The sacrificial lamb:
A culinary lesson in humility

		Grand Mom  Audrey  Mettel Fixmer

My mother was not what you might call a gourmet cook. She was strictly a meat and potatoes kind of cook who aimed only to please her husband.

So I can't figure out how she ever came to make a beautiful lamb cake every year during Holy Week. Someone must have given her the lamb cake form and she couldn't let it go to waste.

The lamb cake would always appear as if by magic on Holy Thursday, signaling the end of dreary Lent and the joy of Easter. It stood proudly in the center of our dining room table, its body all frosted white and covered with coconut "fleece" to represent Christ, the Pascal lamb.

Although we didn't eat it until Easter, the inside was always moist and delicious, a chocolate applesauce cake like no other I ever tasted.

Carrying on tradition

When Mother died, I was the only one of us four girls who wanted that cake form. I was determined to carry out the tradition in my own home. I was always the one that got into holiday decorating in a big way, so, of course, I couldn't wait to bake my first lamb cake.

It had to be Mother's applesauce recipe and from the start it always worked perfectly for me. That is, all but the year that cake mixes came out and I thought I could use the short cut. It fell apart when I took it out of the pan.

From then on I would use nothing but Mother's recipe with all its sifting, measuring, and sifting again.

My centerpiece was unique and was always sure to receive accolades, not only from my family, but from any visitors who came by. I made it more beautiful by surrounding the lamb with the green plastic "grass" and placing colored candy eggs around it until Easter morning and then putting in real colored eggs.

Easter bake sale

When our kids grew up and we went away one year for Easter, one of my daughters, who had left the church, asked to borrow my lamb form. When I returned, I asked her how her lamb turned out, and she scowled, "It fell apart. You forgot to tell me it was a Catholic lamb!"

A couple of weeks ago, someone from the Parish Council got up at Sunday Mass and talked about using our talents and treasures for the church. The same day we had a reminder in the bulletin that the Council of Catholic Women needed contributions for the Easter bake sale.

Well, of course! That was it! I would use my culinary talents to create a lamb cake. Let the others make their decorated cookies, their breads, and their hot cross buns. I would wow them with one of my lambs! Maybe even two!

Culinary masterpiece

So last week I prepared to spend an entire day making the lamb cakes. I made a dreadful mess in my kitchen with all that sifting and measuring and greasing and flouring the pan, but the first one came out beautifully.

I froze it, cleaned up my kitchen, and started all over on the next lamb, messing up my kitchen again. When it came out of the oven I waited the required 25 minutes and then carefully tried to remove it from the pan. It wouldn't budge.

I tried prying it out ever so carefully with all kinds of kitchen utensils, but to no avail. When it finally dropped out it was in two pieces.

What could I do? Just get the first one out of the freezer, make the icing and set to work decorating it. I must have spent well over an hour getting it just right, covering every tiny crevice under the ears, smothering it with coconut, and creating an adorable face complete with raisin eyes and mouth.

I stepped back to admire it and called my husband and daughter for their opinions. When they both proclaimed it was a masterpiece, I beamed with satisfaction. Just wait until those church ladies got a load of this! Might we get $25 for it?

Sacrificial lamb

Before going out to buy the grass and candy eggs, I decided to go back and admire my creation one more time. I stepped into the dining room just in time to see my lamb commit suicide. Right before my eyes, the head fell off! So much for my masterpiece! Could we run a stake through its head and heart and reduce the price to $2?

No, this was truly the sacrificial lamb. The lamb of God who gave up his life to atone for our sins. Was God reminding me of my sin of pride?

Well, the ladies would just have to settle for my two boring pans of hot cross buns.

"Grandmom" likes hearing from other senior citizens who enjoy aging at P.O. Box 216, Fort Atkinson, WI 53538.

Campaign 2004:
What is role of churches in election process?

		Eye on the  Capitol  John Huebscher

Though some states have yet to conduct their presidential primaries, we know the identity of the major party candidates. Thus Campaign 2004 is well under way. So is the ongoing conversation as to the proper role of churches in elections.

Both Catholic teaching and federal law provide that the church as an institution can and should speak to issues but should neither endorse nor oppose candidates. This may frustrate partisans on both sides of the fence. But the distinction serves the church and society well.

How church relates to society

Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, commonly known as Gaudium et Spes, affirms that though the church relates to society, "she must in no way be confused with the political community, nor bound to any political system . . . nor lodge her hope in any privileges conferred by civil authority."

While this limits the church in one respect, it liberates it in another. For the church retains the right to "pass moral judgments, even on matters touching the political order, whenever basic personal rights or the salvation of souls make such judgments necessary" (#76).

Role of individuals

Gaudium et Spes also affirms that individual Catholics have different gifts and vocations to be utilized for different purposes. While the church critiques society and culture, it falls to lay Catholics to take on our distinctive role of bringing the values of our faith into the life of the community (#43).

Another Vatican II document, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), calls lay Catholics to "remedy any institutions and conditions of the world which are customarily an inducement to sin, so that all such things may be conformed to the norms of justice and may favor the practice of virtue rather than hinder it" (#36).

Thus are Catholic men and women encouraged to be politically active in a way that the "institutional" church is not and cannot be.

Not-for-profit policies

For its part, the Internal Revenue Service Code prohibits certain tax-exempt, not-for-profit organizations from acting in ways to favor or oppose candidates. Issue advocacy is permitted, but not actions or statements that express a preference for the outcome of an election for partisan office.

Some say this policy is intended to limit religious freedom. But the policy draws a proper distinction among tax-exempt organizations and so helps to make the tax laws fair.

Not all not-for-profits groups are alike. Some exist for charitable or benevolent purposes. Others serve narrower ends. The tax code treats them accordingly. Donations to charitable groups, such as churches, schools, and other benevolent groups, are tax deductible. Donations to political parties, political action committees (PACs), and other such groups are not tax deductible.

Thus there is a greater financial incentive to donate to churches, schools, and museums than to political parties and PACs.

If this distinction did not exist, wealthy citizens and groups could establish non-profit groups, donate large sums to them for use in campaigns, and pocket a tax break in the bargain.

Church guidelines

This "line of demarcation" between what institutions and individuals may do is sure to raise questions at times. That is why both the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Wisconsin Catholic Conference (WCC) take pains to help people understand which activities are appropriate for diocesan and parish groups and which are appropriate for lay Catholics acting independent of the church.

WCC Guidelines for Church Involvement in Electoral Politics may be found on our Web site at wisconsincatholic.org For its part, the USCCB has developed a very useful resource on the same topic. This is located on the USCCB Web site at usccb.org.

Politically active Catholics who want to know what they can do as members of their parish and what they can do as citizens are encouraged to use both sources throughout Campaign 2004 and beyond.

John Huebscher is executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference.

Revisited: Iraq and just war

		The Catholic  Difference  George Weigel

A year later, here's the question posed to those who argued that it would be morally justifiable to use armed force to compel Iraq's compliance with U.N. disarmament resolutions: if you knew then what you know now, would you have made the same call?

I would.

What we knew then

We know some things now that we also knew then. We know Saddam Hussein was in material breach of the "final" U.N. warning, Resolution 1441; his formal response to 1441 was a lie.

We know he had the scientists, laboratories, and other necessary infrastructure for producing weapons of mass destruction [WMD]. We know he was seeking long-range ballistic missiles.

We know now that Saddam's was a terror regime in which unimaginable brutality was normal state practice. We know, now as then, that Saddam's regime provided safe haven for terrorists.

Saddam's weapons

We also know now that we haven't found caches of WMD in Iraq. What difference does this make to the moral analysis?

Prior to the war, no one doubted that Saddam had WMD. The U.N. thought he did. France thought he did. The only question in dispute was how was he to be disarmed?

And while the investigation of Saddam's WMD programs is incomplete, it seems to me that something like this happened:

Saddam got rid of chemical and biological weapons in various ways: some destroyed outright, others may have been sent to Syria, still others may remain buried.

Saddam was willing to bet the U.N. would never authorize an armed enforcement of its resolutions; the U.S. would cave in; and he could ramp-up his WMD programs after U.N. sanctions lifted.

Meanwhile, as David Kay noted in his report, internal controls were eroding in Baghdad, making it more likely that Iraqi military officers or scientists would transfer WMD to terrorists or rogue states.

Case for war

Suppose we knew all that in March 2003? Would that have made a substantive difference to the moral case for the war?

I don't think so. If the "regime factor" is crucial in calculating "just cause" in situations like this, the more complex WMD situation as we now understand it doesn't vitiate the case for the war. As David Kay suggested, it may strengthen it in some respects.

The case for war has also been strengthened by its results: Iraq is building the infrastructure of a civil society; no more mass graves are being dug; rape is no longer an instrument of state policy; a free press flourishes; children are learning from reliable textbooks rather than being poisoned by propaganda; an interim constitution that provides protection for a broader array of human rights and a more representative form of government.

A year later, I still contend that the war was morally justified. The argument isn't a simple one. In this kind of world, it never is.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.