Funny and Effective
by Susie Lloyd - February 23, 2008
Reprinted with permission.
Text by John Zmirak, recipes by Denise Matychowiak
Crossroads Publishing; 240 pages; $14.95
A funny thing happened on my way to read a serious apologetics book to my teens: I couldn't find it. After turning the house upside-down, ranting and raving a bit, and offering a cash reward, somebody remembered that Dad had loaned it to a non-Catholic friend.
Great. Just great. It had been on my syllabus for weeks. Even in high school, the girls have already faced harsh criticism against the Church; there would be more as they ventured further into the world. Now there sat my number-one resource – collecting dust, I suspected – in the home of a guy who was just married by a priestess to a staunch Lutheran.
(Hold on, the funny part is coming.)
So later that night as I was cackling in bed over The Bad Catholic's Guide to Wine, Whiskey and Song, it came to me: "I'm reading this to the girls!" I told my husband, jarring him awake.
In the late 19th century, scholarly skeptics such as Sir James Frazer attempted to explain away the uniqueness of Christianity by finding precedents for its practices among the pagan cults. Unsurprisingly, they looked to the cannibalistic custom of the Baccantes as the origin of the Eucharist. We must admit the close resemblance: whenever we attend a bloodless offering of bread and wine conducted by a celibate Irishman, our thoughts turn to gangs of naked Greek women, roaring drunk, gouging flesh out of passersby with their fingernails. It's positively distracting, some Sundays.
It struck us both as the kind of apologetics Chesterton used – a blend of logic and ridicule, producing orthodoxy. A funny looking sort of baby, but undeniably effective.
If you've seen its older brother, The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living, you may be wondering how I, a homeschooling mom of many years, many children, and many jean skirts, could ever think of reading such stuff to impressionable children.
Perhaps you agree with the manager of one Catholic shop who refused to carry it because it was "tasteless." Even though the same shop does hawk plastic glow-in-the-dark Madonnas made in China, I, as a mom, do understand his reservations. Kids and certain conservatives are not the target audience of that book; Generation X Catholics are. Both Bad Catholic titles stand a better chance of finding their way into the bathrooms of, well, bad Catholics, than a book that overtly glorifies Catholicism – unless used as toilet paper.
While I liked its older brother, I am much more partial to John Zmirak and Denise Matychowiak's second child. (That's just how it is in some families.) It's fatter and funnier and, yes, more kid-friendly. It shares the same merry features and is animated by the same spirit of obedience to the Church's Papa, who is pictured on the cover holding a Malteser Weissbier. Those in our household who have sampled such fine German brews are not scandalized.
Inside is a list of similar brews and their often monastic origins. There are also wines and liqueurs dating from the period most ex-Catholics call the Dark Ages. We who have tasted German beer and Italian wine like to think of the period in more favorable terms – when Catholics were busy building culture and giving people a reason to live, founding hospitals, schools, and institutions to protect the worker and his family. No wonder modern folks don't get it. They're drinking synthetic substitutes, like "Zima and Other Culinary Inventions from the Devil."
What would happen if instead they tried one of the many "healthy, natural, mostly organic-based dishes that celebrate the intrinsic perfection of God's creation," like "Dom Perignon: Champagne and Caritas are Always Appropriate," "Easter Beer: Miracles and Yeast" or "Cider: O Happy Fall!"
At first they might smack their lips in wonderment and think it a freak accident that stodgy, narrow-minded Catholics actually produced this glory. A few more sips, and who knows? They might well sample some doctrine: "Original Sin – We've fallen and we can't get up." A belly laugh makes history hard to resist: "Henry VIII – A Gouty Man is Hard to Refine." After "Crashing with the Benedictines," they might find Catholics more broadminded than their high school social studies teacher led them to believe.
If their newfound faith – or at least respect – puts them in the mood to sing, they've got their pick of drinking songs. There's one to fit every mood. My favorite? Le Marseillaise, with alternate lyrics penned by the Catholics of the Vendée who valiantly rose up against the forces of the French Revolution. The ditty is now available in English and – you guessed it – nowhere else.
Our predecessors in faith sure enjoyed a good parody. It seems like they enjoyed a lot of things, so perhaps we can safely follow their example in this, too.
Susie Lloyd is the author of the award-winning humor book Please Don't Drink the Holy Water! Look for the sequel from Sophia Institute Press, available 2008.
