Speaking of lost skills...

If you look around online, you'll find shaving experts offering their suggested shaving starter kit. Aye, 'tis a good kit, too. So, in the interest of variety and all that, here's my everyday rig, although you new kids would do better to stick those guys' suggestions, since they are Professionals. Anyway, here's mine:

Gillette Adjustable DE safety razor. Contrary to popular opinion, I far prefer the slim handle, with the year codes I through N. The loss of heft is more than compensated by the added maneuverability. You should also find what setting works with your choice of blades and quit futzing with it. With the blades listed below, I am at #6.
Israeli Personna “Super+” (aka “no-name” or "Crystal") DE razor blades. These truly kick arse, at a ridiculous price. You can also score them on eBay.
Vulfix #2234 badger shaving brush I even got it to match my scuttle. I can get my geek on just as impressively as anyone else, sue me.
Proraso/Bigelow shaving cream I found it, because it was insanely cheap and readily available at most Target stores. But then Target dropped it, and your options are now to buy it under the Bigelow brand (which also has it in a TSA-friendly size) at most Bath & Body Works OR get it at Amazon. This cream shaves as good as anything else out there AND the mentholated cooling thing when you rinse is so-o-o-o-o-o goooooood. Still, at $10, it's a very good deal. It also gets my Italophile side squirming with pleasure.
The Moss Scuttle While not strictly necessary -- you can get a lather going on the palm of your hand if you had to -- I wouldn't wanna shave without it ever again.

I'm pretty neutral on the moisturizing aftershave. My skin manages to issue so much in the way of lipids that it's never been an issue so far. The posh guys are probably right in liking Trumper, so go with that, or Truefitt & Hill's Ultimate Comfort, if you want something unscented.

Okay. Now go knock that 5 o'clock shadow off.

-J.

Butter. Lovely, easy, cultured butter.

The lovely & gracious Kim introduced me, on Twitter, to the equally lovely and similarly gracious Ruth. Twitter, alas is the social media equivalent to HFCS. If you really want to know what happened to my blog, just visualize it being hacked into neat-ish 140-character chunks and fed to the Blue Bird.

But I digress.

Anyway.

Ruth is an evangelist for good-and-good-for-you foods. Her merely saying "Quinoa tabbouleh" (granting the lovely and gracious Badger may have previously come up with such a concept even if she didn't get a chance to brand it as snappily) altered my worldview. Among the gospels of her evangelism is no-knead bread. This is what prompted Kim to introduce us, as æons ago, Kim was asking (again on Twitter) for thoughts on same, and I leapt insomniacally up and sent her my version, which involves a TINY bit of kneading (a riff on CI's, itself a riff on Leahy's original) and she loved it so much she wept profanely in joy for hours.

So!

Not a few minutes ago, I again insomniacally found my way on Twitter (sensing a pattern here), and I see that Ruth has posted on the matter of no-knead bread and cultured butter. She has a lovely photo of a lovely hunk of bread with a semi wrapped chunk of Europeanish cultured butter. Which made me realize, "Wait a minute! I make cultured butter and it's unspeakably easy."

So here it is.

(This is for ¾ lb. butter and 1½ cups buttermilk.)

Some important things to keep in mind:

a) As you've heard me yell lo these many years, the flavor of pasteurized cream is infinitely preferable to ultra-pasteurized, and raw cream (if you can get it) is even better than THAT.
b) The yogurt and sour cream/crème fraîche MUST contain live cultures -- the longer the list of live cultures, the better -- no gums, gelatin, etc. Do not use "Greek" yogurt in this, do not use nonfat/lowfat yogurt.

1 qt heavy cream, the least processed/freshest you can find
¼ c plain yogurt & ¼ c sour cream/crème fraîche (½ c total)
¼ t coarse sea or kosher salt (OPT)

1. Culture the cream: Combine creams and yogurt in large fanatically cleaned and sterilized jar with an airtight lid. Cover, and shake well to combine. Replace the lid with a FRESHLY LAUNDERED kitchen towel, securing it with a thick rubber band (I repurpose the ones that come with asparagus), and place in warmish area (the magic temperature is +/- 75F/24C) undisturbed for 24 hours. It should have a texture like "drinkable yogurt" when properly thickened. If you like a more cultured-y taste, let it go a total of 36 hours.

2. Once your cream has your ideal thickness, doff kitchen towel, re-lid, and refrigerate until the cream is +/- 60F/16C, figure 2 hours. You can store the thickened, cultured cream up to 5 days in the refrigerator until you are ready to make the butter; let it sit at room temperature until it reaches about 60 degrees before proceeding with step 3.

3. Here we go: Have 1qt/1L of ice water on standby in the refrigerator. Pour your cooled cultured cream (say THAT 3x, fast) into the work bowl of your standing mixer with the whisk attachment, er, attached. (You can do all of this in a food processor, but that may require 2-3 batches.)

If you have a splatter guard, now is the time to deploy, or just use cling wrap as best you can, unless mopping dairy off the walls is a long-held ambition of yours.

Anyway.

Whip the cream at maximum speed until the yellow (the better your cream, the yellower this will be)clumps separate out, call it 5 minutes.

Strain this through a fine mesh strainer double-lined with cheesecloth set over bowl. Let it drain quietly, on its own, for 1 minute.

4. Grap the corners of your cheesecloth and spin/twist to wring out the buttermilk, pushing and squeezing until not one drop more of buttermilk is issued. Put your butter in another bowl; refrigerate your buttermilk. You're halfway home.

5. Here it comes. Splash about ⅓ cup of the ice water (you were wondering, weren't you?) over your butter and, with butter "floating like an island" in the ice water, fold and knead it, letting the water wash the butter to rinse it of any remaining buttermilk. Discard buttermilky water, and repeat until the water runs clear. This will take you about 5 or 6 washes. This has to be done because remaining buttermilk will VERY quickly accelerate the spoilage of your butter.

After the final wash, drain the water. Then smash, knead and fold butter to squeeze out as much remaining liquid as your patience will allow. (Keep in mind that even the most posh butter is MAXIMUM 85% solids, so don't be too fanatical here.)

Sprinkle butter with salt, if you are using for spreading on bread, and fold into butter until thoroughly incorporated. The butter will keep for at least 1 month assuming you use reasonably fresh cream and you wash the butter well. You can also freeze them. (Don't panic if the buttermilk separates on thawing, just shake.)

6. Divide butter between two 12" x 15" (30cm x 40cm) rectangles of parchment paper (waxed paper if you must). Shape each half of the butter into an approximate log shape. Fold the paper over the butter, then roll butter log up tightly, twisting the ends, to get a nice cylinder of buttery goodness.

Or do what I do, put it in clean glass jars and refrigerate/freeze.

-J.

You're REALLY not going to like it.

Any time I get the urge to start off a blog post with a recitation of my bona fides, well, that's not a sign that I'm in a good mood about the subject of the blog post in question.

This, friends, is one such time.

I try to handle the matter with equanimity, so you know, but when we're dealing with pessimism. And pessimism, in the words of PGW, "gives me the pip."

So, keeping true to both the spirit and form of these sorts of posts -- for both are precious in the sight of some people -- I will list my bona fides as stipulated above.

I'm what the more benighted Catholics might call a Trad. I am pleased and gratified and privileged to live in a "bubble" where my parishes, both near work and home are solid and liturgically excellent. Mass in the Extraordinary Form is what speaks to my heart, and a reverent Latin Mass in the Ordinary Form is also close to my heart. Those of you who have been inflicted with offline society will recall my views on the liturgical equivalent of "bongos-and-kumbaya" and if you are truly deranged and follow me on Spotify, you'll also note the ceaseless march of Gregorian chant. When it comes to "the yells, bells and smells" I believe I check all the boxes.

I have even blogged, rather well if impassionately if-I-do-say-so-myself, on the matter of the importance of liturgy.

So I am not in the throes of pathological enuresis, singing Gather Us In and pondering a jeteé up the nave.

But in reading commentary of "what Pope Francis is doing" is gravely testing my family history of hypertension.

Let it be on the record that I wish the Holy Father had made different choices on a number of fronts.

I brought these concerns to a venerable ol' Jesuit, for many years -- when execrable felt banners held sway -- a liturgical recusant. He looked at me in the way only a Jesuit can (i.e. "You poor, poor deluded bastid.") and made this point. "Pope Francis is doing something, and he's doing something very precisely and very much on purpose. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but it's for the greater glory of God. You can 'not like it' or 'not understand it' but you can't not trust him." Since I trust THIS Jesuit, the words stayed with me.

Well, it's true. I don't know what he's doing -- I have a hypothesis, more on which anon -- but after following him for a LONG time, I know to trust him. I also have some understanding of "where he's coming from" both socio-geographically and formationally.

In general the gripes about Pope Francis are related to:
1) The, er, minimalism he seems to bring to
   a) his Pontificate and
   b) liturgies
2) The foot washing thing.
3) The fact that "pro-choice" politicians such as Pelosi and Biden said they receive(d) Communion.

On point 1, let me provide some, I hope, illustrative background.

Most of the Jesuits I know, and this includes those who say EF Mass, have a liturgical approach that's, um, workmanlike. The Holy Father, much like most of his Jesuit brethren, simply do not have in their DNA what I might call much of a liturgical zeal. Furthermore, in Latin America (and I have spent decades there, on an off, since I was 2 years old) the more High Church liturgies are associated in the popular imagination with an oligarchical caste. This isn’t right, proper or correct…but it is what it is. Priests such as now-Pope Francis, accustomed to saying Mass in a garage, in a street corner, in a vacant lot, or in a VERY poor parish are going to develop, by necessity, such an approach.

But watch Pope Francis during the Consecration. Notice how long he "holds" the Elevation.

On point 2 I, personally, wish he had done it differently. But I am satisfied with the explanation given by Fr. Lombardi and the USCCB about how exceptions to the "viri" stricture are acceptable when pastoral reasons warrant it. Not crazy about it, but I can live with it.

On point 3, I can't find a single photo of Biden/Pelosi receiving Communion at the Vatican, and given the mob scene during these sorts of Masses, I cannot expect some diocesan priest from Rome to have the slightest clue who Pelosi and Biden ARE, never mind what they look like. That ALL said, I wish the Holy Father would drop the Canon 915 hammer once and for all, but for the moment I can grin-and-bear it.

Loon that I am, I tried to discuss this at Easter brunch. Of the assembled, practicing Catholics all, and not a few traditionally minded ones, at that, the impressions of Pope Francis were exceedingly positive. Two things struck me:

1- Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, said, suggested, intimated, implied, or otherwise gave even a chemical trace of conveying a sentiment that "Pope XYZ is SOOOO much better than Pope ABC."

2- Nobody had a clue about the "controversies" let alone had formed an opinion thereon. All they know is "the Pope went to juvie on Maundy Thursday." Not where "he was supposed to go" and not "whose feet were supposed to get washed" or even "whose feet he did wash." Beyond the thin digital line of the Catholic blogosphere, these things aren't on the radar.

My concern is how many (not all) of my fellow Trads are becoming colossal turnoffs to other Catholics. Those people who fulminate like Yosemite Sam or fret like Piglet or are convinced the ecclesial sky is falling like Chicken Little are guaranteed to sway the minds of someone wondering about the EF Mass away. But I realize many of them are hardwired to such a response and therefore are more to be pitied than censured.

Here's what I'm guessing the Pope is doing, and I freely admit this is a pretty half-baked theory.

There is one problem that leapt out at me in the aftermath of the sex abuse scandal in the U.S.: Nobody was paying attention to anything the Church said. Bishops denounced Thing One or Thing Two and it was as if the grownups from the Peanuts cartoons were talking.

MWAW-WAW-WMAMWMA

The Church (in the institutional sense) was hemorrhaging credibility. Scandals were/are swirling around. The Curia was/is an impediment to the mission of proclaiming the Gospel and drawing people to God.

What Francis is doing is getting people to focus on the primary responsibility of the Church: Proclaiming Christ, crucified. And he's getting a response. I'll look for these later, but I have gotten link after link of Catholics of varying degrees of fallen-awayness discussing their faith and their desire to reconnect with the Church.

And don't think of Francis as some neo- "spirit of V2" sort. Have you heard any pope in your lifetime mention the Devil and the spiritual warfare we face as often and as bluntly? (Say what you will about the liturgical lassitude assumed of a Jesuit, nobody can accuse them of sugarcoating. To quote my friend Dave, "A holy priest calls a spade a spade, and a holy Jesuit calls it a @#$%ing shovel.")

So, if the Church is to regain its footing in a world increasily secular and increasingly hostile to faith, it has to do so from the ground up, and to do this from the ground we're going to have to go to where the devout Catholics ain't, and address them in terms and symbols they will get.

You're not going to like it.

I'm working on a post that encompasses much that has buzzed the more robustly traditionalist segements of the Catholic blogosphere, as re. Pope Francis.

As it takes shape, I am VERY happy that it will almost certainly provide excellent reasons for both upper-case-p Progs and upper-case-t Trads to be displeased with me. Stand by.

The Impotence of Being Earnest

I know I'm s'posed to be working on this, as promised. But something came up and I wanted to catch it while it was fresh.

Earlier today, on Facebook, I posted the following:

"We're never going to win the struggle for the culture unless and until we're (also) more clever and wittier than The Other Side. Neverevereverever."

As the whole Supreme Court/Prop. 8 thing is playing out, some of my friends started changing their avatar to that pink-equal-sign-on-a-red-square. Those people who are not especially hip then start wondering "What IS up with that pink-equal-sign-on-a-red-square?" and thus the whole "fairness" thing goes viral, in a way.

So I changed mine to a Humpty Dumpty to underscore my point.

Some other, more stalwart friends of mine, started changing theirs to a pink-something-NOT-equal-sign-on-a-red-square with, of course, Scripture verses.

So here's the problem.

The pink-equal-sign-on-a-red-square crowd are making a VERY simple point (one with which I disagree) in a very direct way. They are getting their point across VERY effectively as witnessed by the massive shift in public opinion over the last, say, 10-15 years on this issue.

Responding with Holy Writ, while establishing our bona fides as True Believers does relatively little to convince the vast and squishy middle. So the argument becomes People Who Are Fair vs. People Who Go Around Spouting Bible Verses. Regardless how you feel about this, it's a colossal turnoff to anyone not already a committed Christian.

There. I said it.

People shut down and immediately Not Hear anything you have to say on the matter. There isn't anyone -- and I mean ANYONE -- who'll say "Oh, wait, St. Paul said that? I'm changing my mind, then." Rather than making a sharper point, to pique the curiosity of someone not fully bound to one argument or the other, to get them to see, in a pithy way, your point (i.e. We're redefining an institution millenniæ old because of people's feelings.) we simply assuage ourselves that hey, we're standing up for what's good and true.

That's as maybe, but it's not bringing anyone over to our side. If we want to win the struggle for the larger culture, we might want to fight like we intend to win.

What I'm working on.

A LONG post on Pope Francis and Catholic politicians in a state of public sin and their receiving Communion. Fireworks fun for the whole family!

Stand by.

Quick note, on how humility works.

For reasons which God'll understand eleventy squajillion times better than I do, you'll recall, I've translated a few pieces from then-Cdl. Bergoglio/now-Pope Francis. Which is fine and great and all that.

That has led to my being contacted by some Professional Catholics® on this matter, seeing as how, if someone should squint REALLY hard he can convince himself I am some sort of "expert" on the Holy Father. (I am not, by any means.)

But it is cool to be quoted in the various places as someone with some insight on the thinking of the Pope.

So I was feeling extra-special good about my 15 minutes of fame until I ran across this gem in a combox that put me in my place:

You should try and get his Lenten Letter for this year [LINK] and his 2008 Palm Sunday Homily [LINK] They are great. Though unofficial and rough translations, they give one a sense of his thought and preaching. Perhaps someone could re-translate or touch up these translations.

Ouch!

AMDG,

-J.

P.S. I will grant that my typing is rough...