Don't forget Lent!

The IDS coverage of the Muslim Ramadan is admirable ("Muslim Student Union raises money for kitchen with Fast-a-thon" by Zachary Osterman, Oct 12). It is so important for your readers to realize that most adherents to a religious tradition have spiritual depth. Too often religious persons are characterized as "simple thinkers" who follow leaders with a "mindless obedience." This is quite inaccurate. Most believers do obey but with a critical concern about how to live the precepts of their religious tradition. Hence, they -- the believers -- struggle with their faith and its demands. And it is important in the present sociopolitical climate for Americans to discover that Islam is a tradition of deep human values and of searching. \nIn this article, I was amazed and saddened by the comment of a Catholic student who was quoted in the article about the Fast-a-thon saying, "I'm Catholic, and there's really no religious holiday that calls for (fasting)." Apparently he forgot that Catholics observe Lent, a six-week period of fasting, prayer and almsgiving in the springtime (Feb-March). I invite this student to take another look at his religious tradition and discover in it the practices that, like his Muslim brethren, call us to become humans of deep quality. Fasting does this when it is done with spirit and not just as a legal religious requirement, and when it is linked to almsgiving—sharing from our simplicity of living. \nWe Catholics at St. Paul Catholic Center, the Catholic campus ministry at IU, pray that we, with our Muslim brethren and all true searchers, will be faithful to the calling of God, the One and the Holy.