Cui bono? Who benefits from squeezing language until it bleeds jargon? The guilty, of course.
But another important question is: Cui plagalis? Who stands to lose? Whose suffering is likely to be minimized if normally careless people suddenly become very careful about their word choice?
Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine.
Image: by Linnaea Mallette CC0 Public Domain
Here’s what we et this week:
SATURDAY
Cookout leftovers
You’ll never believe it, but we made too much food for July 4th. Good thing, too, as Saturday turned out to be one of those ridiculous days of sudden downpours, changes in plans, awkward encounters with strangers, and a shopping trip that started five hours late and then ended before any food was purchased, because I locked my keys, phone, and wallet in the car. But don’t worry! I also locked in the snacks, so when Lucy got an urgent low blood sugar reading while we waited for AAA, all I had to do was contemplate going back into Aldi (where, recall, I had not done any actual shopping) to say, “Hey, thanks for letting me use your phone three times. Now can we have some free food so my kid doesn’t pass out?” But IT ALL WORKED OUT. But I didn’t do any shopping. So I was happy we had plenty of leftovers in the house to eat.
SUNDAY
Berry chicken salad
It’s a damn fine salad. I think the family is tired of it, but I’m not!
Roasted chicken breast, mixed greens, toasted almonds, feta cheese, blueberries and strawberries, and a balsamic vinegar dressing.
MONDAY
Bacon, eggs, and Brussels sprouts in balsamic honey
An old favorite we haven’t had for a while. I got the idea from Damn Delicious, where you will find plenty of simple and tasty one-pan dinner ideas.
I adjusted the proportions and cook time, so I’ll put a recipe card at the end.
You sprinkle it with parmesan and hot pepper flakes. If you don’t overcook the egg, you can break open the yolk and dip forkfuls of bacon and Brussels sprouts in it. RECOMMENDED.
This meal would be great with a hearty bread like challah. (I didn’t actually make challah. It’s way too hot for that But it would have been good!)
TUESDAY
Muffaletta sandwiches, onion rings, pineapple
When I was drawing up my shopping list, I asked Facebook for sandwich ideas. The first one that caught my eye was muffaletta sandwiches, but if you want some other ideas, there are 82 comments on this thread!
What I made was probably more muffaletish sandwiches than anything else. You’re supposed to have softer bread and far more meat and oil, and you’re supposed to wrap it up and let the olive salad juices seep into the bread before eating. Me, I just slapped it together and wolfed it down. We used salami, ham, capicola, and provolone on ciabatta rolls with olive oil and olive salad.
The sandwich here looks like it was shouting, but it wasn’t really, except for that silent cry of “EAT ME” that so many sandwiches convey.
Wait, wait, here:
Have I told you I’m an award-winning writer? It’s true.
I made the olive salad with black and green olives, some giardiniera vegetables, some capers, and a little olive oil, chopped up in the food processor. In a stunning and radical departure from my typical habits, I made way too much of it; so later in the week, I gobbled up the rest for an evening snack with crackers. And that’s why they make ranitidine. WORTH IT.
On Tuesday we finally had a long-promised campfire with marshmallows and spooky stories. Corrie told a short but terrifying(?) story about werewuffs:
Not everyone likes onion rings, so I got some, well, I got some emoji potato things.
The package said that they mash and season potatoes and form them into fun shapes and then cook them and YOU WILL BE PROUD TO SERVE THEM TO YOUR FAMILY. Like, they came right out and made that assertion. I guess it’s normal to feel defensive when we see clearly what we’re doing.
WEDNESDAY
Meatball subs
Wednesday was one of those miraculous “how is this my life” days, so I made sure to relish it. Damien got all his work set up in the morning and then took the kids to the beach for several hours to write, and Lena made meatballs while I sat in my room in front of a fan, writing my stupid little heart out with only the cat to interrupt me.
I’ll post my basic meatball recipe at the end. The only thing unusual about it is that I cook them in a hot oven on a broiler pan, then transfer them to a pot or crock pot with sauce. It’s so much easier, neater, and faster then frying or boiling.
I had accidentally bought two sizes of roll, and Wednesday was the day I discovered it’s amusing when your aging mother makes reference to “long bois,” but distressing when that same mother goes on to offer you a bag of short bois. The ways of the young are shrouded in mystery.
THURSDAY
Pork nachos with lime crema
I put a half pork loin in the crock pot with a can of Coke and let it cook all day. Actually, I turned the crock pot on and then, a few hours later, my husband asked me if I had intended to plug it in. I told the kids I would take them out for their free 7/11 Flushies, but we ended up making something like five stops first, and I felt so bad about dragging them around in the hot car, we went to the playground.
Man, it’s been too long since we went to the playground. We used to go five days a week! Walking over a mile with the double stroller and the back carrier to while away the long, long hours, desperate to see another adult and do something besides mop up juice and wipe bottoms. Now it’s more like five times a year that we find time to go to a playground in between errands and everyone’s work schedules. This playground is cool and piney, with a little stream, and lots of trees to climb and rocks to scramble up and hills to roll down, and no end of places to hide.
After a somewhat contentious game of hide and seek, they resurrected their old Billy Goats Gruff game, using the wobbly bridge on the play structure, and man oh man, life is so different now, I just don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I guess I’ll cry. Not that I want things to go back the way they were. But still.
Some things haven’t changed, though, and one of those things is that children would rather die than give you a decent photo, even if you bought them Flushies. Well, free Flushies.
Just kidding. I love this. I love how Corrie has the same patient, forbearing expression as Elijah.
Anyway, by the time we finally got home, it was quite late and I suddenly had some unexpected editing to do, so I asked Damien to finish up supper. He shredded the pork, seasoned it heavily with chili lime powder, and put it in a pan under the broiler to brown up. So we had tortilla chips with shredded meat and melted cheese, with the option to add jarred jalapeño slices and corn, salsa, and lime crema.
Recipe card for lime crema at the end. I thought it was a pretty swell meal. I vastly prefer pork to beef on nachos.
FRIDAY
I unno.
It says “pasta” on the blackboard, but it feels too hot for that. Maybe we will just have popcorn, made in the microwave. The microwave, which we can now use again, after they told me it broke, and I asked them several times if it was maybe just not plugged in, and they swore up and down that it was truly broken, so after being annoyed about it for a month, I bought a new microwave, and when we went to plug it in, we discovered . . . well, you know what we discovered.
Yeah, I think they’re getting popcorn.
Make about 100 golf ball-sized meatballs.
Preheat oven to 400.
Mix all ingredients together with your hands until it's fully blended.
Form meatballs and put them in a single layer on a pan with drainage. Cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes or more until they're cooked all the way through.
Add meatballs to sauce and keep warm until you're ready to serve.
Adapted from Damn Delicious. An easy and tasty one-pan meal that would work for any meal. Great with a hearty bread like challah.
Preheat oven to 400. Grease two large oven sheets.
Combine sauce ingredients in a small bowl. Mix Brussels sprouts and bacon together, spread evenly in pans, and pour sauce all over. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.
Cook until bacon is almost done (almost as crisp as you like it) and Brussels sprouts are very slightly browned, 18-20 minutes.
Pull the pans out of the oven and carefully crack the eggs onto the Brussels sprouts and bacon, here and there.
Return pan to the oven and cook a few minutes longer, just enough to set the eggs. The yolks will get a little film over the top, but don't let them cook all the way through, or you'll have something resembled hard boiled eggs, which isn't as good. You want the yolks to be liquid so you can dip forkfuls of fod into it.
Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes and serve.
Mix all ingredients together.
So good on tacos and tortilla chips Looking forward to having it on tortilla soup, enchiladas, MAYBE BAKED POTATOES, I DON'T EVEN KNOW.
My husband and I are runners. You know, more or less. We don’t run fast and we don’t run far; but we do run pretty often together, and we almost always run the same course, which has a lot of ups and downs.
This being New Hampshire, there is hardly any level ground to travel. Most of it slopes up or slopes down, or up and down and up and down, and at both ends of our normal route, there are significant hills — one in the middle that’s short and steep, and one at the end, that’s long and very steep.
A serious runner told me that running downhill for too long — down a mountain, say — gets to be just as hard as running uphill, and you need a whole new set of muscles just to keep yourself from tipping over.
I will take her word for it. In my moderate little routine, downhills are pure bliss. Gravity does much of the work, and all you must do is point yourself in the right direction and off you go. On the downhill, my breathing comes closer to normal, my muscles relax, my stride lengthens, my vision clears. By the time we reach the lowest point and it’s time to circle around and chug right back up again, I feel refreshed, encouraged, and ready.
Except sometimes I don’t. Sometimes, before we get to the downhill, I’m struggling so hard mentally and physically, the chance to ease up doesn’t even register. Maybe I’m stressing out over some unrelated problem, or maybe I’m even worried about how I look, and next thing you know, I’ve gotten the lowest point of the loop, and I don’t even know how I got there. I’ve wasted my chance to take it easy, and now it’s time to start pushing again. I forgot to enjoy the downhill.
So I try to make a point of reminding myself where I am. To really feel my thighs loosen up, to really rest in the sensation of not having to fight against gravity, to relax my chest and my lungs as we descend.
There’s even an actual field of wildflowers at the bottom of the hill, and while I don’t stop to smell them, I do make sure I feast my eyes on them, and search out any new arrivals that have sprung up since last time. There’s always something: White and pink and purple clover, flaming orange hawkweed, purple cow vetch with its fantastical tendrils; Queen Anne’s Lace, bunches of silvery cinquefoil, some early asters, tenacious ranunculus, and clusters of jewelweed with their little orange lanterns. Hardy mulleins stand like sentinels in the tasseled grass, and you’re enveloped in the hot, sweet smell of wild weeds coming into their own.
And then sometimes you come to the bottom of the hill and it’s all been mown down, flattened and carted away by the other people who spend their time on this road, and that’s worth enjoying, too. By proxy, I enjoy the hot, hectic industry of gathering grasses in to make ready for winter. I do enjoy the downhill, when I remember to.
It’s a good motto, “Enjoy the downhill.” Most people have hills and valleys in their life, times of struggle and times of rest — maybe not absolute rest, but at least times when gravity takes over for a while, when you can push less hard, breathe more easily, see more clearly.
When you’re on the downhill, maybe a child still has a chronic illness, but the current crisis has passed. Maybe there are still unresolved problems in the family dynamics, but there’s a temporary truce under your roof. Maybe the Lord has been coming at you with brilliance and heat, but then the downhill comes, and he retreats for a while and lets you be. Maybe things are just easier for a while. There are no pressing bills for once. You’re sleeping through the night. You’re making it through the week. It’s the downhill! It’s not the same as stopping and resting completely, but it’s still so good, so refreshing, if you can recognize that’s where you are.
But sometimes the struggle takes so much out of us, we forget to notice when the eases up. And next thing you know, that time is already past, and now you must start chugging upward again.
If you’re struggling right now, no one needs to point that out to you. You’ll know it when you’re on the uphill, when you have to push with everything you’ve got just to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
But if you’re on the downhill, you may be in danger of missing it. So do look for it. Do enjoy it. Do relish the relief it gives, and do take the chance to loosen your muscles and bring extra air to your lungs. You know darn well you’re going to need it when the road starts to rise.
And do, oh do look for the wildflowers. See what has bloomed on its own while you were busy toiling elsewhere, and enjoy that, too. Not everything has to be done by your own two hands. There’s always something to enjoy, even if you didn’t make it yourself.
And remember, a life of nothing but existential downhill is hard on a person, too, just like physical downhills are. It’s understandable to envy people whose lives offer very little challenge, very few obstacles, but believe me: in a life like that, it takes a whole other set of muscles just to keep from tipping over. I have seen them tip over. And they never do get that sweet pleasure that comes with a reprieve.
Are you on a downhill? Can you loosen up, breathe better, see better, let yourself be carried for a bit? Take note, and enjoy! You know there are more hills to come.
Photo (color altered) by Camila Cordeiro on Unsplash
“I’m drankful they didn’t clip Serena’s wing,” said my four-year-old at evening prayers. “Drankful” is her fusion of “grateful” and “thankful,” and Serena is the wife of Louis the Swan in The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White, which we’ve been reading aloud. And her whole sentiment was my signal that, no, the weirdness in the book hadn’t flown harmlessly over the kids’ heads.
The Trumpet of the Swan tells the story of Louis, a trumpeter swan born without a voice. He can’t communicate, which means he can’t live a full swan’s life. So he goes to school with a boy who befriends him, and, after some initial skepticism from the teacher, he learns to read and write, using a small slate and chalk that hang around his neck. But none of the other swans can read, and he still can’t talk to them; so his father steals a trumpet for him, and he uses it not only to vocalize like a swan, but to play human music. Burdened with the guilt of the theft, Louis leaves home to play music for humans until he earns enough money to pay back the trumpet. The trumpet also allows him to woo Serena, who is also attracted by the slate, a lifesaving medal, and a moneybag that hang around his neck along with the trumpet, setting him apart from other swans.
At one point, Serena is in danger of having her wing clipped to keep her at a zoo; but Louis, who works for the zoo, strikes a bargain: If they let Serena go, the couple will return and donate a cygnet to the zoo from time to time.
My kids were not okay with that, and neither was I.
This book — and E. B. White’s other books, Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little — are not the first ones to deal with the problem of sentient animals living in a human world, but I find myself repelled by how he does handle it.
Let’s switch for a moment to Charlotte’s Web, which aggressively insists that children to think about mortality and, specifically, about being killed. When Wilbur realizes he is going to be slaughtered someday, he is quite reasonably horrified. Charlotte, with her creative weaving, manages to find a way to spare him, and that’s a comfort; but every other animal on the farm, who is just as sentient and emotionally and psychologically whole as he is, will be put to use as farm animals are. Many of them will be killed and eaten. That’s just the way it is. Charlotte dies, too, but Wilbur has some comfort when a few of her children stay behind as friends for him.
As a kid, I read this book compulsively, with fear and loathing. I could see what a good story it was, and how sensitively and beautifully the story was told, but I also felt guilty and ashamed for not being moved and satisfied by how it plays out.
It’s not that I couldn’t get comfortable with the idea that everything passes. I did as well with that idea as any child or any human could be expected to do. It’s that I was angry to be presented with two contradictory realities: That animals are just like us, only we don’t realize it because we can’t understand their language; and that humans can kill and eat these animals, and that’s fine. That even extraordinary people like Fern can penetrate the wall between human and animal . . . until she grows up a little and meets a boy, and then she stops caring, and that’s fine.
That friendship and other relationships between two souls is extremely important, and are what gives life meaning — but someday this will be cut short. And that’s fine.
It’s really not fine. It’s not just that Charlotte’s death is tough. It’s that the entire book is steeped in a kind of mild nihilism, brightened by the suggestion that sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can put off death for a while. How is this a book for children?
The same theme is present in The Trumpet of the Swan, although it’s more in the background. The central problem of the story is communication: Louis and his father both feel that Louis cannot be whole unless he can communicate. When the father swan goes literally crashing into the human world, through the plate glass window of the musical instrument store, he brings back something which allows his son not only to converse with other swans, but to enter into the world of humans as an entertainer and a businessman — which, in turn, allows him to pay back his debt, lay down the human burden of the moneybag, and return to the world of swans and live in peace with his family in the wilds of Canada.
Except that he made that deal that sometimes he gives some children to the zoo. Dammit, E. B. White! There it is again: The reader, and specifically children, are forced to work out some kind of uneasy truce with the contradictory world he builds. We are asked to accept that swans are fully sentient, with ideals and ethics, consciences and desires, and that a wild swan living in a zoo with clipped wings is a kind of servitude so undesirable that my four-year-old recognized it as a dreadful fate. And yet this is the fate Louis proposes for an indeterminate number of his future children, and that’s fine.
White is a good and imaginative story-teller, and he could have come up with some other plot device to extricate Louis and Serena from their dilemma. But he chose to use a trope familiar to anyone who reads fairy tales: child sacrifice. This is in Rapunzel; it’s in Rumpelstiltskin; it’s in Hansel and Gretel. Heck, it’s in Iphegenia and Psyche and Andromeda. Heckity heck, it’s in the Old Testament, when Jacob lets Benjamin go to Egypt. I have no other choice. Here, take my child.
And it’s never presented as a good or reasonable solution. We may recoil in horror, or we may writhe with pity and sympathy, because we can imagine what it feels like to be in such a tight spot; but it’s unequivocally a wrong choice, or at very least a dreadful one, made with anguish. You’re really, really not supposed to sacrifice your children to save yourself.
Not so in Trumpet. Louis and Serena, who love and dote on their children, who know them as individuals, who have real relationships with each other and even with their own parents, and who cherish their beautiful and peaceful life in the wild, travel across the country once a year and sometimes drop off one of their babies at the zoo, as per their agreement. And that’s it.
We don’t even have the comfort of knowing that this is fantastical world where the rules are different when magic intrudes, as we do in fairy tales. In fairy tales, everyday life and hardships smack up against supernatural rule-breaking, and it’s easier to accept some hard truths that wouldn’t play well in real life, because magic is present, and magic has rules of its own. Sometimes cleverness beats magic; sometimes humans are helpless before magic’s inexorable logic. But even when the results are weird and scary and unsettling, we can tell our children, “It doesn’t happen that way in real life. It’s just a story.”
But E.B. White, with his clean, lucid, reporterly style, is at pains to present his world as the actual world, where there are seedy jazz clubs and spoiled campers, where Louis frets over the appropriate tip for the bellboy, and must remember to clean his trumpet’s spit valve. He’s not a magical creature, and he’s not exceptional, except that his defect propelled him to take the trouble to learn English. His creatures rejoice in the world, especially the natural world; but it is very clearly the real world. There’s no otherworldliness to reassure us that we may approach the ethics of this particular story through a modified lens. Again and again, he presents troubling questions to us, and does not answer them.
I keep wondering, how much is White aware of the plight he’s creating for his readers?
Sam Beaver, the boy who befriends Louis and helps rescue him from an ignominious life of muteness, has the endearing habit of writing a question in his journal every night, something to mull over and he falls asleep. In the final scene, he come across the word “crepuscular,” describing a rabbit, and he doesn’t know what it means. He falls asleep wondering what it might mean, planning to look it up later. Then the book ends.
After we finished reading, I followed the obvious prompt from the author looked it up. It means animals that are most active during twilight.
And there it is. E.B. White is a crepuscular writer, who leads us, for reasons of his own, to live in a twilight world, where nothing is clearly one thing or the other, but we’re still expected to live our lives in the half-darkness.
Maybe it’s not nihilism; maybe it’s more like some kind of American zen buddhism. But it’s not especially well-suited for kids, either. Kids can handle the idea of death; but they can’t handle the idea of being content with semi-meaninglessness, and neither can I.
***
Some interesting responses to this essay:
from Darwin: In defense of E. B. White’s talking animals
and from Melanie Bettinelli: Children’s books in Parallax
“Fulton Sheen, Fulton Sheen,” prayed Bonnie Engstrom. She had just given birth, and her baby boy was dead, his umbilical cord tied tightly around his neck.
He did not breathe; his heart did not beat. His leg was necrotic from a misfired epinephrine shot intended to revive him. Sixty-one minutes after delivery, his heart still did not beat, and the monitor showed nothing but “pulseless electric activity.” He could not be revived, and the ER doctors turned away to call the time of death.
Still his parents prayed to Fulton Sheen. Then the baby’s heart began to beat.
His mother and father believe it was the intercession of Fulton Sheen that brought him back to life – not only back to life, but back to health. The child, James Fulton Engstrom, shows no physical or mental defects from the hour he spent among the dead nine years ago.
Sheen, the telegenic archbishop known for his groundbreaking evangelization via TV and radio, will now be beatified — the final step before he is declared a saint.
Beatification is formal recognition that a person is in heaven, and it means that we may now pray to him for intercession. Those who are beatified may be referred to as “Blessed [Name];” and they may be venerated publicly “in places closely associated with his or her life and ministry.”
With his beatification, Sheen is now one step closer to sainthood. Before he is canonized, the Vatican must approve a second miracle attributed to his intercession. The second miracle must take place after the beatification ceremony.
How does the Church actually decide who should and shouldn’t be beatified or canonized?
“Some people think that there’s a ‘wink and nudge’ attitude in the Vatican,” said Omar Gutiérrez, who is the notary for a tribunal working through the beginning stages of another cause for beatification, this one for Fr. Edward J. Flanagan, Founder of Boys Town.
“But the remarkable thoroughness of the process took me aback,” Gutiérrez said.
I interviewed Gutiérrez back in 2014, along with Msgr. Richard Soseman, who oversaw the cause for Sheen’s canonization, and Bonnie Engstrom, whose book describing her family’s experience will be released in the fall The interview originally ran, in a somewhat different form, in Catholic Digest.
I’ve included a glossary of terms at the end.
Bonnie Engstrom and her husband have always believed it was through the intercession of Fulton Sheen that their son’s life was restored; and a thorough investigation into the details of their story has borne out their theory. A rigorously trained team of investigators pored over every aspect of James Fulton’s seemingly miraculous recovery before adding his case to the cause for the beatification of Fulton Sheen. One tribunal charged with collecting information about a holy person examines alleged miracles, and another one focuses on the life and works of the person himself.
When a candidate’s name is suggested for veneration (the step before beatification), a petitioner asks a bishop to get permission from the Vatican to open a cause. If there is no objection, the petitioner names a postulator to oversee all the logistics of the cause.
Gutiérrez said that the process is like a legal investigation.
“We go wherever the evidence leads us,” he said. “We’re instructed not to cover over anything, but to be forthright. We took a vow of secrecy, because we want people who might have unpleasant information to feel free to come forth.”
In the cause for the beatification of Abp. Sheen, Msgr. Richard Soseman was delegated by Archbishop Jenky of Peoria to oversee all facets of the cause for canonization, and to compile evidence about Sheen’s life for review by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (CCS) at the Vatican. Msgr. Soseman, who is an official of the Congregation for the Clergy, said, “We were in contact with around one hundred people who knew Archbishop Sheen personally, and took testimony in the way prescribed by the Church from the greater part of them.”
Once the diocesan phase is done and the postulator has submitted his argument in favor of the candidate, and once a team of historians, theologians, and prelates for the CCS unanimously agree that the candidate led a life of exceptional virtue, he is referred to as “Venerable.” Then (in the case of non-martyrs) the CCS will consider evidence about any allegedly miraculous events brought about through the intercession of the Venerable in question.
This is where James Fulton Engstrom came in. James’ mother, Bonnie, said, “My mom told me that I needed to contact the Sheen Foundation, so they would at least have a record of his story. I sincerely thought they would just write it down in a book somewhere in a back room, and that would be that.”
In many cases, that is precisely what happens. Msgr. Soseman said that, when he worked for the archdiocese, he got requests for inquiries into causes as frequently as once a month.
“There are some Causes which ‘fall apart,’ he said, “and perhaps they should at the time that they do. There are some which start a bit slowly, and others which stall at various stages in the process. I believe there are about 800 causes at the CCS waiting for a miracle or other progress.”
But in the case of James Engstrom, one person talked to another until the postulator in Rome determined the case was strong. The cause has moved forward with unusual speed – but with no lack of thoroughness. Engstrom was interviewed countless times, and spent years answering detailed questions about her son’s health, and about her and her husband Travis’ devotion to Fulton Sheen.
The tribunal discovered that Bonnie’s entire pregnancy had been dedicated to Sheen. She said, “Several witnesses were called who could testify to the fact that Travis and I had a growing devotion to Fulton Sheen; and questions were asked about when and how we and others prayed.”
The allegedly miraculous event itself is scrutinized in great detail. The tribunal interviewed experts and witnesses to testify about the medical aspects of James’ ordeal.
Engstrom said that the panel of physicians searched hard through witness testimony and medical records, looking for some natural, medical explanation for what happened to her son. Engstrom said she appreciated how hard the panel worked to flush out the truth.
“In some ways it was a lot of fun,” she said. “But every time I tell James’ story, especially the more detail I share, it is difficult. My little boy went through a lot. It was difficult to watch, and it is difficult to remember.”
Msgr. Soseman said, “The Church is quite rigorous in this process, to make sure that no error or over-enthusiasm creeps in, which might cloud the issue.”
In March of 2014, the panel of physicians appointed by the CCS unanimously agreed that there was no natural explanation for James’ revival and healing. In June, the panel of theologians agreed that the alleged miracle occurred through the intercession of Sheen.
“We had no idea what to expect!” said Engstrom. “We were totally blown away by the beauty of [the process] — the language used, the sealing wax. We were really impressed with how earnestly the Church wants only the truth. That was really beautiful to watch, too.”
Along with the ceremony and beauty, there is a mountain of clerical work involved in a cause for beatification and canonization.
Gutiérrez said that one aspect of the process that raises eyebrows is the cost. “One complaint I often hear,” he said, “is about the money involved. But the money goes toward paying for postulator’s salary, and for printing. The amount of printing involved is immense.”
When Msgr. Soseman worked with the Congregation for the Clergy in 2008, he said his office prepared multiple copies of the 6,500 documents gathered in the local phase of the cause alone.
After those thousands of pages for the cause are read and considered, and the theologians and physicians recommend that the cause continue, the cardinals and bishops who are members of the CCS must vote on whether to present the case to the Pope.
If they vote to continue, they will recommend that the Pope make a Decree of Heroic Virtue – which he may do even before a miracle is declared. Ultimately, everything rests with Pope Francis: he may do nothing, or he may declare that the miracle is valid, and the candidate will be called “Blessed.” For the candidate to be declared a saint, a second miracle is required.
A date has not yet been set for Sheen’s beatification. The ceremony will take place in Sheen’s hometown of Peoria, IL, near where the Engstrom family lives; but the canonization would be held in Rome.
Engstrom said in 2014, “If James’ healing is declared a miracle, I think there’s a good chance James would get to present Sheen’s relics to Pope Francis. As a mom, that is both incredibly exciting and terrifying!”
At the time, no one knew how much longer will it would before the Pope make a pronouncement about Fulton Sheen.
“In the end,” said Engstrom, “This isn’t about James or our family. It’s not even about Fulton Sheen. In the end, this is about Jesus Christ. All of this — the canonization process, the miracles, saints — it’s all a means to an end, and that end is for every person to know and love Almighty God, to live lives that bring Him glory and honor, and to find salvation through Jesus Christ.”
***
Once secret and mysterious, the beatification and canonization processes are now more familiar to laymen – but some of the terms can be confusing. Here are some of the words and phrases you may hear:
Servant of God: title given to someone for whom a cause for beatification and canonization has begun
Venerable: someone whose martyrdom or heroic virtue has been formally recognized by the Pope
Beatification: recognition that a person is in Heaven. We may pray for intercession in the name of someone who has been beatified, and refer to him as “Blessed So-and-So”
Canonization: recognition that a person is in Heaven and may be universally venerated. Canonization does not make someone into a saint; it infallibly declares that his life is worthy of veneration and imitation
Congregation for the Causes of Saints: the body that oversees the entire process and turns all materials over to the Pope
Petitioner: appoints a postulator and pays for costs associated with the cause
Postulator: Initiates a cause for beatification or canonization and guides it through the process, documenting all relevant information about the candidate, identifying witnesses, and generally organizing and coordinating everything, and formally presenting documents to the CCS
Tribunal: Officials appointed by the bishop to consider evidence for and against canonization
Positio: The comprehensive document that the postulator presents to the CCS, describing the person’s heroic virtue and the alleged miracle attributed to his intercession
Nihil obstat: (“nothing stands in the way”) A formal declaration by the CCS that there is no impediment to proceeding with the cause
Theological Commission: Body of theologians appointed by the bishop to examine the writings of the candidate, to be sure there are no theological problems
Historical Commission: Body of scholars appointed by the bishop to examine the acts, visits, and timeline of the candidate
Both commissions report to the tribunal set up by the bishop who has taken up the cause.
Relator: the “reporter” who assembles documents pertaining to the candidate’s life, history, era, and circumstances. Performs many of the tasks associated with the now defunct “Devil’s Advocate”
Special thanks to Omar Gutiérrez of the Archdiocese of Omaha for his patient and invaluable help in explaining and clarifying the process.
What a week! Summer is officially underway, emitting showers of sparks as it comes. If I finally figured things out, this post contains two videos.
Here’s what we had this week:
SATURDAY
Grilled ham and cheese on sourdough
Saturday was twelve years ago. Let’s see if I took a picture of my sandwich.
Oh yeah!
Sometimes you takes the trouble to plates your dinner, sometimes you don’ts.
SUNDAY
Chicken shawarma with vegetables, pita, and yogurt sauce; frozen grapes
It’s been too long since we shawarma’d. I marinated the meat in the morning and cooked it under the broiler, since it was too rainy to grill outside. We had the meat and onions with black and kalamata olives, feta, parsley, pita and yogurt sauce, tomatoes and cucumbers.
Frozen grapes are a splendid way to clear your head when you’re feeling hot and grumpy. Just remember to dry them off before you freeze them, or they will get a little jacket of ice.
MONDAY
Hamburgers
I also feel like there was some vegetable involved, but I can’t prove it. What I did do was add my little portion to the worldwide onslaught of senseless food videos.
The occasion was that we have new knives like rich people, but I suffered a relapse and bought a meat chub like a poor. See, Damien and I discussed how we are now so wealthy, we no longer have to buy ground beef in opaque plastic printed with a photo of the meat allegedly inside, but can now treat ourselves to meat you can see! But on the other hand, this meat chub was so cheap. So I tried to make the best of it.
Watch the video if only to hear Damien yelp as I severed the chub.TUESDAY
Chicken nuggets, cheezy weezies, snap peas
We were supposed to have this meal on Wednesday, so we could do party shopping and cleaning, then have a quickie meal, and then run off to see the city fireworks. But I spent so long prepping Tuesday’s meal, I ran out of time to cook it. So we had the nuggets. I amused myself by plating it nicely.
I AM AMUSING.
WEDNESDAY
Sesame lime chicken, cucumber salad, cherries
This chicken was a NYT recipe I simplified and messed up a little. It was tasty. Not quite as razzle dazzle as I expected, what with the lime zest, fresh ginger, and fish sauce
but a pleasant, robust flavor. I’ll put a recipe card of my version at the end.
What made the meal was a lovely cucumber salad (recipe at the end), which I’ll be making more often throughout the summer. I really enjoyed the cool, vinegary cucumbers together with the warming honey and hot pepper. A great match for the lime and fish sauce in the chicken.
And the cherries, first of the season, were rewardingly luscious.
If you look closely, you can see that Corrie had put a bowl of blue Jell-o on top of her head, and then, upon hearing that I would be needing to wash her hair, she crushed a bunch of soap into her scalp to wash up. That girl tries.
THURSDAY
July 4th cookout!
Honestly, this is the best day of the year. As many cousins as possible come, and we have three times as much food as we need.
Here’s the leftover meat, after we all ate until we went insane:
I daringly ate my burger with pepper jack cheese, and jalapeños instead of pickles.
It’s not a barbecue, though. I have finally learned that you can’t call it a barbecue unless you spend 172 hours smoking a brisket made of an entire herd of long-horned steer. If you call anything else a BBQ, the ghost of Sam Houston will appear and strangle you with a bolo tie. Me so sorry, me just dumb New Englander who not understand what meat is! All we had was hamburgers, hot dogs, beer brats, sugar rub chicken thighs, and mahogany clams, and it was just a cookout. We also had potato salad (recipe card at the end), an avalanche of chips, watermelon, all sorts of beverages and all sorts of desserts, and Clara made so many chocolate chip cookies that, if you stacked them all up on top of each other, they’d be enough for all the cousins. All the cousins, I say!
The potato salad turned out well. People who don’t usually eat it ate it (recipe card at the end).
As many people reassured me, the kids absolutely did not care that my patriotic layered Jell-o cups didn’t turn out like the picture on the internet. I also made frozen pudding and cream cups, and we had about a bushel of corn on the cob we completely forgot to roast, and ice cream we forgot to eat, and marshmallows we forgot to toast and another watermelon that I don’t even know what happened to it.
And the table top I classily made out of cardboard didn’t even collapse.
I ate a ludicrous number of steamed clams drenched in butter, onions, white wine, and lemon juice, and then wallowed around in Dark and Stormies for a while (dark rum, ginger beer, ice, and fresh lime).
And it was perfect. A wading stream and a trampoline, sparklers and glow sticks, American flags and twinkling lights, guitars, hammocks, salamanders and bug spray, fireflies, tiki torches, cheap beer, and fireworks, and my beloved family. Everyone should be so lucky.
Here’s the whole gang:
FRIDAY
Leftovers, I do believe.
Okay, gotta go drive people around for a bit, and I will come back with the recipe cards this afternoon!
Mix marinade ingredients together, then add chicken. Put in ziplock bag and let marinate several hours or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 425.
Grease a shallow pan. Take the chicken out of the marinade and spread it in a single layer on the pan, and top with the onions (sliced or quartered). If you kept the garlic in larger pieces, fish those out of the marinade and strew them over the chicken. Cook for 45 minutes or more.
Chop up the chicken a bit, if you like, and finish cooking it so it crisps up a bit more.
Serve chicken and onions with pita bread triangles, cucumbers, tomatoes, assorted olives, feta cheese, fresh parsley, pomegranates or grapes, fried eggplant, and yogurt sauce.
Mix all ingredients together. Use for spreading on grilled meats, dipping pita or vegetables, etc.
Adapted from a NYT recipe. Serve with cucumber salad for a wonderful summer meal, with rice.
Mix all sauce ingredients together and pour over chicken. Let marinate at least four hours.
Remove from marinade. Grill over coals or broil in oven, turning once.
Serve with cilantro garnish and chiles, if desired.
A spicy, zippy side dish that you can make very quickly.
Mix all ingredients together. Serve immediately, or chill to serve later (but the longer you leave it, the softer the cukes will get)
Put potatoes and the three eggs in pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, turn the heat down, cover loosely, and simmer until potatoes are easily pierced with a fork (15 minutes or so)
Drain the potatoes. Fish out the eggs, peel, and chop them.
When they are cool enough to handle, cut them into bite-sized pieces and mix them up with the olive oil.
Add the chopped eggs, celery, onion, and parsley.
Mix together the dressing ingredients and add to potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate and serve cold.
Mix dry ingredients together. Rub all over chicken and let marinate until the sugar melts a bit.
Light the fire, and let it burn down to coals. Shove the coals over to one side and lay the chicken on the grill. Lower the lid and let the chicken smoke for an hour or two until they are fully cooked.
Prepare sauce: Coarsely chop the onion and sautee it in the olive oil with the red pepper flakes. Add salt and pepper.
Add two sticks of butter and let them melt. Add the wine and lemon juice.
Light the fire and let it burn to coals. While it's burning down, sort and clean the shellfish, discarding any damaged or dead ones. (If they're open, tap them. If they don't close, they're dead. If they're closed, they're fine.)
Lay shellfish on grill until they pop open. The hotter the fire, the shorter the time it will take - five minutes or more.
Add shellfish to sauce and stir to mix.
My father usually reads the Declaration of Independence out loud when we get together on the Fourth of July. We’ll do it again this year, if only to savor the beauty of the cadence of those words.
It will be a happy day for the kids, full of sparklers and hot dogs and marshmallows, and it will be good to have everyone together again. I don’t want to muck up the fun with any heavy irony. But the Declaration doesn’t fall on my ears the way it used to.
When I was young and listened to the Declaration of Independence, I used to feel pride and gratitude for our country, flaws and all; but now, when I think of what we have become, I am so mired in anger and dismay. The “long train of abuses” that stirred the founding fathers into revolution are nothing, nothing at all, compared to the abuses the vulnerable suffer from our elected government now; and the people who cry “America!” the loudest let these abuses happen without a murmur, or heartily cheer them on.
We are still the freest country in the world, at least for some. We are still more or less at peace, at least within our borders, at least for some. We do have a free press, at least for now. It’s not nothing, that our nation manages to transfer power peacefully every election. Nobody dies when we throw out one bum and bring in the next. But good grief, I’d like to see more than that. I’d like to see that it’s still possible to bring about change using the system the founders designed, but the gears have become so clogged with money and lies, it barely functions When something good happens — when a decent, moderately virtuous candidate does appear, or a sensible bill gets passed, or a monstrous one is defeated, it’s almost like a fluke. We’re the land of ten thousand monkeys, and the democratic process is a typewriter. And if you think I’m speaking about just one party, you’re willfully blind.
Maybe a different document would be better to read.
A few years ago, we passed the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. In this astonishingly compact speech, Lincoln looks back at our founding, and then he looks around at the rubble and the blood-soaked ground.
And then he does something extraordinary: he looks forward. He says,
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
He stood on the blood-soaked ground, and he looked forward.
Now we hear the words like “freedom” and “unity” coming out of the mouths of people who despise freedom, who put all of their effort into subverting unity, who see journalists as the enemy, who treat asylum seekers as criminals, who tell us we must violate our consciences in the name of patriotism, who welcome true enemies as logistical allies. And in response, we’re squandering our freedom of speech on petty name-calling, on projectile milkshakes, on melodramatic photo ops. I don’t want four more years of the gorgon, but I don’t know if I can bring myself to vote for one of these soulless, preening candidates just to chase him away.
But Lincoln stood on blood-soaked ground and looked forward.
So I can’t hear the Declaration of Independence and feel pride in our country — not today. But I can hear the Gettysburg Address and take courage. I can see the struggle and grief of the nation, suffering now as it is, and I can look forward.
If they could recover from that, then we can recover from this.
Those of us who still love the Constitution are the living. We’re the ones who understand that the country is not great, but it’s not over yet. It is still, as Lincoln said, “unfinished work.”
To the pro-lifers who refuse to be overcome by an obscene and hysterical mob, and who refuse to let the phrase “pro-life” be co-opted by racists and misogynists: you are the living. To the volunteers who knock on doors and mail flyers and work the phone banks to rally support for a candidate who can’t win but isn’t a monster: you are the living. To students who grind your eyeballs into your law books because you want to make things better, want to defend the innocent: you are the living. To those who see their government crushing the poor, and work doubly hard to build them up again: You are the living. To teachers who day after day shrug off the pressing cultural gibberish because you know your children need to hear the truth; to citizen scholars who patiently call into radio shows and wade into battle on Facebook and Twitter, correcting and correcting and correcting the lies: you are the living.
And to ordinary citizens who pray for our country every day — not because we’re on the side of God, but because God will come to our side if we beg — we are the living.
This country is unfinished work. The battle isn’t over yet.
***
A version of this post ran in the Register in 2013.
Image: from the book Gettysburg and Lincolnvia Wikipedia (Creative Commons)
The border, the border, the border. It’s so heavy to think about. Children are, by definition, innocent. We are, by definition, obligated to help the innocent. There’s no “but we have to teach their parents a lesson” clause or “they should never have come” loophole or “my grandparents did it the right way” excuse note. Children are innocent. We are obligated to help the innocent.
People are aching to give detained kids food and blankets, diapers, toys, and anything to make them feel like someone cares about them; but they are not accepting donations at detention centers.
So you help where you can. When migrants are released from detainment, often after tireless legal intercession by groups like Immigrant Families Together, they are in desperate need. Respite centers, where migrants go when they are released, are accepting donations.
New Wave Feminists, a secular pro-life group founded by the irrepressible Destiny Herndon De La Rosa, has organized a massive pro-life effort, with over fifty pro-life sponsors from across the political spectrum, to bring supplies and funds to the people on the ground ministering to people in dire need.
“Our humanity doesn’t begin at birth, and it doesn’t end at the border,” it says on NWF’s donation page. They will pass all donations until July 13th along to help families at the border.
“We should be able to stand with the vulnerable wherever they are,” Herndon-De La Rosa said, “and that extends beyond the womb.”
They have reached the capacity of how many physical goods they can haul to respite centers, but they are still gratefully accepting donations, which they will pass along to two respite centers and a legal aid fund that works to reunite families by helping them through the legal system and posting their bails.
***
Previous volumes of Pro-life Spotlight:
Gadbois mission trip to Bulgarian orphanage
Rio Grande Valley Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center
If you know or have worked with an organization that works to build a culture that cherishes human life, please drop me a line at simchafisher at gmail dot com with “pro-life spotlight” in the title.
Even in the very silliest of silly seasons in the seminaries, it seems likely that someone, somewhere would have caught the detail that this legendary fake priest had been baptized with milk, and the process would have come to a screeching halt long before the putative ordination.
But if it were true, I can’t see a way around the horrible consequences, because the sacraments are real. Something real happens when they are performed, and if they’re not really performed, then nothing real happens.
Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Photo via Flickr via Navy (license: U.S. Government Works)
Oh Friday! I was whooping it up in Princeton, NJ for a big part of the week. Great trip, wonderful people, tiny airplane, glad to be home. Here’s what we ate this week:
SATURDAY
Chicken quesadillas, tortilla chips, guacamole
Corrie is always trying to get me to watch food videos with her, and I kept saying “not now.” So, as she says: “I like food videos, so I may as wewll make my own!” This video will make you feel better about the cleanliness of your food preparation area, about your efficiency with avocados, and most of all, about your Spanish. But it may make you wish you had a cooking companion and videographer like I have.
I don’t want to hear and kvetching about the vertical camera! She’s four!For the quesadillas, I drizzled the chicken with olive oil and sprinkled on plenty of chili lime powder, then roasted it. I think I either left the house or went to lie down at this point, because I don’t remember making quesadillas, but I do remember eating some.
And very good they are, quesadillas that somebody else made.
SUNDAY
Grilled chicken, bratwurst, pork ribs, and shrimp with mango salsa; chips and guacamole; strawberries and ice cream
Damien’s mom came by to watch Into the Spiderverse with the kids, and Damien smoked up a feast.
Now, here is where you may begin to notice a certain theme: Mandatory Meat vs. Optional Meat. I like meat? I really do. But I can imagine a happy life without it, unlike some husbands. I am most certainly not complaining! It just wouldn’t occur to me to cook a meal featuring four different meats; and it wouldn’t occur to him to go to a restaurant and not order meat. I guess between the two of us, we even out. As with so many other things.
He used the same rub for the ribs as he does for the chicken, but for the ribs, he put some mustard on first, before smoking it. (I think he seared it on the grill and then moved it to a smoker? His ways are mysterious.)
He boiled the brats in beer and onions before grilling them. The shrimp, he marinated in lemon juice, olive oil, garlic powder, chili powder, and a little salt and pepper, and skewered them on skewers that had been soaked in water, then grilled them.
So good. That chicken is so juicy and the skin is so crisp.
Have I told you about Damien’s Amazing Interchangeable Cinderblock Meat Altar Situation? He wanted a really big grill, but we don’t especially care for, you know, paying for things. We keep buying cheap grills and then leaving them out in the rain to rust, and that’s no good.
So he got a bunch of cinderblocks and built up this giant monolith for the base. Then he has an assortment of little blocks and chunks, grates of various sizes, chimneys, tongs, different charcoals and whatnot, and he just builds to suit, depending on how much fire he wants, how high the grate and how much air circulations, how many different fires he needs at the same time, and so on.
He does want one big grill to go over the whole thing, for when we have a lot of guests. And today is the day I found out he’s too much of a fancy man to even consider stealing a shopping cart.
Anyway, the mango salsa was pretty tasty. I did say I was interested in mangos! So pretty, too.
I do like the taste, but I’d probably buy them just for how the peels look.
I’ll put a recipe card at the end. Oh, it’s so good to eat outside again! Even the plates are happy.
Oh, mangoes have not seen the last of me.
And I do believe Corrie is firmly in the “carnem et carnem solum” camp.
MONDAY
Creamy lemon sausage pasta
I saw this recipe in the New York Times and it looked easy enough, and everybody likes lemon and cheese. But I figured I better get some meat in there, for the more carnal amongst us. I also tweaked the proportions so there was more sauce per pasta.
So, you just cook pasta, then cook up the sausage, then mix it together with ricotta and parmesan, lemon juice and lemon zest, salt and pepper, and some of the pasta water to thin it out, and stir all that into the cooked pasta, and put some fresh basil and red pepper flakes on top.
It was good? It was almost good. It was not great. It was filling, and a little odd, but definitely cheap and easy. I would have liked to have the lemon and cheese filling in ravioli, probably; but as a sauce, and with the sausage, I was not entranced. I don’t know if it was the combination of sausage and lemon, or if this just wasn’t the dish for us. Oh well, onward and upward.
TUESDAY
I was gone, wasn’t I! On Tuesday I did a Theology on Tap with the beautiful and indefatigable Kait Mayer, who also took me out to eat beforehand at Triumph Brewing, where I had . . .
Well, look, now we’re back to the difference between me and Damien. I ordered the tempura mushroom banh mi, and I stand by it. The mushroom had a lovely, crisp coating, the bun was soft and giving, and the shredded vegetables were copious, flattered winsomely with a spicy mayo just as the gods ordained. It was delicious.
WEDNESDAY
I had lunch at EFES Mediterranean Grill with my Aunt Joan and Uncle Lloyd. Lovely little place! Athough I wanted to want lamb dumplings or something along those lines, it was tremendously hot and humid, so I just ordered an appetizer, which was plenty. Homemade yogurt with spinach and walnuts with a basket of pita, and there were also little cups of sauce — something orange and very warming, and something minty and cooling. I got a very clear message that I need more mint in my life.
Then we did a mini-tour of Princeton campus, and then I mooched around the Princeton Art Museum. I only had time for the ancient art gallery, which was, as the kids say, extremely my jam. I posted a bunch of photos on Instagram. What a gorgeous place, and free admission.
Then the gracious Claire Gmachl and the monsignor took me out for dinner at the Blue Point Grill, where I had arctic char and wild rice. I had to ask what arctic char is, since I am a bumpkin. It turns out it’s like salmon, but more salmony. And I fully expected to see a wiggly red line appear under “salmony” as I typed, but it turns out salmony is so a word. Then I thought maybe it was some obscure legal term, like simony, only more salmony. Oh, you want it in a sentence? Then how about The Sporting Review’s observation:
“This stream, which forms the Cascade de Con, abounds with a delicious little trout, the best flavoured and the most salmony I ever ate.”
Or perhaps this 1906 entry in Horticulture by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society will satisfy you:
“The color is pretty much the shade seen in Queen Alexandra, a salmony bronze, one of the kinds commonly called off-colors…”
This seems interesting to me. But I did not sleep a lot this week. I did go ahead and look up “arctic char” to see if the internet would rush to offer the information that it’s rather salmony, but all I learned was that its distribution is circumpolar. I feel that same way myself.
After my talk, I got to hang out with Tom and Elizabeth McDonald, who are SO MUCH FUN. And I have a photo which I am currently saving in case I ever need to blackmail Tom.
THURSDAY
Pizza
Damien insisted on making dinner while I lay down. Benny brought me dinner in bed:
Then they went to the beach while I lay down some more! I hope my current life isn’t the opposite of working out your purgatory on earth so you don’t have to do it after you die, because I feel like I’m racking up a lot of rewards that I haven’t quite earned.
FRIDAY
It says on the blackboard “giant choc chip pancake – eggs” and I don’t feel like I can argue with that, even though I’m sitting here smelling the pancakes they are making themselves for brunch.
Coming up: our giant family July 4th cookout and mostly-legal fireworks display! We’ll be having, you guessed it, lots of kinds of meat, plus all the usual summer foods — potato salad, corn on the cob, watermelon, and a variety of refreshing beverages. What should we do for dessert? The kids want a cake in the shape of a flag, with red and blue berries, but I’m fairly anti-cake in the summer. I think we have done ice cream cups and a giant mountain of cookies in the past. That may be perfect; but I’d love to hear other ideas, too. Whatcha got?
Good for shrimp, pork, chicken, or just tortilla chips
That's it, dude.
Mix dry ingredients together. Rub all over chicken and let marinate until the sugar melts a bit.
Light the fire, and let it burn down to coals. Shove the coals over to one side and lay the chicken on the grill. Lower the lid and let the chicken smoke for an hour or two until they are fully cooked.
Peel avocados. Mash two and dice two.
Mix together with rest of ingredients and add seasonings.
Cover tightly, as it becomes discolored quickly.
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