Thursday, February 23, 2012

Lenten penance


I think that what I am going to try to give up for Lent is reading items on the net that make my blood pressure erupt, when I have a choice about it.


In Catholicism, sin is always a matter of choice. The three requirements for committing a serious sin are 1. grave matter 2. sufficient reflection and 3. full consent of the will.  All three. So if you get dragged into something without thinking or without acting consciously, it's knocked down from a felony to a misdemeanor. But I'm gonna try.

I will still rant. After all, Ex Cathedra is a son of Descartes: I rant, therefore I am. But I don't need to add a lot of fuel to that fire. Even if I never read another item about the various cancers of the Seven Pillars, I'd have plenty of material to last me past Easter. It's self-propagating.

I have already made this choice three times today and it's just 9 AM. I refused to read anything about the results of the Koran burning in Afghanistan, I am putting off indefinitely reading about a court case in PA over Halloween mocking of Mohammed (sorry Trevor), and I refused to watch a video of soldiers being made to wear prosthetic breasts and full wombs as part of a sensitivity training about pregnant females in the military.

And in honor of my ascetic attempt --I think of it as a kind of fasting--- here, courtesy of a HT from B...

Enjoy!

3 comments:

Mr. Freeze said...

Not Lenten in the slightest, but I've been making the same effort for awhile.

While I doubt it'll make any difference for my damned soul, it seems to be doing some good for my blood pressure.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps that is a good idea, if this sort of reading makes you so stressed.

But it makes me wonder, once again, what makes you and I so very different in this regard-- when I read items of Spenglerian news, My usual reaction is just to mentally file it among the important mappings of Things that Be and then just go on to a next thing, my exercise, my games, totally different reading, housework, kitchen, whatever.

Really, I wish I understood this.

--Nathan

Leah said...

I am so looking forward to this movie, will make up for all the aggrevating news out there.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...