Happy Mardi Gras! and other Lent Thoughts...

'Tis the season for our local grocery stores to translate "jelly doughnut" into Polish and jack up the prices 300% as people prepare to give up things for Lent tomorrow. As for me, I gave up Lent years ago, long before I gave up jelly doughnut for Atkins. If I am judging my readership correctly, I am not alone, either in the jelly doughnuts or in eschewing organized religion, though I will try to be sensitive to those among you, my readers, who still involve themselves in one or the other or both.

Even the least religious among us have probably heard the big Lenten news this year: the new Mel Gibson movie. In a departure from previous positions on the need to protect our vulnerable children from cinematic violence, pastors are actually encouraging their flocks to take underage children to see this R-rated movie for the particular reason that it is violent enough to receive an R rating. Think I'm kidding? Click here. If you clicked, you read that right:

"Honestly, I think the R-rating will work to that advantage for students to be interested in seeing it. "

and

"I've read about the brutality of crucifixion, but I've never felt the emotion of the crucifixion like I did when I saw Mel Gibson's movie."

To recap: violence in movies is bad, unless the violence serves the divine purpose of searing images of bloody, sadistic deicide into the psyches of teenagers who may be questioning their beliefs. Letting teenagers into R-rated movies is harmful unless they are bringing their heathen friends to be converted by the images of a man being tortured.

I don't suppose anyone has considered that, if the church is looking for converts among teenagers, they may want to try a softer sell and save the graphic scourgings for later on in the conversion process. If someone wants to point out how truly evil people can be, I have a taped interview with a pediatric hospital physician, in which the doctor recounts the cause of death of an infant admitted into his ward. That story is far more effective than any cinematic special effects at showing just what kind of suffering a person is capable of inflicting on a completely innocent human being.

But, heck, it's Mardi Gras. Have a happy Tuesday.