If you’re too lazy to hit that link, essentially, the folks in Bahston (home of my lovely former math tutor Mary, who occasionally starts math fracases on the comments section) are grumbling because they don’t get a special dispensation from the Pope to eat hot dogs on Good Friday if they go to the Red Sox opening game.
The thing that bugs me is this line ‘I think it’s very insensitive to the huge number of people who are Christians and fans.”
Ok, first off, the no meat during lent? Not necessarily a Christian thing. It’s (as far as I know) only a Catholic thing. Even though I’m not a practicing Lutheran, I find that assumption really offensive. Don’t reign me into your crazy Fish on Friday thing! Also, if I were Catholic and if I did believe strongly that one should not eat meat on six specific Fridays a year, then I certainly wouldn’t dream of forsaking that belief so that I could eat a damn hotdog at a baseball game. Either it’s a sin or it isn’t.
Here’s an interesting anecdote: one of my first big incredulous fights with Esteban when we first started going out was over the fact that Esteban claimed that Catholicism and Christianity was the same thing. You see, he grew up in a very rural and very Catholic portion of Wisconsin. I don’t know that there are any non-Catholic churches in that area, and if they are, they keep a pretty low profile. His entire family is Catholic. He was baptized Catholic. He just didn’t realize that there are Protestants out there, or maybe thought the Protestants were the Amish, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and that one religion that meets in school gymnasiums and doesn’t let women cut their hair or wear pants.
We had long entrenched debates about it, in which I took several different approaches, both dogmatic and sociological, and also covered historical stuff that he had never been exposed to, complete with the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and Henry VIII and Martin Luther ruining what must have been a beautiful hand-carved wooden door (guess who’s been hanging around the Hundred Dollar store too much?). I even went the logical left brained way, by pointing out that all Catholics are Christian, but not all Christians are Catholics. I may have even drawn a Venn diagram, although, in my defense, I was taking a logic class at the time, which pumped, up the left side of my brain and I think I actually got high off saying the phrase ‘That’s a logical fallacy’ because I said it no fewer than four hundred times a day.
It was grueling work, that stubborn argument between two mulish (or assish, since we’re being all Biblical) people. If I even understood the concept and rules of sainthood (another thing that I don’t think Lutherans have), I would probably expect to be bodily consumed into heaven on just the merit of having the tenacity to forge onward through what we have now come to call The Troubles. It was years before he realized that yes, there were indeed non-crazy Protestants out there, and that there were concrete differences other than the fact that Lutherans don’t have to pay attention to the Pope. Other than to make fun of his Ovipositor hat.
Also, what does being a fan have to do with eating a damned hot dog? Will it prevent your team from winning? Why is baseball more important than your religion? And if you can get a dispensation for something as ridiculous as eating a hot dog at a baseball game, isn’t the no meat thing sort of silly to begin with? I mean, when Christ was hanging on the cross, did He chastise the Romans for eating Egg McMuffins? No. It’s a historical given that some pope in some century wanted to save the Italian fishing industry, so he made the ‘no meat on Fridays, no meat at all during Lent’ thing. And then since then, another pope decided to ease back on the meat ruling because maybe he was up for reelection. Or maybe it was one of his campaign promises. It’s politics, that’s all it is. And probably also Mel Gibson’s fault somehow. Or Meryl Streep. But not Christopher Walken, because he’s hotchachacha hot. In a crazy random kind of way.
I’m actually half Catholic and half Lutheran, whatever that is supposed to mean. I’m only Lutheran because my mother acquiesced to my father’s will and baptized me in the Lutheran church with his entirely German last name rather than her own rather beautiful French one. My mother’s family is imbued with a Dauphinic sense of Catholic legacy. In a shocking bit of heresy, my great grandmother converted to Lutheranism to marry her second husband, and together, they sat on the board of a Lutheran private school and made certain that their only Lutheran grandchild had a proper red Jell-o with bananas and whipped cream parochial education. At least until I balked in the fifth grade and demanded to go to public school. So it’s not like I have something against Catholicism. I don’t. If anything, when I was a kid, I had wished that I was Catholic so that I would be like all of my friends and also get to wear the school uniforms that they did.
For what it’s worth, I do get behind the idea of giving up something for Lent, even though it’s not specified by our synod (and I’m not sure I would anyway, but that’s back to my comment about technically being Lutheran). It seems like a nice thing to do for your faith and I like the idea that it’s something that is a personal sacrifice for the whole period of Lent. None of this arbitrary meat on certain days thing, though.
Why would you give some guy or group of guys the power to not only invent a sin, but then ask them to absolve you of that sin? It just doesn’t make sense to me.
Did you hear that sound? It was the sound of a hundred emails getting Bible verses copied and pasted and then a self-righteous mouse-click on the Send button.
Of all hymns, I like Lenten hymns the best. They are all bloody and gothic and A-minory and talk about being stricken, smitten, and afflicted. That’s some strong stuff, right there. That’s my verdict. Lenten hymns to the top of the charts with a bullet! Or, you know, a rock thrown by a small child. Next on TRL: Pontius Pilate gives ‘Abide With Me’ two clean thumbs up!
In case you weren’t convinced of my inherent blasphemy, right now I’m working on a short story that puts Jesus, Hitler, Joan of Arc, Anne Frank (and a bunch of other people) as cast members of a reality television show like Survivor. Except I keep feeling like I’m going to get struck by lightening whenever I work on it. Or attacked by locusts. I may have to paint my computer with lamb’s blood or something. Gah.
Dear Pastor Beulow,
I am going to hell. You were totally right.
Sincerely,
Weetabix Marietabix
Dear Everyone,
Why aren’t you on Orkut yet?
Seriously?
Weet
Dear Esteban’s Friends,
I had something else to write about, but then Esteban said ‘And I better not get shit about this from my friends’, which tells me that one or more of you habitually still can’t keep your fat mouths shut about what you read on this diary. So cut it out. If you can’t be creative enough to come up with your own material, just don’t say anything.
I’m serious.
Weetabix
Dear Kirstie Alley,
It’s not like I didn’t warn you. Freakjob.
Sincerely,
Weetabix
Dear Jake,
Heh.
Weet
