Today my groaning lackeys, I bid you looking up from your moldy loafs and cups of fetid water and contemplate this, from a reader:<\/p>\n
I wanted to make you aware of a wonderful Catholic cookbook put out by our group to fund our program called TASTE.\u00a0<\/span>The TASTE Program (T<\/b>aste\u00a0A<\/b>nd\u00a0S<\/b>ee\u00a0T<\/b>ake\u2026E<\/b>at) is a program that began in 2007 and is now comprised of women from 38\u00a0parishes in the Baltimore \/Washington Dioceses who meet EVERY Thursday to learn the Truths of our Catholic Faith. We also have a wonderful spiritual adoption program to pray for priests! This will be our 5th year. Our speakers are by invitation only as we are orthodox and the women that come know they will be getting\u00a0authentic<\/i><\/b>\u00a0Catholic doctrine.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
You can learn more about the TASTE Program if you go to our website \u00a0www.tasteprogram.com<\/span><\/a>\u00a0We have a Catholic family cookbook that we had professionally published to help families cook with the saints and keep us afloat financially. We\u2019ve been selling it individually to families and to schools and parishes as fundraisers. You can also get it at Franciscan University, EWTN Religious Catalogue, Catholic Information Center as well as some local bookstores. \u00a0You can check it out at\u00a0www.catholicfamilycookbook.com<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Last weekend I went to the Defend the Faith Conference in Steubenville and they were sold out of the cookbook! \u00a0\ud83d\ude42\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/div>\nMay God Continue To Bless You And The Good You Do For The Church<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nYou may smell the nice smells, but no actual tasting. <\/p>\n
As a Dark Lord, I am always of two minds about these advertisements for beautiful new Christian initiatives. Of course, I realize it looks good to have a notice like this on my site, just in case Red Cross inspectors show up to see how things are going down their in the Pits or Despair (or \u201cHouses of Re-Education\u201d as we refer to them around the inspectors).<\/p>\n
But at the same time, there is always the concern that minions will forget their place when given even a small taste of the Christian vision of the dignity of the human person and the goodness at the heart of God\u2019s creation. It\u2019s so important that you lot maintain a rigorous discipline on your unruly desires for \u201cfreedom\u201d and \u201chappiness\u201d down there in the Pits of Despair. We Dark Lords try to provide you with opportunities for pleasure (since it\u2019s so fun take that pleasure away). But as a Dark Lord responsible for the alliance between reckless capitalism and irresponsible government, I can only ask you, \u201cIf you get carried away and start wanting more than thin gruel and moldy bread, where will our precarious economy be? Suppose a congresscritter or President had to sacrifice some of his 3669% increase in personal wealth because you lot started getting uppity about the food budget? What about them? What about their needs?\u201d Remember: the *true* gospel is not this rubbish about \u201chaving life abundantly\u201d or \u201cIt is for freedom that Christ has set us free\u201d or \u201ctaste and see that the Lord is good\u201d or \u201cthe law was made for man, not man for the law\u201d. It\u2019s not about happiness at all! It\u2019s about servicing the machine of my good friends Caesar and Mammon, increasing their power and wealth, and then quietly dying in despair when your utility to the System is ended. It is also about growing in envy of them so that you get your minds off Christ and the imitation of his Mother and his saints and long to become just like your exploiters and oppressors (clever breeding program, no?) It\u2019s one of those \u201ccircle of life\u201d things that lions, social Darwinists and others at the top of the food chain like to rhapsodize about. What my spiritual mentor, Screwtape, calls the \u201cGrand Dynamism\u201d.<\/p>\n
The danger, in short, is that Christian initiatives like the TASTE program are like viruses in that well-oiled system of Order that I hope to impose on the world, filling people with impossible notions of joy and generosity, not avarice and envy, instead of simply being merely useful window dressing for my purposes. This troubles me. I think I will go and brood for a while.<\/p>\n
That is all.<\/p>\n