Why I don't take strict fasting during Lent seriously.

I consider myself a devout Catholic, but I do not see myself as a Catholic who puts one's well-being to side. Modern Church practices have Catholics fasting (2 small meals + 1 big meal) and abstaining from meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and then the same things for every following Wednesday and Friday until Easter Sunday. A good number of Catholics think this is too lax.

More strict fasting goes vegan (Eastern Rite) plus fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. Some Catholics practice Black Fast were abstaining from food all day along until a sunset for one vegan meal. The following picture is that of a "traditional" fasting calendar for the entire liturgical year -

You might as well be vegan if you're going to do this calendar since almost half of the year you're abstaining from meat (March, April, November, December, June, and August). If most Catholics followed this they'd be probably be underweight and suffer from malnutrition. (This  calendar was made by A Catholic Life -- a Catholic who's quite gung-ho on the traditional ways of Catholic life but then he's also vegetarian in real life and you know I feel about those types of people.) Say good-bye to endurance sports and things like lifting weights for health. Not to mention that hitting your 2k calories per day during Lent will not be met. 

Do Catholics who practice Black Fast for multiple consecutive days, trying to push it to 40 days,  have jobs that require them to exert energy let alone get out much, like adult responsibilities like errands and taking care of kids. That's a serious question. It may get you to a spiritual high, but it totally rejects modern - and sound - science, and commons sense,  where you need sustenance, and adequate sustenance, to function fully. 

I say this with all respect to those who want to take their fasting game to the next level while wanting it to be more prominent in the Catholic world: We're not monks in the desert. I wish that were the case because I'd probably take the extreme form of fasting a little more seriously. I don't mind doing Black Fast as an experiment, but I ain't gonna flex about it if I ever do it for more than a couple of days. Heck, I support bringing back Ember Days.

I've seen myself and my own mother, when deprived of food and only turning to liquids for than five days edge towards going apeshit. The reason being I had a couple of wisdom teeth pulled out a few years ago were I was subjected to only liquids as I abstained from solids for the entire week. By day five my hands were shaking because sipping water and eating yogurt just wasn't enough for my body. Just last year, my dear mother decided to get braces. She was also exercising daily in order to lose and maintain a healthy weight. Due to having braces, the first few weeks of eating was a chore. She was limited to only soft foods, liquids and blending any solids that were too hard for her to chew into a shake. Accompany that with exercising daily she lost weight faster than usual. If this continued her weight would've been dangerously low for her height and age. Thankfully, after a month or so, she gained control of the situation and slowly started to eat solids again. The experience was quite unpleasant for her. 

If there's one thing I'll say that's archaic about in my faith  -- in a bad way -- it's how Catholics tackle fasting not just during Lent but throughout the entire liturgical year. Western Rite or Eastern Rite? Traditional fasting or modern fasting? There's no true set expectations that I know of besides abstaining and fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays during Lent in preparation for Easter Sunday. I'd rather people develop a deep prayer life than admire any extreme form of fasting because "that's what they did in the old day" or "why can't we admire our Orthodox brothers or Eastern Rite Catholics because they're really hardcore about fasting!" Yea, no. Sometimes a thing being old isn't always good, let alone sustainable.

Some take fasting as optional or barely even fast and abstain on Wednesdays or Fridays during Lent. On the other end of the spectrum I've read posts saying they're going to only drink water through the 40 days of Lent as they give a link to some physician or dietitian saying it's totally okay if done "safely." Um, okay.

For those that are looking at Lent and the liturgical calendar to implement a strict fasting practice, do you advocate bringing back social norms like mantillas for women when attending church and suits for men? How about alter rails, no communion via hand, and rood screens? I get the feeling they wouldn't really approve of these resurgences and those advocating for it (for example, me). I wonder the percent who are passionate about strict fasting that prefer the NO or the TLM. It be an interesting survey to unpack. 

Without that said, I am actually going to adopt abstaining from meat on Fridays year round. I think that's a very reasonable practice to take-up (plus it aligns with my current diet of abstaining from meat for health reasons outside of my Catholicism). 

In the meantime I think concepts like Exodus 90 for Lenten preparation is a great way to follow the instructions of the Church for Lent while building a prayer life, implementing health choices (daily exercise, cutting out alcohol for 40 days, cutting out sweets and eating between meals), abstaining from brainless internet use and entertainment, and controlling unnecessary spending (Amazon, Ebay). This, to me, is more relevant to what plagues men and women today. As I said, we're not monks back in the old day living in the desert where we had the whole day to think about our Lord and where strict fasting was conducive to demands of the lives lived. Things have changed.

Sports: Watching Live or Watching on the TV?

Soccer: I'd rather watch it on the television.

Baseball: So much better live.

Softball: Rather be playing it than watching it, but if I'm watching it it's on television. 

Football: Eh, depends. College football is great live. NFL I probably prefer on tv. 

Basketball: Definitely tv for NBA. Live for college basketball. 

Hockey: Live but watching it on television comes a close second. 

Neurological Differences in Males, Females and Sexualities.

Here's a relatively short post.

Why do we say "Love is Love" and that there are no differences between males and females in terms of athletic performances yet, supposedly, science is showing that there are neurological differences between the following -

• male and females
• homosexuals having neurological frameworks of their opposite sex (hence why they're attracted to their own sex)
• transgender having neurological framework similar to that of the sex they want to transition in (hence their feeling of being in "the wrong body" aka Gender Identity Disorder/Dysphoria)

So when shallow platitudes of "Love is Love" is bandied around, or when commercials showing a huge "x-ray" where people kiss behind it, where the audience only sees the skeletal frame of the two people kissing or hugging, to be met with different races, religions and two people of the same sex once they step in front, you should probably think twice. 

As I said, given the neurological differences, the promotion of sodomy and transgenderism should be questioned. A same-sex pairing isn't going to be worried about committing sodomy and getting pregnant. A transgender has a ton of stuff to work out. Simply put, second and third points to a disorder. Wires crossed or misaligned. We go skin deep to skeletal to microscopic. When people say there's no difference between female and male brain, think again. 

What SHOULD constitute as porn in the tv & movie industry, especially softcore?

WARNING: Crude stuff ahead.

I talked about this in a past post, but it bears to be repeated given, as of late, a number of streaming channels releasing tv series containing graphic sex scenes aimed at a mature audience, specifically teenagers.

One criteria:

• TV and movies that have sex scenes with nudity = softcore porn (i.e. Euphoria series, I Know What You Did Last Summer series, The Dreamers), rape scenes not counted.

Not porn:

• Actress who just appears nude, whether topless and/or full-blown but no sex scene = hired stripper (i.e. Halle Barry in Swordfish, Rose Leslie in Game of Thrones, Rosaria Dawson in Westworld)
• Nudity with sex scene on stage = exhibitionist

Of course, there are some exceptions (okay, only one) - Kate Winslet in Titanic as she posed as a model for Leonardo Dicaprio's Jack. This is one scene that actually added to the movie and to the characters.

I have more respect for glamour models, strippers, soft/hardcore porn stars and even OnlyFans amateurs because they don't dress up what they do as "art" or attach some faux intellectual excuse to it. The latter three know they aren't going to get respect from society and they're okay with that; they just do what they do. But actors who strip or agree within their contract to perform nudity + sex scenes, well, they want respect if you disagree with that they're doing.

Out of all those that shed their clothes, the only position I respect for nudity are nude models in art classes. Why? Because what's being done is twofold: use the model as an example of beauty or just "this is the human body", like med students view a cadaver, and to practice the craft of drawing/sketching/sculpting. The end result, if done well, is usually admirers who compliment the artists skill of sketching the nude model, or the wonder of the sculpture made stone or marble resemble skin or soft silk.

Now this begs the question: Why do actors stop at graphic sex scenes? Why not actually just commit to the act of sex then? They'd say that's crossing the line into hardcore porn but so what. There's a decent argument to be made that what happens in Eurphoria is softcore porn, so what's the real different in actually agreeing to have sex with your co-worker? Sure, there's money to be spent on STD tests, before and after, but the porn industry already has that sorted out, so just learn from them. Or, just wear condoms. Everything is the same just like in a hardcore scene except the ejaculation.

But it's as if an actor should actually commit murder if their character kills someone in the script. Not quite. Here's why: People think sex and nudity is a-okay in real life which they are if a-okay means having no eroticism attached to it. Killing someone, not a-okay. Nudity and sex scenes are viewed as some sort of rite of passage with actors; their admires are just waiting for the day that a young actress who just turned 18 will shed their clothes and reveal all. It's a waiting game. It may happen within that year (i.e. Thomasin McKenzie) or it may take more than a decade (i.e. Kate Mara). 

Edit: Paramaters of softcore porn verse hardcore porn. This link confirms my judgement that yes, all of the sex scenes were have seen on tv and on film can be comfortably categorized as softcore. As the link states -

There are specific rules that need to be respected when it comes to making soft porn or hardcore porn videos. Namely, in soft porn, you can rarely (if ever) see the male or female genitalia. There cannot be real oral sex too, so when the male actor goes down on a woman, he usually pulls down to the pubic bone, resting his forehead on it while the woman lifts her leg and braces him with it just enough to cover what’s truly going on. Of course, soft porn is not short of the moans and cries a woman does while real sex happens in the otherwise “normal” sex videos, also known as hardcore porn.

 Now this is what's said about how different hardcore porn is -

While soft porn is more secretive and intimate, hardcore porn leaves nothing hidden and shows the actors entirely from every angle in every pose. Hard porn exposes their genitals, and while in soft porn there cannot be penetration shown, hardcore porn relies on it. The videos also indicate a close-up on oral sex with the man coming on her body. This type of porn has become very popular in the first decade of the 21 st century, and with the internet, it has been booming ever since.

As Irish actress Sarah Bolger puts it regarding on screen nudity -

"With acting and my job, nothing scares me about nakednss.  I wouldn't even think twice if it was right for the script and project," said the Dublin star.

"It's not like I'm making a conscious effort to push the boundaries but I won't ever limit myself in any way.  There is always something new with every opportunity that comes along, you just have to do what you will with that." 

In my view, actors are hired strippers to film/tv as strippers are to a bachelor/bachelorette party.  

Pope Francis

I'll admit, Francy boy is a bad pope. Sure, there are many who have returned to the faith because of his approachability, but overall he does nothing that strengthens the faith. When socially left clerics and religious members like him you can take that as a sign of complete mediocrity. 

Education: Institution Prestige & POCs

 Particularly African-Americans born post 1975. I tend to find them lacking in actual intellectual vigor - not all of course. I can't seem to remember but maybe I addressed it in a past post, but I remember two African-Americans, one whom I believe was half-white, where just based on their CV that their degrees that they sought out were mainly based on public perception of the institution. Case in point of the following two examples.

Case #1

• African-American female
• Attended an Ivy for undergraduate
• Attended an Ivy for doctoral degree 
• After completing her doctoral degree, she lamented that her first academic job, a tenured track job to be exact,  at a small liberal arts college out West wasn't seen as prestigious as the institutions she received her formal education. The college? Colorado College. 

This was, I guess in mid-2015. I checked the department page to see if she was still there but it turns out she wasn't listed. I suppose she used it as a stepping stone for a few years and moved on to a more known institution.

Case #2

• African-American female
• Attended non-Ivy, non-prestigious university for undergrad (DI volleyball scholarship)
• Attended masters at an Ivy (field in which masters was received the wide spread wisdom is to get it at the cheapest program; Ivy name has no real pull)
• Attended doctoral degree at an Ivy (filed in which Phd was received the best schools for it tend to be public institutions)
• Was employed by Ivy institution for first tenured track job; no longer at Ivy institution
• Research interests are equally or better suited within non-Ivy league institutions (i.e. public institutions)

This same prestige/name-brand hunting could be said to be present amongst African-Americans when it comes to medical schools and post-grad residency/fellowships. I think a decent indicator of whether or not the POC (i.e. African-American) is academically sound is if they get into AOA, the medical school  version of Phi Beta Kappa. In places like University of Chicago (Pritzker) med school the African-Americans who have attended in the past four years, only a minority of them were inducted in AOA. Arguments for the lack of POCs, especially African-Americans, is, of course, racism. Unlike that Northwestern study, AMA's own survey is more interesting.

Unpopular Catholic Thought #1

Those who are in the Latin Rite but want to convert to the Eastern Rite are really just rite shopping like Protestants do with their churches. In most cases this isn't about orthodoxy of the priest and/or seeking out a reverent liturgy, but "being drawn to" (whatever that means) Eastern Rites, which, historically, are Orthodoxy. "Being drawn to" is shallow in my mind, at least in the Catholic sense since instead of converting to another religion or denomination one makes a conversion within the Catholic Church. I call these people "meta-converts." Don't like the pope and all the legalism and clericalism of the Latin Rite? Well, I guess I'll seek out the Eastern Rite or even Eastern Orthodoxy. Have issues with the Church's view on NFP? Well I can't consider myself a Catholic anymore and become Orthodoxy instead! Don't like the precision, or imprecision, of a Latin Rite encyclical? Well heck, I'll just go to Orthodoxy cause I don't have to bother with my wannabe philosopher brain nitpicking on what some dead pope said!

If Catholicism is ever driven back underground I wouldn't be surprised if such meta-converts would be absent. When the going gets tough they'll back out. What a bunch of Judases.