Sunday, September 02, 2012

Flor de calabaza

Brooklyn Sunday Dinner #2: fresh squid salad, squash blossom and tomato risotto, Mexican flan. Best of all, I only had to make the risotto. Co-host M, a Catholic theologian by avocation, patiently steamed the squid as I harangued him about Cardinal Dolan's practically post-Christian invocation of God "father of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus" at the RNC. Earlier in the day housemate V had converted my pressure cooker into a double boiler. Guest G provided sorbets and a Malbec. Gochiso.

[Update 9/7: I clearly wasn't the only one to think Dolan's words heterodox. In Charlotte, as part of his even longer preachment to the Democrats, Dolan corrected course, invoking "Almighty God, father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, revealed to us so powerfully in your Son, Jesus Christ." But it's the Deist "nature and nature's God" invoked against gay marriage both times:

RNC Dolan: "Make us truly free, by tethering freedom to truth and ordering freedom to goodness. ... May we know the truth of your creation, respecting the laws of nature and nature’s God, and not seek to replace it with idols of our own making. Give us the good sense not to cast aside the boundaries of righteous living you first inscribed in our hearts even before inscribing them on tablets of stone. May you mend our every flaw, confirming our soul in self-control, our liberty in law.

DNC Dolan: "May our liberty be in harmony with truth; freedom ordered in goodness and justice. ... Show us anew that happiness is found only in respecting the laws of nature and of nature’s God. Empower us with your grace so that we might resist the temptation to replace the moral law with idols of our own making, or to remake those institutions you have given us for the nurturing of life and community."]