Fr. Z's Blog | Catholic commentary by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

My Eggs Benedict roundup with obiter dicta

Posted on 17 April 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

To observe both Pope Benedict’s Birthday and National Eggs Benedict Day (coincidence?) I made… wait for it… Eggs Benedict. Thank you to the few, you happy few, who sent donations for groceries. I thought of you as I shopped and cooked.

The main ingredients: room-temperature farm-fresh eggs, English muffin, clarified butter, Canadian bacon, lemon. You don’t have to use clarified butter. As a matter of fact, the milk fat in unclarified butter can be a plus! I just wanted to use up the clarified butter I had. FYI: clarified butter has a higher burn point, around 450F, and so it can be useful when frying or sauté.

I gently warmed the bacon in the clarified butter. Don’t treat this stuff like regular bacon or it turns into something like a pub coaster.

Hollandaise sauce begins with egg yolks and a tiny bit of cold water, beaten with a wire or plastic whip in a pan or bowl or pot that can be placed on top of a pot of boiling water. Beat the eggs up so that they froth and increase in volume.

Place your pan with the beaten frothy eggs over your briskly bubbling pot of water and keep beating. It can be handy to have a bowl of cold water near the stove. If your pot gets too warm and the eggs look as if they are going to scramble set the pan, bowl, etc. into the cold water. The idea with a double-boiler set up is control of the heat so that your eggs don’t just scramble on you.

Be ready to move your container with the eggs off from the steam frequently. Control that temp!

Begin adding unsalted butter. You can use soft butter or clarified. I had some clarified on hand so I used that.

As you beat the butter into the eggs, a little at a time, the combination will emulsify and become velvety.

When the consistency is about right, and you will know when it is, or maybe just a little tighter than you think a sauce should be, season with lemon juice (which will loosen it up again), pepper (white is better – I didn’t have any) and even a pinch of cayenne pepper. Beat it together thoroughly. You can keep your sauce on hand for only a short time. I don’t recommend more than about 20 minutes. Once that sauce is done, keep it warm, not hot, or it may “break” and separate or clot. You can revive it with a touch of water.

I use a water temp of around 170-180F for 3 minutes. Do NOT boil the water. The higher (not boiling) temp and putting a little vinegar in the water helps the whites stay together.

Try to compress the time between completing the Hollandaise and starting the eggs a’poachin’. Lift them out with a slotted spoon. It helps to have some paper towel on hand to dab and soak up water from off and from around the eggs.

Assemble. I like English muffins well-toasted. Thanks to reader KA for the toaster from my amazon wish list, btw. I now toast, rather than incinerate, in style.

You will usually see the bacon go onto the muffin first, then the egg, topped with sauce. I put a slice beneath and above so you could see it better. The visual is important!

I made some fried potatoes.

I added the chives to annoy liberals. Come to think of it they also annoy some traddies. Liberals and the really hardcore traddies can be alike in many ways, mirabile scriptu. Whenever I post about even rather simple meals – made to look nice with the application of sprigs of “personality” – I inevitably get hate mail. A chive placed at an angle seems to just set them off…. to my joy! A little touch of “personality” on a plate of even very simple fare – and Eggs Benedict is very simple fare – can go a long way to demonstrating respect for the process, for the ingredients which God provides, and for the people to whom you serve your food.

Other than the friend potatoes, which I started way in advance, this whole thing should take about 15 minutes if you prep your space and get the water going ahead of time and get everything set up, that whole mise en place thing.

And so I made, and ate, Eggs Benedict yesterday evening, probably sending them straight to my LAD.

As I ate I wished His Holiness a happy birthday and then I amused myself for the balance of the meal with charts of amateur radio bands.

QRU.

Posted in Fr. Z's Kitchen, Lighter fare | Tagged Canadian bacon, chives, Eggs Benedict, English muffin, Ham radio, Hollandaise sauce, lemon, QRU
10 Comments

Of things Lyrid, Saturnine, Solar and TEOTWAWKI

Posted on 16 April 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From Spaceweather comes, first, benign news and, then, news that one of these days is going to precede TEOTWAWKI:

LYRID METEOR SHOWER: Earth is approaching the debris field of ancient Comet Thatcher, source of the annual Lyrid meteor shower. Forecasters expect the shower to peak on April 21-22; a nearly-new moon on those dates will provide perfect dark-sky conditions for meteor watching. Usually the shower is mild (10-20 meteors per hour) but unmapped filaments of dust in the comet’s tail sometimes trigger outbursts 10 times stronger.

It’s called the Lyrid shower because the meteors appear to spoke out from the constellation Lyra.

SATURN’S RINGS AT THEIR BEST: This week Saturn is at opposition–directly opposite the sun in the skies of Earth. The ringed planet rises at sunset and soars high in the sky at midnight, up all night long. Opposition is the time when Saturn’s rings are at their best. From the point of view of Earth, shadows in the ring plane almost completely disappear (just as your own shadow tries to hide beneath your feet at noon) and sunlight is directly backscattered by icy ring particles toward our planet.

From our perspective, Saturn has a wobble over a long arc of time. Therefore we sometimes have to look at him direct on, so that we can barely see the rings. At other times, Saturn is tilted toward or away from us and we get a better view.

And then there’s… this:

SPECTACULAR EXPLOSION: Magnetic fields on the sun’s northeastern limb erupted around 17:45 UT on April 16th, producing one of the most visually-spectacular explosions in years. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the blast at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths:

The explosion, which registered M1.7 on the Richter Scale of solar flares, was not Earth-directed. [This time.] A CME produced by the blast is likely to hit NASA’s STEREO-B spacecraft, but probably no planets.

This event confirms suspicions that an active region of significance is rotating onto the Earth-facing side of the sun. [DUM DUM DAAAAAAAH! I would start stocking up on Mystic Monk Coffee, friends. Don’t think ponder it. Just do it.] Stay tuned for updates. Solar flare alerts:text,phone.

One of these days, something reeeeallly bog blasted out of the Sun will strike the earth, and our lives will dramatically change.

If you are responsible for anyone else, and if you don’t think about these things from time to time, you are nuts.

Have a nice day!

I’m going to celebrate today’s narrow dodge of life-altering doom by observing National Eggs Benedict Day.

Posted in Global Killer Asteroid Questions, Just Too Cool, Look! Up in the sky!, TEOTWAWKI, The future and our choices | Tagged Lyriad, solar flare, TEOTWAWKI
12 Comments

National Eggs Benedict Day … Coincidence?

Posted on 16 April 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

A friend has informed me that, in addition to it being Pope Benedict’s 85th birthday, it is also.. and I didn’t know this… National Eggs Benedict Day.

Coincidence? I think not.

Thus, I urge you all to make or to eat Eggs Benedict today. If you wish, send in some photos.

I must go to the grocery store later and I will get ingredients.

To that end, I will shamelessly add my donation button because… I am shameless in the adding of my donation button. I find that when I make it visible, donations come in.

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Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Fr. Z's Kitchen, Lighter fare | Tagged Eggs Benedict
11 Comments

QUAERITUR: Priests, valid absolution of sins, and the faculty to receive sacrament confessions

Posted on 16 April 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader about something I raised HERE.

In a recent post you wrote, “bishops and priests have Christ’s own power to forgive sins and they do so validly with the Church’s permission, indicated by a ‘faculty.'” Does this mean that a priest who lacked the faculty to hear confessions could not validly absolve, or would such an absolution be valid but illicit?

The 1983 Code of Canon Law says that:

Can. 966 §1 For the valid absolution of sins, it is required that, in addition to the power of order, the minister has the faculty to exercise that power in respect of the faithful to whom he gives absolution.
§2 A priest can be given this faculty either by the law itself, or by a concession issued by the competent authority in accordance with can. 969.

From this we see that priests must have permission of the Church to absolve sins. The Church, by the way, gets to determine how the sacraments are administered.

The business about “the law itself” giving the faculty to absolve validly pertains, for example, to situations of danger of death. Consider the situation in which a priest who has, for any reason at all, no longer in active ministry and, therefore, no longer has any faculties to function as a priest. If a person is in danger of dying, that ex-priest would in those circumstances have the faculty to absolve validly, even if there were another, active priest in good standing there present also.

But in normal circumstances, if a priest does not have the faculty to receive sacramental confessions, for whatever reason, the absolution is invalid.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Linking Back, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Priests and Priesthood, The Drill | Tagged absolution, can. 966, canon law, confession, reconciliation, sacrament of penance, validity
15 Comments

SSPX options and the Pope of Christian Unity

Posted on 16 April 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Benedict XVI is the Pope of Christian Unity.

From the intrepid Andrea Tornielli’s Vatican Insider of the Italian daily La Stampa. My emphases and comments.

The Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X writes to his priests: “We are waiting, an agreement will happen if concessions which touch upon the faith are not asked from us and if we are assured true freedom“

Andrea Tornielli
Vatican City

The Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X , Bishop Bernad Fellay, in the evening of the 14th of April took hold of paper and pen to send a message reserved to the other three bishops and to all priests belonging to the Lefebvrist group, confirming the state of relations with the Holy See.

Fellay, in reference to the media rumours on a possible positive outcome of the dialogue with Rome, would have explained that, for the time being, nothing of a definitive nature has yet taken place, neither in the direction of a canonical recognition, not in the direction of a rupture, and it is therefore time to wait and see.

The bishop, according to the rumours gathered by Vatican Insider, wished to confirm to the priests of the Society that which he had already written a few days ago, recalling the two principles that guide the Lefebvrians in the relations with Rome: the first is that no concessions be asked from the Society that touch upon the faith and that which derives from it (liturgy, sacraments, morals, and discipline); [A possible problem here is that if hard-liners within the SSPX insist on some “deal-killer” this whole thing grinds to a halt. The SSPXers have been doing their own thing for a long time now. Some of them have never known unity with the See of Peter. Such a “deal killer” could be, for example, insisting that the Holy Father repudiate the Council’s documents which, obviously, ain’t gonna happen, thus freezing in amber the SSPX’s status. If, however, they say that they want to have some freedom in the matter of interpretation of the Church’s teaching on religious liberty, I don’t see why that could not be conceded. Fr. Feeney was reconciled over a very thorny question of salvation outside the Church without having to abjure his position. Why not the SSPX on a question that is by no means cut and dried?] the second, that true freedom and autonomy of action be granted to the Society of Saint Pius X, which would allow it to grow and develop. [That could be accomplished fairly easily, with the provisos that somewhere along the lines they cannot just ignore diocesan bishops (who have, among other things, tribunals.]

How to interpret this message of the General Superior? Above all, it is interesting to note that the possibility of a positive outcome – which many sources, both those close to the Society of Saint Pius X and those within Vatican, consider at this moment probable and imminent – is not denied at all. Fellay, who is aware that there is a group within the Society that is outspokenly opposed to the agreement (approximately 25% of the Society, including the other three bishops, Williamson, Tissier de Mallerais and Galarreta, though with different positions among themselves), probably wanted to reassure his partners that the canonical setting and the re-entry into full communion will take place according to those two conditions already made public by him in the past few weeks.

In this time after Easter and bridging the liturgical year to Pentecost, ask the Holy Spirit to

Flecte quod est rigidum,
fove quod est frigidum,
rege quod est devium.

Bend what is hard,
warm what is chilled,
correct what is astray.

Posted in Brick by Brick, Pope of Christian Unity | Tagged Andrea Tornielli, Benedict XVI, Bp. Fellay, Pope of Christian Unity, SSPX
51 Comments

Ad multos annos Pope Benedict

Posted on 16 April 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Say a prayer for Pope Benedict today on his 85th birthday.

He is now one of the oldest of Popes in history.

Here is a shot of my Vatican Curia wall calendar.

Close up of the birthday item.

UPDATE:

I read in the UK’s best Catholic weekly, The Catholic Herald, some remarks by His Holiness on the occasion of his birthday:

“I find myself on the last stretch of my journey in life, and I don’t know what is awaiting me.”

“I know, however, that the light of God exists, that he is risen, that his light is stronger than any darkness and that God’s goodness is stronger than any evil in this world, and this helps me go forward with certainty,” he said.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
5 Comments

Any good news?

Posted on 16 April 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

What is your good news today?

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
43 Comments

UK: British atheists try to block new Catholic schools

Posted on 16 April 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From the UK’s best Catholic weekly, The Catholic Herald comes this dreadful tale:

Humanists to mount legal challenge against new schools
By MADELEINE TEAHAN on Thursday, 12 April 2012

A legal challenge will be launched against the building of two new Catholic schools in southwest London.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) and the Richmond Inclusive Schools Campaign (RISC) are planning to mount a legal challenge against Richmond Council, following an application by the Diocese of Westminster to build a Catholic primary and secondary school.

A spokesman for the Diocese of Westminster defended the application stating: “The Diocese of Westminster believe that Richmond Council have acted entirely properly in respect of proposals for the establishment of new Voluntary Aided Catholic primary and secondary schools in the borough.

“The proposed court case being brought by RISC and the British Humanist Association, a national organisation that campaigns against the existence of all schools with a religious character, seeks to use procedural arguments to prevent an entirely legitimate proposal to increase the educational choices available for parents and children in Richmond.”

[…]

It is useful for people in the USA to keep track of what is going on in the UK. Their Kulturkampf is farther along than ours.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | Tagged anti-catholicism, atheists, BHA, bigotry, bigots, kulturkampf
21 Comments

Your Sunday Mass and sermon notes

Posted on 16 April 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Was there a good point in the Sunday sermon you heard? Some point of Mass apart from the norm that earned special attention? Share it here.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
21 Comments

A Titanic Fata Morgana

Posted on 15 April 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

By now most of you know that today was the 100th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic.

Astronomy Pic of the Day, which isn’t limited to covering things celestial, has a photo of a very curious natural phenomenon which is proposed as, perhaps, having something to do with Titanic’s collision with the iceberg and subsequent foundering.

Behold… Fata Morgana.

Did this mirage help sink the Titanic? The optical phenomenon called Fata Morgana can make strange shapes or a false wall of water appear above a watery horizon. When conditions are right, light reflecting off of cold water will be bent by an unusual layer of warm air above to arrive at the observer from several different angles. A conceptually comparable mirage can make a setting Sun appear strangely distorted or a distant pavement appear wet. One hundred years ago today, such a Fata Morgana mirage might have obscured real icebergs from the clear view of crew onboard the Titanic. Additional evidence for this distortion hypothesis arises from the nearby vessel SS Californian which reported sightings consistent with Fata Morgana mirages. The above Fata Morgana mirage was taken off the US Pacific coast in 2008.