The Accidental Lowbrow Fast Food Blogger

 

 

 

 

Back in September 2014, I’d never have guessed some 80,000 views and 2½ years later, how often I’d have written about food, especially fast food joints and other greasy spoons in Canada and the United States. I’m not quite sure what I thought I was going to be writing about, but I don’t remember food being on my composing radar for blog posts. Premillennial dispensationalism? The Rapture? Young Earth Creationism?  Spiritual Warfare? Petrus Romanus? Prophecy of St. Malachy or Prophecy of the Popes? Any and all things Catholic? Sure, all of these and more, some pretty arcane and from the fringe of the respectable-thinking universe. But food? Who’d a thunk it?

Admittedly, I had written on occasion about food, especially fast food, prior to venturing forth with soundingsjohnbarker (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/) but not that often.  Mainly if it involved a road trip from Southern Ontario to New England or vice-versa that wound up taking me to my favourite Red Barn, up in the Adirondacks in Troy, New York, or something got me thinking about high school back in Oshawa, Ontario and memories of Mother’s Pizza and Pepi’s Pizza. That sort of thing.

Just taking a quick look here, it looks like I’ve become an insatiable lowbrow fast food blogger who dreams of being to blogging what Guy Fieri of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives is to TV. And that’s just looking for headlines that trumpet food, not so much others posts that mention food either in a secondary or passing fashion, overshadowed by a main non-food story. Last year I wrote about Glenview, Illinois-based Family Video (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2016/01/17/who-shot-the-video-store-and-how-did-glenview-illinois-based-family-video-survive-to-thrive-and-still-rent-movies-and-now-sell-pizza/), which continues to survive and thrive and still rent movies, but also mentioned how they now sell pizza made in their video stores from Marco’s Pizza of Toledo, Ohio. Marco’s Pizza, founded in 1978 by Pasquale “Pat” Giammarco, is one of the fastest-growing pizza franchise operations in the United States. The Toledo-based delivery pizza franchisor opened 116 stores in 2015. Pizza is a $46- billion market in the United States that continues to grow at a rate of about one to two per cent per year.

In a similar vein, I’ve written a couple of times about the Burntwood Curling Club’s monthly, from November to April anyway, fundraising pickerel fish fry, now in its third season, to bring in some revenue at $20 a plate for the older crowd and $10 a plate for those 12 and under, with proceeds going towards what it cost to replace the club’s aging ice plant, a big ticket six-figure item for curling clubs. The last fish fry of the season is set for Monday, April 3 in the upstairs club lounge from 5 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The fish fry involves club volunteers cooking about 50 pounds per fish fry of  fresh pickerel, also known as walleye, from the commercial fish packing station in Wabowden. Pickerel is the most valuable commercial fish catch in Manitoba, with an average value of  about $20 million per year, which is about 70 per cent of the landed value of all species, and comprise more than 40 per cent of commercial fish production in the province by weight. Am I writing primarily about curling or pickerel? I suppose some of both really, but I know a bit more about pickerel. Jeanette and I are looking forward this spring and summer to marking a decade fishing together off the dock for pickerel at Paint Lake Marina!

I’ve written here and elsewhere about driving a Plymouth Duster to deliver for Mother’s Pizza Simcoe North in Oshawa during my last spring in high school for $2.65 per hour – plus tips (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/a-taste-for-yesterday-mothers-pizza-and-pepis-pizza/). Mother’s was an iconic Canadian pizza parlour chain from the 1970s – with its swinging parlour-style doors, Tiffany lamps, antique-style chairs, red-and-white checked gingham tablecloths, black-and-white short silent movies shown on a screen for patrons waiting for their meal to enjoy, root beer floats and pizzas served on silver-coloured metal pedestal stands.

Maybe we all just love food, no?

In Winnipeg, we have V.J.’s Drive Inn at at Broadway and Main with its overstuffed double chili cheese dogs, greasy spoon certified cheeseburgers, golden fries and chocolate milkshakes, all for the more discerning among the Fort Garry Hotel clientele methinks.

And speaking of chili dogs: should you ever find yourself down in Durham, North Carolina, you can’t go wrong enjoying a meal at The Dog House, locally owned and in business in Durham since 1970, and serving up an assortment of Bull-Dogs, Boxer Dogs, Collie Dogs, Hound Dogs, Puppy Dogs, Ol’ Yallows and the like.

Living in North Carolina was where I developed tastes for chili dogs, deep-fried cornmeal-batter Hushpuppies, pork barbecue and fat back, cracklins and wash pot pork rinds, while prudently not losing said tastes by overdoing it with low-density lipoproteins (LDL) cholesterol testing at nearby Duke University Medical Center, although I visited the world-class medical facility for other ailments on occasion.

The Dog House says its chili is made from a family recipe with pure beef, and no beans, soy or other fillers; just a blend of secret spices and 47 years of experience.

As for the slaw, it is “not too sweet and not too spicy,” and always freshly made.

But closer to home, when you’re appetite is a bit larger than a sausage dog or one of its cousins,  my pick is Lovey’s BBQ in St. Boniface for hand trimmed briskets, pork shoulders and ribs. Yum!

Sometimes you get to combine your writing interests, say about Catholicism and food, as I did in “Catholic cooking: From Pope Francis’ love for Buenos Aires pizzerias to Father Leo Patalinghug, the TV show Filipino ‘Cooking Priest’” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2015/03/15/catholic-cooking-from-pope-francis-love-for-buenos-aires-pizzerias-to-father-leo-patalinghug-the-tv-show-filipino-cooking-priest/)

I combined Catholicism and food on a few other occasions as well: In “‘Make mine halibut, please’: Fish-and-chips-Catholic-on-Friday” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/11/07/make-mine-halibut-please-fish-and-chips-catholic-on-friday/) I wrote that until Blessed Pope Paul VI proclaimed Paenitemini (Apostolic Constitution On Penance) on Feb. 17, 1966, which allowed episcopal conferences to permit Catholics in their jurisdictions to substitute some other penitential practice aside from abstaining from meat on Fridays. Catholics had been eating fish on Friday under an edict in force in the universal church since Pope Saint Nicholas 1, also known as Saint Nicholas the Great, in 851. With the exception in Canada of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday in accordance with the prescriptions of Canon 1253, proclaimed in 1983. Fridays are days of abstinence, but Canadian Catholics can substitute special acts of charity or piety on this day.

No need to feel too sorry though for us fish eaters for having to forgo meat on Fridays from 851 to 1966. We made up for it on an annual basis on “Fat Tuesday,” which fell on Feb. 28 this year. Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras.  Máirt Inide. Dydd Mawrth Ynyd.  Fastnacht. Fastelavn. Sprengidagur.  Güdisdienstag. Vastlapäev.  Užgavėnės.  Fettisdagen. Laskiainen. Shrove Tuesday. Call it what you will, but we made sure we ate  – and ate big and ate rich – on this moveable feast, based on the lunar cycles of the moon – the last day of Shrovetide before the penitential season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which is its colloquial name.  Dating to the A.D. 900s, the official name is the Day of Ashes. Come to think of it, even though we can eat meat on Fridays now outside of Lent, we remain fond of Shrove Tuesday.

“If smell and sound are important to Catholics, so, too, taste,” I wrote in a blog post headlined “With our O antiphons, Smoking Bishops and ‘sinful servants’ we are the Church Militant on Earth.” I noted that we had borrowed the “Smoking Bishop,” a mulled wine wassail, “in a spirit of ecumenical breaking of bread at table” from our “Anglican or Episcopalian brothers and sisters, particularly Charles Dickens, a heterodox Anglican if ever there was one, who wrote A Christmas Carol after he journeyed to Lancashire in the summer of 1843 to see for himself how life was lived in the industrial north of England. He completed the book that fall in six weeks and the book was published on Dec. 19, 1843 (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/12/18/with-our-o-antiphons-smoking-bishops-and-sinful-servants-we-are-the-church-militant-on-earth/).

“A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of Smoking Bishop, Bob!”

It is in that spirit we offer you this recipe for a Smoking Bishop, courtesy of Cedric Dickens, a great-grandson of Charles Dickens, published in his 1988 book, Drinking with Dickens:

Smoking Bishop

6 Clementines
1/2 C sugar
30 cloves
8 C moderately sweet red wine
1 bottle ruby port

Bake the oranges in a medium oven for about 20 minutes. Stick cloves into the oranges and then put them into a large bowl. Pour the wine over them and add the sugar. Cover and leave in a warm place for 24 hours. Squeeze the juice from the oranges and mix it with the wine. Add the port and heat the mixture in a pan. Do not boil. Serve hot.

And you can be pretty sure that while I might not post about it on soundingsjohnbarker, I’m quite likely to put in a bit of a plug on my Facebook page at least for annual Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day come Wednesday, April 12. I’ve done so for the last two years.

Melting cheese on top of bread is a culinary concept that has been around since the time of Ancient Rome,  but modern grilled cheese sandwiches, as we know them, didn’t become popular until the 1920s. Due to the ready availability of cheese and sliced bread for the average consumer by the early 20th century, they became an American staple, but a connoisseur’s love for grilled cheese sandwiches also spread around the world.

Thanksgiving, of course, gives me a change to give holiday nod to turkey, such as in this piece, “Mouthwatering American Thanksgiving recipes correction in the New York Times and other pardonable acts” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/11/27/mouthwatering-american-thanksgiving-recipes-correction-in-the-new-york-times-and-other-pardonable-acts/):

“Correction: November 26, 2014

“An article last Wednesday recommending a Thanksgiving dish from each state, with a recipe, contained numerous errors.

“The recipe from Connecticut, for quince with cipollini onions and bacon, omitted directions for preparing the quince. It should be peeled, cored and cut into 1-inch chunks. An illustration with the West Virginia recipe, for pawpaw pudding, depicted a papaya — not a pawpaw, which is correctly depicted above. The introduction to the recipe from Arizona, for cranberry sauce and chiles, misstated the origin of Hatch chiles. They are grown in New Mexico, not in Arizona.

“The introduction to the Delaware recipe, for du Pont turkey with truffled zucchini stuffing, referred incorrectly to several historical points about the Winterthur estate. It was an ancestral home of the du Pont family, not the sole one; it was established in 1837, not in 1810; the house was completed in 1839, not in 1837. The introduction also misstated the relationship of Pauline Foster du Pont to Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. Pauline was the wife of Mr. du Pont’s grandson, not his daughter-in-law.

And I wouldn’t be much of a former New Englander, if after enjoying a “blue” rare steak, I didn’t enjoy  scarfing down some super premium ice cream, like Steve’s Ice Cream, named after Steve Herrell, as it was in the early 1980s at the original location on Elm Street in Davis Square in Somerville, Massachusetts, or Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Inc., which got its its start  in a renovated gas station at the corner of St. Paul and College streets  in Burlington, Vermont. In 1980, they were  showing movies on summer Saturday nights on an outside wall of the gas station, I remember.\

Burgers have been the continuing jackpot for my food entries, however, which may not surprise many. What might surprise you, however, is the relatively big numbers (outpacing anything I’ve written on Thompson city council, can you believe it?) has been for two posts on two defunct American burger chains, both of which also operated for a time in parts of Canada, particularly in the 1970s.

Apparently former employees of the two burger chains and hungry aficionados who remember them fondly, salivate, or so it seems, to a helping of words on the Red Barn and Burger Chef, gone, but never forgotten.

Both stories get read pretty much daily somewhere in the world and “Red Barn, Big Barney and the Barnbuster” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/red-barn-big-barney-and-the-barnbuster/) was published here back on Sept. 13, 2014, while “Burger Chef: The story of the greatest might-have-been in the history of the fast food business” (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2016/03/13/burger-chef-the-story-of-the-greatest-might-have-been-in-the-history-of-the-fast-food-business/) appeared originally on March 13, 2016.

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Fat chance, last chance: Fat Tuesday

080206-N-7869M-057 Atlantic Ocean (Feb. 6, 2008) Electronics Technician 3rd Class Leila Tardieu receives the sacramental ashes during an Ash Wednesday celebration aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD 1). U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Brian May (Released)

Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras.  Máirt Inide. Dydd Mawrth Ynyd.  Fastnacht. Fastelavn. Sprengidagur.  Güdisdienstag. Vastlapäev.  Užgavėnės.  Fettisdagen. Laskiainen. Shrove Tuesday. Call it what you will, but make sure you eat – and eat big and eat rich – on this moveable feast, based on the lunar cycles of the moon, and celebrated around the world, falling this year on Feb. 9 – the last day of shrovetide before the penitential season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which is its colloquial name.  Dating to the A.D. 900s, the official name is the Day of Ashes.

“Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return,” will be said by Catholic priests in churches around the world Wednesday, as they make the distinctive of signing the foreheads of the faithful with the sign of the cross in ashes, blessed by a priest and made from burning palm fronds which have been saved from last year’s Palm Sunday masses.  Blessed ashes having been used in such religious  rituals since the time of Moses.

The historical reason that pancakes are associated with the day preceding Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent is that the 40 days of Lent form a period of liturgical fasting, during which only the plainest foodstuffs are eaten by the devout. Therefore, rich ingredients such as eggs, milk, and sugar are disposed of immediately prior to the commencement of the fast.

Pancakes and doughnuts are an efficient way of using up these perishable goods. The word shrove is a past tense of the English verb “shrive,” which means to obtain absolution for one’s sins by confessing and doing penance.

Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the shriving or confession that Anglo-Saxon Christians made immediately before Lent, a season of soul-searching and repentance.

For Roman Catholics, Lent runs from Ash Wednesday on Feb. 10 up to but excluding the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday on March 24. The evening of Holy Thursday is already part of the Good Friday liturgical day, the first of the three days of the paschal triduum, so it is not liturgically a part of Lent in the Roman Catholic Church, although it is still reckoned as part of the “40 days of Lent,” because the paschal triduum begins the evening of Holy Thursday and concludes with the evening vespers of Easter. The triduum includes Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and reaches it high point at the Great Easter Vigil. The name “Maundy” comes from the Latin antiphon Mandatum Novum, meaning “a new mandate.” The new mandate from Jesus is taken from John 13:34: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

In many mainline Protestant churches, Maundy Thursday is still liturgically part of Lent since many do not recognize the triduum as distinct from Lent.

In regards to fasting and abstinence for Roman Catholics during Lent, particular regulations vary in each country according to the norms established by national episcopal conferences and approved by the Holy See, so it is not always easy to know what regulations are in force. The Ottawa-based Canadian Conference of Catholics Bishops (CCCB) says, “Fasting means cutting down on the amount and richness of our food and drink. Done as a penance for sin, it helps us to pray better: an empty stomach can lead to more attentive prayer. The money we save on food should be given to others in alms, In reference to abstinence, the Canadian bishops go onto say, “This form of penance needs to be seen as a near cousin of fasting. We may give up meat or other desirable foods on one or two days a week during Lent, especially on Friday, the day of Christ’s saving death on the cross. Our abstinence is another way of sharing in Christ’s work of saving the world.”

The norms for Canada are based on the Canadian Conference of Catholics Bishops’ Order of Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours and Celebration of the Eucharist, known more commonly and simply as the Ordo, which is essentially a guide for clergy in Canada, updated from time to time, to aid in preparation of the liturgy. The Ordo dates back to the Middle Ages:

•  All Fridays are days of abstinence from meat, but Catholics may substitute special acts of charity
  or piety on this day;
•  The paschal fast is observed on Good Friday and, where possible, continued through Holy
  Saturday;
•  Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of fasting and abstinence from meat;
•  The law of abstinence from meat binds those who are 14 and older; the law of fasting binds
  those from 18 to 59 years of age.

While Canadian bishops have placed particular insistence on Fridays of Lent as days of penance, the “manner of fulfilling this duty is left to the discretion of the faithful.” (National Bulletin on Liturgy, 42 – from the 1966 statement of the CCCB on Penance).

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Catholic Church: Change comes when it comes

I’ve always heard something haunting but yet beautiful whenever I hear Karin Bergquist’s rendition of Over the Rhine’s “Changes Come” from the 2008 Cornerstone Music Festival in Bushnell, Illinois. She wrote the song, with her husband, Linford Detweiler, and the Cincinnati alt-country band recorded it five years earlier in Nashville on Oct. 19, 2003. The lyrics go partially like this:

“Changes come, Turn my world around, Changes come, Turn my world around. Jesus come Turn my world around Jesus come Bring the whole thing down Bring it down.”

Change comes when it comes.

For some reason, this song has been running through my head, as I reflect a bit on Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”) the 624 words in English language translation declaration on the relation of the Roman Catholic Church to non-Christian religions that Catholic bishops adopted 50 years ago today, near the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, which ended Dec. 7, 1965.

Perhaps it also resonates after the three-week Synod on the Family from Oct. 4 to Oct. 25, which just ended. One of the great issues of the synod, which advised Pope Francis, was whether civilly divorced Catholics who remarry, and haven’t received an annulment within the Catholic Church, might be admitted pastorally, if not doctrinally, to the sacrament of the Eucharist. The Church teaches that the sacrament of marriage is “indissoluble” and that remarried Catholics who have not received annulments are committing adultery and living in sin. They may receive communion if they abstain from sex.

Pastoral versus doctrinal. Discipline versus doctrinal. Orthodox versus heterodox. These are always the stuff of great Catholic debates among ourselves. Doctrine encompasses the overall teachings of the Church. For example, Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”) now Blessed Pope Paul VI’s encyclical teaching on birth control. Pastoral practice is how the Church applies doctrines in real life.

Doctrine is important, but not every doctrine is dogma, which refers to core Catholic beliefs, such as the Resurrection, which is foundational. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the kingpin upon which all of Christianity and Catholicism stands or crumbles. If Christ has not been raised from the dead then Christian faith is futile. No other prophet of any religion has come back from the dead. In the Apostle Paul’s First Letter to the Church at Corinth in (15: 14-19), he writes of the resurrection of Jesus as being the central doctrine in Christianity: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain,” Paul observed. And if Christ has not been raised, he added, God is being misrepresented because “we testified of God that he raised Christ.” Therefore, if Christ has not been raised, “your faith is futile: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” The entire Christian faith hinges upon the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus on the third day.

The Old Testament Mosaic law allowed for divorce and remarriage among the Israelites. The Israelites saw divorce as a way to dissolve a marriage and enable the spouses to remarry others so the Pharisees questioned Jesus when he taught on the permanence of marriage by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?

As we see in the Synoptic Gospels of Saints Matthew (19: 3-8); Mark (10: 2-9); and Luke (16: 18), Jesus answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.

“They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?’ He said to them, ‘For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.’”

Catholics therefore believe Jesus re-established the permanence of marriage among his followers and raised Christian marriage to the level of a sacrament, teaching that sacramental marriages cannot be dissolved through divorce, which was part of Jesus’ perfection of the Old Law, of which he said, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them.”

While there is much debate about what the synod’s advice on the subject to the Holy Father means, the final document offers divorced and remarried Catholics the possibility of returning to fuller participation in the Church, on a case-by-case basis, after receiving spiritual counselling from priests in what is called the “internal forum.” It says nothing about whether divorced and remarried Catholics may or may not receive communion. But it does say divorced and civilly remarried Catholics “must not feel excommunicated.” The document said that opening to Catholics in less-than-perfect situations was not a “weakening of the faith,” or of the “testimony on the indissolubility of marriage”; instead, it was a sign of the church’s charity.

In his closing address last Saturday night, Pope Francis said the Synod on the Family was “about trying to view and interpret realities, today’s realities, through God’s eyes, so as to kindle the flame of faith and enlighten people’s hearts in times marked by discouragement, social, economic and moral crisis, and growing pessimism.

“It was about bearing witness to everyone that, for the Church, the Gospel continues to be a vital source of eternal newness, against all those who would ‘indoctrinate’ it in dead stones to be hurled at others.

“It was also about laying bare the closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families.

“It was about making clear that the Church is a Church of the poor in spirit and of sinners seeking forgiveness, not simply of the righteous and the holy, but rather of those who are righteous and holy precisely when they feel themselves poor sinners.”

Change comes when it comes.

Peter, the first pope, and the apostles that Jesus chose were, for the most part, married men, although the Council of Elvira decreed in 306 a priest who sleeps with his wife the night before mass would lose his job.

It wasn’t until Pope St. Gregory VII in 1074 that celibacy was imposed uniformly across the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. And It wasn’t until 1215 that the Fourth Lateran Council used the word transubstantiated, when speaking of the change that takes place in the Eucharist, while it would be a few years later at the Second Council of Lyons, convened in 1274, that the teaching of Pope Innocent IV was used to develop a formal declaration on purgatory.

In 1964 and 1965, a year after the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was enacted, the new mass (Novus Ordo) in the vernacular rather than Latin was introduced, the priest turned around and started celebrating mass facing the people, who could stand to receive the Eucharist, as the altar rails were soon to be removed.

Now Blessed Pope Paul VI proclaimed Paenitemini (Apostolic Constitution On Penance) on Feb. 17, 1966, which allowed episcopal conferences to permit Catholics in their jurisdictions to substitute some other penitential practice aside from abstaining from meat on Fridays, a prescription which had been in force in the universal church since Pope Saint Nicholas 1, also known as Saint Nicholas the Great, in 851 (with the exception in Canada of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday in accordance with the prescriptions of Canon 1253, proclaimed in 1983. Fridays are days of abstinence, but Canadian Catholics can substitute special acts of charity or piety on this day).

Following the lead of the Vatican and national episcopal conferences in France, Canada and Mexico earlier in 1966, the U.S. norms (which are similar but not identical to those in Canada) were approved in “On Penance and Abstinence,” a pastoral statement of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on Nov. 18, 1966. The first day Friday American Catholics could eat meat on Friday under the new regulations was the first Friday of Advent on Dec. 2, 1966.

Change comes when it comes. Or not. But history will not move backwards no matter how much I personally would like to hear monks chanting vespers in Latin at every mass.

Canadian Catholics, both heterosexual and homosexual, will continue to get married and divorced, either inside or outside the Church.

Same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada for more than 10 years since the federal Civil Marriage Act received royal assent on July 20, 2005. Carey Nieuwhof, a Protestant evangelical and lead pastor of Connexus Church in Barrie, Ontario, in a blog post last June 29 headlined, “Some Advice on Same-Sex Marriage for US Church Leaders From a Canadian” wrote, “Most of us reading this post have been born into a unique season in history in which our culture is moving from a Christian culture to a post-Christian culture before our eyes.

“Whatever you think about history, theology or exactly when this shift happened, it’s clear for all of us that the world into which we were born no longer exists.

“Viewpoints that were widely embraced by culture just decades ago are no longer embraced. For some this seems like progress. For others, it seems like we’re losing something. Regardless, things have changed fundamentally.”

Nieuwhof went onto write: “If you believe gay sex is sinful, it’s really no morally different than straight sex outside of marriage.

“Be honest, pretty much every unmarried person in your church is having sex (yes, even the Christians).

“I know you want to believe that’s not true (trust me, I want to believe that’s not true), but why don’t you ask around? You’ll discover that only a few really surrender their sexuality.

“Not to mention the married folks that struggle with porn, lust and a long list of other dysfunctions.

“If you believe gay marriage is not God’s design, you’re really dealing with the same issue you’ve been dealing with all along – sex outside of its God-given context.

“You don’t need to treat it any differently.

“By the way, if you don’t deal with straight sex outside of marriage, don’t start being inconsistent and speak out against gay sex.

“And you may want to start dealing with gluttony and gossip and greed while you’re at it.”

Meanwhile, abortion has been legal in Canada for almost three decades now, since Jan. 28, 1988 when the Supreme Court of Canada, in Dr. Henry Morgentaler, Dr. Leslie Frank Smoling and Dr. Robert Scott v. Her Majesty The Queen, struck down Section 251 of the Criminal Code of Canada, the 1969 therapeutic abortion criminal law, as unconstitutional, without force and effect, in a 5-2 decision.

The law was found to violate Section 7 the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it infringed upon a woman’s right to “life, liberty and security of person,” the court held. Morgentaler, Smoling and Scott had been charged in 1983 with performing illegal abortions at their Toronto clinic. A Supreme Court of Ontario jury had acquitted them on Nov. 8, 1984, but the Crown appealed and on Oct. 1, 1985 the Court of Appeal for Ontario set aside the acquittals and ordered a new trial. Morgentaler, Smoling and Scott then successfully appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada to have the Court of Appeal for Ontario decision overturned and their acquittals restored. The following year, on Nov. 3, 1989, then Progressive Conservative Minister of Justice Kim Campbell introduced in the House of Commons Bill C-43, which, had it been approved by both the House of Commons and the Senate, would have made it a criminal offence to induce an abortion on a woman unless it was done by, or under the direction of, a physician who considered that the woman’s life or health was otherwise likely to be threatened. “Health” was defined as including physical, mental and psychological health.

On May 29, 1990, the House of Commons passed Bill C-43 on third reading by a vote of 140-131. Although cabinet ministers were required to support the bill, it was a free vote for all other MPs. On Jan. 31, 1991, the Senate voted on Bill C-43. As with the House of Commons, it was a free vote except for members of the cabinet, in this case Senator Lowell Murray, leader of the government in the Senate. Of 86 senators present, 43 voted for the bill and 43 voted against it. Under the Rules of the Senate, the 43-43 tie vote is deemed to be a “no” vote, therefore Bill C-43 was defeated.

Pope Francis, the pope of mercy, understands how the world and families really are in the real world, rather than how we might simply wish them to be.

Divorce is reality.

Same-sex marriage is reality.

Abortion is reality.

So what are we going to do? As Catholics.

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Tim Chey and the Christian cinema ‘cheese’ factor

There was much consternation among Tim Chey and his Christian movie fans recently when all of the major Hollywood  movie studios took a pass on releasing his $50-million epic, David and Goliath, shot last year in Morocco and produced by RiverRain Productions.

The usual suspects, including the secular media, were trotted out for a whipping, and Chey and his supporters decided to go ahead and release the film on their own in 31 cities on Good Friday, April 3, while they tried to raise more money to get the film shown on more screens in more cities through Indiegogo, a San Francisco crowdfunding company. The movie earned about $161,000 at the box office over the Easter weekend. When the Indiegogo campaign closed March 12, they had only managed to crowdfund three per cent of their $777,000 USD goal, with 499 donors contributing $19,653 USD. According to the filmmakers, GodVine reported “The Hollywood studios have rejected David and Goliath for being too Bible-based and religious. One studio executive said, ‘You mention God in almost every scene.'”

Godvine went onto quote Chey as reportedly saying, “We were constantly being ridiculed by the secular media.” Contrast that with the upbeat tone Chey took in a Beverly Hills, California-based Ripple Effect Communications media advisory on April 21, 2014, just weeks before shooting was set to get under way for David and Goliath in Morocco.  “Chey, who just finishing location scouting in Morocco, is jubilant,” according to Carol Edwards’ media advisory for Ripple Effect Communications. “We’re going to have thousands of extras, A-list special effects, and it will exceed the epic-look of ‘Noah,’ Chey was quoted as saying. “The $50 million dollar film comes at a perfect time. Hollywood is embracing faith-based films as of late and the audiences are growing at a record pace according to reports.”

What a difference a year can make.

Martin Stillion, reviewing David and Goliath in Peter T. Chattaway’s “Filmchat” on the religion blog Patheos April 5, wrote that Chey “undertook a mendacious, self-pitying marketing campaign to position the film as the ultimate underdog, “rejected by Hollywood for being too ‘God-centered’ – a claim based on an alleged remark from one of those potential distributors.

“This may seem a little puzzling. Why wouldn’t distributors be interested? After all, David and Goliath comes along at a time when a lot of attention is being paid to both “faith-based” films (God’s Not Dead, Old Fashioned, Do You Believe?) and Bible epics (Noah, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Son of God), and several of those films have done well financially. So Chey’s film, a faith-based Bible epic that retells one of the most archetypal biblical stories, is in the right place at the right time.

“But it forgot to bring the right stuff.

“I could give you a dozen reasons that distributors wouldn’t want to touch this film, and none of them have anything to do with its being ‘God-centered.’ They have to do with its being a very, very bad movie. I know that’s a common criticism of faith-based films, but seriously, this one makes God’s Not Dead look like Blade Runner.”

Chey has directed 10 feature films, including the $20 million Carry Me Home with Cuba Gooding, Jr., Suing the Devil with Malcolm McDowell, Genius Club with Stephen Baldwin and Final: The Rapture, starring Jah Shams, Mary Grace, Carman, Masashi Nagadoi and Dave Edwards, which depicts the apocalyptic chaos that ensues for four nonbelievers – an African-American, an Asian, a Hispanic and a white man living in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and on a South Pacific island, after the Rapture occurs.

Trotting out the secular media – or even other Christians – as a whipping boy is not exactly a new theme for Chey. In an April 25, 2014  Christian Post story by Stoyan Zaimov, headlined  “CP Exclusive: ‘David and Goliath’ Director Assures Big-Budget Movie Will Be ‘Biblically Correct in Every Way,’ Chey is quoted as saying, “We were constantly being ridiculed by the secular media, our films were being sabotaged by online piracy, and fellow jealous Christians were mocking us saying the acting was bad, script was horrible, etc., etc.

“Thousands of people were coming to Christ so why did I let that bother me? I don’t know. The Lord showed me clearly it was a spiritual attack. I repented and began to trust the Lord again. Within two months, we raised millions of dollars and made the $20 million dollar Carry Me Home on the early life of John Newton, writer of Amazing Grace and now David and Goliath.”

Bad scripts and bad acting are hardly new criticisms when it comes to the Christian movie genre. Nor are they ones without merit. As I observed in a blog post last Sept. 15 headlined “Flying largely under the mainstream cinematic radar: Christian movie genre is ‘hot’” the “big knock against the Christian movie genre for more secular moviegoers – aside from the fact the films are Christian – has long been heavy-handed theological scripts, clunky acting and cheesy sets, with mainly bad films, which, to be charitable, do little more than preach to the choir, there hasn’t been, aside from the occasional blockbuster, much for broader audiences to judge such films on if they were done, well, well. You know, decent scripts, good actors, high production values, that sort of thing.” You can read the piece here at: https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/flying-largely-under-the-mainstream-cinematic-radar-christian-movie-genre-is-hot/

The story of Chey’s conversion from atheist to born-again believer has been oft told in many places, but the shorthand goes something like this. Chey was born and raised in Los Angeles and  “once threw his mother’s Bible in the trash and hectored his Christian friends,” noted Matt Soergel in a generally flattering piece in the Florida Times-Union when Suing the Devil was released in 2011. Chey was educated at Harvard University, University of Southern California (USC) School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles and Boston University School of Law. He practiced law for three years, but “realized I just didn’t have a heart for law,” he told interviewer Nathan Jones of The Christ in Prophecy Journal of David Reagan’s Princeton, Texas-based Lamb & Lion Ministries in a Jan. 20, 2014 broadcast interview. “I was an artist, caught up in something that really meant nothing to me,” he told Soergel of the Florida Times-Union.

His first film, which he wrote and directed was, Fakin’ Da Funk, a 1997 comedy starring Pam Grier and Dante Basco about a Chinese son adopted by black parents who relocates to South Central Los Angeles. A second story involves Mai-Ling, an exchange student played by Margaret Cho, who by another twist, gets sent to the wrong ‘hood.'”

The film was nominated for the Golden Starfish Award at the 1997 Hamptons International Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the 1997 Urbanworld Film Festival.

In 2001, Chey was in his mid-30s, single, and in the Philippines scouting locations for his next movie. After a busy night boozing at strip clubs,” Soergel wrote in his May 23, 2011 piece for the Florida Times-Union, he picked up the Gideon Bible in his hotel room and began reading: “”I got down on my knees and accepted Jesus Christ right there,” Chey said.

He was back in the Philippines in 2002 in Manila, Pasig City, Bataan, Manila Bay, and Antipolo to direct Gone, his first Christian-themed film, a post-apocalyptic thriller based on his screenplay, starring Dirk Been and Joel Klug star as tenacious lawyers who are sent to Manila to defend a multinational corporation, but instead, meet their fate in the Last Days after the Rapture.

Suing the Devil, released in August 2011, was his fifth Christian-themed movie and set in Australia, where he obtained much of the financing for it. It’s about a young law student who files an $8- trillion dollar civil lawsuit against Satan for all the misery he’s caused humanity. Corbin Bernsen, played divorce lawyer Arnie Becker on TV’s L.A. Law, which ran from for eight seasons on NBC from 1986 to 1994, and is a long-time evangelical Christian, plays a TV news host.

To law student Luke O’Brien’s (played by Bart Bronson) surprise, a loquacious Satan – in the form of Malcolm McDowell, star of the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange – shows up to defend himself.

Describing McDowell to Soergel, Chey said, “He’s a seeker. We had great talks. We talked a lot about God, a lot about life. He’s a spiritual person.”

In a June 2010 interview, about 14 months before Suing the Devil was released, McDowell had this to say about the movie: “From my point of view – I play the Devil – [the film] is about a loser that can’t get his act together or his life together and blames everybody else for his loser-ness. He’s a big loser, and so he, of course, blames the Devil and he goes to court to sue the Devil. And I answer the summons. And so it’s really a comedy in a courtroom.

“You know, I’m not into the religious connotations of what good and evil are. In fact the Devil I played is not really evil. I mean, the Devil really is charming, seductive. I mean, it’s like Nazism … charming, seductive, all these things. It’s just the underbelly of angst … but it was really actually a terrific script and I had a ball.”

How that fits in with Chey’s observations 11 months later in the Florida Times-Union, I leave for you to decide.

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Shrived by the confessor: Fat Tuesday and Ash Wednesday arrive for penitents as the liturgical season of Lent is upon us, but not before one last rich feast of pancakes Feb. 17 as shrovetide ends

Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras.  Máirt Inide. Dydd Mawrth Ynyd.  Fastnacht. Fastelavn. Sprengidagur.  Güdisdienstag. Vastlapäev.  Užgavėnės.  Fettisdagen. Laskiainen. Shrove Tuesday. Call it what you will, but make sure you eat – and eat big and eat rich – on this moveable feast, based on the lunar cycles of the moon, and celebrated around the world, falling this year on Feb. 17 – next Tuesday – the last day of shrovetide before the penitential season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which is its colloquial name.  Dating to the A.D. 900s, the official name is the Day of Ashes.

“Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return,” will be said by Catholic priests in churches around the world Wednesday, as they make the distinctive of signing the foreheads of the faithful with the sign of the cross in ashes, blessed by a priest and made from burning palm fronds which have been saved from last year’s Palm Sunday masses.  Blessed ashes having been used in such religious  rituals since the time of Moses.

The historical reason that pancakes are associated with the day preceding Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent is that the 40 days of Lent form a period of liturgical fasting, during which only the plainest foodstuffs are eaten by the devout. Therefore, rich ingredients such as eggs, milk, and sugar are disposed of immediately prior to the commencement of the fast.

Pancakes and doughnuts are an efficient way of using up these perishable goods. The word shrove is a past tense of the English verb “shrive,” which means to obtain absolution for one’s sins by confessing and doing penance.

Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the shriving or confession that Anglo-Saxon Christians made immediately before Lent, a season of soul-searching and repentance.

For Roman Catholics, Lent runs from Ash Wednesday on Feb. 18 up to but excluding the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday on April 2. The evening of Holy Thursday is already part of the Good Friday liturgical day, the first of the three days of the paschal triduum, so it is not liturgically a part of Lent in the Roman Catholic Church, although it is still reckoned as part of the “40 days of Lent,” because the paschal triduum begins the evening of Holy Thursday and concludes with the evening vespers of Easter. The triduum includes Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and reaches it high point at the Great Easter Vigil. The name “Maundy” comes from the Latin antiphon Mandatum Novum, meaning “a new mandate.” The new mandate from Jesus is taken from John 13:34: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

In many mainline Protestant churches, Maundy Thursday is still liturgically part of Lent since many do not recognize the triduum as distinct from Lent.

In regards to fasting and abstinence for Roman Catholics during Lent, particular regulations vary in each country according to the norms established by national episcopal conferences and approved by the Holy See, so it is not always easy to know what regulations are in force. The Ottawa-based Canadian Conference of Catholics Bishops (CCCB) says, “Fasting means cutting down on the amount and richness of our food and drink. Done as a penance for sin, it helps us to pray better: an empty stomach can lead to more attentive prayer. The money we save on food should be given to others in alms, In reference to abstinence, the Canadian bishops go onto say, “This form of penance needs to be seen as a near cousin of fasting. We may give up meat or other desirable foods on one or two days a week during Lent, especially on Friday, the day of Christ’s saving death on the cross. Our abstinence is another way of sharing in Christ’s work of saving the world.”

The norms for Canada are based on the Canadian Conference of Catholics Bishops’ Order of Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours and Celebration of the Eucharist, known more commonly and simply as the Ordo, which is essentially a guide for clergy in Canada, updated from time to time, to aid in preparation of the liturgy. The Ordo dates back to the Middle Ages:

•  All Fridays are days of abstinence from meat, but Catholics may substitute special acts of charity
  or piety on this day;
•  The paschal fast is observed on Good Friday and, where possible, continued through Holy
  Saturday;
•  Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of fasting and abstinence from meat;
•  The law of abstinence from meat binds those who are 14 and older; the law of fasting binds
  those from 18 to 59 years of age.

While Canadian bishops have placed particular insistence on Fridays of Lent as days of penance, the “manner of fulfilling this duty is left to the discretion of the faithful.” (National Bulletin on Liturgy, 42 – from the 1966 statement of the CCCB on Penance).

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‘Make mine halibut, please’: Fish-and-chips-Catholic-on-Friday

If you grew up Catholic in Canada in the 1960s and 1970s, you probably have memories of having a favourite fish-and-chips shop, serving halibut, haddock or cod, along with French Fries, maybe some coleslaw and a wedge of lemon.

Now true enough, Pope Paul VI had proclaimed Paenitemini (Apostolic Constitution On Penance) on Feb. 17, 1966, which allowed episcopal conferences to permit Catholics in their jurisdictions to substitute some other penitential practice aside from abstaining from meat on Fridays, a prescription which had been in force in the universal church since Pope Saint Nicholas 1, also known as Saint Nicholas the Great, in 851 (with the exception in Canada of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday in accordance with the prescriptions of Canon 1253, proclaimed in 1983. Fridays are days of abstinence, but Canadian Catholics can substitute special acts of charity or piety on this day).

The fact such substitutional acts of charity or piety have never really been spelled out in any great detail or emphasis by most bishops in Canada or the United States has meant that the Friday-abstinence story has been cast not surprisingly by reporters since 1966 primarily in terms of “no more going to hell for eating a hamburger on Friday,” as Daria Sockey wrote in “What Ever Happened to Meatless Fridays?” in the National Catholic Register on June 1, 2003, “rather than a call to continue the tradition of Friday penance, embraced out of love, and with leeway for more variety.”

Following the lead of the Vatican and national episcopal conferences in France, Canada and Mexico earlier in 1966, the U.S. norms (which are similar but not identical to those in Canada) were approved in “On Penance and Abstinence,” a pastoral statement of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on Nov. 18, 1966. The first day Friday American Catholics could eat meat on Friday under the new regulations was the first Friday of Advent on Dec. 2, 1966.

I was nine years old, growing up in Oshawa, Ontario, when all this came to pass in 1966. As far as I can remember, it didn’t really change our family practice and the fact that for years, well into the 1970s anyway, my dad still picked up fish-and-chip dinners for us on Fridays after work.

My earliest memories of that were fish and chips from the Rose Bowl that operated at the corner of Bond and Prince streets for many years, memories that include malt vinegar and newspaper wrapping.

Sometime in the early 1970s, an H. Salt, Esq. Authentic English Fish and Chips franchise came to Simcoe Street North in Oshawa, and we enjoyed their fish and chips also for a time. Haddon Salt had operated his fish and chips store in Skegness, in the northeastern corner of England, before moving to the United States and, along with his wife, Grace, opening their first shop in Sausalito, California, under the name of Salt’s Fish & Chips in 1965.

At its peak in the 1970s, there were close to 60 H. Salt, Esq. Authentic English Fish and Chips restaurants in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), including Oshawa. Today, the company is headquartered in Monterey Park, California, and has about 18 remaining locations operating in Chino, Corona, Covina, Downey, Long Beach, Gardena, Garden Grove, Hollywood, North Hollywood, Orange, Rancho Palos Verdes, Reseda, San Fernando, Temple City, Upland, West Los Angeles, and Westminster in Southern California.

When I went off to Trent University in 1976, my love of fish and chips followed me to Baker’s Seafood (now gone) at 262 Hunter St. W. on the edge of downtown and an old residential neighbourhood fronting Hunter at the corner of Bethune Street. A sign midway between the first and second storeys of the Hunter Street side of the building had a white background and red letters proclaiming Baker’s Seafood. On the  side facing west on Bethune Street was a similar sign reading “Fish and Chips” and on the wall next to the front door was a sign with a cartoon-like blue fish in the middle holding a knife and fork and a lemon that said: “Est. 1954. Seafood. Chicken. TAKE OUT. Shrimp – Scallops. Salads – Veggies. HALIBUT Fish and Chips. Peterborough’s Tradition.”

Another great Peterborough fish and chip is Jeff Purvey’s Fish & Chips, which has two locations, although I am more familiar with the older Rubidge Street restaurant.

The Purvey tradition started in 1919 when Henry Purvey went into business on Dundas Street in Toronto. Henry’s son, Jeff Purvey, was born there. After serving for six years in the Canadian Armed Forces during the Second World War from 1939 to 1945, Jeff joined his father and together they expanded into three Toronto locations on Yonge Street, Danforth Avenue and McRae Avenue in Leaside.

In 1956 Jeff moved to Peterborough and opened the Rubidge Street location with just 12 seats originally.

And, of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention The Pilot House in downtown Kingston, Ontario, established in 1981 at the corner of King and Johnson streets, where I spent some cheerful Friday evenings during my graduate school days at Queen’s University from 1993 to 1995, and the pints were as famous as the fish and chips.

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