SIMCHA FISHER

Dear Father,

I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve said, “Quit telling priests what to do.” You guys are super busy and already working harder than anyone could reasonably expect.

But I’ll give one of those imaginary dollars back today, because I’m going to tell you what to do this Sunday. Trust me, it’s for your own good.

This Sunday is, as you no doubt know, Mother’s Day, and a lot of your parishioners are going to expect you to acknowledge it. Also, a lot of your parishioners are going to be mad if you acknowledge it.

A good portion of your congregation feels that the world despises motherhood, and they look to the Church to be the one place where they are appreciated for their sacrifices and their hard work.

Another good portion of your congregation feels that the world only cares about women if they are mothers, and they look to the Church to be the one place where no one despises them for not being mothers.

Some of your parishioners are pregnant, and they’re miserable about it. Some of them desperately wish they were pregnant, and are working hard not to hate their fertile sisters. Some of them look pregnant, but are just fat, and if one more well-meaning priest blesses their unoccupied abdomens, they’re going to sock him in the jaw.

Some of them look pregnant, but they’re the only one who knows that the baby they’re carrying is already dead.

Some of your parishioners are the mothers of children who are already buried, or children whose bodies went straight into the hospital’s incinerator while their mothers wept and bled. Some of your parishioners paid to have their children put there.

Some of your parishioners have been wretched mothers, and they know it. Some of them have been excellent mothers of wretched children, and everyone assumes that wretchedness must be the mother’s fault.

Some of your parishioners hated their mothers. Some of them just lost their beloved mothers yesterday. Some of them never knew their mothers at all.

Some of your parishioners are excellent mothers who pour their heart, soul, mind, and strength into caring for their families, and as soon as they get home from Mass, everyone expects them to get right back to cooking and cleaning and making life easy for everyone else, the same as every other day.

And then, of course, you will have the people who are mad that you mentioned a secular holiday during Mass. And the people who remember how much better it was when Fr. Aloysius was in charge, oh yes, it was much better then. It’s a shame.

So, what’s your plan, Father? Gonna make all the mothers stand up and be acknowledged? You’ll be forcing a lot of women to make a statement they may not want to make. Gonna pass out carnations? Same problem. Gonna make us extend our hands over mothers in blessing? Well, you’re the priest, aren’t you. We would rather keep our hands to ourselves.

The real answer would be for Americans to just calm the hell down about motherhood, and not to expect the Church to cater to their every emotional need. But that’s not where we are right now. It’s a mess, and you’re right in the middle of it. Sorry! But I really do think you can thread the Mother’s Day needle without getting poked if you offer something like the following blessing before the end of Mass:

On this Mother’s Day in May, which is Mary’s month, we remember that our Blessed Mother was honored above every other human being besides Jesus Himself when she was asked by God to bear His Son. We ask God’s blessing on all women, because all women, no matter what their state in life, are specially privileged to bring Christ into the world. Mary is our model in joy and in suffering, in trust and in sorrow. We ask Mary to intercede for our earthly mothers and for all the women who cared for us, and we ask the Holy Spirit to increase our love so that we will always honor the women in our lives. We ask this through Christ Our Lord. 
Amen.

Then scoot out the side door before anyone can yell at you.
Amen.

***

Image of woman who is disappointed in you via Pixabay

Today, I fulfilled my Ascension Thursday tradition and put out a frantic question on Facebook: IS THURSDAY A HDO IN NH OR NOT???

The answer is: Yes, in my diocese it is. All of New Hampshire is the Diocese of Manchester, which is a part of the Ecclesiastical Province of Boston, which, unlike most places in the U.S., has not moved the feast of the Ascension to Sunday. Thursday is a Holy Day of obligation in New Hampshire, and also in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Our family’s schedules are crazy go nuts, so I was trying to figure out if I really needed to excuse my kids from a mandatory final dress rehearsal or not, or if we should tell the carpool kid we can’t get her because we’ll be getting to our three schools late because we need to go to the morning Mass, or if I should cancel today’s doctor appointment and have all the kids go into aftercare so I can get to the vigil Mass in a town forty minutes away. I mention this in case you’re wondering why I don’t just say, “I love Jesus, so we’ll go to Mass whether we have to or not.” I do love Jesus, but, see: crazy go nuts.

Anyway, there was some back-and-forthing among my Catholic friends around the country, and one of my non-Catholic friends commented:

I ask this in all sincerity as a non-Catholic, so please forgive me if it seems disrespectful. But if it takes a 40-person Facebook discussion, a set of trigonometric tables, and a slide rule to figure out if Ascension Thursday is a Holy Day of Obligation, does it really matter that much to God? I mean, is He going down the list and saying “Sinner! Oh, never mind, she’s in the Diocese of Omaha and it’s Daylight Saving Time”?

A fair question! Here is my answer.

There are some things we are obligated to do because they have intrinsic moral significance, and there are some things we are obligated to do out of obedience. So it’s not a question of God trying to keep up with the rules that the Church has created. It’s a question of whether or not we believe that God has given the Church the authority to define doctrine and to impose discipline.

That’s what we’re talking about here: doctrine vs. discipline.  Everything that the Church obligates us to do falls under one or the other category.

What’s the difference? The classic example illustrating doctrine vs. discipline: the male priesthood vs. the celibate priesthood. The first is doctrine, and has intrinsic moral significance; the second is a discipline, and we’re obligated to follow it out of obedience.

The male priesthood is the doctrine that says only men can be Catholic priests. Doctrine never will be and cannot be changed, because the Church has decreed that there is an unchangeable theological reason for this teaching.  The Church simply does not have the authority to decide that women can be ordained priests, and Catholics have always been obligated to acknowledge that women cannot be priests.

The celibate priesthood, on the other hand, is a matter of discipline: it’s something that the Church can change and, in fact, has changed. So if there was a married priest celebrating Mass, God wouldn’t look at him and say, “Hey! You have a wife? Sinner! Oh, wait, it’s only the year 1 AD. Never mind, you’re fine, bro.” The Church has the authority to change this discipline.

But here’s the key: We are obligated to obey both what the Church teaches as doctrine and what the Church imposes as discipline. The first will never be changed; the second might. Whatever the Church currently imposes as a discipline, we are required to obey that, because we recognize that the Church has authority over us.

So, back to the current question about the Holy Day of Obligation and the scheduling shenanigans. I discovered that tomorrow is a Holy Day of Obligation for us in New Hampshire, so we are obligated to get to Mass if we possibly can. It’s a discipline that the Church has the authority to impose on us, and if I know that this is the case and it’s reasonably possible for us to get there, then we need to get there. Not because God is just cuh-razy about Thursdays and gets mad when people go to choir practice instead, but because God has given the Church the authority to define doctrine and to impose disciplines.

It’s fitting to talk about these things on Ascension Thursday since that was the day that the work of redemption was completed. When Jesus ascended into Heaven, He left behind His Church, having given His Church the ability to define doctrine and to impose disciplines. God is not bound by the Church’s rules. Instead, He has given us the Church as a way of helping us learn to come closer to Him. When we obey the Church in legitimate matters of Faith, then we are obeying God. Which we do because we love Jesus, crazy go nuts or not.

***

Image: photo by Waiting for the Word (license)

So there we were, all throwing up. If that’s too much information for you, just consider: I never even mentioned what else we were all doing, besides throwing up. You’re welcome!

When a stomach bug goes roaring through a big family — a big family, I might add, who’s had “make second toilet operational again” on the to-do list for over a year now — it looks a little something like this:

The first part is all, “Well, well, here we are on a fine spring afternoon. What shall we do with our day?” And then . . . you find out.

So anyway, the baby has not gotten sick. I attribute this to my superior mothering skills, which include letting her eat dirt, letting her eat hot dogs, and letting her eat dog food. I also notice her coat is sleek and shiny and her foot pads are supple.

However, having a healthy baby living amidst the valley of the almost-dead is not necessarily a recipe for domestic happiness. She wants to run around shrieking and hitting people in the face and dancing on the ottoman like a drunken sorority girl, only with less clothing. Normally, we are fine with this, by which I mean we are scared of her and don’t know how to make her stop. But when we’re all sick and enfeebled and our heads are going to fall off if she doesn’t stop shrieeeeeeeeeeeking at us, something must be done.

Using the last working part of my brain, I had a brain wave. I took a milk jug, rinsed it out, cut a hole in the side, and handed it to Ms. Nu Upsilon Tau (head sorority sister at NUT House, ha), along with a bag full of clothespins.

She. Loved. It. If you can’t imagine why, just picture this: You can drop a clothespin in the hole, and it will fall into the jug! You won’t be able to see it anymore! But it made a loud clattering noise, so you know it’s got to be there somewhere! So you stick your hand in the hole in the side, and there is a clothespin in there! And if you take it out, you will have a clothespin! But wait, there’s more. YOU CAN DO THE SAME THING ALL OVER AGAIN!

This miracle of physics kept her busy for a blessed twelve minutes, and she didn’t even try to murder us when we suggested to her that she might want to play with it again later in the day. Babies are insane. Thank God.

If more than 24 hours goes by and you don’t hear from me again, please send more clothespins.

***

image by Loadmaster (David R. Tribble) Creative Commons

SATURDAY
Hamburgers, probably chips and salad. Long time ago.

Friday we went to the CIRCUS and got home late, and Saturday we had a birthday party in the afternoon and a new trampoline to assemble and shopping and cleaning and First Communion Workshop and a bunch of other stuff, haircuts, new jobs, oh boy. By the time it was dinner halfway through this Weekend of All The Things, the only meal I could think of was hamburgers.

It was a wonderful weekend! We learned how to deal with a crisis as a family long before we learned how to have big, exciting, fun days together, oddly enough; but we’re definitely there now.

Here is the birthday girl:

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***

SUNDAY
Vermont Turkey Sandwiches; Potato Puffs; Corn on the cob

[img attachment=”100882″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”IMG_8176″ /]

Sandwich of the Week, week 2! We attempted to recreate the delicious sandwiches we had at a restaurant the other week.

Smoked turkey, lettuce, tomato, bacon, cheddar cheese, and green apple slices on ciabatta. This we could recall. But what was that dressing? We spent a good week returning again and again to the conundrum of the mysterious dressing. It had some sweetness, but a bit of an edge, too, and we both felt that we had tasted this particular balance of flavors before, but we couldn’t think in what context. Was it camembert and Vidalia onion? Was there buttermilk involved? We just couldn’t place it.

So we looked it up.

And.

It was honey mustard.

C’est si exotique! Honey . . . and mustard. All together, in one place! We had to travel north all the way to central New Hampshire to have this unusual culinary experience. Someday, when I get the nerve, I hope to sample some authentic South American cuisine. I’ve heard good things about — and forgive me if I get the spelling wrong. These foreign names make my head whirl — Taco Bell. But I don’t want to shock my palate too much.

We gotta get out more.

***

MONDAY
Pizza

I made four pizzas in the morning and instructed the kids to cook three of them while I was on the radio in the evening. To make pizza, I stretch the dough over the edge of the pans and let it stay there, and then I roll it back to make a raised crust before I put it in the oven. I did this with two of the pizzas, but forgot to finish the third. So when they pulled the third pizza out of the oven, this is what they got:

[img attachment=”100883″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”image1″ /]

A baked crust that was trying to devour the pan. So of course we had to turn the pizza over to get a picture. So of course when we put it right side up again, half of it had flipped over there and remained dangling like a cheesy sunburst of incompetence:

[img attachment=”100884″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”image1 (1)” /]

And that was Monday.

***

TUESDAY
Sausage, Mushroom, and Cheese Omelettes; Oven Roasted Potatoes; Salad

When you’re poor for a long time and then you stop being poor, it takes a while for all of your expectations to level off. I have finally stopped feeling guilty for buying avocados when it’s not even my birthday, but it only just now occurred to me that, yes, oh yes, I can have a two-burner griddle that costs $12. I don’t have to keep wishing and hoping and crossing my fingers that someone will leave one by the side of the road. I can just put it in my cart.

So, with my new griddle and my wonderful T-fal sautée pan, I cooked made-to-order omelettes for 12 13 (okay, yes, I cook special eggs for the dog because he’s my special guy) in under 15 minutes, rather than 40 minutes.

By the time I sat down to eat my food

[img attachment=”100885″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”FullSizeRender (2)” /]

I wasn’t too shattered and footsore to care what it tasted like. Amazing! Money isn’t everything, but it is definitely something.

***

WEDNESDAY
Hot dogs; Beans; Chips

The kids made this. I think I drove about 400 miles on Wednesday, all in about a twenty-mile radius.

***

THURSDAY
Halmonee Chicken; Spicy Almond String Beans; Rice

Here’s the chicken recipe from my friend Elizabeth:

Put chicken thighs in a pot in a single layer. Pour this sauce over it so the chicken is covered halfway up:

equal parts soy sauce and apple juice
a squirt of honey
a dash of sesame oil
lots of garlic

Boil on about medium heat, but a good steady rolling boil for about 45 min, turning periodically. If you’re cooking with skin on, it will be loose enough to pluck off with tongs about halfway through.

I actually forgot the garlic — a phrase I never thought I’d utter — but it tasted great. Very flavorful, super easy. The key is to keep the chicken in a single layer (I used three pans).

[img attachment=”100886″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”FullSizeRender (3)” /]

Just about everyone liked it!

I happened to have almonds in the house (I bought them to decorate the birthday cake but forgot), so I found this recipe for “tangy almond garlic string beans.” After I found the ginger under the trampoline (no, it doesn’t grow there. The kids just put it under the trampoline, for reasons) it was pretty easy to throw this together. I cooked the string beans and prepped the ingredients in the morning, and finished cooking it in the evening. Really zippy and flavorful. Definitely going into the permanent collection. A nice meal all around.

[img attachment=”100887″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”IMG_8266″ /]

Even if I did have to eat mine in (sigh) the van.

[img attachment=”100888″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”IMG_8268″ /]

***

FRIDAY
Penne with jarred sauce; salad

Oh, I forgot: when the kids asked what was for dinner on Saturday, I said, “Nice sandwiches, potato puffs, and corn on the cob.”
And my son says, “What on a cob?”
Because so many things come on cobs. Oatmeal on a cob; venison on a cob; fluffernutter sandwiches on a cob. How was he to know?

And he wasn’t even trying to drive me crazy. It just happens naturally.

We’ve started Michael Dubruiel’s The How-To Book of the Mass: Everything You Need to Know, But No One Ever Taught You (OSV, revised 2007), and I couldn’t be more pleased. My older kids are certainly quiet and respectful at Mass, but I would love for them to be more engaged, and I think this book will be transformative — not only for them, but for me and my husband, too. Let’s face it, we have some gaps in our educations, too.

Read the rest at the Register.

Because we are driving them crazy.

This woman, Chrissy Teigen, had a baby ten days ago. She is famous — I guess she is a model or something — so when she went out to dinner with her husband, John Legend (?), lots of people took pictures of her.

So then this happened:

You just had a baby stay at home

Dumb. No normal woman would want to leave her baby so soon

Years of infertility struggle finally had a baby and peaces out after a week

Maybe it’s just rich people but I have two children, I had them at a young age also. I don’t think I let anyone watch my child without me til a month or two.

That spotlight pull be strong. One week. Who wants to leave a one week old baby to go to a bar?

And so on. These are comments on social media, in response to a woman who committed the outrageous and vile act of . . . going out to dinner with her husband. She didn’t fly off to Antigua and leave her baby in a box on the floor at the airport. She didn’t accidentally forget her at the hospital. She didn’t turn the kid over to the first maternal-looking dog she could find so as to lead a “Babies Bore Me” rally at the local Bad Mother Sodality.

She just. Went out. To dinner. And then presumably went back home and hung out with her baby, as women do.

My friend Laura Broussard, who has a knack for getting to the point, said:

America: where we shred you for going on a two-hour dinner date at a week postpartum but give no sh*ts if you have to go back to work 40 hours a week at a week postpartum.

Seriously. It’s a couple hours. A healthy nine-day old baby is probably sleeping at this time. If my healthy nine-day old is sleeping well and my friend called and said, “Can I pick you up and take you out for calzones down the street before you start trying to lose the baby weight?” I would say OK JUST LET ME FIND MY DRY SHAMPOO. (Because ain’t no paparazzi care about my look while I’m grubbing at Rotolo’s.)

Leave. Mothers. Alone. Stop picking picking picking at them. You want to know why American mothers are all crazy? This is why they’re all crazy. Because there’s nothing they can do that won’t get them yelled at by strangers. If you think that doesn’t make people crazy, then try it some time — and add in all the normal hormones and stresses and insecurities of motherhood.

I invite you to carry a baby for nine months, give birth, and spend a scant week healing up and dealing with the exhaustion and wackiness that every mother deals with, and find it in yourself to shrug off criticism — yes, even if you’re a rich mom, even if you’re a mom with lots of help, even if you’re a mom who can fit into slinky pants right away, and even if you’re a mom who is married to someone named John Legend. This is the stuff that makes people crazy, and there is no way to avoid it.

Teigen dealt with the criticism with humor and grace. I didn’t do as well when I had just given birth and decided to get back to work after a short time, because I could do it sitting down, and because we needed the money. As soon as I said something people didn’t like, I got a rousing chorus of “YOU’RE A BAD MOTHER TO BE WORKING.” Not that they wanted to help pay my mortgage, or anything.  Not that they had anything good to say about WIC, or mandatory maternity leave laws. It was enough that I was a woman who had publicly admitted to giving birth. Suddenly, any misstep I made could be magnified by a thousand because [fill in the blank] isn’t supposed to be how mothers act. 

How about we let the lady eat? Or at least stop using motherhood as another stick to beat women over the head with. And yes, I’m speaking to women at least as much as I am to men.

First person to say, “Hey, fatherhood is hard, too!” gets a hundred lashes with a pair of maternity compression hose.

***

Angry Mob photo by Hans Splinter via Flickr (Creative Commons)

What do you get when a sperm meets an egg? A new life, a new soul . . . and a dazzling flash of light. According to a science story in the Telegraph UK

An explosion of tiny sparks erupts from the egg at the exact moment of conception.

For the first time, researchers have caught these intimate little human fireworks on film.

The bright flash occurs because when sperm enters and egg it triggers calcium to increase which releases zinc from the egg. As the zinc shoots out, it binds to small molecules which emit a fluorescence which can be picked up my camera microscopes.

When I saw the headline, I caught my breath. “It’s almost,” I told my husband, “As if something amazing is going on! Something that shouldn’t be messed with!”

Then I read the rest of the story, and I let my breath out in a sigh. One of the researchers involved in the project called the zinc flash “breathtaking,” — and then went on to explain:

This means if you can look at the zinc spark at the time of fertilization, you will know immediately which eggs are the good ones to transfer in in vitro fertilization.

Breathtaking indeed. We stand in a dark doorway and behold the brilliant spark of life itself, and we say to ourselves, “Think of the commercial possibilities!” I’m thinking of venal, wretched Uncle Andrew in C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew. Accidentally graced to be present at the creation of Narnia, Uncle Andrew saw that flash, too, as life came into being:

Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying:
“Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.

Narnia here is only minutes old, and the rich new soil is so fertile and fresh that everything that touches it springs into life and flourishes and bears fruit. Even gold and silver coins that spill from his pocket, even bits of toffee. And Uncle Andrew rubs his hands and hatches a plan to dash back home and find some bits of trains and warships that he can grow into iron trees and sell for a profit.

Thus the researcher as she witnesses that dazzling flash of new life:

[Y]ou will know immediately which eggs are the good ones to transfer in in vitro fertilization. . . It’s a way of sorting egg quality in a way we’ve never been able to assess before.

You can just hear her rubbing her hands and she mentally fondles the potential profit.

I’ll let the honest Cabby, destined to be the king of Narnia, answer her:

Oh stow it, Guv’nor, do stow it. Watchin’ and listenin’s the thing at present; not talking.

Am I being too hard on these researchers? It is true that they’re making money as they force human life into being. They profit from sorting through tiny persons, flushing the inferior ones away, and inserting the heartiest specimens back into a likely uterine home, hoping their investment will pay off.

But they do want to help. They do not want to harm, surely. The researcher says:

“There are no tools currently available that tell us if it’s a good quality egg. Often we don’t know whether the egg or embryo is truly viable until we see if a pregnancy ensues.

“That’s the reason this is so transformative. If we have the ability up front to see what is a good egg and what’s not, it will help us know which embryo to transfer, avoid a lot of heartache and achieve pregnancy much more quickly.”

Surely more life, less heartache, is always a worthy goal? Surely if we can, we should? To increase life, to sustain life, to avoid heartache. We can do it. Shouldn’t we?

Here is what Aslan says:

“Alas … Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart’s desire … All get what they want; they do not always like it.”

Light brings heartache. Darkness brings heartache. You will not be spared heartache, no matter how hard you try to catch that spark in a jar like a lightning bug. If you love life, then do not quantify. Do not sort. Do not coax, and do not discard. If you love life, you will let it flash out its brilliance in its own time, and you will let it go out when it will. It is not ours to coax into being, and it is not ours to snuff out.

***

Image: “Ancient of Days” by William Blake – William Blake Archive, Public Domain,

My husband sent me this collection of excerpts from interviews with Donald Trump: Donald Trump Thinks Men who Change Diapers Are Acting ‘Like the Wife’.  Trump displays a few fairly mild examples of his trademarked unabashed sexism and general jerkitude, saying that he doesn’t change diapers and would never be seen pushing a carriage. When he discovered Marla Maples was pregnant with his child, his chivalrous response was, “‘Excuse me, what happened?”

Nothing shocking here. It’s not as if we all imagined him spending hours fondly dawdling by the crib talking baby talk before leaping up to help one of his wives with the household chores. Nobody who likes Trump is going to be astonished to hear that he’s proud to be a caricature of a hands-off, inattentive, sperm donor of a dad who look at his own baby daughter and saw a potential set of gorgeous legs and perky breasts.

Trump is gross, blah blah blah. The thing that struck me was how sorry I felt for him. Five children, and in all those years, he apparently never let himself enjoy them. He’s happy to use them as props, but they don’t seem to have made him happy.

The other day, I posted a picture of my husband at what must be our . . . mathmathmath . . . yes, about the hundredth kid’s birthday party we’ve had at our house.

[img attachment=”100302″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”13087622_10153611020587029_1664471751188240295_n (1)” /]

The baby is obviously enthralled, but notice my husband’s face. This is a man who is having a good time, and not because he’s really into Dollar Store fashions. Having kids is fun. Having kids makes you happy. Having kids gives you something simple and straightforward to be joyful about.

Of course, there’s also some of this kind of thing, when your four-year-old wants to tell you all about . . . whatever it is that she is going on and on and on and on and on about . . .

[img attachment=”100303″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”FullSizeRender (1)” /]

And there are other, less photogenic moments, too — long days, long nights, frustration, disappointment, sorrow, doubt, and fear. These are things that come to every father, too.

Some men are naturally good dads, and take to it instantly. Some men intend only to fulfill their duty, and are delighted to learn that they actually like their kids. Some men love playing with their kids, but are slower to realize that they need to take part in the less pleasant bits of childrearing, too. There are all kinds of good dads who work out all kinds of arrangements with their families. It’s all right to take some time to grow into the role of father. It’s a big one.

But ladies, if you are thinking of marrying a man and starting a family with him, please, please, first take a hard look at how he interacts with children. Talk over your expectations ahead of time. Does he understand that his kids are going to need him — not just his money, but him, himself? Is he even open to the idea?

It’s not just about the kids, and their needs, and their happiness. It’s also about him. If you love a man, you’ll want him to enjoy the gift of a joyful, involved relationship with his children. There’s nothing masculine or conservative about refusing to accept the fullness of the great gift of fatherhood. Have the conversation!