Lent – Fasting from TV

Some people give up candy or soft drinks, while others sacrifice something as major as caffeine or meat.

So far, so good. However, Father Michael Buckley thinks most Roman Catholics, and members of other churches that observe Lent, would find it easier to properly prepare to celebrate Easter if they took an even more drastic step - unplugging their televisions.

"The reality is that most people sacrifice small things at Lent in order to give the season a kind of a tone of self- sacrifice," said Father Buckley of Plainview, Neb., whose "On Media" column appears in about 90 Catholic newspapers. "People give up little things because we have trouble even thinking about making real sacrifices, anymore. Seriously, most Catholics no longer see themselves as different from the culture around them. This really shows up at Lent."

Making a symbolic spiritual change isn't an end in itself, during the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter, which this year is on April 4. In Eastern Orthodoxy the season of Great Lent began with Forgiveness Sunday on Feb. 21 and ends with Pascha on April 11.

The goal is to create a zone of quiet for repentance and reflection. The defining signs of Lent are supposed to be fasting, prayer and alms giving, said Father Buckley. However, the season's message is usually drowned out by the noise of daily life. As radical as it sounds, one of the only ways to give Lent a fighting chance is to turn off, or to at least curtail the use of, the TVs scattered throughout most homes.

"You end up with more time for your family, for prayer, for the church, for life in general," he said. "But I think most people would find it much harder to give up television during Lent than to give up meat."

It's hard to fight this kind of battle without practical strategies.

For some people, a good starting point would be spending two or more hours reading for each hour that they watch television, said evangelical media critic Doug LeBlanc, in a recent Moody magazine column. Then, when he does turn on the TV, he has vowed to hit the mute button during every commercial.

"Commercials are not only loud and intrusive," noted LeBlanc, "but they sell a particularly noxious snake oil known as commercialism. I have enough trouble resisting the siren call of narcissism without reinforcing it during every commercial break."

But the big problem is that people use mass media - especially television news, sports, talk radio and music - as pseudo-shopping-mall "white noise" to cover gaps in their lives that hint at loneliness or a need for self-reflection, said LeBlanc. Clearly, many fear silence.

It's also possible to make better decisions about what to watch, as well as how much to watch, said James Breig, a columnist in Credo, an alternative Catholic weekly in Ann Arbor, Mich. Some could begin by listing their five favorite shows and then swearing off one of them, to invest that time in spiritual books. High-quality religious programs also turn up occasionally on history and arts channels and some parishes have begun collecting libraries of videotapes.

And it might help to put a Bible or prayer book near the TV Guide or the remote control.

"In an average week," Breig asked his readers, "which do you do more often: Watch TV or pray? Think of how often you say, 'There's nothing on,' and then watch that nothing."

The overarching problem is that, all too often, church leaders and members choose to ignore the role that all those televisions play in most homes and in the culture at large. Mass media are, in fact, the channels through which most people receive the stories, images and values that shape their lives – hour after hour, day by day, season after season.

"The THING called a television, the actual box with a screen on it and some speakers, can do some good," said Father Buckley. "The problem is how people let television and the media take over their lives. That's a spiritual issue. I don't think that it's a reach to say that the role television plays in most modern homes is evil."

Adolph Hitler: A perverted Christian?

From Adolph Hitler's point of view, Christendom had it all wrong.

Jesus wasn't a humble savior who suffered and died on a cross to redeem all of humanity. For Hitler, Jesus was an angry, whip-cracking messiah who was tough enough to lead Germany to victory. Hitler's Jesus looked a lot like Hitler. The Christian messiah was too Jewish.

"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter," said Hitler, in one 1922 speech. "It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by only a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned me to fight against them. In boundless love, as a Christian and as a man, I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord rose at last in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders."

In "Mein Kampf," Hitler went one terrifying step further as he attacked the "Jewish doctrine of Marxism." He wrote: "Eternal Nature inexorably revenges the transgressions against her laws. Therefore, I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator: By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord's work."

What do these words mean? While historians have struggled to answer that question, one thing is certain: Anyone who uses the words "Hitler" and "Christian" in the same sentence will cause controversy. The most recent flare-up centers on remarks by President Bill Clinton at the 1999 National Prayer Breakfast.

"The problem is that Hitler was all over the map when he talked about religion, including Christianity," said journalist Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil." "When it was useful for him to appear Christian, in order to manipulate the masses, then he did so. But then in private comments he was much more candid about his hatred of Christianity."

The result is a maze of questions. What did Hitler mean when he said "the Lord" or "Divine Providence" gave him spiritual visions and that an "inner voice" called him to redeem the German people and crush the Jews? And does the fact that Hitler called himself a Christian mean that it's proper for anyone else to call him a Christian?

What people say about Hitler usually reveals more about their biases and beliefs than about those of Hitler, said Rosenbaum.

Take Clinton's speech, for example. The president reminded his interfaith audience that many of the world's woes are "rooted in what we believe are the instructions we get from God to do things to people who are different from us." But just because people believe they're following God doesn't mean they're right, he said.

"I do believe that even though Adolph Hitler preached a perverted form of Christianity, God did not want him to prevail," said Clinton.

Conservative Christians immediately cried "foul."

In reality, Hitler's hate was rooted in a pseudo-scientific racism, not religious faith, said Rosenbaum. Thus, it would have been more accurate to say that Hitler preached a "perverted form of Darwinism, rather than a perverted Christianity." The most logical explanation for Clinton's comments would be that he was striking back at "conservative Christians and his other critics that he considers judgmental and mean-spirited," said Rosenbaum, who stressed that he also is a frequent critic of the Religious Right.

But this is business as usual, when it comes to discussions of Hitler and religion. Christians anxious to attack the occult can cite evidence that Hitler was a neo-pagan terrorist who hated God and saw himself as a god-like messiah. Atheists and agnostics blame Hitler's actions on his Catholic boyhood. Anti-Semites welcome any evidence that Hitler may have been part Jewish. The list goes on and on.

"It's like a Rorschach test. People see what they want to see and then they use Hitler as a way to settle arguments," said Rosenbaum. "Everyone wants to be able to say that their enemies believe what Hitler believed. What we can learn from all of this is that you can't trust anything Hitler said. If you are trying to understand Hitler, the last thing you can believe are his words."

Ash Wednesday for Baptists: Why not?

As worshippers entered the dim sanctuary, they could tell that this wasn't the usual Wednesday night prayer meeting in the First Baptist Church of Gretna, Va.

First, there was quiet music, candlelight and a meditative atmosphere. After awhile, worship leaders began reading verses from the Psalms, such as: "Have mercy upon me, O God. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me." Then everyone sang "Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!"

Finally, participants were invited to walk the aisle and have ashes applied to their foreheads in the shape of a cross. Yes, First Baptist in Gretna held an Ash Wednesday service last year and it will do so once again next week, opening the Lenten season that precedes Easter.

"To tell you the truth, we didn't do the sign of the cross on the forehead part at first," said the Rev. M. Glenn Graves, describing the rites that began three years ago in his church. "That kind of thing tends to freak Baptists out, you know? So we just let them stick their own hands down in the urn the first time and get ashes all over themselves."

For one thing, the ashes were really thick and hard to handle that first year. Christians have long added to the symbolism of these rites by using ashes created by burning palm branches saved from Palm Sunday the previous year. But there's the rub. Palm Sunday rites are almost as rare in Baptist circles as Ash Wednesday services. Since Graves didn't have any old palm leaves around his church, he burned a dried-out Christmas tree instead. Since then, he has found that friendly florists will hand over a few palm branches.

"We could do Palm Sunday, but that would open up Holy Week and there you go," he said, laughing. "Then my people would really accuse me of being a Baptist-Episcopalian-Roman Catholic. That's the thing about traditions like that. They all seem to be connected and once you use one of them it's hard to know where to stop adding things to the calendar."

Graves is convinced many people in Protestant pews would welcome a chance to find symbolic ways to deal with sticky issues such as sin, repentance, forgiveness and their own mortality - even if the "new" rites are really centuries old. After asking a few tough questions, his flock has accepted Ash Wednesday as a chance to face "the dark side of their souls," he said.

"For those of us who are new at this, it is awkward, much like our confessed sins," he wrote, in an article in Baptists Today, a national newspaper for those in the "moderate" wing of Baptist life. "However, the shared, solemn occasion has left a mark on us like the dark ashes we carry on our foreheads."

First Baptist in Gretna - located about 38 miles south of Lynchburg - hasn't based its rites directly on a Catholic liturgy or the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. Instead, Graves said he adopted a very Baptist approach to tiptoeing into ancient traditions. He went to a mainline Protestant bookstore and bought a copy of "The New Handbook of the Christian Year." Then his church started experimenting.

Graves suggested that churches that want to try Ash Wednesday services should start with their own frameworks of scriptures and familiar music about sin and repentance - such as "Amazing Grace." For some people, this more formal approach to worship may seem like "going through the motions," he said. But for many others, it will provide a chance to form ties to believers in the past.

"Sometimes you just have to pull some stuff from here and some stuff from there and then give it a shot," he said. "Because I'm a Baptist, I'm free to pick and choose. I'm free to choose the parts of a liturgy that I'm comfortable with and to avoid the parts that I know will make my people uncomfortable. You have to find out what works for your people."

Peace, justice, life & Truth

No gathering of Catholic social activists would be complete without rows of cars outside with bumper stickers containing the famous words of Pope Paul VI: "If you want peace, work for justice."

To which Pope John Paul II would add a hearty "Amen."

But that's just once thread in a larger garment. During this recent American tour, the pope again stressed that it's impossible to talk about peace, justice and freedom without raising other issues that make many people, including some Catholics, very nervous. How can a society do what is good, he asked time after time, when few can agree on what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false?

"America first proclaimed its independence on the basis of self-evident moral truths," noted the pope, during an evening prayer service in St. Louis. "America will remain a beacon of freedom for the world as long as it stands by those moral truths which are the very heart of its historical experience.

"And so America: If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. If you want life, embrace truth – truth revealed by God."

This one statement captures the big ideas of John Paul's pontificate. However, this ethic remains hard to fit into bumper stickers, T-shirts and headlines.

Thus, the pope's words will once again cause cheers and moans on both sides of the political aisle and in many Catholic and Protestant sanctuaries, said Mennonite theologian Ron Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action. Nevertheless, it's obvious that John Paul's goal is to defend the sanctity of life by attacking what he calls a "culture of death" that kills human dignity and hope. This is the overarching issue.

"People on the left will love what he had to say about the death penalty and racism and caring for the poor," noted Sider, a veteran coalition-builder among evangelicals and Catholics of varying political views. "But many liberals are going to squirm because he ties these issues directly to traditional Christian teachings on abortion and euthanasia and family life. Meanwhile, some people on the right will squirm because the pope made it very clear that he links these pro-life issues to the death penalty and poverty, sickness, hunger and even the environment."

In the statement that drew the most media attention, John Paul said that "the Gospel of God's love for man, the Gospel of the dignity of the person and the Gospel of life are a single and indivisible Gospel." Thus, the church needs more believers who are "unconditionally pro-life," even when this stance seems to be harder to defend, he said.

"A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil," said the pope, during the St. Louis Mass. "Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. ...I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary."

While exchanging greetings with President Clinton – who backs both the death penalty and abortion rights – John Paul stressed that he believes America is undergoing a "time of testing" that will profoundly impact the rest of the world in the coming century. This can be seen, he said, in America's bitter conflicts about whether to declare "entire groups of human beings – the unborn, the terminally ill, the handicapped and others considered 'unuseful' - to be outside the boundaries of legal protection."

And again, the pope added: "Only a higher moral vision can motivate the choice for life."

"The pope is dead on target by returning to the larger issue of today's debates over the reality of truth," said Sider. "We live in an age of incredible relativism in this society and even in the church. We live in a land that seems to have lost its way. ... So the pope isn't backing down on any of this. Those of us who really care about these issues can only hope that people are still listening."