Friday abstinence rules in Canada (and a recipe)

One of the things about living in America's hat (aka Canada) is that we suffer from Eagleland Osmosis. In Catholic matters it's even worse. Almost everything comes from the US. The hymnals, the CCD materials, the missals, etc. And none of them mention that anything might be different in Canada. To a large extent this is probably a good thing because in my experience, where Canada differs from the US in things Catholic, Canada takes the wimpy route. (E.g. holy days of obligation, Canada has only TWO, Christmas and Mother of God, which occur exactly a week apart, and in some years they both occur on Sunday, meaning that Canadians have no obligation in those years to ever do anything other than Sunday Mass. WIMPY.)

I knew this, but I was still surprised to read the following in the bulletin one Sunday before Ash Wednesday:

Friday Abstinence Rules in Canada
While the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter [the religious community that runs the parish] observes the more traditional practice of abstaining from meat on all Fridays of the year, commonly called the 'Fish Friday', and also encourages you to observe this older practice, the following rules apply in Canada (rules which differ slightly from the USA):
--S.29 of the 'Ordo' of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops specifies that all Fridays of the year are special days of abstinence from meat in Canada. This includes the Fridays of Lent; however, they also state that Canadian Catholics may substitute 'special acts' of charity or piety on these days, even in Lent (except for Ash Wed. and Good Fri., when fasting and abstinence is required).

To restate: The Canadian bishops' conference makes no distinction between Lent and the rest of the year vis a vis abstinence. So if you're in Canada and you're not abstaining the rest of the year, there's no reason officially at least why you should change that during Lent, and you're under no obligation to do so.

In conclusion, Canada is wimpy yet again. :C

Of course there's the "special acts" qualifier; in the heady and optimistic past, the bishops seem to have been living in a dream world wherein all lay Catholics were just itching to apply awesome creative penances and perform superheroic acts of mercy and prayer and were somehow being held back by the idea that all you had to do was abstain from meat. "Ok, we're removing that rule! Let's see what you got, laity! Go for it!" The laity collectively went for it. Where "it" is "a hamburger." This is because the laity, being human, are very very good at hearing when they no longer have to do something difficult, but seemingly impossible to educate to start doing something difficult, much less to come up with their own difficult things to do.

Anyway. We try to keep meatless year round on Fridays. I'm always looking for more meatless recipes, and we did something tonight that was quite easy and also provided leftovers that can be easily spun into totally different meals.

African-Inspired Yams and Rice with Black-Eyed Peas and Peanut Sauce

I'm not going to insert a picture here because if you've ever seen a dish involving peanut sauce, you know what it looks like. Brown. And vaguely gross. Not even food stylists can truly make peanut sauce dishes look great; they try to trick you with neat bowls or splashing garnishes all over the place.

• sweet potatoes or yams, sufficient to feed your family and have some leftover
• rice ditto (or some other grain, or leave it out and just have it with the sweet potatoes)
• one can black eyed peas, rinsed and drained (or a similar amount cooked from dried beans)
• one large can plum tomatoes in juice
• one cup natural peanut butter
• a splash of vinegar or citrus
• nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and chile powder to taste--don't be shy

Preheat the oven to 400F and stick the yams in on a tray lined with foil (because those suckers ooze). Bake until the texture is how you want it, which depends mostly on how big the yams are and how soft you want them. Start checking with a fork or skewer at about the 40 minute mark.

Cook rice somehow. You know how to make rice, right? If you don't, look it up somewhere else. Or buy a rice cooker, because they are awesome. Especially if you make rice as often as we do.

Dump the plum tomatoes and their juice into a small pot. Roughly cut up the tomatoes with a fork and knife. Add the drained black eyed peas, the peanut butter, the vinegar, and the spices. Heat over medium-low, stirring frequently. It will look horrendous at first until the peanut butter melts and melds with the other ingredients to form a smooth sauce. Then it will just look brown, lumpy and vaguely gross (as mentioned above). But it will taste amazing.

Let each individual combine some rice, some sweet potato and some sauce in a bowl. If you cooked them soft, the sweet potato will collapse into the sauce. The result will be gently sweet, warmly savory, creamy, and spicy.

This was inspired by several different sources but notably the idea of beans and sweet potatoes in Crescent Dragonwagon's Bean by Bean and the peanut sauce in Mollie Katzen's Simple Suppers.

In Defense of Cry Rooms

In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity. - Unknown

Modeled by one of my little room criers.

It seems at least once a week someone on my Facebook feed shares a piece attacking cry rooms. There are three main directions of attack, which interestingly enough, also attack each other implicitly:

1. Babies and young children should be able to cry, scream, laugh, and talk during Mass and other people should ignore, accept or even celebrate it.
2. Babies and young children need to be in the pew in order to be taught to behave. You must swiftly correct every disruptive behavior every time until your children sit attentively, or at least quietly, in the pew for an hour and a half every week.
3. Children under 7 shouldn't be at Mass at all. They should be left in a nursery or at home with another caregiver so that the parents can focus on Christ. The parents can switch off Masses if necessary to achieve this.

But although they implicitly criticize each other, the focus of their criticism always seems to be the cry room, that semi-segregated section of shame (how's that for alliteration) where brats hang from the ceiling while their mothers chat about toilet training, oblivious to the homily or the consecration.

My perspective is that there is no section on cry rooms or child behavior at Mass in either scripture, the catechism, or canon law, except inasmuch as to say that children under the age of reason are not bound by the obligation to attend Mass. Despite the dire reputation, in fact, the Church isn't terribly keen on telling people The Only Way to Do It unless there IS only one possible choice that is binding on every person without regard to circumstance, something that is rarer than you might think.

We laity are actually a lot more judgmental and strict than the Church in these matters. My perspective is basically that everyone should figure out what works for their family. Unfortunately, the cry room attacks often go all the way to a call for priests and administrators to remove or ban cry rooms. To the extent that they succeed, this is an attack on a perfectly licit and for me often a very helpful option. So I feel the need to defend cry rooms, with the important caveat that I am not claiming that letting children be potentially disruptive in Mass, OR swiftly correcting all possibly disruptive behavior in Mass, OR not bringing young children to Mass are wrong things to do, much less sinful things to do. Any might be right or wrong for your family, at this moment. Any can be taken to a harmful extreme for sure, just as the hyperbolic example of cry rooms I gave previously is easily recognized as a harmful extreme. A child who is allowed to sing loudly all through the homily, a family that is never IN the pew for more than a few minutes before yanking a child who dared to scratch an itch out to the vestibule for a time out, and a poor breastfeeding mother who misses Mass for months because she can't be separated from her baby and yet doesn't want to "disrupt" Mass with an infant's cries--all these would also be harmful extremes.

Any parent of more than one child knows that being a good parent means recognizing that the same approach doesn't work with every child. The Church is our mother, and she recognizes that we all have different needs, and require different disciplines, and different consolations. And, frankly, some of us are weaker than others, some of us are the bruised reeds. There are definitely weeks, or just moments, where I feel like a bruised reed. It's time like that, that the cry room is one of my consolations.

So if the hellscape version of cry rooms is a harmful extreme, what does an appropriate version look like? Maybe it's boastful to say so, but I think my parish does it pretty well.

At our parish, the cry room is one of the confessional rooms, with the screen pulled back, some kneelers at the window, some chairs, and a box full of quiet toys (an alphabet puzzle, some religious children's books, and some stuffed animals). There is a soft speaker, which enables the occupants to hear the priest etc, and the room is directly under the choir loft, so the music can be heard.

I can put a changing mat on the floor, and change a baby, while my toddler plays with a doll, and still be able to listen to the homily. I can let my overtired toddler lie on the floor behind me while I kneel watching the consecration and pray for strength. I can breastfeed in a chair that, frankly, is way more comfortable than doing so in the pew. These are the things that make the cry room a good option for me, at least some of the time. If you don't think these are good excuses, you should thank God that you are stronger than me, and pray that I may become as strong as you.

But in the meantime, please don't take away my cry room!

being a NO CAR family (and enjoying it!)

My friend Rosemary shared a link on Facebook, which I can no longer find, about how to fit three carseats into one regular car, so as to be able to avoid changing to a minivan, as a part of being able to afford to live on one income. Oops, never mind, changed some Google keywords and I found it.

(As a brief aside, this is one thing I don't like about Facebook and most other sites like it... if you're trying to find a link that someone shared a few months ago, it's a complete headache. Back to my topic.)

Anyway, a related post on the blog is titled "Growing a Family on One Income: Being a One-Car Family" and at the time, I commented (on my friend's Facebook) that I should make a post about "Growing a Family on One Income: Being a No Car Family." And another friend said we should make some kind of a blog round-up or something.

I don't know if the round-up/link-around/whatever mom-o-sphere term will happen or not, but I thought I'd jot down how we make being a no car family work.

Apparently to be a hip mommy-blogger ya gotta make images for people to pin on Pinterest or whatever, so here goes. (This picture was actually taken when a bus got stranded in the snow near our place, hence why she's sitting in a solo seat instead of next to me!)

Firstly, as a caveat, I have to say that neither my husband nor I knows how to drive. I know this makes us absolute freaks in the North American context, and for us two freaks to somehow find and fall for each other has got to be very bad odds. For both of us, it's for very similar reasons: parents expected us to pay the difference in insurance etc to be able to drive family cars, we didn't find it feasible while in high school, then we went to universities where we lived on campus and having a car wasn't any more feasible, and before we knew it we are 31 and 27 and neither of us ever in possession of a license.

But I actually think this has been a great blessing for us. We mostly don't know what we're missing; we don't have a car mindset. We didn't expect to have a car, so when we were looking for a place to live, finding employment, we didn't do it with the mindset that a car was an option.

Second caveat is that I'm going to use all local prices. I have to compare apples to apples; this isn't about renting and transit-ing in Vancouver versus driving in Teton Village, Wyoming.

Vancouver has one of the best transit systems in North America, which is damning with faint praise; probably only a dozen communities or so in all of North America have public transit that is adequate to thrive car-free... I can only think of eight myself off-hand, but I'm generously assuming there's a few others I don't know about. Nevertheless, a lot of people in Vancouver still drive, and I think a lot of it is just car mind-set. The most tragic are the people who live out in the suburbs because they can't afford a city apartment and a car payment, and now they need a car because they live out in the suburbs and they need to commute... vicious cycle.

So I thought I'd crunch the numbers on what we, personally, are saving by not having a car, and how that compares to the rent we pay here (Vancouver proper, but not downtown) vs for a similar space in, say, Surrey. We pay about $200-300 more per month than we would for a similar apartment there. We'll say $300 (I'm going to minimize our savings estimate as much as I can, so that I can say we're saving at LEAST this much, and probably more).

Our costs: $91 for one monthly one zone FareCard, plus around $21 for ~20 FareSavers per month, plus around $10 for times we need to add fare to travel to another zone, for a total of $122/mo. FareCards aren't tied to a single person. On normal days, they can be used by only one adult, but on Sundays and holidays, two adults can ride on one FareCard; we take full advantage of this. Children four and under ride free. Strollers can be taken aboard buses, trains, and ferries, although they may need to be folded if space is lacking (uncommon, in my experience, probably have to fold or take the next bus once or twice a month). There is no tax on transit fares, and you actually can deduct the monthly pass from your taxes, but we'll ignore that for these purposes.

Estimated costs for a single car: Recently read an article that said that gas had edged above $1.50/liter, which is roughly $5.68/gal for American readers. Let's pretend we use 100 liters a month (about 26 gallons; drivers, is that a reasonable amount of fuel?). That's $150 a month just on gas.

Ok, but what are we spending on the car? Let's be realistic and say it's a bit of a clunker. It's pretty hard for me to gauge what we might be spending. I went onto a bargain hunters forum (where I would think people are being pretty frugal) where there was a thread about car payments, and the payments ranged wildly. $250/month seems to be on the low end though, so we'll pretend that's our car payment.

So higher rent + transit fares = $422/mo and gas + car payment = $400/month. So we haven't quite broken even yet. But we're about to.

We now need to add car insurance. Now here I'm really going to show my ignorance. Remember, I've never had car insurance in my entire life. There's approximately eight bajillion variables affecting how much you pay per month in car insurance. I can't possibly guess how much we'd pay. Searching for "average car insurance BC" I found figures like $1200 or $1400/year. Let's say $100/month. Feel free to tell me if I'm way off in either direction. We're now officially saving money. Hurray!

We have more costs to consider though. Parking is not too bad in Vancouver, and lots of places have free parking, but we would still need to pay for parking sometimes. I'll be very conservative and say $50/month. Surrey is on the other side of a toll road. There is an alternative route, but it takes much longer, especially in high traffic situations. The toll is $3/trip. Again, very conservatively, let's say we take a mere 10 round trips across the Port Mann; that's $60/month. And the car has to be maintained, and repaired when stuff goes wrong. If we assume we have a clunker, those costs are probably higher, but again, super conservatively, let's say another $50/month on average towards maintenance and repair. It also costs money to register the car, and get your license, but the cost per month isn't that much so I'll be generous and ignore it. And since all this is just to have us be a single car family, I'm still left without transport when he's at work. So I'll at least have to spend SOME money on bus tickets for myself; fortunately Surrey's transit is still better than most places in North America. (I'd lay down good money that it's more convenient to use the bus in suburban Surrey than in downtown Pittsburgh, for example.) Let's say $40/month (since I don't have a FareCard to borrow sometimes, and since now more trips involve crossing zone boundaries).

So on the barest of bare minimums, we save at least $350/mo by not having a car and living in Vancouver vs. having a car and living in Surrey. This is why we are not bankrupt, as The Husband puts it.

There are also non-monetary benefits of being No Car:
Since I use tickets if I need to take transit when The Husband is using the pass (ie during his working hours), it gives me an incentive to walk if I possibly can, because the use of a ticket is very concrete. At some level people know when we take a car trip that yes, this individual trip uses up $X of gas, adds X miles towards the next maintenance milestone, etc, but I don't think people really think about it the same way. It's like how it's easier to keep to a budget if you spend cash instead of using a credit card.

Also, buses usually pick up and drop off a block or two away from my actual destination. This is equivalent to that old saw that people bring out as a weightloss tip that you should park in the back of the lot. Essentially, taking a bus means you are ALWAYS parking in the back of the lot. That adds up and it's great for my health.

It amazes me how many times I've gotten to chatting with a mom who drove to a playground (or whatever), and I mention I walked there, and it turns out she lives closer than I do! This is part of the car mind-set I was talking about earlier.

Toddlers love buses and trains. I can head off whining about not wanting to leave the playground (or whatever) by announcing it's time to get on the bus, or even better the train. My kid uses the bus pretty much every day, and it's still not old for her.

Just don't let the toddler drive the bus.

In a car, unless you're one of those people who texts or talks on the phone (and please stop being one of those people if so, thanks, especially if you're the dude who almost hit me in the crosswalk last week), getting to a destination is single-tasking. Now that I have kids, I don't get to chill out and read or play on my phone like I used to, but public transit is still a great place to multitask. I retie my toddler's shoe, nurse my baby, use my phone to check the flyer for a supermarket near my destination to see if I want to get something there before coming home.

Buses and trains put little babies to sleep. This was so invariable that we used to call it Hypnobus or Hypnotrain. I know a lot of babies fall asleep in car seats, but even kids who hate car seats (like Pippa), you put them in a baby carrier on a train, watch those eyes close before you know it.

And then of course, taking public transit is better for the environment. I don't just mean less emissions, fuel use etc. The more people take transit, the less traffic is on the roads, which means roads last longer, less traffic jams, less need for parking spaces, etc. Car commuters who complain about their gas taxes going to transit should see just how much more hellish their commute would be if all the people on buses and trains were in individual cars instead.

The drawbacks:
It usually takes longer to get somewhere by transit rather than car, although not always--it's usually faster to get downtown via train for us, certainly when you factor in finding a parking space and walking from it. But most of the time, it takes an extra 5 to 30 minutes to go via transit, depending on transfers, whether the bus is running on time, etc.

Public transit puts you up close and personal with your fellow man. During rush hour, sometimes REALLY close and personal. A lot depends here on the general culture of the place and of the people using the transit system, but no matter where you are, there might be crazies. There's crazies driving cars too of course, but at least there you have several tons of metal between. Truly dangerous incidents are rare. Much more common is dealing with overly friendly grandparent-types with unsolicited advice, people who are allergic to soap, people listening to their music so loud that you can hear every F-bomb even through the headphones, etc etc etc. If you're a Swift in reverse (that is, you love mankind but hate people), public transit will be your worst nightmare. But there's an upside to it too. Sometimes the unsolicited advice from the wannabe grandma turns out to be encouraging, the unwashed dude makes you laugh, the music gets your toes tapping, or what have you. And if you're Catholic like me... you can always offer it up... ;)

Not having a car severely limits your ability to leave the local area. That "takes longer" is alright when you're going from 15 minute drive to 25 minute bus trip, but when it's from 1 hour car trip to 2.5 hour bus trip it's much more discouraging. And that's assuming that a public transit option exists at all. There's no way to get via public transit from Vancouver to the zoo out in Langley, for example. When we want to go further afield, we HAVE to take Greyhound or Amtrak or fly.

Even when taking a car, there's a certain amount out of your control. There might be traffic, a road might close because of an accident, your car may develop a sudden problem. However, I will admit that unpredictability is predictable with transit. There is the phenomenon my husband calls "bunching and gaps", which is when a bus gets behind schedule, thus causing it to pick up larger loads, thus to run even slower, while the bus behind it gets ahead of schedule because there's no one to pick up, until eventually the buses are right on top of each other (a "bunch"), and then there's a long time until another bus comes (a "gap"). You can also never be really sure how long your individual bus will take. Loading and unloading wheelchairs, for example, takes a few minutes every time. So if you NEED to be somewhere on time, you gotta plan to be early.

Bringing home big purchases is a hassle. But this actually turns out to be a blessing in disguise because bringing big stuff home is such a hassle that I end up saying "Do we really need all that? I don't think we need that." Plus you know if you're pursuing a no car lifestyle for the money saving, you're probably living in a tiny place anyway. Can you fit all that stuff in your apartment? No you cannot. And you don't need it. Save your money.

In Conclusion:

There are lots of ways to make a family work on a smaller budget than you might expect, if you're willing to question a lot of the "of course we have to haves". Reducing from two cars to one car is radical to many in North America. But there are plenty of people raising a family with no car too, and I think if you make savvy choices about where to live, it can be a very rewarding, and even freeing, lifestyle.