which is what I do.
3. This week at the Catholic Writers Guild blog I’ve been shuffling around the schedule to get all the mundane writer-talk posts pushed off until after Easter. I didn’t want Holy Week to be chit-chat as usually. But Sarah Reinhard’s post for today, even though it’s sort of a blogging post, it’s really a Holy Week post: Remember Your Priorities.
–> Hey and real quick please pray for Sarah’s very urgent prayer request for a family member with a scary, likely life-threatening diagnosis on the way. Thanks.
4. You know what? I just love this photo so much. I was thrilled with Julie D. picked it out for her 1,000 Words post. Because I just like to look at it.
5.Holiness versus Weirdness. It’s a constant battle. I spend a lot of time just trying to figure out how to live life. I feel stupid about this, because, well, not knowing how to live your life has got to be one of the marks of stupidity, right? But at the same time, I live in a culture that doesn’t know how to live life, so I remind myself it’s not exactly shocking that my adulthood be devoted to figuring out what I ought to be doing instead.
And I’m not alone. Which makes reading Catholic Lifestyle Lit of a decade ago so amusing, because the holiness-fads of years gone by shout out like a pair of parachute pants. Which is why my children in ten years will be laughing about this over Thanksgiving dinner:
When I wrote about fasting from artificial light in the Register a while back, I got a ton of interesting responses. One of my favorites was from a dad who told me about this family tradition that they’ve been doing for 30 years:
We turn off the light when we leave for Holy Thursday Mass and don’t turn them on again until we return from the Saturday Easter Vigil at around midnight on Saturday.
We got the idea when our parish turned off the lights and had us exit in silence on Holy Thursday. And we entered at the Easter Vigil in darkness which continued until the Gloria. And, of course, Good Friday services were held during the daytime so lighting was not a main focus. So we got the idea to practically “live” this period when Jesus the “light of the world” was taken away from us.
I think we might try this this year. Anyone else going to give it a shot?
My kids will the story of how I read this idea at some Catholic lady’s blog, and when I told Jon, not only did he like the idea, he proposed we just flip all the breakers in the house except the one for the kitchen.
So yeah. Weird. I know we are. I know it kids.
6. But listen, weird isn’t all bad. My garden is awesome. If by “awesome” we mean: I like it. And I was sitting in it this spring, and realized that Margaret Realy’s book about Prayer Gardens had come true. I read it, followed the instructions, and wow, it worked. Highly recommended if you want a little quiet garden-y oasis, and need some ideas about how to make it work.
And with that I’ll cut out the rest of the chit-chat and go be all vocational. Have a great week, and I’ll see you back here come Easter or so.
