catholic tastes.

BEER PENANCE From the St. Stephan Seminary Foundation to the Regensburg Diocese and many monasteries, Catholic institutions in southern Germany are continuing a hallowed tradition of beer brewing that started in the Middle Ages.

Lent is an especially busy time for the church-run breweries in Bavaria as they supply their popular, heavyweight bock beers. According to Catholic News Service (March 8, 1999), a legend that dates to the 1700s says "the pope was asked to grant German monks permission to brew and drink bock beer during times of fasting. A keg was sent over the Alps to the Vatican. But on the way, the beer was shaken up, warmed and cooled due to temperature changes. By the time it reached the pope weeks later, it was spoiled and tasted terrible. The pontiff then agreed if the German monks could drink the beer, as bad as it was, they could go ahead and brew it for the time of fasting."

ARE YOU RAPTURE READY? The fundamentalist belief in an imminent Rapture--when all born-again believers will suddenly fly up into the air to meet the Lord, while Catholics and other "apostates" and non-Christians will suffer and ultimately be slaughtered under the rule of the Antichrist--appears to gather steam. Not only has the Left Behind fiction series--with 3.5 million copies sold--become the "most successful Christian fiction series in history" (Christianity Today, March 1, 1999), some of the Web sites promoting various "premillennial, pretribulational" lunacies are reporting 50,000 "hits" a day.

On one of these sites (www.novia.net/~todd/rap2.html), you can now chart world events in a "Rapture Index." At press time, the index had tied the all-time record high of 174--meaning that we're in the "Alert Zone" (above 145). Recent harbingers of the Rapture include: "World Unrest: The Kosovo conflict has maxed out this category"--5 points; "Apostasy: In the Catholic Church there are some who are trying to elevate Mary to the status of co-redeemer"--5; "False Christs: Downgraded due to the lack of activity"--4; "Mark of the Beast: Some companies in Europe are trying out the new Euro currency"--5.

Todd Strandberg, who publishes the index, says he hopes it will be a source of explanation for those left behind in the Rapture. "Some day the New York Times is going to go looking for my site." (Current Thoughts & Trends, March 1999)

WILDE THOUGHTS "I can believe anything, provided it's incredible. That's why I intend to die a Catholic, though I couldn't possibly live as one. Catholicism is such a romantic religion. It has saints and sinners. The Church of England only has respectable people. The Catholic Church is the only church where skeptics stand at the altar, with Thomas the Doubter as prince of the apostles."

--Oscar Wilde (in the movie Wilde)

GOD'S ENEMIES "It took me a long time to understand that God is not the enemy of my enemies. God is not even the enemy of God's enemies."

--Martin Niemoller (quoted in Current Thoughts & Trends, March 1999)

ABBA PATER ANATHEMA A California radio station recently banned foreign language songs because they might include objectionable words that the station does not understand. It promptly fired one of its disc jockeys for playing Pope John Paul II's "Abba Pater." (Chicago Sun-Times, April 14, 1999)

JESUS CHE "We want to get away from the wimpy Nordic figure in a white nightie."--Rev. Tom Ambrose of England's Churches Advertising Network, commenting on his group's Easter campaign, which invited people to come to church with cards and posters depicting Jesus as Che Guevara. (Washington Post, Feb. 14, 1999)