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Today marks the beginning of the Lenten season with Ash Wednesday. The day and the season are mostly associated with Roman Catholicism, but the tradition is also observed by denominations including, but not limited to, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists and Presbyterians. And, according to a Salt Lake Tribune article, many Protestant denominations that had once regarded Lent as a non-Biblical ritual are increasingly incorporating Lent into their observances.

Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches also observe Lent, though their observance began two days earlier on Ash Monday.

A common thread among all denominations is a period where Christians meditate on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ across a period of 40 days. Observers make a personal sacrifice during the season, and Lent commonly involves daily fasts and abstention from meat-eating.

Catholic Online has the messages and meanings of the Roman Catholic Lenten rite.

According to the Ash Wednesday page:

•The ashes, made from the charred palms used in the prior year's Palm Sunday, are a reminder of humankind's mortality. Ashes are placed on the forehead with the reminder that "Man is dust, and unto dust you shall return."

•The Catholic Church has a thorough code on the practices of fasting and abstinence. Fasting, or reducing the amount of food eaten during the Lenten period, must be observed by Catholics ages 18 to 59. Abstinence, or refraining from eating meat, is required of Catholics ages 14 and older on Ash Wednesday and the Fridays before Easter Sunday. The sick, pregnant and nursing women, and workers in jobs requiring strenuous manual labor are exempt from fast and abstinence.

•While Lent is a time of sacrifice, it is also a time for all observers to still carry out their obligations as students, workers and parents. So, no, vacations are not considered sacrifices.

For other questions regarding Lenten observance, Catholic Online has an FAQ page.

YouTube gets more ecclesiastical as the head of the Catholic Church joins President Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth II on the Web video site.

Pope Benedict XVI launched his own site Friday welcoming viewers to this "great family that knows no borders" and said he hoped they would "feel

involved in this great dialogue of truth."

The Pope's site was launched the same day the pontiff praised as a "gift to humanity" the benefits of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace in forging friendships and understanding.

He joins President Barack Obama and Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in reaching out to the digital generation.

The Vatican said it was launching the channel to broaden Benedict's audience while also giving the Holy See better control over the papal image online.

And while Benedict sees some benefits to virtual socializing, he warned that "obsessive" online networking could isolate people from real social interaction and broaden the digital divide by further marginalizing people.

And in his message for the World Day of Communications, he urged producers of new media to ensure that the content respected human dignity and the "goodness and intimacy of human sexuality."

The 81-year-old pope has been extremely wary of new media and their effect on society, warning about what he has called the tendency of entertainment media, in particular, to trivialize sex and promote violence.

But Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli, who heads the Vatican's social communications office, said the pope fully approved of the Vatican YouTube channel, saying Benedict was "a man of dialogue" who wanted to engage with people wherever they were.

"It's true that not all of humanity is found on YouTube, but millions of people meet on YouTube," Celli told reporters.

Benedict is joining the White House, which launched its own YouTube channel after Obama's inauguration day, as well as Queen Elizabeth II, who went online with her royal YouTube channel in December 2007.

Celli likened the Vatican channel to the pontiff's pilgrimages around the world, in which he meets with millions of the faithful. The Internet and YouTube,

Celli said, allowed for a more intimate interaction during which the user "enters in a personal dialogue with the pope."

Celli said the Vatican was launching the channel in part to have some control over the pontiff's image, which he said already was being used on sites respectful of the papacy and not.

"It's undeniable that certain images are already circulating," Celli said. While there is little the Vatican can do legally to shut down blasphemous or pornographic sites that use the papal or other Church images, he said it can at least control the content of what it puts up on its own channel.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the Vatican hoped that YouTube owner Google, Inc., would help the Holy See determine where Vatican images are being used so that it can better protect its own images.

He said no money exchanged hands to launch the channel and that the Vatican wouldn't earn anything with publicity. "We didn't pay a cent to Google," he said, adding that the channel was the Vatican's "offer" to the world.

The Vatican plans to update the YouTube site daily with the most important papal news items that are produced by the Vatican's television station, CTV.

The messages are available in Italian, German, English and Spanish.

Google's managing director for media solutions, Henrique de Castro, said Google was working out details to ensure the site was available in China, where authorities occasionally block foreign news sites. The Vatican and China have no diplomatic relations, and Church authorities have accused

Beijing in the past of blocking the faithful's access to the pontiff's messages.

Celli said the YouTube channel was the next logical step after the Vatican entered the digital age on Christmas Day in 1995, launching its Web site with Pope John Paul II's traditional Urbi et Orbi message.

The site has been expanded over the years and now includes virtual tours of the Vatican Museums, audio feeds from Vatican Radio, as well as the Vatican's daily news bulletin and key Church documents.

There's a lot of junk on the Internet, especially when it comes to videos. Plenty of the content on YouTube is more ridiculous than even the most mind-numbing episodes of VH1 reality shows. Sometimes you want something more substantial, more meaty, more insightful.

That's where PBS's Frontline archive comes in -- a collection of smart, in-depth documentaries viewable online. "The Medicated Child," for example, takes a look at the issues concerning children who are prescribed psychiatric drugs. "Young & Restless in China" focuses on nine young adults in China coping with their country's rapidly changing environment. There are films on AIDS, the Holocaust, obesity and, of course, the Iraq War. The archive dates back to 2001, so there's no shortage of videos here. Log on and feed your head.

Did you know that St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is not a cathedral, but a shrine? Just what makes a church a cathedral, anyway? Find out the answers, plus beautiful photographs and drawings and detailed histories of California's cathedrals at the blogging project by author and Roman Catholic deacon Eric Stoltz and Los Angeles photographer Francesco Curá, "Cathedrals of California." The duo set out to document the state's 36 identified cathedrals in a "virtual pilgrimage," and the blog so far contains entries on 25 of them. These include the largest and the oldest Roman Catholic cathedrals in the U.S., both of which are located in California. The site also provides maps, trivia and a list of former cathedrals and "almost cathedrals."