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
pigbodies and reese's cups.
I alternate between giving up all sweets (even sweetened yogurt, just plain :-P) and giving up all internet browsing except banking. Giving up the internet is harder.
The Boston Celtics...although this year that probably doesn't count.
I continued my head cheese fast.
All brands of soda. I think I've drank more bottles of water in the past few weeks than I have in the past year.
I was wondering if any Catholic Freepers gave up FR for six weeks. I'm trying not to eat dinner. Stick to two meals a day and hopefully lose some tonnage. So far, it's been 50-50. I'm not a good Catholic.
Um, "back in the day" Catholic kids and teenagers from observant families didn't eat meat on any Friday throughout the year, and fasted on Ash Wednesday and Friday's in Lent, as well.
Any Lenten sacrifice was in addition to "giving up" meat on Fridays.
I always give up sweets and eating between meals - it was more difficult at my old job about 10 years ago. I sat next to a couple of "born again" guys who considered it great fun to eat doughnuts while making loud eating noises every morning. It was annoying as hell but pretty funny at the same time.
I gave up Works-based Salvation!
It always struck me as peculiar that one would ostensibly go to Hell for eating beans-and-franks on Friday, but chowing-down on shrimp cocktail and a lobster was no problem whatsoever.
I always give up eating liver.
I believe Lent is not only for temporary "deprivation", but to be meaningful it should make real ongoing changes in our lives. One year, I gave up hard liquor for Lent, and now, several years later, I rarely drink it at all.
This year, it's red meat, of which I am far too fond, and I think that will be the same kind of permanent alteration in my habits.
"What is a Facebook?"
Is there a reason that reading the article was completely out of the question? The answer is easily found there.
LOL - well, "The Lord works His Will in Wond'rous Ways!"
I bet literally hundreds of thousands have given up smoking that way.
Fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday is still the norm for adults. And abstaining from meat on Fridays is still the primary form of penance on Fridays:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P4O.HTM
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