BTW South Song of the Day
Nicotine, "Howie Mobile" from Mailorder is Fun! (T.L.A.M.)

Caution: Vulgarity ahead.

Mission: Unpossible
Simply put, the task was unpossible, at least for this wretched sinner. In the words of Zapp Brannigan, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised." Or something. My shame is immense, but I have a curious relationship with shame, which will now take us on a meandering digression:

I love my mother, but she did a lackluster job of raising The L.A.W., the Mountain of Love, and me in the Church. Sure, she took us to Mass and made us attend C.C.D. (more on that later), later called L.I.F.T. (Living In Faith Together), but at the time of my Confirmation I knew jack and squat about Catholicism outside of my rote memorization of the Mass. Everything I know about the Church I learned through my own initiative. I asked her once what C.C.D. stood for and she promptly answered, "Confraternity of Christian Doctrine." She knew this because as a girl she'd attended elementary school and junior high in Catholic schools. In 1950s and '60s Ohio, she was taught by actual nuns. The C.C.D. she attended was the C.C.D. of the pre-Vatican II Church. I'm not saying that the Vatican II reforms were not necessary, but one area in which the Princes of the Church went too far was in the "Protestantization" of the Church. Post-Vatican II youths like me were not taught to be proud of being Catholic. We were not taught about the illustrious history of the Church. We were not taught about the crucial doctrinal differences between Holy Mother Church and our rebellious Protestant and schismatic Orthodox brethren. In my C.C.D. classes, I was never even taught what C.C.D. stood for; my mother took no time to teach us about the mysteries of the Church, assuming C.C.D. would pick up the slack. The name change to L.I.F.T. should have been a red flag. ("Living In Faith Together"? What in the hey does that even mean if we don't know anything about the faith?)

When I was confirmed by His Excellency Bishop Kenneth Povish, may he rest in peace, my heart was touched by the Holy Ghost; I have never again doubted the existence, benevolence, or glory of Almighty God, common feelings during my early teen years. So, by the grace of God I was a confirmed in the sacred Catholic Church, the one true faith and the instrument of His Will on Earth. Neat, but what exactly did that mean? Beyond the Eucharist and really quite un-Christian protests outside abortion clinics, what did it mean to be Catholic? So, I began a leisurely, periodic study of the tenets and doctrines of the Christian faith's most pure expression, the Catholic Church.

The guilt about everything? The constant shame over the many sins, mortal and venial, we each of us commit every day? Yeah, I embraced all that on my own. I was predisposed toward Catholicism by my childhood, but that alone is not a sufficient cause; The L.A.W. and the Mountian were brought up before and after me and they have vehemently rejected both Christ and the Church. The Mountain was never confirmed; on at least three occasions during his militant atheist phase he told me I was too smart to possibly believe in God. (Ayn Rand once said much the same thing to William F. Buckley, Jr. I would be a merciless Objectivist had the Holy Ghost not blessed me on the day of my confirmation.) Simple habit does not adequately explain my devotion to the Church. I have imperiled my immortal soul by disagreeing with Holy Mother Church on several important doctrinal issues, but in each of those instances I acknowledge the primacy of the Church's opinion and pray that the Lord forgives the rebellion my conscience demands.

Long story short, I fail in my Christian duty virtually every second of every day. And for that I feel ashamed. When I don't fele ashamed, I am surely indulging in Pride, the deadliest of the seven cardinal sins. And then I am ashamed of that. Like I said, curious relationship with shame. Without shame, I feel naked. So, to fulfill this year's Lenten sacrifice, to prove my mettle, and because masturbation is a sin from which one should always refrain - but let's start with a more achievable goal first, shall we? - on the morrow I shall begin... MISSION: UNPOSSIBLE ZWEI!

This time, it's personal.