Category: links elsewhere

Opinions Solicited (How often does that happen?)

Hathaway’s looking for opinions on his Crash Course in Catholic Ethical Thinking .  I’m having my turn at the busy week, so I promised him I’d comment by mid-week or he should pester me.   But you, aren’t you looking for someone to argue with today?

Here’s his ending:

. . . The Church can have compassion for the person in the extreme without saying “this teaching no longer applies because there is this one extreme case, and the rest of you can go on and do whatever you want.”When someone’s holding a gun to your head, either literally or metaphorically, and you do something intrinsically evil, you’re not a sinner. If the Nazis are at your door, and you lie out of fear, that’s not heroic virtue, but it’s also not a sin.

Again, intrinsic evil just means that the act is always evil and can never be virtuous in and of itself. It does not mean that it’s as bad as something else or better than something else.

So:

1. Means, motive and end are all good? Act is virtuous.2. Means, motive and end are good, circumstances are extreme? Act is heroically virtuous.

3. Means are neutral or good. Intentions are good. There are multiple ends, at least one bad and one good? This is “double effect”.

4. Means are bad. Intentions are good. Ends are bad. Circumstances are extreme or person is ignorant? The act is wrong, but culpability is reduced, possibly to nothing.

5. Means are bad. Intentions are bad. Ends are bad. Person is ignorant or not acting in total freedom; and/or matter is not grave? Venial sin.

6. Means are bad. Intentions are bad. Ends are bad. Person acts in full knowledge and freedom. Matter is grave. Mortal sin.

It is really crucial to be clear on these distinctions. To say “X is intrinsically evil” is not the same thing as saying “Y is a sinner for doing X” or even to say that “X is always mortally sinful”. It’s just to say that the using X as a means puts the action under categories 4-6 above.

Read the lead-up.  Tell him what you think.  Friendly guy.

Lent-o-rama: Slubgrip; Sardines

1. Slubgrip.

You may have been wondering:  What could cause a person who doesn’t post ads on her blog, to suddenly post an ad on her blog?

And you would not have been far off, if you thought, “She just wanted that cool-loookin’ gargoyle image.”  Except that she hadn’t seen the gargoyle image until after she wrote to Fr. L saying she’d be happy to post his ad.

Very puzzling, isn’t it?  The solution to the mystery is this: The Gargoyle Code is a really good book.  And your hostess likes to promote really good books, because, well, the more good books people buy, the more good books publishers will print, and thus the more good books your hostess will find crowding the shelves of her favorite local Catholic bookstore.

Blatant self-interest.  And now, in a fabulous wish come true, Father Longenecker has written yet more gargoyle-y fiction goodness.  You can read this week’s episode here. And then you will know why you should buy his book.  Which you can do by clicking the ad in the sidebar, or by visiting your favorite local catholic bookstore.

 

2. Sardines.

This is not usually a food blog, which is strange given how much I like the stuff.  But as many of my readers eat, and a few of them cook, why shouldn’t we go off topic now and again?

Now is the time for my older sister and all other people who don’t like seafood to depart by clicking on one of the fine links in the sidebar.  Many of them contain no horrid accounts of eating things that used to swim.

Anyway, here’s the story:  SuperHusband points out to me, a person who eats tuna straight from the can, that anchovies and sardines are superior in every way.   Insert list: health, environment, mercury . . . you begin to get the picture of the moral superiority that can be had by purchasing the flat rectangular tin instead slightly taller round tin.

How could I resist such an opportunity?  I cannot be upstaged in the food-virtue department by my own spouse, can I?

So I go buy the stuff on the next grocery trip, and stick it in the cupboard where the tuna used to sit.

And then a couple weeks later, I get really really hungry, on a Friday when my normal non-lenten penance of staying off the internet has once again spectacularly failed and not eating meat seems much simpler, and we are all about light penances here, and in a fit of braveness I open the anchovies.

Here is the part where you laugh.  Because, you who know anything about anchovies (as your hostess did not), knows that one does not eat them straight from the tin as one might do with tuna.

So now I have this open tin of anchovies, moral superiority on the line, and no, I can’t just give them to the cat.  She is a small cat.  And the dog will just get indigestion.  And anyway, giving the pets expensive human food is no way to one-up the spouse.

But here’s what I discovered: You can cook with the stuff. And it’s good!  Convenient!  Useful!  Tasty!

Now all the readers who already know how to cook with sardines and anchovies may quit laughing at me and click on a link in the sidebar.

Also, all readers who can boil pasta and have three Joy of Cooking recipes you can make, but you don’t really know how to cook yet, because let’s admit it, “winging it” in the kitchen is a skill one builds over time, you should just maybe consider the sidebar too.  Because the potential for disaster and ridicule is quite high any time a can of tiny, strongly-flavored fish is involved.

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Now, to the empty internet, here’s what I figured out:

VERY IMPORTANT:  Purchase the sardines or the anchovies “in oil”. Not the one in mustard sauce or something.  Just oil.  Fish in oil.  That’s all you want.  Two ingredients. (Plus salt or whatever.  But no delightful surplus condiment flavors.)

Now you’ve got the proper tin in hand.  You know the part of the recipe at the very beginning, where you put oil in the bottom of the pan and saute your garlic or onions or ginger or whatever it is that needs to be sauteed first of all?

Instead of the butter or oil, just dump the whole tin of fish right into the bottom of the pan. Use that as your cooking oil for that sauteing step.  The fish will naturally get diced/shredded in the process of sauteeing your vegetables.  Then proceed with the recipe as normal.

MORE VERY IMPORTANT:  If you don’t like how fish tastes, don’t cook with fish.  This is not one of those “how to sneak seafood into the recipe” tricks.  This method gives the recipe a light seafood-taste, akin to say a crab recipe, or adding fish sauce to your curry.  Depth, complexity, and all the moral superiority for which you had hoped, but in a seafood-y way.

What it’s good for:

  • Recipes that call for ‘fish sauce’.  Think of certain thai recipes, curries, etc.
  • Soups that either already seafood-y, or that would like to be converted.  With the caveat that say your spouse really loves oyster stew, that does not mean he loves anchovy-oyster stew.  Don’t over-complicate recipes that want to be simple.  Use bacon drippings for the oyster stew, your spouse will thank you.
  • Pasta sauce!  Red sauce if you like, but this makes a great base for a vegetable-parmesan sauce, and maybe use up the last little bit of the cream leftover from the vichyssoise.

If you use anchovies, plan around the saltiness. You will not need to add the usual amount of salt or soy sauce to your recipe. Also, this is a good time to balance the intensity of the anchovies with something sweet and something sour (lime, vinegar, etc.)  Sardines are milder, so you season more or less like you would have if you’d just made the recipe the normal way.

Happy Lent.  Does it count as a penitential if you are looking forward to the new recipes?

 

Abortion and Tidiness.

Go read this at the Catholic Key Blog.  And not just because I am a person who likes both babies and a good drink now and again.  But because this resonates with maybe what you have seen elsewhere?

Because maybe right now you are facebook friends with one of the coolest teenagers in the universe?  And that kid wouldn’t even have been given a name, let alone a chance to see the light of day, if some scared 16-year-old and her mother hadn’t resisted the pressure to do what all those clean-cut wholesome small-town upper-class ladies were saying they had to do to “get rid of the problem”?

When someone has to die in order for me to maintain my sterling reputation?  . . . No.  Just no.   –>  If only all my lousy ideas and major mistakes could result in something as awesomely awesome as a certain favorite nephew of mine.  Why would someone want to kill the one good thing to be granted?

Go and sin no more.  That’s meekness.

Parents Caught Raising Well-Rounded Daughter

UPDATE: (Long as JDM has caught me goofing off again, I might as well do it right): Brad Warthen is on topic.  Check out the video he links, hilarious.  So true.

(Said by a fellow LLL grad who has not only CD’d, but hung them out to dry on the line. Then again, my 2nd-born’s first food was Tiramisu.  My credentials are doubtful.)

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The Livesay’s on their daughter with the “weirdest life ever”.

I link because the whole parenting-police theme is central to that homeschooling book I’m reportedly writing.  (Yes I am in fact writing it.  Slowly.)  We live in a bizarre society where one of the national pastimes is getting all huffy because someone else’s life isn’t one long giant defense of your own personal decisions.

The really funniest one is when some lady (yes, usually a lady), says something along the lines of, “Sure, nobody’s perfect, but how can that family possibly homeschool, when their children’s socks don’t even match!”  [This is ironic, because of course if sock-matching were the measure of educational success, it would be so much easier to assess the schools.]

I kid not.  People — registered voters with college degrees, even — truly do say this stuff.   Lately I mostly hear it about those horrible horrible parents like the Livesays, who send their children to school, but the method can be used  against any parenting decision anytime anywhere, so long as you pick your audience properly.  The formula is this:

a)  Insist that of course you aren’t setting up impossible standards

b)  Choose someone or something you don’t like

c)  Randomly choose some criteria that you have decided should be the central measure of human worth.

d) Make sure it is something that you excel at, and your target does not.  Also, make sure the person to whom your are speaking manages well enough at the proposed criteria.

e)  Use a tone that suggests the parents are feeding the children excrement or mating them with livestock,  as you point out your target doesn’t meet your made-up requirement.

f)  Chortle triumphantly at your brilliant proof that your target should give it up and just come to you for lessons in proper living.

You think I exaggerate.  No I do not. People do this.  And it makes life a nightmare for parents who are genuinely trying to figure out the best way to rear their children under difficult circumstances.  So lay off the parents.  That’s my Friday sermon:  Lay off.

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BTW if you aren’t feeling chastised (or smug) enough, Ruth at Wheelie catholic has more cautionary tales of employee horror.  Because the utter cluelessness of mankind knows no bounds. Go read. Be warned.  Amend your ways.  Find yourself rocketing to Employee of the Year.  It’s all good.

Lent-o-rama and other quick notes

I made the Aggie Catholic Guide to Lent (thank you Mark Shea) it’s own special category in the sidebar.  Am going to maybe build the category up a bit.  Send suggestions.  Thanks.

And yes,  yes, I know I am behind on updating the sidebar with other great blogs I’ve recently started reading and recommending.  Pester me if yours isn’t up on the list by Monday.

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Please pray for a special intention for some missionaries in difficulty.  Thanks.

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Brad Warthen posts Clark Whelton’s What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness.  Let it be a warning to us all.

Mr. Magundi on Beggars.

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And how to cut to the chase with your friendly but inexperienced evangelical door-to-door missionary:

Kind and earnest missionary asks, “If you died tomorrow, where would you go?”

Reflect.  Give honest answer: “Purgatory.”

Silence.  “Um, here, have one of these.”  Hands over tract, quickly retreats to next door.

Perfectly nice kids, by the way, and nothing anti-catholic in the tract.  Basic model plan-of-salvation, baptist version.   Refreshing, really.  Catholics could learn a thing or two.

 

 

Meekness

I was pleased to see that in addition to Chelsea Zimmerman (put me in a paragraph with her any day), John Hathaway is on the undecided couch.  He ponders here and here, and then finally takes action in this letter.  This is one thing that I admire about John, even when it terrifies me: the man is not shy.  Just not.

But I’m definitely leaning toward the Tollefsen-Shea camp, not a surprise.  It fits too well.

Am I so meek?  I wish.  My specialty is doing things exactly the wrong way (even when I know better), and I’ve failed out of Meekness 101 more times than I care to count. Despite this, I have been wanting to write about Meekness for a while now, because if you’re a poly-sci/history type, you eventually figure out that the meek really do inherit the earth.

Here’s the tough part in making sense of it: In your brain when you hear the word “meek”, do you just swap in “weak” and think it means the same thing?  And maybe something about “shy as a mouse”, since mice are small and the word “mouse” starts with “m”?

[And maybe you add in something about being a peasant or something, because you think “humble” = “poor”.  Doesn’t work.  St. Thomas More was meek.  Wealthy, opinionated, but ultimately meek.]

What it really means is “mild of temper” (that’s not me) “long-suffering” (more not) and “patient under injuries” (nope, not that either).  And then we think of the Amish, who are famously meek.  So we think, oh, okay, meek = pacifist?  Maybe sometimes.  But a really good soldier is massively meek.  How else do you hold up under confusing orders, dangerous conditions, constant hardship, and just do what is asked no matter the personal cost?  That’s meek.

Public, peaceful resistance to brutal dictatorships?  That’s hardcore meekness.  (And not forgetting that yes there is a time and place to bear arms.  But remember those just war criteria?  “Some chance of success”?  Though it is just as bloody, sometimes peaceful resistance is the only moral option.  But much harder.  All the pain and suffering, maybe more, and none of the gratification of sticking it to your enemy, no matter how futile the effort.)

Anyhow, saying all that, the way I think it ties in to the recent internet excitement, is that maybe shy, weak, pro-lifers like myself need to work on our meekness a little more?  Not the fake-meekness that means ‘doing nothing’, but the real kind, which is doing what is right and what is necessary, no matter the cost.

I hate it when I post things like this.

 

Tollefsen Reply Discussion Thread

Chris Tollefsen’s reply is up, over at Public Discourse. Note about the reading level: I didn’t have to look up any words in the dictionary, which is pretty noteworthy.  But the crux paragraphs do require you to slow down and read carefully.  So don’t try to skim, you’ll just end up feeling really dumb or really resentful, depending on your disposition.

(Why yes, I did know he was going to link to this blog, he warned me a few days ago.  No, I did not know about any of the other contents of the reply until I read it this morning, other than that he promised to address the Nazi at the Door problem.  Which he does.)

So this is the thread for discussing the state of the debate as it stands today, if there’s anyone left who isn’t thoroughly bored or disgusted with the topic by now.  (And who has free time.  I’m fascinated by the problem, but I have other problems, such as long division, calling me today.)  I have not done a check for new posts elsewhere this morning, so by all means link to anything fresh that you think moves forward the discussion.

 

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Note to any new readers here: 1) Welcome! 2) Your first post or two gets automatically held for moderation.  I will try to check in periodically, and keep the spam folder empty as well, but we are actually having school today, so you take 2nd place to my darling children.  You knew that.  If your post is submerged in the ether for an unexpected amount of time, don’t assume it was due to any fault of your own.

Fr. L. on the gambling industry.

More yes.  This is all true.   Over the past dozen years I’ve spent a lot of time in Vegas.  I’m familiar with the city, inside and out.  (Surprise: I prefer “out”.  Red Rocks, to be precise.)

To Fr. Longenecker’s comments I’ll add that gambling generates no wealth.  It doesn’t feed, clothe or shelter any better than my sitting on the porch playing 3-men’s morris does so.  (Except, in that case, I get to spend time with my child, teach some strategy, get my rear whipped by a 4-year-old . . . yes, there is all that.  The bulk of casino gambling doesn’t even pretend to give us that much.)

Gambling does redistribute wealth.  If you need a method to get cash from the hands of wealthy private-jet owners into the hands of waitresses, well, yes, that is one way.  But what Fr. L says about the industry is absolutely true, including the addiction and family-destroying and saving-depleting bits.

He didn’t mention the associated crime, but you can count on that too.  When you take a whole bunch of people who want something for nothing and stick them all together in one place, it’s not exactly a surprise that greed crosses legal lines here and there.

–> This isn’t some fundamentalist getting his rear in a wad because you like to play poker with your friends.  It’s not about whether games of chance are somehow evil.

But when you pray that prayer about “lead me not into temptation”? It implies a responsibility to avoid leading your neighbor into temptation either.

You want investment?  Build a farm, or a factory.  A school even.  (Or, go crazy, send a guy to seminary.  That’s an investment.)  The gambling “industry” is not industry at all.  And you go there to spend your money, and end up spending yourself as well.