Month: November 2005

Holiday Tip: Low Carb Mashed Potatoes!

Mashed_potatoesThis is another "wish I’d thought of this sooner" post. If it comes too late for you to use this Thanksgiving, consider it for Christmas.

For hard-core low-carb folks who will keep the discipline even on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas (which is to say, people like me), here’s a way to approximate traditional holiday cuisine a little bit.

Some things like turkey and ham are, of course, no problem as long people don’t mess them up with carb-laden additives.

But how is it possible to get a low-carb equivalent of that holiday favorite, mashed potatoes?

Actually, there’s more than one way. I’ve seen mixes for low-carb equivalents to mashed potatoes, but there’s a very simple way to do it that just uses what you can get in an ordinary grocery store.

Here’s the secret: Make mashed cauliflower instead.

Like potatoes, cauliflower brought to the right temperature gets nice and mushy, so you can then mush them up. It’s also simliar in color to potatoes but–unlike the latter food–it is quite low carb. A 3 oz. serving of it has like 2 grams of digestible carbs and 2 grams of fiber and only 20 calories.

So just get some cauliflower–frozen or fresh–and nuke it until it’s really soft (I just tested a package of fresh cauliflower florettes in a bag and after 7 minutes on high it was quite mushy)–the mush it up with a spoon and you’re ready to go.

Since cauliflower–like potatoes–has a relatively neutral taste (not the same as potatoes, but still pretty bland) it’s really just a flavor vehicle for what you put on it.

So what can you put on it?

Exact same stuff you put on mashed potatoes: milk, butter, gravy, mushrooms, chives, cheese, salt, pepper–none of those are problems from a low-carb perspective (as long as you use low-carb milk or half-and-half or heavy cream and as long as the gravy isn’t loaded with carbs; many commercial gravies aren’t bad carb-wise at all), so have at it!

When I was a boy my mom would do fancy things with mashed potatoes on holidays, like form them into individual, ball-like servings (with a point on top) and brown them in the oven before serving. I haven’t verified that that would work with mashed cauliflower, but I imagine it would, so if your family’s into that kind of thing, you might try it, too.

Good luck with your holiday low-carbing!

A Victim Of Sexual Abuse Shares His Perspective

A reader writes:

I have been following the lengthy comments on the arrest of the LifeTeen founder on sexual abuse charges.  I thought I might add my comment as a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of religious (in my case a Christian brother). 

It has taken me many years to deal with the effects of this.  I have also quietly observed the news and instances that have surfaced over many years.  I strongly feel that this is NOT a failing of the Catholic Church.  This is a failing of individuals.  We are all sinners. 

In hearing reports of Catholic abuse, I am profoundly saddened and where it is proven to be fact, strong measures MUST be taken, but I also hear about abuse in other Christian groups, by hockey coaches, by babysitters, and in many other circumstances.  These are all tragedies, but they are the failings of individuals who sin in an act that victimizes the most vulnerable. 

We must all be on guard to come to the aid of those in this situation – in all instances where it occurs. 

We must also understand that evil could lurk on both sides of the equation, where priests might well be unjustly accused. 

I was a Catholic then and remain a Catholic now.  I love the Church and I will not let the all too human failings of man color my understanding of the truth and authority that is Christ’s Church.

May I say that the reader shows a remarkably healthy and balanced perspective on the subject. I am certain that it has been a painful cross for him, but it is a cross that he appears to have born well.

It has long struck me that one of the most important parts of recovering from a personal tragedy (whatever the tragedy may be) is internalizing the resolution: "As bad as this tragedy was, I am not going to allow it to wreck my life." It sounds to me like the reader has internalized this.

My hat’s off to him.

 

Zarqawi An Ex-Terrorist?

I’m starting to think that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may be dead.

(For those not following this part of the news, he’s been the head al-Qa’eda villain in Iraq.)

I mean, at first I was skeptical.

Some Arab TV station was reporting that he and seven others blew themselves up in Mosul to avoid getting caught.

Yeah, right. What some Arab TV station says plus ten dollars will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Then several more Arab TV stations reported the same thing.

Okay, put ’em all together plus ten bucks and you can still get that steamysweet cup of frappuchinomochococoalatte.

But y’know what?

There really WAS an incident in Mosul where a bunch of terrorists in a house blew themselves up to avoid capture.

And it appears that the group included people from Zarqawi’s immediate leadership team, so maybe he was there, too.

And now the U.S. military has announced that they’re doing DNA tests on the bodies from Mosul to see if any of them are Zarqawi.

And then there’s all this Zarqawi not being all over the news personally the last few days.

I mean, if you’re a terrorist mastermind waging an insurgency campaign and a rumor gets out that you’re dead then the first thing you’d better do is blow something up and then issue a statement to prove that you’re still alive, y’know?

I mean, you just can’t let those "Zarqawi is dead" rumors get very far. Not if you want to retain command and control of your organization and keep . . . well . . . inspiring terror in people.

People stop being afraid of someone who they think is dead.  (I mean, unless he’s Dracula or something.)

So where’s Zarqawi?

I’m thinking that he may have shuffled himself off this mortal coil, joined the infernal choir invisible, and become an ex-terrorist.

GET THE STORY.

Also, even if he’s not dead,

HE JUST HAD A TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO-GOOD, VERY BAD WEEK.

Doubt & The Real Presence

A reader writes:

My friend’s Mother who has been a Catholic all her life and will stay in the Church, has been having problems believing in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  Any reading you know of she can do?

It’s a little hard to know what to recommend without understanding more precisely what the source of her difficulty is (i.e., which objections to the Real Presence she finds troubling).

In general I would recommend the material in the library and This Rock archive at www.catholic.com that deals with this. It hits about every objection that I’m aware of to the Real Presence.

If the problem is just a general psychological difficulty of accepting something that is contrary to the senses then some of the following points may be helpful for her to contemplate:

  1. There are many times in life where appearances are misleading and we need to act on what we know to be the case, appearances notwithstanding.
  2. We have Jesus’ word on this really emphatically in Scripture.
  3. It’s been the unbroken faith of the Church ever since.
  4. We can have faith in God to guide his Church into correct beliefs.
  5. God is omnipotent and even the things that seem unimaginably hard to us are equally easy for him as the smallest acts. It is as easy for God to make Jesus present in the Eucharist as it is for him to create a single atom or pick up a piece of paper or cause a gentle breeze to blow. Being omnipotent, God does not expend resources when he does things and so all things are equally easy to him. He is completely un-strained by everything he does since he has infinite resources to draw upon (that’s what omnipotence does for you). Something may seem hard to us, but that’s because of our limited resources. It’s not hard to God. For him, everything is easy. It’s just a question of what he chooses to do, and he’s told us that he’s chosen to do this.

Unhappy Kennedy Assassination Day

Dealey_plazaToday–November 22–back in 1963 President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot while riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in the city of Dallas.

To the left is a picture of me standing at the spot where he was struck by the fatal head shot that ended his life.

(Sorry for the poor picture quality, but it was taken a couple of years ago and all I had was a really dinky camera phone.)

The Kennedy assassination is one of the most enduring mysteries of recent American political life. Who killed Kennedy and why has been endlessly debated and rivers of ink have flowed on the subject.

According to the Warren Commision (lead by horrible Chief Justice Earl Warren and involving such notables as future President Gerald R. Ford, future Senator Arlen Spectere, and former CIA Director Allen Dulles–the uncle of now Cardinal Avery Dulles) there was no conspiracy to kill Kennedy, only a lone nut named Lee Harvey Oswald.

Oswald is a very odd figure. He was a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War and then was repatriated to the United States. There are many claims that Oswald had ties to the U.S. intelligence community and many have thought that he was actually working as a spy for the U.S. during his time in Russia.

However that may be, he just happened to have strated work at the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza shortly before the President made a trip to the city (to mend fences with Southern Democrats in preparation for the 1964 presidential election). According to the Warren Commission he then shot President Kennedy from the sixth floor of that building–an event captured on the famed Zapruder Film.

Unlike prior presidential assassins–such as John Wilkes Booth (who himself was part of an anti-Lincoln conspiracy) was proud of the fact that he had shot Abraham Lincoln–Oswald denied shooting the president after he was apprehended and claimed that he was being used as a "patsy" (i.e., someone set up by the real killer or killers to take the fall for the crime).

In the 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations looked into the matter again and concluded that there had been a conspiracy, though it did not establish what role Oswald may have played in it.

There are thus two official and opposite government findings: The Warren Commission, which found that there was no conspiracy, and the House Select Committee report, which found that there was a conspiracy.

According to polls, most Americans agree with the House Select Committee over the Warren Commission, though opinion polls are not a good way of determining what happened on that day in 1963.

The thing to do is look at the evidence.

Which happens to be something that I’ve done to a considerable extent.

Continue reading “Unhappy Kennedy Assassination Day”

Christmas Peace Veteran Dies

Cenotaph

In Europe in 1914, when Christmas was still considered to be a holy day and an occasion for peace rather than an excuse to party, the combatants of World War I observed a truce in honor of the holiday. The last surviving Allied veteran to witness the 1914 Christmas Peace has died at the age of 109.

"Alfred Anderson was the oldest man in Scotland and the last known surviving Scottish veteran of the war.

"’I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence,’ he was quoted as saying in the Observer newspaper last year, describing the day-long Christmas Truce of 1914, which began spontaneously when German soldiers sang carols in the trenches, and British soldiers responded in English.

"’All I’d heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machinegun fire and distant German voices. But there was a dead silence that morning across the land as far as you could see.’

"’We shouted "Merry Christmas" even though nobody felt merry. The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again.’"

GET THE STORY.

May Mr. Anderson and all of the witnesses of that Christmas Peace finally be reunited this holiday season to witness the everlasting peace of heaven.

LifeTeen Founder Arrested

Fushek2Due to my work on liturgy I have regularly been put in a position in which I was asked about problematic liturgical practices in connection with LifeTeen, and I have tried to answer those as accurately and charitably as I could. The truth is that there were significant violations of liturgical law in connection with the typical "LifeTeen Mass," though fortunately those have recently been addressed following the intervention of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

It gives me absolutely NO pleasure, however, to note the following news item:

Msgr. Dale Fushek, the founder of LifeTeen, has been arrested on charges in connection with the sexual abuse of minors.

According to ABC News:

Fushek was charged with three counts of assault, five of contributing
to the delinquency of a minor and two of indecent exposure.

The former vicar general of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix was
arrested Monday on charges he fondled boys and young men and asked them
prying questions about their sex lives that he pretended were part of
confession.

Allegations emerged against Msgr. Fushek a number of months ago, at which point he resigned from his position as pastor of a parish in Mesa, Arizona. (Which he would have needed to do even if the charges were false.)

I must say that I am skittish about some of the allegations made against Msgr. Fushek:

Fushek resigned as pastor of St. Timothy’s in April after someone
claimed to have recovered a repressed memory involving sexual
improprieties by Fushek in 1985. He has denied the allegations.

Maricopa Attorney Andrew Thomas said the priest conducted "sham
confessions" in which he extracted details about people’s sex lives for
his own gratification.

I am EXTREMELY suspicious of recovered "repressed memories." That was the basis of the witchhunt that was conducted against daycare workers a number of years ago that led to numerous innocent individuals having their reputations and careers ruined.

I am also skittish about the allegations made in connection with the sacrament of confession. There is too much potential for a Rashomon situation here, with the same question being interpreted differently or misremembered.
If innocent of the charges in connection with confession, Msgr. Fushek also would be in the unenviable position of being bound by the seal (EVEN IF THE PENITENT CLAIMS TO RELEASE HIM FROM IT) and thus unable to effectively defend himself against the allegations.

That being said, some of the evidence against Msgr. Fushek could turn out to be solid. We’ll have to wait and see.

While we wait, may we pray that justice be done in this case, whatever that may be.

Let’s also pray that the impact of this on the young people to whom LifeTeen ministers will be minimized.

GET THE (SAD) STORY.

Anti-Murder Student & Mom On Radio

Just got a note from Katelyn Sill’s mom, who says:

Katelyn and I will be on the Heart, Mind, and Strength radio show tomorrow, Tuesday at 11am Pacific time.  It broadcasts live on the internet at www.avemariaradio.net and also offer podcasts of their  daily show which can be downloaded to IPODS or MP3 players.  You can find out more information about this at the podcast page on their website at www.exceptionalmarriages.com

I’ll be interesting to hear if any new facts emerge on the situation on the show.

Tune in or download if you can.

The Grace Box

Writer Andrew Santella, in a column slyly titled "The Sin Box," wants to know where all the sinners have gone. Why aren’t they lining up outside the confessional the way they did years ago, especially in a tell-all day-and-age when some people tell their sins to anyone who will listen.

"A generation ago, you’d see a lot of us lined up inside Catholic churches on Saturday afternoons, waiting to take our turn in one of the confessionals. We’d recite the familiar phrases (‘Bless me Father, for I have sinned’), list our transgressions and the number of times we’d committed them, maybe endure a priestly lecture, and emerge to recite a few Hail Marys as an act of penance. … Yet in most parishes, the lines for the confessionals have pretty much disappeared. Confession — or the sacrament of reconciliation, as it’s officially known — has become the one sacrament casual Catholics feel free to skip. We’ll get married in church, we’ll be buried from church, and we’ll take Communion at Mass. But regularly confessing one’s sins to God and the parish priest seems to be a part of fewer and fewer Catholic lives. Where have all the sinners gone?

[…]

"[I]t’s strange that so many lay Catholics should have abandoned the confessional even while secular culture is increasingly awash in confession, apology, and acts of contrition of every sort. Parents own up to pedophilia on Jerry Springer. Authors reveal their fetishes and infidelities in self-lacerating memoirs. On Web sites like Daily Confession and Not Proud, the anonymous poster can unburden his conscience electronically. The confessions on these sites are displayed in categories borrowed from Sunday school lessons: the Ten Commandments or the seven deadly sins. At least one posting I read was framed in the language of the Catholic confessional. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,’ it began before going on to catalog a series of mostly mundane misdeeds. (Others are simply odd: ‘I eat ants but only the little red ones. They’re sweet as hell and I just can’t get enough.’)"

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to the reader who sent the link.)

The article is filled with confusions (e.g., "Dying with unconfessed mortal sin on your soul meant eternal torment"; uhm, no, that’s an unrepented mortal sin) and "witty" asides (e.g., "I know one [Catholic woman] who says she’ll go back to confession when she can confide in a female priest"), but the question asked is a serious one: Where have all the sinners gone?

They’re still around, of course, but as G. K. Chesterton once pointed out, they’ve traded the confessional for the psychoanalyst’s couch — or the talk show diva’s couch — and now have a form of "confession" far less satisfying and infinitely less healing. That’s because "the sin box" does not have as its purpose to wallow in sin but to dispense grace.