Month: October 2015

Everybody knows the Church will change. (Everybody is wrong.)

Rom,_Vatikan,_Petersdom_-_Silhouette_bei_Sonnenuntergang_3

 

Many Catholics believe the Synod on the Family will drive home the final nail in the coffin of orthodoxy. They believe that, when the Synod is over, from that coffin will emerge some hideous new zombie Church, which progressive Pope Francis will envelop in one of his famous Marxist hugs. Together, Frankie and Zombie will personally cater all the gay weddings they can find, and couples who have three or more annulments under their belts can claim a discount on renting the Sistine Chapel for their next few weddings.

Many Catholics look at the Synod, and they know that the Church is going to change. They know it.

Are they right? Let’s step back a few decades, to the last time everybody knew what would happen in the Church.

In 1963, Pope John XXIII called a Pontifical Commission to examine the Church’s ban on artificial birth control. After he died, Pope Paul VI expanded the commission to include doctors, theologians, lay women, bishops and cardinals.

The members of this committee were chosen by the Pope, and everybody knew what that meant: the Church was obviously revving up for something big, something new. The commission members debated, studied, and solicited testimony for several years; and then in 1966, they came out with a report that concluded exactly what everyone was expecting: It said that the Church should do a 180 and allow artificial birth control. The official report said that birth control was not intrinsically evil, and that the Church’s ban on it should be lifted.

There was rejoicing in some quarters, wringing of hands in others, as everyone assumed that the Pope would agree. Everyone assumed that life as a married Catholic would be dramatically different from then on, in keeping with the times. Laymen thought so. Priests thought so. Everyone thought, “This is it. This is the big change we’ve all been [hoping for/dreading].”

And what happened?

Humanae Vitae happened. BOOM. Rather than assenting to the Commission’s recommendation, Paul VI issued the glorious encyclical which firmly and passionately reasserts the Church’s constant teaching on human sexuality, almost miraculously predicting the societal ills that would follow if the world embraced artificial contraception. The encyclical thrilled some, enraged others, and immediately began sowing the seeds for John Paul II’s flourishing Theology of the Body, which is only now beginning to take root in the hearts of many Catholics.

In 1968, everyone knew the Church was going to change.

Everyone was wrong.

I expect — no, I believe with all my heart — that the same will happen in the next few years regarding the issues of divorce and civil remarriage, and same sex marriage. The Pope has reaffirmed countless times that he is a “son of the Church” and will uphold and defend her doctrine, no matter what the rumors imply (and Cardinal Kasper — CARDINAL KASPER — says so, too).

Now, this is not to say that everything will be fine. Most Catholics, including those present when Humanae Vitae first came out, ignored and continue to blithely ignore the Church’s teaching on contraception. It’s likely that Catholics who are in favor of same sex marriage will continue to be in favor of same sex marriage, no matter what happens at the synod, and no matter what the Pope says, infallibly or otherwise.

But will the Church change her teachings on marriage? No, she will not. I would bet my life on it. Sometimes when everyone knows something, everyone is wrong.

So, listen to rumors if you like. Debate about the ins and outs of various meetings and interviews, and feel free to wince, as any normal human being would do, as we witness sausage being made. Above all, pray — pray for the pope, pray for the bishops, pray for a change of heart for those in dissent, and pray for courage for those who are faithful. Pray for the Church. Pray for all of us. Prayer is always the appropriate response. But as you pray, don’t panic.

Remember, everybody knew what was definitely going to happen in 1968.  Everybody was wrong.

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Shush. Your mother is trying to listen.

kids fighting

 

If you came in in the middle of the process, you’d think I was being totally unfair. You’d see me letting one kid stand there and have center stage, while everyone else has to just stand around and listen to half-truths, exaggerations, and self-pity. You’d think I was a fool for listening gravely and seriously to what is obviously a biased, self-serving version of what happened.

Or maybe you’d see me letting one kid stand there and having center stage, while everyone else has to just stand around and listen to a bullying, overbearing, jerk.  You’d think I was a tyrant for listening gravely and seriously to what is obviously a harsh and inhumane version of how we should treat each other.

This is what it would sound like if you saw only part of the process. But I hope you’d have a different point of view if you tried to understand what I was actually trying to accomplish.

Read the rest at the Register.

The lady was sad, and MAD. (We showed the kids an opera!)

don giovanni

My kids’ experience with opera comes entirely from Bugs Bunny, and we really wanted them to branch out. So, with great trepidation, we showed them Don Giovanni last weekend … and they loved  it. More or less.

We did it in two nights. The first night, I set out some trays heaped with treats in the living room. We had brie, havarti, and honey goat cheese and three kinds of crackers, red and green grapes, mini chocolate eclairs, and sparkling cider. So the kids were all excited and cheerful, and ready to have a fancy good time. For my kids, this step is essential. If they get any whiff of high art or culture, they turn into jerks and refuse to enjoy themselves, so they need to be softened up. This is okay with me, because I, too, enjoy cheese.

We went with the Metropolitan Opera’s 2000 production with set design by Franco Zeffirelli. This production has large, clear subtitles, and all the literate kids followed the action just fine. (And the story doesn’t waste any time, but leaps right in, which is one of the reasons I chose this opera.)

The amazing thing was that Benny (age 3) picked up an awful lot, too, and was engaged throughout. She could tell that DonjiManji was one bad dude. She called all the women “princesses” (score one for the wonderful costumes, which were everything opera costumes should be) and said that Donna Elivra was “sad, and mad.” When Don Ottavio was pestering Donna Anna for the umpteenth time, she remarked, “The princess wants him to shut up.”

They laughed at the funny parts (Ferruccio Furlanetto as Leperello did a great job of making all the subtler jokes obvious with gestures and smirks) and were aghast at Don Giovanni’s wickedness.

The NYT review said that Bryn Terfel

comes to the Don with his own powerful if somewhat repugnant point of view. If the production is about period elegance, the character itself achieves a modern mean-spiritedness. Endearing naughtiness is replaced with outright sadism. This is a coldly obsessive figure for whom rape and murder is not offhand but committed with pleasure.

Well, that is the role. I don’t see how the rest of the opera makes any sense if the Don is just endearingly naughty; and his sneering callousness helped the kids to see why (spoiler) Don Giovanni goes to Hell but Leperello gets off the hook. Terfel’s power and command were sufficient to explain why the women found him hard to resist, and, as the NYT says,

this not very nice man sings like an angel. The articulation was wonderful, and Mr. Terfel commands such a depth of color that his ”La ci darem la mano” could soar out into the hall even at half voice. Volume does not necessarily conquer the Met’s bigness. Quality and focus have a better chance.

The entire cast had that focus, and no one seemed dwarfed. Here’s the rest of the cast:

Bryn Terfel (Don Giovanni), Ferruccio Furlanetto (Leporello), Renee Fleming (Donna Anna), Solveig Kringelborn (Donna Elvira), Hei-Kyung Hong (Zerlina), Paul Groves (Don Ottavio), Sergei Koptchak (Commendatore) and John Relyea (Masetto). James Levine was conductor.

Renee Fleming was tremendous. I think a few of the kids were crying when she wept, “O padre mio!” The NYT:

Fleming’s Donna Anna had unusual breadth. ”Non mi dir” luxuriated in the softness of her timbre, yet the early scenes abandoned beauty for its own sake and took on a wonderful fierceness. She is in both moods a splendid musician; the attention to rhythm, phrase length and pitch legitimized the emotion.

Quite right about the two moods. She showed real depth. Her character is naturally more interesting than Don Ottavio’s anyway, but I was really struck, in this production, by how unworthy he is of her! And what a pest, good heavens. I think if she broke a toe or won the Nobel prize for phsyics, he’d scoot over and explain that this was the perfect time for her to get over her grief and marry him.  Anyway, she was immensely present in the role, and plus, she is just so beautiful.

Solveig Kringelborn as Donna Elivira was a revelation to me. I’ve heard this role mainly played as straight up crazy bitch; but Kringelborn brought out some real pathos and humor, and avoided sounding screamy in a role that has a lot of high notes. I enjoyed every minute of her performance, and the kids loved her.

Zerlina, I was not so crazy about, and the kids had a hard time with her character. I’ve seen her played more winningly.  Her voice was crystalline and her diction was perfect, but there was no appeal in her stage presence, that I could see. It would have been fine as an audio performance, but I wouldn’t seek out Hei-Kyung Hong out for this stage role again.

Masetto did fine. Paul Groves as Don Ottavio was nicely stolid and useless, and his voice was as lovely as you could wish for his lovely arias. Don Ottavio is not actually allowed to breathe at any point, and Groves did not. The Commendatore was nice and creepy. I totally would have repented if it had been me holding that cold hand!

assuming I was still awake by the time the Commendatore showed up again

assuming I was still awake by the time the Commendatore showed up

We rented this two-disc set through Netflix, which has several Don Giovannis available. You can buy the DVD set on Amazon, or you can rent it directly from the Met for $3.99.

Very sensitive audiences will be upset with the scariness of the final scene, and with Don Giovanni’s handsiness, but it is an opera about rape and damnation, so. There was nothing so explicit that we found it off-bounds for the kids.

Next up: not sure! I think Mozart is great for kids: the emotion is so evident, and he doesn’t waste any time. Maybe The Barber of Seville.I’m sadly ignorant about Italian opera, and I’d like to remedy that. What would you suggest?

What’s for Supper? Vol. 7: Meatloaf: A Tragicomedy

whats for supper

Just the facts!

SUNDAY
Grilled pizza sandwiches

food blog pizza sandwiches

These are not only delicious, easy to make, and filling, but they are cheaper than making pizza, especially if you use pre-made dough when you make pizza. I find that I use about half the amount of cheese and sauce as I do to make pizza for the same number of people.

We made these with cheese, pepperoni, and some bottled pesto. Spread the outsides of the sandwich with butter mixed with garlic powder and oregano

food blog butter

a promising start to any recipe

and on the inside, spread sauce on each slice of bread, then add a handful of cheese, and whatever filling you like. Then put it together and grill as you would normal grilled cheese sandwich. I like to grill them until they’re golden on the outside, then put them in a warm oven for a bit, to make sure they’re cooked all the way through, because they are pretty thick.

This recipe works well with sturdier bread, like sourdough or something. Or, if you are using softer bread, just make sure the butter is nice and soft, using whatever kitchen tools you have on hand, like a potato masher or an elephant

food blog elephant butter

Hey, I didn’t kill anybody this week. Where’s my  medal?

MONDAY
Chicken pesto pasta

Poach chicken breast, then dice or shred it. Cook and drain a bunch of pasta (farfalle/bowtie/butterfly pasta is good for chunky recipes like this. We used penne, because it was what we had, and it was fine), mix it with the chicken, and add in a bunch of pesto*, a bunch of crushed fresh garlic, and a ton of grated parmesan cheese. Add salt and pepper. Serve hot or cold.

food blog chicken pesto

*I didn’t even make pesto, I just chopped up a bunch of fresh basil and mixed it with olive oil. Pretty yummy. Better the second day.

This really needed a side dish, but I went to lie down instead.

TUESDAY 
Meatloaf, acorn squash

I’m the only one in my house who thinks this is funny.

food blog meatloaf tragedy

What they don’t realize is that it takes all my effort to resist making a nice perky set of Double D meatloaves.

Our meatloaf recipe: good old Fannie Farmer. As she says, this recipe is “susceptible to many variations.”

Acorn squash! So seasonal! My usual recipe is to buy it, put it on the counter, look at it guiltily a few times a day for a few weeks, notice someone has stabbed it with a screwdriver and there is now something squirmy living inside, and throw it in the swamp out back; but here’s the technique we used this time, and it was much more popular:

Cut squash in half, scoop out seeds and pulp, put them face down on a pan and bake at 350 for half an hour. Turn them over, but a blob of butter and brown sugar in each one, and put them back in the oven for another half hour.  Tasty.

I feel like we had something else, too, but I forget what.

 

WEDNESDAY
English muffins, scrambled eggs, hostages, some elderly cantaloupe, quinoa

Definitely a low point of the week, food-wise. English muffins undertoasted, eggs burned, sausages are fine because how the hell do you screw up frozen sausages, cantaloupe dessicated and improperly peeled, and the quinoa, well . . . I bought this pre-flavored, pre-vegetabled quinoa and it turned out looking like something that nobody wants because nobody needs. And it was expensive!

Quinwhat?

Quinwhat?

THURSDAY
Tacos de Carnitas

Boy, I had really high hopes for this recipe, which I got from the NYT; and it smelled fantastic as it was cooking. TO BE FAIR, I was missing a lot of the ingredients. I think it’s worth making again when I have more stuff on hand, because pork is still cheap; but I was expecting this dish to redeem the entire week, and it did not do that.

food blog carnitas

It didn’t help that I didn’t fry up the meat nearly long enough after it was shredded, and I think that’s not cilantro. I think that’s parsley. Also, I forgot that corn tortillas are bloody awful when you don’t fry them. Boo.

 

FRIDAY
Fish sticks, rice, raw broccoli and sweet peppers

The “raw broccoli and sweet pepper” part is the voice of optimism speaking. But I do feel like I can heat up some frozen fish sticks, and probably strong-arm some teenager into making a pot of rice.

In conclusion, this week can eat my poo.  Did I say that last week? Well, still.

I’m struggling a bit with InLinkz. I paid the little fee so that entry thumbnails would be displayed at the bottom of the page, but I think you still had to click through last time. Grr. Here’s hoping it works this week. Anyway, I hope you join in! Anything you want to say about food, here’s the place.

I’m very happy to see TRUMP signs appearing around town .

Because now every time I see one of these:

Trump_2016

I’ll be armed with a bunch of these:

CAN EAT MY POO

 

So the town will soon covered with these:

Trump_2016

Yes, I’m a ridiculous, childish person. Yes, I actually ordered this sticker. You can too,here. 

Please note, I will earn 20 cents for each sticker sold. I intend to use this money to build a BYOOTIFUL WALL to keep the kids out when I’m trying to go to the bathroom.

Can American writers write happy endings?

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The British get Tom Jones and Dickens and Shakespeare’s comedies, but what do we Americans get? Death and sadness, that’s what — at least in literature.

Are there American novels with happy endings? Here’s our list . . .

Read the rest at the Register.