by this time there

Only in NY could you find Fast Food Religion. At St. Patrick's Cathedral every year, you can stand in long lines to receive ashes on Ash Wednesday (TODAY, you lapsers, you) without having to sit through mass. Men and women in business clothes patiently making their way through the drive-thru line for the mark of repentance.

On one hand, it is the clear symbol of our culture -- too busy, too harried to take more than ten minutes to commemorate the Lord, too concerned with the hustle to do more than receive a cursory thumbsmear. Really, there are too few minutes in the day for work, sleep, meals, AND God? You're cutting the minutes out of the wrong grouping, hardheart.

On the other hand, in a city of ten million, with several million Catholics to process in the course of a few hours in a locale where there isn't a church on every corner, this is perhaps the only way to manage helping everyone find a means by which to publicly identify with God and proclaim a repentant heart. In which case, the cynics are the hardhearters.

Hear that, me? Didn't learn about prejudging enough from the whole Tesh thing,?