Sundays in Lent: Part III

A reader writes:

The suspension of penitential practice on Sundays, I would think, is more than just one option among many. I would say that the Catholic devotional and liturgical tradition, taken as a whole, inveighs against any attempt to practice penance on the Lord’s Day.

In the Liturgy of the Hours, every Sunday of Lent begins with this reading from Lauds:

Today is holy to the Lord your God. Do not be sad, and do not weep; for today is holy to our Lord. Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength! (Nehemiah 8: 9, 10).

The disposition demanded by this reading seems incompatible with normal penitential practices. Your take on the matter?

I would say that "inveighs" is too strong a term, especially when one is speaking of "any attempt to practice penance on the Lord’s Day" (see below on Sundays as days of penance). I also would say that "demands" is too strong a term for what the reading from Nehemiah is doing regarding our dispositions. The disposition described in Nehemiah is applicable to a particular historical situation, and the Liturgy of the Hours holds it up to us as something to be emulated to the extent our situation mirrors the one in which it was demanded–a mirroring which is only partial.

I would say, however, that the nature of Sunday as the day of commemorating the Resurrection of Our Lord makes it reasonable and even suitable to modify penitential practices on that day. It is certainly more reasonable to lessen penitential practices on Sunday than it would be, for example, on Monday. So if you are going to lighten up on yourself on a weekday of Lent, that would be the day to do it. However, Sundays remain days of penance, and if someone chooses to continue their Lenten penitential practice on Sundays while still celebrating it the way that the Church envisions it according to law, I cannot fault the person. I’m not going to tell someone who has decided to give up ice cream and television for Lent that they must plop themselves down in front of the tube with a bowl of Haagen-Dazs.

Sundays in Lent: Part II

Are Sundays part of Lent? This question often arises because of the custom (mentioned in Part I) of many people giving themselves a break from penance on Sundays in Lent.

The answer is yes, Sundays are part of Lent. Here is the definition of Lent from the General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar:

Lent runs from Ash Wednesday until the Mass of the Lord’s Supper exclusive [no. 28].

There’s nothing in that about Sundays not counting, so Sundays are indeed part of Lent.

Sundays in Lent: Part I

A correspondent writes:

Ok i am doing the 40 day’s of Lent. And i was jus wondering if on Sunday you had to follow your lenten schedule?? Thanks.

Since giving up something for Lent (or doing extra penitential practices beyond abstinence on Fridays and fast and abstinence on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday) is voluntary, you can decide for yourself whether you want to do something on Sundays. Many people do not do any penances on Sunday as a way of celebrating Our Lord’s Resurrection.

Hope this helps!

The Length of Lent

How many days are there in Lent? Let’s count!

Every year this question comes up. People hear about Lent being forty days long, but when they look at a calendar this clearly isn’t the case. Since we’ve just quoted the official definition of the start and stop of Lent, let’s look at a calendar and count up the days. Here is the whole of Lent for 2004:

FEBRUARY
22 23 24 25
Ash Wed.
1		 26

2

 27

3

 28

4
29
1st Sun.
5		            

MARCH
  1

6

 2

7

 3

8

 4

9

 5

10

 6

11
7
2nd Sun.
12		 8

13

 9

14

 10

15

 11

16

 12

17

 13

18
14
3rd Sun.
19		 15

20

 16

21

 17

22

 18

23

 19

24

 20

25
21
4th Sun.
26		 22

27

 23

28

 24

29

 25

30

 26

31

 27

32
28
5th Sun.
33		 29

34

 30

35

 31

36

      

APRIL
        1

37

 2

38

 3

39
4
Palm Sun.
40		 5

41

 6

42

 7

43

 8
Holy Thur.
44		 9
Good Fri.		 10
Holy Sat.
11
Easter Sun.
 		 12 13 14 15 16 17

In this calendar, the days of Lent are counted in red. As you can see, there are forty four of them, counting Holy Thursday as one of the days (technically, only the part of Holy Thursday before the beginning of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper is Lent; once the Mass of the Lord’s Supper begins the season becomes Triduum).

Now a couple of notes:

  • The fact that the calendar above is for 2004 does not matter. Neither does the fact that a Leap Year intervenes between Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday. The reason is that Ash Wednesday is always a fixed number of Sundays before Holy Thursday (six Sundays, counting Palm Sunday). The particular dates of the calendar that the days of Lent fall on (Leap Year included) don’t affect the total number.
  • If you want to be persnickety, you could argue that there are only forty three days since the definition of Lent’s start and stop points reads: "Lent runs from Ash Wednesday until the Mass of the Lord’s Supper exclusive [General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar 28]. Taking the word "exclusive" to refer to both Ash Wednesday and the Mass of the Lord’s Supper would knock a day off the total. However, doing this would be an error. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent. Everybody knows this. And the General Norms immediately go on to list Ash Wednesday under the heading of Lent (see no. 29). The word "exclusive" applies only to the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. What we have is simply an imperfection in the drafting of the law such that it fails to properly express the legislator’s intent (which is to include Ash Wednesday in Lent).

So there you have it. Lent under current law is more than forty days long. The number forty is thus to be taken as approximate, not literal. If you want to read more about how Lent and its "forty days" evolved, see here.

(One last note: Some have noted that there are forty days up to and including Palm Sunday. Whether that is the reason Lent is said to have forty days is ambiguous; the article linked gives a much more complicated history. In any event, since the days after Palm Sunday are now part of Lent, the season now has more than forty days regardless of how the number originated).

Sinful Thoughts?

A correspondent writes:

Hi Jimmy, I enjoy listening to your spots on Catholic Answers Live and also
seeing you on The Journey Home on EWTN.  I am currently seeking help for an Anxiety Disorder and trying to better my mental health.  One symptom of
those with high anxiety is unwanted "scary" thoughts or sudden flashes of
unusual images in your mind.  For instance, you may be washing dishes and
cleaning a sharp knife and all of a sudden you get a subconscience thought
out of nowhere that you might stab somebody, or in church you might
desicrate a cross or something.  I have no intent on doing these things, but
I’ll get a mental flash.  Is this considered sin?  Are thoughts of no intent
sinful?  Thanks for your time.

Thank you for writing and for your kind words.   It sounds as if you may be suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which is a very common anxiety disorder, estimated to affect perhaps one in forty people.   Because it is so common, and because the thoughts it generates can be so troubling to people, I am often contacted by people who have this condition, and I’ve read up on it. In persons of faith, OCD tends to cause scrupulosity, being constantly afraid that one is in a state of mortal sin because of the thoughts. However, be assured that the thoughts OCD generates are not sins. We do not have much control over the thoughts that occur to us, and people who have OCD have a quirk in their brain chemistry that makes them more susceptible to such thoughts than others. As you point out, these are not things that you would actually do. They are therefore what psychologists term ego dystonic thoughts, contrary to one’s beliefs and values. As a result, there is not the kind of cooperation of the will needed to make them sinful. In fact, you should not confess these thoughts in the confessional, as focusing on them will tend to reinforce them and exacerbate the condition. You should simply do your best to ignore them. The more you can relax and ignore them, the better you will get.   I don’t know if you have yet engaged in a course of treatment for the condition, but I should mention that OCD is very treatable. It appears related to a deficiency of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain, and there is a class of drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) that effectively increase the amount of serotonin in the brain and bring a great deal of relief to people with this condition. Also, certain nutritional supplements that can increase serotonin levels (e.g., 5-HTP) may help, though these should not be used if one is already on SSRIs without a doctor’s supervision. If you would like to read more about nutritional supplements that might help, I recommend the book Dr. Atkins Vita-Nutrient Solution, by Dr. Robert Atkins in addition to the 5-HTP book already linked.   Hope this helps, and God bless you!

Still Yet More on Tattoos

A third reader writes:

I’m pretty sure real tatooing (as opposed to simple outside coloration such as with magic market) could well be considered a sin against the fifth commandment, since it’s an attack on your own body. As are the multiple piercings one sees these days. Anytime you willingly violate the body’s natural boundaries (skin) for non-life-saving reasons, you’re in trouble.

You seem to be taking a position that goes beyond what the Church does. The argument you use would prohibit even the piercing of ears, and the Church does not condemn that practice.

While some reason would seem to be needed to break the skin, the Church does not seem to envision it as being a grave reason like the need to save a life. Indeed, many surgeries are performed that involve breaking the skin but are for much lesser goals than saving a life.

I suspect that you probably meant "for therapeutic reasons," but the Church does not seems to require that criterion (it does for mutilation, but as noted above, tattoos do not impair body function and so are not mutilation). Things like ear piercing or tattooing can play cultural functions in some societies, and those can be important reasons as well.

Since the function of the skin is to protect the body, it would seem that the skin can be pierced as long as there is some good to be achieved that is proportionate to the risk of infection given the precautions that are being taken against infection in a particular cause. If a man decides that he’s going to make a statement about his devotion to the Blessed Virgin by having a tattoo of Our Lady of Guadalupe put on his arm then he may be able to arrange it so that the risk of infection is low enough to be counterbalanced by the good to be achieved by his making the statement.

If you can cite any current Magisterial documents to the contrary, though, I’d love to see them. Hope this helps!

Yet More on Tattoos

Another reader writes:

Doesn’t the Tanach forbid tatooing?

Yes, though we already covered that. Tanak is simply the Jewish term for their Scriptures (equivalent to our Old Testament, less the deuterocanonical materials). The word is an anagram–TaNaK–where the T stands for Torah (the Law of Moses), N stands for Neviim (the Prophets), and K for Ketuvim (the Writings, basically the rest of the protocanonical Old Testament).

As noted in the answer to the first question on tattooing, Leviticus (in the Torah and thus in the Tanak) does forbid tattooing, but this doesn’t apply to use for the reasons indicated in the article. Hope this helps!

Still More on Tattoos

A reader writes:

Connected with misgivings or reservations about tattoos is the idea of "mutilation" — that we should not damage our bodies. Does the Church have any specific teaching on this subject?

I agree with you that tattooing does NOT constitute a mutilation. I’m also comfortable with ear piercing, since once the skin heals its integrity isn’t compromised in any way.

I’m more uncomfortable with tongue and cheek piercing, which I think may carry ongoing risk of infection. And just recently I saw on TV where some people are doing "tongue SPLITTING" — literally having the tips of their tongue severed for an inch or so. (Those who do this can move the two tips of their tongue independently, and one individual claimed unstated benefits for kissing. Yuck!)

Something in me says that’s just not right. What do you say?

The Church does indeed have something to say about mutilation. Here’s what the Catechism says (CCC 2296-2297):

It is morally inadmissible directly to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons.

Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.

Mutilation, as understood by the Catechism and moral theology in general, involves more than simply making a change in one’s body. Otherwise having an ear pierced or even getting a manicure or a haircut would count as mutilation. Instead, mutilation must involve some kind of impairment of function in the body (like cutting off a hand out taking out an organ). The degree of impairment then tells us the gravity of the mutilation.

Since tattoos do not involve an impairment of body function, they do not count as mutilation. You are correct about that.

You are also correct about some of the other body . . . uh . . . "modifications" that are being done today would seem to count as mutilation. I don’t know that much about tongue and cheek piercing. I’d have to do research about whether they involve long-term risk of infection. But tongue splitting would seem to be a prime example. Not only does it impair the tongue’s role in eating and talking, it also would seem to make an immoral statement of some kind due to its snake-like connotations. It also has an even higher risk associated with it due to the fact that the tongue has significant blood vessels in it and a split requires a longer time to heal, with risk of infection and bleeding. As a result, many doctors are opposed to the practice.

Hidalgo

Just turned in my review of the new movie Hidalgo to The Decent Films Guide. The film stars Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings) as a cowboy named Frank Hopkins who goes to Arabia to compete in a long-distance horse race.

You can read what I thought about the movie in the review, but here are a couple of technical notes that really don’t belong in a review:

1) Since we’ve been talking about other languages in movies, I might mention that a good bit of this one is in a Native American language (Lakhota, I believe) and in Arabic. I don’t know Lakhota, but since 9/11 I’ve been studying Arabic. (I wanted to be able to read enough of the Qur’an in the original to refute the claims of Muslim apologists).

The story in Hidalgo takes the viewer to Yemen and Arabia, but the Arabic being spoken in the film doesn’t sound quite like Arabian Arabic to me. It sounds more like Syrian Arabic (though my ear isn’t good enough yet to be sure). Syrian Arabic is more "musical," like the Arabic in the film, while Arabian Arabic is more harsh and guttural.

I also noticed in the film that the subtitles when the characters are speaking Arabic aren’t giving a strictly literal translation of what is being said. That, however, was true of The Passion as well: The subtitles in it weren’t strictly literal, either.

2) The horsemanship in Hidalgo is pretty good. Viggo Mortensen really does know how to ride. In fact, I was stunned at one of the things he did in The Two Towers.

You know the scene where Aragorn has washed up on the shore and we see a horse step into the foreground, placing its hoof right next to his head and then putting its lips over Viggo’s nose? I was stunned when I saw this. In real life letting a horse do that would be incredibly reckless. Since we didn’t see it’s whole body, I thought for sure it was an animatronic (mechanical) "horse" that the filmmakers used, but no, it was a real one. Viggo apparently slept with it in its stall for a few nights to let it get comfortable enough with him. Still, I would have never done that.

In Hidalgo, Viggo rides well (for the most part) and uses realistic audible cues to tell the horse what he wants it to do (people often don’t realize how important audible cues are to riding–not just "whoa" and "giddyup," but sucking/clicking sounds that you make with your mouth; different horses are trained to respond to different cues).

Given the horse realism the filmmakers seemed to be trying for, I was a little surprised that Viggo didn’t talk to the horse more during scenes in which something that would be very frightening to a horse was taking place (e.g., a sandstorm). Horses are very timid and easily-frightened animals that need to be reassured that their riders know what is going on and are in control of the situation. Talking to the horse plays an important role in keeping him calm when something frightening happens. Otherwise he may run off in fear, carrying the rider with him (which is a Really Not Good Thing in a sandstorm).

I also was a little surprised at a couple of points in the movie when immediately after hard exercise horses were ordered to be bathed in cold water or run directly into the ocean surf.  Body heat management is not easy for horses, and they need to be cooled down by slow walking before you get them wet. If they get too much cold water in their hair when they’re still hot it can cause the shivers and even get them sick. One would think that the problem would be exacerbated in the heat of Arabia, but then maybe the cold water there isn’t all that cold by our standards.

What's Jimmy Working On?

Just finished the next Inside Catholic Answers newsletter. Topics this time were a major new educational campaign on the homosexual "marriage" issue and the overwhelming response we’ve had to the Voters’ Guide for Serious Catholics.

Also just got word that I may have to go up to L.A. next week to be interviewed by the BBC on The Passion of the Christ.

At work we just got back from the press our new evangelistic pamphlet God’s Love For You. Looks great. Is designed to be an outreach to people who are not Catholic. Thus far most of our materials are written for a Catholic audience, but now we are starting to branch out into materials written for non-Catholics to help them find their way to the Church. Our materials have been helping people to do that for years, but now, by providing things directly written for non-Catholics, they should be even more effective.

Tuesday I revised a chapter from Inside Mormonism to incorporate the change in the Holy See’s policy on the invalidity of Mormon baptisms.

Monday I turned in my next "Brass Tacks" column for This Rock. The topic this time was a look at the four senses of Scripture.