Posted on 03/07/2007 4:24:40 AM PST by Chi-townChief
Back in the day when virtually every Catholic kid and teenager gave up meat on Fridays for Lent, there were always a couple of holier-than-Richie types who took it to the next level. They'd give up Dr Pepper. Or watching "Happy Days." Or listening to the soundtrack for "Saturday Night Fever."
Real sacrifices of the time.
These days, how much of a sacrifice is it to give up meat on Fridays? There are millions upon millions of Catholics who don't even eat meat anyway. For them, abstaining from burgers, pork chops and steaks is about as difficult as giving up cigarettes, olives and scotch would be for me.
(Olives! How can you people eat those things!? But that's a story for another time.)
Even if you love a good pulled-pork sandwich chased with a bratwurst and it's going to hurt to give them up, there are so many more non-meaty choices in 2007 than there were a few decades ago. Whether you're cooking at home, living in a restaurant-filled neighborhood in the city or cruising suburbia, you have access to literally hundreds of tasty meat-free dishes. Back in the meat-and-potatoes era, sushi was not an option for the average resident of Calumet City or Rogers Park or Back of the Yards.
If the idea is to sacrifice something as a way of identifying with the infinitely greater sacrifices made by Jesus -- and that basically is the idea -- then you should give up something that really matters, right? Something you'll truly miss during Lent.
Like Facebook.
I'll text you when it's over The Baltimore Sun reports that instead of abstaining from favorite junk foods, some high school and college students are giving up their techno-addictions for Lent. "Facebook fasting is the penance of choice for some college students this Lenten season, which ends April 8, Easter Sunday," says the story.
"Others have sworn off MySpace, AOL Instant Messenger and similar semi-addictive Internet outlets, all in the spirit of intensified religious devotion that precedes Easter."
OK, semi-addictive? I don't think so. There's no "semi" in these habits.
The article rightly notes that giving up something like Facebook for nearly six weeks is a pretty big deal.
"The site, where friends track birthdays, post pictures, check homework, monitor romances and generally gossip, has become the connective tissue of undergraduate life, and ignoring it from Ash Wednesday to Easter is no small sacrifice."
Let's put it this way. If you were to have made an equivalent sacrifice in, say, 1975, it would have meant attending class but avoiding the Student Union or other gathering places, never using the phone and basically cutting off all free-time contact with your friends and classmates.
It'd be like going into an isolation tank for 40 days and 40 nights.
Lent: It's not just for kids Not that techno-addictions are confined to adolescents and teenagers. It's funny when parents go on and on about how their kids are tethered to their cell phones and their instant messaging -- and these parents are telling these stories while constantly checking their Blackberrys and monitoring their cell phone messages, lest they miss whatever it is they're concerned about not missing. I just finished a bit of a traveling marathon, during which I took a dozen flights over a 35-day period. It used to be that you couldn't turn on your cell phone or PDA until you had exited the aircraft, but now you can activate your communication device when the plane lands -- so the moment the wheels touch ground, virtually every adult on the plane automatically reaches for the wireless communication device. You could choreograph it to music -- 150 grown-ups powering up their cell phones and PDAs in almost perfect unison.
Does everybody have a job or a family situation that requires one to be in communication with the outside world the moment a plane lands? My God, how did we survive in the olden days, when you had to wait to get off the plane to use your phone?
Lent me your ears Whether you're 12 or 22 or 66, if you're giving up something beyond meat for Lent this year, I'd like to hear your story. If you're giving up e-mail, please don't resort to the telephone -- just send me a letter.
That's l-e-t-t-e-r. If you don't know what it is, you can look it up on Wikipedia.
Unless you're giving up Wikipedia for Lent. In that case, ask someone over 25.
And by the way -- it's a sin to give up the Sun-Times for Lent. The pope told me.
mailto:rroeper@suntimes.com
GMTA!
There's almost no fish in fish-sticks. It's kind of revolting, really.
LOL!
Here is some food for thought (fish is good brain food, according to Curly Howard):
http://www.writing.com/main/polls/item_id/909581
Where would fishsticks be without tartar sauce?
Are fishsticks harder to catch?
Can you light a fire using two fishsticks?
Should fishsticks be sold on a sliding scale?
Has Martha Stuart just learned what a fishsticks are?
Should marriage between fishsticks and corndogs be legalized?
Can fish sticks be in any other shape and still be called a fishsicks?
Do fishsticks stick to things once the've started them?
Are fishsticks just an old fisherman's wives "tail?"
yeah, i know, but i'll take breading over an eyeball : )
LOL!!!
Being that I don't watch MSM for news that also meant giving up all news reports.
But it was good letting go that part of my life to concentrate more on God.
This year I've given up the left-hand lane on my way to work. My route is 25 miles of dodging speed crazed drivers, construction vehicles, semi-trailers, and interspersed with creeping bumper to bumper traffic. Driving only in the right hand lane allows me to separate myself from all that, not worry about how slow I'm going or how much I'm being passed.
************
LOL! I'm with you on that one. :)
Here, I don't mind telling you what it is. I had to find out for myself also. Some people have such attitudes. Probably gave up sex for lent.
"The article rightly notes that giving up something like Facebook for nearly six weeks is a pretty big deal.
"The site, where friends track birthdays, post pictures, check homework, monitor romances and generally gossip, has become the connective tissue of undergraduate life, and ignoring it from Ash Wednesday to Easter is no small sacrifice."
The point is that "back in the day" you went to hell if you ate meat on any Friday and didn't fast and abstain on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
You didn't get a choice about it, it was a church law.
Your voluntary penance had to be something in addition to that.
Good for you!
Giving up your works as the path to God is the one thing that will save you!
I tried to give up hair metal, but it only lasted an hour...
You'll see the link I posted is to the Code of Canon Law. It's still "the law".
As to whether or not one is going to Hell, the "law" doesn't speak to that. Someone may have told you that for some misguided reason but I believe the Church has always recognized that there is only one Judge of the living and the dead.
I could be wrong, perhaps there is indeed a citation somewhere showing that the Church has stated definitively that someone would go to Hell; no ifs, ands, or buts.
The Church's position is that anyone who commits mortal sin without afterwards going to confession or having perfect contrition* does, indeed, sentence himself to hell.
What the Church does not have a position on is whether any particular sinner has actually comitted a mortal sin (extenuating circumstances could render a usually mortal sin venial), or whether that sinner might have repented before death. That is up to the mercy of God.
*Perfect contrition being repentance for the sake of the love of God and sorrow at offending Him, not simply from fear of Hell.
I gave up giving up anything for Lent.
They're very pretty. :)
I gave up lemonade (the all you can drink kind). :(
Sleeping with Nancy Pelosi.
I don't recall any rule to that effect.
Not that there was any shellfish consumption going on at the Waring house.
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