The meat, the rules, and an article

The meat turned out very good. The recipe called for an internal temp of 125 F for 1 hour. 45 minutes into cooking I checked the internal temperature and found that it was 180 F. Cyndi said "Take it out NOW!!!". It was perfect. Even the grease in the roasting pan was good.

We had a lot of fun talking with Father David and Elaine. We discovered that they read to each other like we do. (They don't have a TV either.) They brought the little boy an Ikon of St Herman of Alaska. We talked a lot about real estate and property management. They run a charity called Raphael House, and are looking at forming a for profit corporation that buys and manages realestate in order to support their work, which is currently 90% funded by donations.

About the 28th: Anything you want to make is fine. We picked that date because it is a feast day and can eat anything. But, just so you know, even if it was a fast day, we could eat anything you offer. The rule is to never turn down someone's food offered at the table because of a fast. Hospitality is a good work and leads to salvation; it would be sinful to interfere with your salvation. However, I am supposed to avoid being put into situations where I will break the fasts. That is why during Advent and Lent I am careful about accepting invitiations to things. It is a balancing act.

An interesting article:
'Between You and Your God'
By Fr John Garvey
There is a cliche floating around that people drop as if it were a self-evident truth -- a category that may not exist, despite our Declarationof Independence. In anything involving religion, morals, medicalethics, or sexuality, whatever you choose to do is "between you andyour God."Euthanize comatose grandpa? This decision is between you andyour God. (Grandpa's God is presumably as out of it as grandpa is.) A woman's decision to abort is between her and her God, and howa man chooses to worship, or whether to worship at all, is betweenhim and his God.Here we are, back at polytheism. All these gods -- mine, yours,hers, his, theirs -- are the result of a combination of secularismgone to an extreme, combined with individualism and asentimental form of civic religion. Completely absent is the ideathat one of these gods could turn out to be real, and might makedemands, and that there could be serious consequences if we do notobey them.This "between you and your God" language comes up mainly inpolitical contexts, usually in defense of a pro-choice position, butthe fact that it is so frequently accepted without debate shows thatits effects are everywhere. The god invoked here is plainly areflection of its possessor, and can be counted on to affirm itsowner's every longing or whim.Those unlucky enough to feel obliged to vote this November willhave to choose between a man whose god has no problem with thenear-infanticide of late-term abortions and a man whose god wasnot displeased with hundreds of killed Texas prisoners, not tospeak of dead GIs and Iraquis. Am I saying that my god knowsbetter than theirs? No. I am saying that any time any politician saysanything about God and our relationship to God we should realizethat we are being used, and idolatry is afoot. And we should loathewhat we have been offered as a choice.But religion can work badly in another direction. When Catholicbishops say that they will deny communion to those politicianswho support what is euphemistically called "a woman's right tochoose" (the Lexus or the Buick? To kill or not to kill?) they entera fraught area.Without getting into the subject of their own moral credibility (amore serious question than some bishops seem to realize) they doin fact have the obligation to be clear about the fact that some ofthe church's teachings are not just oddities of your faith's form ofobservance -- fast days, for example -- but have universal import.Abortion and capital punishment are not the same things as nomeat on Friday. They have not done a good job of making thatargument, though they seem to think they have.But here there is a weird selectivity. Until pro-choice andpro-capital punishment Republican politicians like Rudy Giulianni,George Pataki, and Arnold Schwartznegger are mentioned by thebishops in the same breath as the offending Democrats, the Waspswho always wait in the wings to emerge as neo-Nativists will beable to say that the Vatican will forever try to control Americanpolitics. And Kerry will be able to show what a brave guy he is bydefying the bishops, which is about as brave as telling SisterWilhelmena that you think she's a meanie.As an Orthodox Christian who doesn't believe in using communionas a common means of discipline -- though no one has a right tocommunion, rights being a stupid category where the sacramentsare concerned, and priests really should refuse communion in somecases -- I am not in a position to inform Catholic bishops orlaypeople about how they should approach Roman Catholicdiscipline. But people who say they believe that the life of aconceived child is human and matters, and this is what Catholicsand Orthodox believe, should not support political platforms thatare callous or indifferent about this; and they really should think
twice about receiving the body and blood of one who died for allhuman beings, including killed fetuses and executed criminals. Thebishops are surely not wrong to affirm this.I have mentioned the worry that the heavy-handedness of a fewbishops will raise the old Nativist specter, the notion that the Popewill try to control Catholic politicians. But there is another anddeeper consideration here. To what extent can a person who isseriously at odds with the direction of a culture sign off on the mostmurderous aspects of that culture, in order to accomplish lessergoods? In other words, in order to raise the minimum wage youvote (because it's the Democratic party line) to allow late-termabortions? Some months ago the Orthodox Peace Fellowship sentletters to Senators Paul Sarbanes (D. Maryland) and OlympiaSnowe (R. Maine) both Orthodox who cast consistently pro-choicevotes, challenging their record in this regard, and asking for someexplanation of their position. The letters remain unanswered.Catholics, Orthodox, and others who are troubled by this issueshould not leave it to the bishops to challenge pro-choiceDemocrats or pro-capital punishment members of either party. Likethe largely lay membership of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, theyshould challenge the politicians themselves. Isn't that part of whatthe priesthood of the laity is all about?* * *Fr John Garvey, a priest of the Orthodox Church in America, livesin Bayside, New York. His column is posted with permission of theauthor and Commonweal magazine. Fr John is a longtime member ofthe Orthodox Peace Fellowship.