It's Friday and it's Lent, so here's a little story that Trevor Morrow tells in his book ''Free to Love.' The story originally came from 'Growing Up Catholic.' I hope you enjoy it...
If you were at a baseball game on a Friday night and you wanted a hot dog, you had a problem because you are not supposed to eat meat on Friday,"Now just considering eating meat on Friday is a venial sin; wanting to eat meat is another one. So you have not even moved in your seat and you have already sinned twice. What if you actually ate one?! Aside from the risk of choking on forbidden food and receiving your temporal punishment on the spot, have you committed a mortal sin or a venial sin? Well if you think its mortal, it may be mortal; and if you think its venial, it may still be mortal. After much thought, you decide its venial, so you call the hot dog vendor, you take the money out of your pocket and you buy a hot dog; this is clearly an act of freewill. You figure you can go to confession on Saturday - but wait does a venial sin become mortal when you commit it deliberately? That's a chance you take. What if you've forgotten its Friday? In that case eating the hot dog may not be a sin... but forgetting that it's Friday is! What if you remember it's Friday half way through the hot dog, is it a venial sin to finish it? If you throw it away, is wasting food a sin? In five minutes you have committed enough sins to land you in purgatory for a million years! The simplest course is just not to take any chances, and avoid the near occasion of sin and stay out of ballparks on Friday!"
And that is why I'm a Presbyterian! Actually we have our own set of silly rules, they just haven't been canonized in the same way.
