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
I think Dopey is a bit too young to remember that as well as full fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday or abstaining on Christmas Eve or no eating after midnight before Communion.
For the record, I've given up my favorite food: peanut butter.
Yeah...me too. I give up olives.
Well, the idea was a historical one about sacrifice.
However, nowadays when one can have "lobster ravioli" or "orange roughy francaise", I would agree that that doesn't qualify as much of a sacrifice.
Although I can assure you that while I was growing up, my mother wasn't making shrimp cocktail and lobster thermador on Friday nights. Fridays most often meant fish sticks, and that certainly qualified as a sacrifice in my book. We were ecstatic when my parents were too tired on a Friday and we got a cheese pizza.
Yep, I'm aware of that.
I gave up visiting any thread with "Rudy" or "Duncan" in the title.
Good luck finding anyone that will tell you that fasting will save you.
One fasts for a variety of reasons. To make real the thought that the things of this world are not the most important things might be one reason.
I gave up cursing. That stuff's gotta stop...
At my house, it was beans and macaroni every Friday (of course, it was that way most of the year.) Christmas Eve was spaghetti with the baccala sauce.
Fish sticks on Friday? Blech! Pass the ketchup.
It could have been worse. We could have grown up Orthodox. They do some no-kiddin'-around fasting for Lent.
fish stix, cheese pizza, tuna pizza, tuna noodle casserole. And it was every Friday when I was a kid.
This year I gave up chocolate - I think giving up FR was harder - and I am a real chocoholic!!
"What is a Facebook?"
Did your personal Facebook addiction destroy your sense of humor?
Gave up sweets of all types and the use of the f-bomb. The f-bomb was harder to give up than the sweets.
It looked like a serious question.
Coffee. Although my co-workers really wish I hadn't.
Every Friday when I was a kid as well.
Keep in mind that pre-Vatican II meat was not permitted on Fridays throughout the year, and no meat was consumed at all during lent. One reason many European monasteries began to domesticate rabbits is that the young were considered fish until their hair grew in. Another interesting tidbit is that Spanish explorers to the New World considered manatee, "the fish that tasted like beef."
gag! sounds familiar. and still goes on to this day, as i am torturing my kids with that same lenten friday menu : )
And so far, it has been relatively easy. Though, when someone brings doughnuts in the office (I used to eat at least two), it's a little tough.
But the most important part of of my first Lent as a Catholic is increased prayer, and asking for the strength to resist temptation. I'm sure that has helped me tremendously these first couple weeks.
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