HUH?????

Yesterday at a parish that shall remain nameless, to protect the innocent, they had a booklet entitled Prayers for College Students. It had some really good ones by St. Thomas Aquinas, St, Anselm & St. Augustine. It had several other good prayers like Anuma Christi (English) & the Apostleship of Prayer Morning Offering.

But there was 1 prayer that started out good. Until I got to this line:

Help me to reject whatever is harmful to it: too much eating, drinking, smoking; abuse of drug or sex.

I looked at it & something didn't seem right. Then it dawned on me, the way it was worded. the 1st part, up to too much eating, drinking, smoking, presented no problem. It was the last part. abuse of drug or sex, that raised the concerns.

I know that there is a semicolon before abuse of drug or sex but with my job I have been arround college students long enough to know that they can be jesuitical in a way that would make a Jesuit seem like a slacker. A good majority of them would see the semicolon as a comma, see no or between eating & drinking, & the only or between drug & sex. & say: "How far can I go before abuse of drug become too much?" or "How much sex is OK before it becomes too much?"

They would have ignored the 1st part about rejecting what is harmful. Thus they would have also ignored the fact that the prayer was a call to reject drug abuse. They would have also ignored the fact that the or connected abuse of with sex as well. They would not see it as saying that any form of sex outside of marriage is wrong.

IMHO the prayer would have been better worded thus: Help me to reject whatever is harmful to it: drug abuse; misuse of the gift of my seuality; too much eating, drinking, or smoking.

Maybe I am being a little too critical since the booklet is a wonderful attempt to encourage those young people going off to school to not abandon their faith. But, as I said, I have been arround college students long enough that it is better to avoid anything that would enable them to go off in a wrong direction.