People who give up sweets for Lent

You people who give up sweets for Lent, I'm calling you out, because I think that you are plainly insane. Stephen Colbert, I think you are a cool guy and I couldn't be more grateful for the way in which you are representing cool Catholics everywhere, but I also have to say that giving up sweets for Lent is weird and perverse.

I consulted my catechism –

Sidebar: I got a free catechism! For free! Merely for getting confirmed! Hell, I don't even have to get confirmed – they've given me the free catechism already, and you know, if I wanted to, I could just take the catechism and run. Sell it for a profit on eBay. I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, it's very sweet and trusting that they're just handing out catechisms like free condoms to all comers (teehee); but on the other hand I think they should be aware of the risks they're running, giving free stuff to people without any sort of screening process to make sure the recipients aren't fundamentalists disguised as Catholics on a mission to can acquire enough catechisms for a state-wide book-burning.

– well, I consulted my catechism, and it says that Lent is an intense moment of the Church's penitential practice, and therefore particularly appropriate for voluntary self-denial such as fasting.

Screw that, I say. Self-denial seems rather purposeless, unless you have some other end in mind than just telling the Lord that He is more important to you than candy. Because I guess that's nice for a deity to hear, but like, I can think of things that would please me more, if I were a deity.

I should probably not be saying "screw that" to my shiny new catechism. It would be awful if the Top Brass in the campus church found my blog and decided I was nothing like in a state of grace and could not ever possibly be confirmed in their church. I have a lot of anxieties about this whole confirmation business, because I think I may be a heretic as well as being an apostate on account of not liking the Pope.

Okay, so not "screw that" but "fooey on that". I think it is a much better and more holy and virtuous idea (I'm all about being holy and virtuous, as those of you who know me will recognize) to use Lent as a time to become a Better Person. Which is what I am doing by giving up lying to people about shit I don't want to do. Whereas people who are giving up sweets will just get cancer and high blood pressure because they haven't eaten enough dark chocolate; and come on, people, how is that making Jesus happy?

That's right. It's not. If you have any further questions about this, I direct you to my message to the world.