back to article 'Gv up txt 4 Lent,' urges bishop

Some of you may decide to give up an Earthly pleasure for Lent, but one Italian bishop has asked followers specifically to forgo almost all forms of electronic communication and entertainment during the religious season. Monsignor Benito Cocchi, the Bishop of Modena, reportedly said that renouncing text messaging would help …

COMMENTS

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  1. Ash
    Thumb Down

    I'm giving up listening to religious leaders.

    They clearly don't have an objective, logical view of life, and allow important decisions to be based on the teachings of old story books.

    I'm not bashing religion, just those who can't seperate it from choices which affect peolpe who don't agree with them.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Once again the church misses a market opportunity

    Where is their iPhone app that gives you timely reminders of the important holy days, like Sunday, Easter, Lent, Seventh Day Ascension, Eighth Day Declination and Christmas? Where's their sandbox virtual cleric game, where you start as a lowly altar-boy, then slowly and ruthlessly work your way up to Pontifex, performing driveby confessionals on Jews, Moslems, Scientologists and Richard Dawkins from the safety of your prayer-powered Popemobile, in between rounds of infallibility and covering up unsavoury doings involving said altar-boys? Or maybe just a Vatican-styled Asus laptop, complete with incense burners and built-in webcam software that continually monitors users for sinful behaviour. then shuts down until they've performed the requisite number of Hail Marys?

    All this just off the top of my head, and I don't claim to know anything about the purpose and ultimate fate of our existence...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just an excuse for bishops to have sex

    All this electronic communication stuff is my job so the bishop is basically saying to me, and I suppose to the majority of El Reg's readership, to give up my job. I see an ulterior motive here because if I follow this through then the Pope should give up his job for lent and I'd bet a penny to pound that he'd have a damn better time of it than us.

  4. Richard

    40 days in Lent

    Sundays are feast days so don't count. Also, patronal festivals are feast days, which is why one suspects the Irish were so keen on St Pat's day being in Lent.

    /pedant

  5. Rob
    Alien

    yeah

    while it does seem quite laughable at first, i agree now (but I wouldn't have a couple of years ago) all this stupid electronic crap IS ruining our lives, and its getting worse by the day, by detracting from the 'real' world, ie, nature, and leading us more and more into digital enslavery by the purely imaginary world we've created,

    bring on the solar EMP!!

  6. Ray
    Flame

    tech evangelist?

    uhm...

  7. Chris
    Thumb Down

    Ridiculous

    I'll do it if he gives up believing in Sky Beard Man for Lent.

  8. Charlie Barnes
    Paris Hilton

    On the take?

    "But the Bish didn’t stop there, because he also suggested that followers avoid videogames, iPhones and social networking sites during the season."

    Do we assume from the lack of G1 on that list he's on the take from Google or T-Mobile?

    Paris because she's normally too busy to text...

  9. Matthew Wilkes
    Stop

    Lent?

    That's that old christian tradition, isn't it? Surely nobody believes in that old rot anymore.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Nuts

    Religious nutter

  11. Paul

    How about...

    ....we use the internet even more during Lent? Just to balance it out :)

  12. Paul Fremantle
    Linux

    Lent

    Actually Lent doesn't include Sundays. That's why it lasts 46 days instead of the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness: the 6 Sundays don't count. So you can text as much as you like on Sundays.

    Of course they never tell you that.

  13. Gerard Krupa

    Re: Lent?

    @Matthew Wilkes

    Technically no, it's that old Babylonian tradition that like most other Christian festivals got wrapped up in a bible story and integrated so it was easier to indoctrinate the Anglo-Saxons and others into a new up-and-coming cult about 1800 years ago.

  14. Jon H

    give up things and do what instead?...

    ...go to church perhaps?...

    Ha ha ha! Yeah right! Pull the other one. That's less likely to happen than me giving up facebook for a month!!!!

  15. Edward Hull
    Coat

    Can't Feast and Fast at the same time.

    Sundays are not part of lent.

    Too many people just never ask the question and just assume that because the sundays in lent are all refered to as the nth sunday of lent and all the teachings are themed around lent, the sundays themselves must also be days of fasting.

    Moral of the story: if you are tols that somethng is 40 units in length and you add up the individual units and get 46, ask someone why!

    Mine's the one with old church newsletters in the pocket.

  16. Daniel Silver badge
    Alert

    He has a point

    Whatever your thoughts on organised religion, you can't knock individual people for trying to improve the world. It's unfortunate that Church leaders who actually try to do something constructive quickly end up being branded 'religious nutters' - attacking the messenger whilst ignoring the message (as a society, we're getting so tied up in our electronic, virtual lives that it's time we stopped - just for a while - and took the time to look around us).

    It's not a bad message, might even be a grain of truth in it, and the guy doesn't deserve to be called a lunatic for voicing it.

    Imagine if somebody NOT affiliated with the Church had said it - the Queen, for example. Would she be called a nutter as well?

  17. Wize

    If they want all religious people to give up technology...

    ...I'm all for it. No more God-bothering TV.

  18. Rob

    Ad Hominem

    daniel up there said it better than i did, i'm not saying go to church every day, i don't believe in organised religion, but I understand what they are trying to say, and simply saying they're 'religious nutters' so you can ignore what they say, regardless of its validity, is a logical fallacy, I believe, called 'Ad Hominem' it seems most people on here need to start reading about such things and maybe realising just how biased their cognitive functions are, without them even realising, it amazes me how a lot of 'it' people think they know it all about the nature of reality, because they keep a server running or write some apps to earn money, ha!!

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Queen

    You mean the Defender of the Faith, head of the Church of England? OK, not the same Church....

  20. Mark Olleson
    Jobs Horns

    Imaginary friends

    So.... is this a case of giving up virtual worlds for imaginary friends?

  21. Mark Malley
    Thumb Up

    I didn't think of that

    That's a good idea! I go cross country in the US on a motorcycle every year and it's great to have 2 weeks without electronic communications.

  22. Chris

    @ Daniel

    If the Queen had said it I'd ignore her too.

  23. Paul

    @Chris W

    Or he could just be sugesting that people could give up somthing which is adversly affecting there lifes. You may as well say the catholic church is trying to kill diabetics because some people give up chocolat for lent.

  24. smeddy
    Stop

    I gave up religion for Lent

    Never looked back

  25. Mike Groombridge
    Happy

    Great Idea

    I would love to do this can preists sign you off work like doctors can

    Dear sir

    i am signing your systems engineers off for 46 during lent

    jesus be with you

    regards

    (some priest )

    sure my boss and the company would love that

  26. Bob Calder
    Boffin

    Did the church ever...

    Did the church ever tell people to quit writing letters to each other? I know speech (as in free) in general has never been particularly popular with them but I thought writing was generally encouraged even when "silent."

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