Author: simchajfisher

“If he says it’s the right thing to do, it’s the right thing to do.” That was my comment on Facebook three years ago yesterday, when the world first heard that Papa Benedict was retiring. Like so many other Catholics, I was baffled and troubled, but I made an act of will to trust this eminently trustworthy shepherd.

John Allen reminds us of the profound humility of his choice, saying:

Benedict was the first pope to renounce his powers, not in the teeth of schism, foreign armies, or internal power struggles, but rather as the result of an honest self-examination that he simply wasn’t up to the demands of the office any longer.

Allen shares some little-known facts about the way Benedict behaved during his papacy, and reminds us that this humility was no departure from the norm for Benedict, but was in fact the hallmark of this holy man’s eight years as Pope.

Elise Harris reports for CNA that the way he left office should not be allowed to overshadow his true achievements. Harris says that Vatican journalist Marco Mancini’s book about Benedict’s papacy describes

how Benedict XVI fought against scourges in the Church and in society such as the growing presence of relativism, the economic crisis, pedophilia, increasing global hostility toward Christians and the first “Vatileaks” scandal.

…

“Financial transparency and pedophilia are the two pillars of the process of reform that Benedict set up in the Church. He started,” Mancini said.

Did you know that? Did you know that Benedict was the first to take strenuous action against the Church’s shameful cover-up of sex abuse by clergy?

The standard story you’ll hear, instead, is that Benedict XVI spent most of his time in office covering for pedophile priests, and doing everything he could to prevent them from being brought to justice.  Here‘s a standard comment I got in one of my comboxes when I mentioned Benedict’s name:

[T]he practice of protecting pedophiles was a formal written policy of the church. It came directly from then-Cardinal Ratzinger and was backed by a threat of excommunication.

The commenter linked to a piece from The Guardian from 2005, with the headline:  Pope ‘Obstructed’ Sex Abuse Inquiry.

Did he,  now?

Remember, that story is from 2005.  Now, let’s read this post from 2010, in which Steven Kellmeyer drills down into the actual numbers of abuse victims in the Church, and finds what everyone should already know:  that your children are and always have been safer with priests than with teachers, safer with priests than with Muslim imams, far safer with priests than with the male population as a whole.

But here’s the fascinating part.  Kellmeyer reprints a chart from the John Jay Report on annual totals of accused priests and incidents of sexual abuse reported by year, from 1950 to 2005:

Horrible numbers.  But look at the shape of that chart.  Kellmeyer says:

Do you notice anything interesting? Do you see how that red line (number of cases) and that blue line (number of priests committing abuse) both begin a REALLY rapid descent? Well, if you look closely at the year when that rapid fall begins, that year would be 1981 – two years after John Paul II is elected Pope and the same year Ratzinger is picked to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Even though the CDF won’t streamline the process and gain sole jurisdiction over abuse cases until 2001, the chart shows that the minute Ratzinger became the head of CDF, someone, somewhere started shutting these abusive priests down. By 1995, most of the rat holes had been closed.

The press didn’t pick up on what was going on until AFTER Ratzinger or one of his confreres had already finished most of the work.

Awfully strange behavior for a fellow who was so devoted to hiding and protecting pedophiles.  Did the Church hang back until the press held its feet to the fire?  Clearly not.  As soon as he had the authority, Benedict worked strenuously to rid the Church of the horrible scourge of sexual abuse; and the parishes who were guilty of shuffling offenders around were working in contradiction of his policies.

It’s hard to argue with numbers. Benedict’s legacy is a legacy of reform.

The question we face now is, will Ratzinger’s legacy be squandered? In 2015, the Vatican released the new statutes from the Vatican Commission for the Protection of Minors, which was formed by Pope Francis and is headed by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley. The guidelines are in effect until 2018, and then they will be reevaluated and improved if necessary. So far, so good . . . if Pope Francis’ work is not impeded.

Benedict XVI knew only too well that reform is never welcome, and that the Church can be its own worst enemy. As we remember Benedict XVI’s papacy with love and gratitude, let’s pray that that bureaucracy and blindness will not hobble his good work that Francis is striving to carry forward.

***

A portion of this post was first published, in a slightly different form, at the National Catholic Register in 2014.

Once again, the Church’s response to sexual abuse is in the news, and once again, it’s hard to tell how accurate the reports are.

Once again, they don’t sound great. The level-headed and thorough John Allen at Crux says that newly-appointed bishops took a training course from the Vatican, but that

the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, the body created by Pope Francis to identify “best practices” in the fight against child abuse, was not involved in the training.

Allen says that the new bishops instead got a presentation from Tony Anatrella, a French monsignor and psychotherapist, and that Anatrella

argued that bishops have no duty to report allegations to the police, which he says is up to victims and their families.

Allen says:

It’s a legalistic take on a critical issue, one which has brought only trouble for the Church and its leaders. Why, one wonders, was it part of a training session?

Most basically, canonical procedures kick in only after abuse has been alleged. Presumably the goal ought to be to stop those crimes from happening, and in that regard it’s striking that Anatrella devoted just a few paragraphs to abuse prevention, using abstract language without concrete examples.

Allen says he consulted Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, “who’s on the board of the Rome-based Gregorian University’s Centre for Child Protection,” about what new Bishops need to know, and Rossetti told him they should know:

1.  “How to deal with victims, because it’s not intuitively obvious.”
2.  “They have to know the canonical material.”
3. “What the red flags [for abuse] are … It’s important to be concrete, giving scenarios and talking out what an effective response looks like.”
4. “How to deal with accused priests … including the risk of recidivism, as well as how to show charity without enabling abusive behavior.”
5.  Abuse prevention resources: “We don’t have to start from scratch. There are effective programs available right now.”

Judging by the published papers, only the second point figured prominently in the “baby bishops” program last year.

My first impulse, on reading things like this, is to start screaming and throwing things. But Jen Fitz, also a thorough and level-headed person, has a more useful response, which can’t be shared often enough. Fitz says:

Reporting on religion is notoriously unreliable, and I’m in no position to confirm or clarify these reports.  But whenever such nonsense gets promulgated, I’m here to remind you: Tell the police.

That’s right. Don’t wait for things to go through the proper channels, don’t wait for the system to catch up, don’t wait and see.

I’m trying really hard to remember that these are just initial reports, and that it’s possible there’s a whole other batch of information about what the bishops are learning, and these early stories are not accurate. But I also feel like the Church has thoroughly earned my pessimism about the whole issue.

Anyway. All I can do is remember and pass along Fitz’s excellent advice:

It is not your job to be investigator, judge, and jury.  If someone’s in immediate danger, of course you’ll dial 911.  When that’s not the case? Pick up the phone, call the city or county police office during business hours, and make arrangements to file the appropriate report.  It’s okay to call and say, “I’m not even sure a crime took place, but –.”  The police are used to getting these calls.  It is their job to sort through the information and figure out how to proceed.

If it makes you more comfortable, first describe what you know about the possible crime, and wait to name the perpetrator until you’ve determined the action was in fact criminal.  But call the police.  Not your friend who’s a cop, not your neighbor, not the lady at church whose kid is going to the police academy.  Call your police station, and make an official report.  Even if the particular incident is not one that will result in a conviction, it can become part of a collection of evidence that paints the complete picture.

If it’s going to be up to laymen, it’s going to be up to laymen. Please read the rest of Fitz’s short essay from Amazing Catechists.

Naturally, her commonsense advice applies any time you suspect abuse by anyone, priest or otherwise. (Catholic priests abuse children at a lower rate than males in the general population.) Get the ball rolling. Make things different from the horrible way they have been. If you have reason to be concerned, then you have a serious obligation to talk to the police. Don’t wait for someone else to do the right thing.

***
2/12/16 Thanks to comments from a few readers, I realized that I used the wrong link in the paragraph above. Mea culpa! I had a lot of tabs open and grabbed the wrong one. I originally linked to a Newsweek story which claimed that Catholic priests abuse at the same rate as the rest of the male population. The new link, above, is to the John Jay report, which reports abuse by priests at a lower rate than the rest of the male population.)

Like most lifelong Catholics, my husband and I have no idea what the rules of fasting are, so we have to look it up every year. And every year, I tell my husband, “Well, gosh, that’s how you eat every day anyway.” This is why he is within a single stomach virus’ distance of fitting into the pants he got married in 18 years ago, while I . . . well, let’s just say that marriage is an opportunity for growth, and I have not squandered that opportunity. No, indeedbaconator, I have not.

So, since he didn’t ask for it, I started to give my husband advice for how to observe Ash Wednesday. In case you’re in a similar position, here are some ways to make your husband miserable help your husband draw closer to Christ, which is your job:

1. Keep it spirituelle. Complain incessantly about all the things that make it especially hard for housewives to fast, like having to be around food all day, and being hungrier than most people anyway because your attitudes toward food and hunger and body image are all out of whack because of all the sacrifices of pregnancy and childbirth you’ve made throughout your married life. I mean, I don’t even know when I’m hungry anymore, you know? I can’t tell if I’m actually hungry, or just frustrated with how frustrating my life is, or if my body is telling my I’m deficient in something, because I’m so depleted, or what!

Then when he sympathetically suggests that you might go easy on yourself because of your state in life, give him a pitying look and murmur in a Holy Spirit kind of voice, “I don’t know, that just seems kind of . . . contrary to the spirit of the season, you know?”

2. Practice catecheticriticism. This is when you send a message to an adult in the next room by way of instructing children who are in front of you. Like so: “And so, kids, there are a lot of ways you can show God that you are sorry for your sins. Giving up Minecraft or candy OR OLD CROW is good, but you could also do things, like keeping your room clean or BRINGING THAT RIDICULOUS BROKEN DISHWASHER TO THE DUMP ALREADY or sharing your toys. These are all good things to do for Lent, and here is a nice coloring page of the stations of the cross, because I GUESS I HAVE TO BE THE SPIRITUAL HEAD OF THE FAMILY SINCE NO ONE ELSE IS STEPPING UP. Here are some crayons.”

3. Cry, and refuse to say why, because it’s nothing, just nothing. This one isn’t specific to Lent. It’s just pretty much the worst thing you can do to a guy.

4. If he persists in his concern, admit that you’ve just been feeling low lately, that’s all, and it would just be nice to get away from these same four walls and this kitchen and these kids and just feel like a woman, you know? Just for one time. Then when he reminds you that he asked you five times if you wanted to go out, say, “Oh, I know, I know, but it’s Lent . . .”

5. Complain about female bloggers who talk about fasting when they really mean dieting, and how sick it is that, in society today, all we care about is women’s bodies, and what about their souls? Talk about Cosmo, armpit airbrushing, and how much the actresses in Star Wars got paid. Go into your room to be alone and pray for a while. When he comes in to search for the socks you claim there are plenty of in his drawer if he would just look, let him find you standing there, just gazing at that clingy red sundress you wore to your friend’s wedding two decades ago, back when you considered ice cubes an indulgent snack. Just gazing at it. Then say, “You know, in the Middle Ages, they fasted all the time, all through Lent. Did you know that? Ugh, we’re such wimps nowadays. People really were holier then. Society today really makes me sick.”

Hey, only 39 more days to go, guys.

Now that I’m the adult authority bossing myself around, and telling myself to do this and don’t do that, and now that I deliberately make the choice to put myself under obedience to the Church, it’s easier to see the connection between love and obligation. When I’m the authority figure, it behooves me to make sure I’m giving orders out of love, and not just because I can. By the same token, when I’m the position of offering obedience, it behooves me to make sure I’m obeying out of love, and not just because I have to.

Read the rest at the Register.

As an enthusiastic consumer of nameless, store brand, orange-colored, nacho-flavored chips of corn origin, I don’t have a dog in the Dorito fight. (I wish I didn’t have a dog at all, but that’s neither here nor there.)

If you missed the Superbowl commercial at the center of the hullabaloo, here it is:

Does it seem especially pro-life to you? It’s really not. The only reason it’s getting spun that way is because NARAL grotesquely complained on Twitter that Doritos used an “antichoice tactice of humanizing fetuses.”

[img attachment=”90827″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”naral tweet fetus” /]

In response, pro-lifers cheered Doritos, gleefully vowed to stock their shelves with the brand, and took coy selfies with a pro-life chip halfway to their mouths.

It was a little silly, but NARAL comes out looking far sillier than anyone else (especially after they also tweeted that they liked a Subaru commercial “with dog parents driving their puppies around.” No word on why it’s okay to humanize dogs).

If anything, Doritos was commercializing the fetus, which any halfwit can see is already pretty damn human without needing any help from an ad campaign. Still, it was nice to see an ultrasound in a commercial, I guess (although the commercial itself was, frankly, gross). It shows that a large percentage of the viewing public has been in a room with an ultrasound tech and would recognize what that was on the screen (a baby, duh), and it was nice to see the doctor say, “And there’s your beautiful baby.”

But, guys. It was less than six months ago that half my friends were angrily boycotting Doritos because they were making special edition rainbow chips, in support of the “It Gets Better” campaign to support LGBT youth, or whatever it was.

At that point, conservatives called for boycotts of the same Doritos, and my progressive friends then gleefully vowed to stock their shelves with the brand, and took coy selfies with a purple NOH8 chip halfway to their mouths.

What’s the moral of this story? Nothing. There is no moral. And that’s the point: we need to stop looking to commercial brands to express any meaningful part of our moral lives.

Yes, it would be wonderful if corporations would quit making social statements and just focused on making chips or cars or office supplies or whatever. But the other half of this equation is us. We need to stop responding with glee or rage or hysteria or, worst of all, coy selfies every time a new commercial campaign debuts. That’s not activism; it’s just a slightly more pretentious kind of consumerism. And guess what? It doesn’t matter to the corporation if you’re using a happy or an angry hashtag, as long as their name keeps coming up.

We need to stop drooling every time corporations ring their sociological bells. Talk about dehumanizing!  All commercial campaigns are inherently dehumanizing, because they invite us to see ourselves and each other as mere consumers, rather than as whole people with better things to do than think about Doritos. This effect is doubled or tripled when a bag of chips tries to persuade us that it has anything to say about, for instance, sexuality. Please. It’s chips. It’s just chips.

So, my title was a bit of an exaggeration. I didn’t hate the Superbowl commercial, really. I just hate all commercials. I hate being made to think about them. I hate being made to act as if they matter. I have stuff to do.

You know what power we really wield, as socially conscious consumers? The power to turn the damn TV off.

A bleg today! I’m working on a longer piece for Our Sunday Visitor, designed for newcomers to the Church (and welcome, by the way! I’m SO GLAD YOU’RE HERE!). I want to explain some of the things that cradle Catholics take for granted, but which might be baffling for newbies.

I’m thinking less about doctrinal issues and more about the “little stuff” — holy water etiquette, when to genuflect and when to go down on both knees, what prayers to say after Communion, whether or not to drop a fiver in the paten, whether or not to bring your hunting hounds along to your skinny little baby’s baptism . . .

If you’re a new convert, what would you like to know more about? Or if you remember being new, what made you scratch your head? Or if you’re a priest or a RCIA instructor, what “little things” do your new flocks wonder about?

In the mean time, here’s a piece I wrote for the Register back in 2013. It’s also for converts — specifically, for those facing their first Lent as a Catholic. Might be helpful for us old-timers, too, as we solidify our plans for how to observe Lent.

***

Lenten Rookie Mistakes

I feel like I can’t walk ten feet without bumping into an enthusiastic new convert, which is delightful, and so encouraging!  Welcome, everybody!  We papists have a little saying:  Venite intus; horribilis est!

Heh.  Anyway, you may be looking forward to your first Lent with enthusiasm but some trepidation.  If so, you’re ahead of the game:  it should be something to get excited about.  Lent can be a wonderful source of grace.  But as such, it can be a real mine field of screw-ups, especially for rookies.  Here are some typical rookie mistakes during Lent:

Giving Up All The Things!!!  Don’t forget:  even though it’s Lent, you still have to live the rest of your life.  So it’s probably not wise to take on such a complicated set of obligations and observances that you will need to hire a monk to follow you around, reminding you that you have exactly four minutes to make supper or earn a living before you’re due for your next spiritual reading, or  to pray anther five decades of the rosary, volunteer another half hour at the soup kitchen, say a blessing before, during, and after sneezing, and put a fresh set of dried peas in your shoes, all on four hours of sleep without a pillow and after a breakfast consisting of half a prune.  Just pick one or two things that you can reasonably stick with, or you will burn out and/or drop dead.

Giving up the thing that makes you bearable  Lent is about you doing sacrifices, not making everybody else suffer while they endure your enduring your sacrifice.  If your family sits you down 48 hours into Lent and presents you with a court order demanding that you start smoking or drinking coffee again, then have mercy and listen to them.

Leaving Loopholes As I’m prone to explain shoutily to my lazy, rotten kids, “That’s not cleaning, that’s just moving the mess around!”  You’re not allowed to tidy up your bed by shoving all your junk under the bed.  In the same way, it doesn’t really benefit you much to give up Facebook if you’re suddenly going to become a champion-level Twitterer.  Or if you gave up chocolate, you get no points for diving head first into a vat of caramel.  Substituting toothpicks for cigarettes, or water for beer, is a real penance; substituting YouTube for Netflix, not so much.

Waiting until the last minute for confession  You may think you’re getting the most out of your Lenten Experience by doing one final purge during Holy Week.  This is a horrible mistake.  Unless you want to be on line forever and ever, or unless your priest shows signs that he would like some extra penance by being in that box morning, noon, and night, do try to get to confession before the last minute!  Ideally, you should get to confession more than once during Lent, anyway.  And of course, if you haven’t gotten around to it, later is better than never.  But be aware that many priests do not hear confessions on Good Friday or Holy Saturday.  There’s some dispute over whether or not they’re permitted to hear confessions on those days; but for many overworked priests, there’s simply no time, with all the preparations they must make for the Triduum.

Getting cute about it  The standard observations are standard for a reason.  I know it’s fun to be creative, but it’s kind of obnoxious to give up — I don’t know, adjectives, or clothes that match, or foods with the letter “r” in them.  It might actually work out to be a difficult penance, but come on.   No need to reinvent the wheel.  If you’re a naturally creative person, consider it your penance to bow to the ordinary, and do what everyone else is doing for once.

Getting overly somber about it Yes, it’s a penitential season, when we focus, like no other time of year, on the ugliness of sin, and on the suffering and sorrows Our Lord took on for our sake.  It makes perfect sense to curtail parties and frivolities until after Lent (it’s only 40 days!), and to make our daily lives take on a penitential tone which is unmistakably different from the rest of the year.  But that doesn’t mean you need to quit smiling, or that we can’t enjoy being with friends and family, or listening to the first robin sing.  We’re not Calvinists or Jansenists or any other “ist” that makes us quit being human.

Not getting back on that horse  If you fail, that doesn’t mean you’ve picked the wrong penance, or that you’re incapable of doing penance.  It means you’re a human being.  Duh.  That’s why we need Lent.  Yes, you can back away from penances that turn out to be really disastrous; but don’t quit just because you fail.  God likes it when we try to become holier, but He loves it when we mess up, repent, and try again.  As Jen Fulwiler has pointed out, Lent really starts about halfway through, when the novelty has worn off and you still have to keep on sticking with your dumb old, boring old, purifying old penance.

***

After reading this list of don’ts and more don’ts, do you feel a little taken aback — a little less confident about your powers to turn yourself into a better person?  Are you starting to think that there’s really no way you can make up for your sins on your own, and that you’re going to need ten boatloads of grace from the Holy Spirit to even get through the day, much less forty days straight?

Ah!  Now we’re getting somewhere.

Well! I acquitted myself very well this week. I tried three new recipes, and two of them were great. I definitely could have stepped up the side dishes, but otherwise, gold star for the week. It definitely didn’t hurt that lots of meat was on sale because of the Superbowl.

Let me tell you all about it.

SATURDAY
SPAGHETTI and MEATBALLS; GARLIC BREAD; SALAD; BIRTHDAY CAKE and ICE CREAM

Birthday party! The kid wanted a luau sleepover, so we went thoroughly authentic and served spaghetti and meatballs. There were six little skinny ten-year-old girls for guests, and they fell upon the food like wolves in time of famine. Amazing.

‘Scuse me while I Pinterest at you for a minute. We had a volcano cake with sparklers and peel-and-pull Twizzlers

[img attachment=”90388″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”volcano cake” /]

Bake the cake in a metal bowl, and it makes a serviceable volcano. If you wait until the last minute so the cake is still warm while you’re frosting it, the lava gets all melty and looks even better. I actually offered to go all out with the lava — I make some excellent sugar candy lava, if I do say so myself — but frosting lava is what she wanted.

We were planning to make fruit kabobs, using cookie cutters to cut the fruit into cute shapes (we’ve done this before, and it looks very impressive), but the fruit at Aldi looked terrible, so we just stuck a bunch of grapes on skewers and jammed them into oranges in a cupcake holder.

[img attachment=”90389″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”party table” /]

But check it out: oyster and pearl cookies!

[img attachment=”90390″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”oyster cookies” /]

We found almond cookies at the dollar store, put pink-tinted frosting in between two cookies, and put one of those pearly Sixlets inside each one. We were running way, way, way late, so they are kind of gloppy, but you get the general idea – I’m sure you can do better with a pastry bag or something. The eyes were white frosting with raisins, since no one ate the chocolate chips I was saving, and they just disappeared on their own for no reason. I’m going to make these again for Valentine’s Day, but use those chalky conversation hearts instead of pearls.

Oh, and I made those palm tree decorations like you see on the internet? And they looked just like on the internet!

[img attachment=”90396″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”palm tree” /]

We only have nine more birthday parties to get through this year, and then we’re done.

SUNDAY
PORK RIBS, CHIPS, SALAD

So I’m at the store, and pork ribs were SO CHEAP. I just kept putting them into the cart.

[img attachment=”90385″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”pork ribs in oven” /]

Such an easy main course: turn on the oven broiler, salt and pepper the ribs on both sides, throw them on a pan with some drainage, and turn them once. A little BBQ sauce for dipping, and you are a meat hero.

If I had planned ahead, I would have made some cole slaw and mashed potatoes, instead of just chips; and yet no one complained when I put twelve sizzling pounds of meat on the table.

MONDAY
CHEATER KOREAN BEEF BOWL; ROASTED BROCCOLI

Thanks a million to whichever reader suggested this recipe! So spicy and savory and easy easy easy. I made it in the morning and heated it up for dinner.

I was skeptical that it could really be a good Asian meal with ground beef, but it was fantastic. We served it with rice, but will probably make some kind of noodles next time. I really like this sauce! Using fresh ginger, garlic, and scallions made it wonderful. I also used actual sesame oil for the first time (I usually substitute whatever I have on hand), and it was totally worth the extra buck or two.

The broccoli, I tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and put it in a shallow pan under the broiler until the edges were browned and crispy. Very nice.

TUESDAY
BEEF STEW; ROLLS of MISERY

The beef stew turned out fine. I used steak because it was cheaper than stew meat. I also chopped the garlic, rather than crushing it, and the flavor is much brighter.

Those rolls, though, can go straight back to hell where they came from. I don’t know where I found the recipe, but this is it:

Momma’s Easy No Yeast Dinner Rolls:

1 Cup Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp of salt
1/2 Cup milk
2 Tablespoons Mayo

Well, Momma.

You know and I know that there is no such thing as a quick, no-yeast, few-ingredient bread that is going to be as good as real dinner rolls. I know this. And yet I feel that I was too harshly punished for what was, after all, just an excess of trust.

My first clue should have been that the recipe makes five rolls. Five. That’s a red flag there, that says, “Special Situation Recipe. Not for Normal People.” So I quadrupled it, and then saw that it called for a 180-degree oven. That’s, like, as hot as it gets if you rub your hands together really fast and then hold the pan.

Also, Momma wrote “in to” and “aprox.” and “(5)” and has no respect for capitalization. At this point, I knew where we were heading. But I was in too deep, so I forged ahead.

I ended up baking them for three times as long as it said, and they just sat there in their muffin tins looking stupid. So I cranked the oven up to 350 and yelled at them to bake for another ten minutes, at which point we really had to get dinner on the table because our lives were passing us by.

The texture was actually not bad — kind of pillowy, almost like angel food cake. They were mayonnaise-colored. The taste? Imagine that someone took a bag of hot salt and hit you in the mouth. But quadrupled!

Recommended for Lent, if you have a lot of reparations to make, you animal.

WEDNESDAY
WAFFLES; SAUSAGES; EGGS

Burned the waffles, oh well.

THURSDAY
OVEN BBQ CHICKEN; CHIPS

Pioneer Woman’s recipe. I used Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce and apricot preserves, because I couldn’t find peach. I again minced the garlic, rather than crushing it, and added some hearty glugs of hot sauce. Wings and drumsticks were on sale, so that’s what I used.

I’ll let the picture speak for itself:

[img attachment=”90387″ align=”aligncenter” size=”full” alt=”bbq chicken” /]

Eh? Eh? Eh? I shall make this forever from now on.

FRIDAY
TUNA NOODLE CASSEROLE; RAW VEGGIES

It’s a snow day today, so I’m going to make the tuna noodle-loving kid make the tuna noodle.

What’s for supper over your way? And who can give me some ideas for side dishes? I’m in a rut, and fall back on rice, baked potatoes, oven roasted potaoes, and salad over and over again.

In one of those rare, slightly alarming confluences of sisterly outrage, women of every political stripe are coming together and flipping a huge bird to the CDC, who yesterday proclaimed that women of childbearing age shouldn’t drink at all unless they’re using contraception. 

When women drink excessively while pregnant, the CDC explains, their babies are sometimes born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which is a dreadful, irreversible, pervasive disorder with a host of physical, developmental, intellectual, and behavioral problems. Since we don’t perform experiments on unborn babies, we can’t say exactly how much alcohol is too much; so the CDC has decided that no amount of drinking can be considered safe.

They are saying that if you have a glass of wine on Friday night so you can sleep for once, that puts you in the same category as the sorority girl blacking out in a pool of Jägermeister and someone else’s vomit because she’s too dumb to notice that, after hosting the entire rugby team one night, she hasn’t gotten her period in six months.

It’s hard to even list the problems with thinking this way. But I’ll try!

#1. It tells us that women are too dumb to make reasonable decisions about how they behave. Yes, some women are stupid and irresponsible and awful. These women need to be told, in the simplest terms, that they need to shape up or horrible things will happen (and they may or may not listen). But there are a lot more women who are capable of assessing the risk of a particular situation and making a choice that makes sense.

Everything we do as human beings with free will, while we’re pregnant or not, is a risk/benefit assessment. Sometimes, the health benefits of an occasional drink are greater than the risk, and we need to trust women to make these decisions sensibly. Saying, “No level of drinking is safe” is a way of saying, “We don’t trust you to figure out what’s safe.”

#2. It tells us that women are too dumb to know if they’re likely to be pregnant or not. Yes, surprises happen. Yes, accidents happen. But, dammit, they happen to us. That makes us the ones who should be in charge of knowing whether or not we’re likely to be pregnant. If there are great swaths of women who have no idea how their bodies work, then maybe the CDC should be making statements like, “The educational system in our country has been a colossal failure; let’s all head over to the nearest NaPro doctor or Marquette instructor and learn the basic facts about reproduction.”

#3. It taps into our lingering Puritan neurosis about alcohol being the debbil. Where’s the recommendation that potentially fertile women avoid taking ibuprofen, or smoking, or travelling to countries with iffy water, or eating deli meat? These are all things that can cause mild, moderate, or severe birth defects. Heck, where’s the recommendation that women get all contracepted up before they even consider skiing or skydiving? Or driving in a car? These are dangerous activities, and if you do them while you’re pregnant, you could hurt your baby. Happens all the time. Where’s the outrage?

#4. It treats women as if they’re just walking potential pregnancies. This is the one that really brings women together from the left and the right. It doesn’t matter how cognizant I am of the holiness and the privilege of being the bearer of life. I don’t want some government agency telling me that I have to think like an incubator from puberty until I’m safely dried up.

#5. It tells society that pregnancy is a horrible, scary, emergency situation that can descend on you at any time without warning for no reason, and you need to completely turn your life upside down on the slim chance that you might even be at risk of falling prey to this catastrophic situation.

#6 It’s just the updated version of “autism is caused by cold mothers.” It feeds into the belief that perfect, healthy baby specimens can be had if these selfish, lazy women would just do everything right. It puts unbearable pressure on women to follow constantly-shifting, incredibly demanding guidelines for “best odds” outcome, and that if baby isn’t perfect, mama must have done something wrong. And it further cements the idea that imperfect babies are not to be tolerated.

#7. It’s so extreme, it will backfire. We all know that our mothers and grandmothers drank through pregnancy, and we may have done so ourselves. But we may easily not know anyone with FAS. This doesn’t prove anything; but it’s hard to resist the conclusion that someone is probably exaggerating . . .and can probably be disregarded. When someone keeps shrieking in my ear that a rock is about to fall on my head, and a rock never, ever falls on my head, I will assume that the shrieker is some kind of idiot — and I’ll be less careful even when there are actual rocks in actual danger of falling.

These are just a few objections that spring to mind. I’m sure you can supply more.

So . . .  why would the CDC say what it said? What could possibly be the point of making a statement that doesn’t make good medical sense, is guaranteed to alienate tons of women, and is very unlikely to be followed — and will, in fact, likely backfire and not reduce the number of babies born with FAS?

I’m about to sound paranoid.

I’m okay with that.

It’s part of a larger campaign to get as many women as possible on IUDs, and it has to do with money and control. The CDC does its part to make it seem like going on contraception is the default — that girls should do it as soon as they hit menarche, and that responsible, reasonable, clean, normal, American ladies are ladies who take care of their contraceptive duty.

This isn’t new. It’s been a constantly escalating propaganda effort for decades. The CDC lists all sorts of contraception that women can use. It doesn’t specify which one we should opt for, as long as we get on something, anything, asap, because YOU HAVE TO BE ON CONTRACEPTION NOW NOW NOW.

And meanwhile, from your school, from your doctor, from your TV, from your magazines, from the welfare office and the well-woman clinic and the hospital and the OB/GYN, from your blogs and social media and up, down, north, south, east, and west, everyone is telling women . . .

Sayyyy, have you considered an IUD?

It’s so eaaaaaaaasy. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to remember anything. You don’t have to keep track of anything. Just sit still for a couple of minutes, close your eyes and think of a field of daisies, and it will all be taken care of for you.

Every woman of childbearing years knows this. IUDs are everywhere. We see that slender little T-shape in our sleep. I hear more about IUDs than I hear about shoes, purses, and hair products combined. They. Are. Everywhere. You might hear an occasional story about a perforated uterus emergency surgery pelvic inflammatory disease chronic infection excruciating pain pregnancy that happens anyway and goes horribly wrong, but . . .

Come on. It’s just women. These are acceptable risks we can take, right, ladies? After all, we trust you to make decisions about your body and to make sensible risk/benefit assessments. Trust women. Give women all the information they need, and then let them decide what to do with their bodies, without a bunch of paternalistic scaremongering.

As long as what they decide is to turn their money and their fertility over to Mirena or ParaGard.

“The risk is real. Why take the chance?” says CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat, M.D. But somehow, she’s not talking about the risks women face when they let someone cram a copper wire into their uterine wall.

Because  . . . it’s just women. If one woman gets damaged, we can always find more.

We, too, are gun owners, but we don’t open carry, or flaunt it, or yammer about it endlessly. Gun ownership is not an end in itself; it’s part of what helps us to live a life of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which are the rights that the Declaration of Independence says come from God. Guns are not something to be flaunted and paraded about, any more than you’d flaunt or parade about your wallet, or the ample supply of food in your freezer, or the gold bars you’re saving for retirement. These are things that you have a right to amass, and which may help you to live the kind of life you are supposed to be free to pursue. But to flaunt them without regard for the people around you, as if they were in themselves the highest good, shows a stunted understanding of what it means to live well.

Read the rest at the Register.

Edited at  8:20 AM EST Feb. 5: Yes, I meant “Declaration of Independence,” not “Constitution.” Embarrassing! I do know the difference; it was just a careless error. I corrected it at the Register yesterday, but forgot to edit the teaser here. Thanks to everyone who pointed it out.

My kids’ elementary school has instituted a system of school bucks, which the kids can earn with good behavior and hard work, and which they can spend on t-shirts and snow cones. Within 48 hours, there was theft, extortion, and the organization of a counterfeit ring — and that was just in the 1/2 class.

So, it turned out to be a pretty good lesson about how money works.