Hey and here’s more good new media, h/t to Fr. V. I think this one fits into that whole ignatian-imagination-meditation topic we were on the other month. I never really thought about what 40 days in the desert really looked like, until someone drew me a picture:
And I tell you I don’t watch TV. Ha. Yes I do.
Julie D. at Happy Catholic reminds us to promote catholic media today. I’m lousy at these coordinated things — such an excess of self-discipline and order required. My thought one week ago, as I lay in bed calculating the hours until midnight: It’s not necessarily that I am a slave to my passions. Sometimes I’m just a very reliable servant.
But often, yes, slave.
Rather than be organized, then, I’m going to just give you a few of my top favorite underrated blogs. My list of well-known favorite catholic sites is in the sidebar.
Brandon at Siris is not only much smarter than me, he is also the true boy scout of internet-philosophers. Here is where he answers my question about Intentio.
John McNichol barely blogs, but that’s because he is actually writing books. Which I guess makes him “old media”, but gee, who else out there is taking care of catholic boys in need of more action/adventure novels? Do you really want your son glued to some blog, when he could be reading chestertonian steampunk instead?
Christian LeBlanc explains the catholic faith to sixth graders, which I suppose makes him too smart for the internet, too. But since most of us internet Catholics really need a proper sixth-grade religious education still, he posts his lessons on his site, and also links them to Sunday Snippets.
And my last under-rated catholic blog to promote today is my friend John Hathaway’s. If St. Therese of Lisieux were a married American catholic man with Asperger’s and Marfan syndrome, who really dreamed of being a missionary priest to Haiti but instead was homeschooling his four kids, teaching college English, and doing all things lay-carmelite, that would be John. You begin to see why I like the guy. (And his wife, but she is too sensible and too busy to blog.)
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Speaking of underrated means and methods, here’s this bit of reflection is from a non-catholic blog, written by an evangelical missionary in Haiti, whose husband has been in prison for 5 months now. Could just as easily be the wife of St. Thomas More writing here:
What? Huh? Glory in suffering? But you know what, it’s true. One thing I’ve noticed is when you are suffering God doesn’t usually take the problem away immediately. He’s not a magic wand to take away all your troubles. You suffer and you suffer more when you are a Christian. I have suffered so much in the past 5 months. However I have noticed that thru my suffering I have changed, how I react has changed, and how I communicate has changed.
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Catholic Media Promotion Day facebook page is here. You can make your list on your blog and then post the link on their wall, or just recommend some links directly on the wall.
. . . don’t look at this blog. You’ll only make things harder for yourself.
Bearing asks for advice on how to assist children with their lenten devotions:
. . . I was not a child growing up in a practicing-Catholic family. I literally do not know how to encourage a Lenten devotion without becoming Lent Cop Mom.
Seriously. Help me out here. . . .
Since I know I have a few readers here who could answer this one, and because I want to know the answer too, please go read the whole thing and then inform us.
Thank you.
This morning when you woke up, you were thinking, “Gee, Jennifer needs to clean the house, takes the kids to dance class, drop by the church to return her very overdue books from the parish library and pester the DRE about something, maybe go downtown for one errand and the post office on three, and what she really really wants to do is go the garden center and pick out some drought-resistant plants for the flower beds.”
And furthermore, you were thinking, “I wish I knew more about problems facing orphans in Haiti.”
Perfect! Here’s your article: Complexity of Orphan Care, at Sit a Spell.
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After which, although you might be planning to take the Ironic Catholic’s advice and give up hand lotion or cinnamon for Lent, I suspect she’d approve if you’d squeeze in some prayers for orphans and their parents.
That’s what my then two-year-old used to shout at his baby sister in the next seat when we arrived at our destination. The parents were not amused.
These two articles might not amuse you, either. But if you need to be really grumpy, these’ll do it.
–> I’m continuing with the regular-life-requires-my-attention-theme, so outsourcing my invective to ‘things that showed up in my inbox’.
From Christian LeBlanc, interesting link to an essay on contraception and the fall of the west.
The West lasted from AD 732, when Charles Martel defeated the Muslims at Tours, until 1960, where it fell without a battle. In 1960, the birth control pill became widely available. Many think of it as heaven, sexual nirvana, the route to self-expression, wish fulfillment, and liberation for millions of women. I think of it as Auschwitz in a bottle. It was and is genocide, as, using it, the women of my generation happily traded off 1,200 years of unparalleled growth, wealth, security, stability, scientific and ethical progress for a second BMW in the garage.
I’m not persuaded of author’s provocative conclusion (“Islam is the only way”), but the irony is there. In the 19th century the French quit reproducing — yes, before effective contraception became widely available — and by the late 20th were wringing their hands over the cultural impact of all the muslims they’d imported to do the labor of the children they’d never had. Germany has followed suit, and the US isn’t far behind.
(Though, luckily for our culture, we are importing truckloads of macho catholics with their awesome mariachi masses. Maybe God does love us more? Kidding. Really. The French have Brie — if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is. But yes, I do like a rousing Spanish mass now and again. Perks up the excessively-somber soul. And as much as I am moved by the beauty and devotion of faithful muslims at worship, no, I can’t slip down to the corner mosque for a mini-revival.)
Anyhow, key point of link for me is this: You can’t refuse to bear children, then get all shocked and horrified at the presence of the people you imported to do the work of the offspring you never had. You want someone t0 mow your lawn and do your dishes? Either rear yourself a pair of middle-schoolers, or hire someone else’s.
[Teenagers everywhere are now saying aha! You really did raise me to be a slave! The mother points out that she does a thing or two for her own children that she doesn’t do for the random low-wage stranger. Indeed, here may lie a bit of the problem: rather than a steady flow of youngsters who do the grunt work for a decade and then move on to greater work, we attempt to create a society divided between perpetual overlords and perpetual economic-teenagers. And then are shocked, just shocked, when the daring, hard-working, self-sacrificing immigrants turn out to be just like our own children — ready to move up in the world after a spell.]
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Your other link is this article from the HSLDA, from Swedish parents who moved to Finland in order to homeschool. I will use this as my cue to get off the internet educate a few fresh faces of my own.
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PS, castle news: We got a new roof. Looks a lot like the old one, only much, much younger.
Catholic Writers’ Conference Online: It’s free, no-obligation, and exceedingly helpful even if all you do is drop in for one or two things the whole week. Anyone is welcome, and you don’t have to be published or smart or talented or anything. I haven’t seen this year’s schedule, but typically there are courses of interest for all abilities and types of writers.
Tomorrow is the participant registration deadline. So go sign-up ASAP if you haven’t already.
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.
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:
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?
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.
