Roly poly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads,
Eat them up, yum!"
Barnes & Barnes-"Fish Heads"
Happy Friday everyone! Tonight is a big night for restaurants, as many families and couples hit up their favorite dives to celebrate the end of the week. What are you going to have tonight? Steak? Chicken? Pasta? Pizza? Tex-Mex? Thai? Indian? If so, you are the lucky ones, especially this time of year. Me? I'm a practicing Catholic, so I am limited in my choices due to it being the liturgical season of Lent.
Fish. Lots of Fish. Fish, fish, and more fish. Of course, other seafood is fair game as well and I enjoy plenty of other types of seafood, but fish is much cheaper than lobster or crab. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. Sgt. Fish from Barney Miller. A Fish Called Wanda. You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.
If you are a seafood lover and a Catholic, Lent will not pose a problem for you. However, if you are allergic or just plain don't like fish, Lent will be a major struggle. Liking seafood has never been an issue for me, but by the end of Lent, I get to the point where I hope I don't see another fish for a long time. Of course, pasta and pizza are also fair game, but steer away from meat sauce or pepperoni. No eggs either...rats! Oh wait...we CAN have eggs? Then I've been denying myself breakfast for nothing for all these years...oops.
Also, for the love of all that is holy, do not let your family take you to a restaurant that specializes in steak, pork, or bacon on a Friday night during Lent. That is either a felony or it should be as it is cruel and unusual punishment. So, steer clear of the Longhorns, the Texas Roadhouse, or the Ruth's Cris on Fridays during Lent. You do not want to be sitting there, mouth all agape, as everyone around you is enjoying a delicious T-Bone while you stare at your plate of haddock.
Many of my Catholic friends know how I will rant against this practice as Lent nears its close, mostly because I am sick of fish by this time, even though I love fish. Well, I've decided to investigate why "fish on Friday" has been the rule for practicing Catholics during Lent. Think about it for a second: In Sacred Scripture, Christ did not say during the Sermon on the Mount "Behold, you shall eat fish on the Friday of the week, or the penalty will be firey Gehenna." So why do we adhere to this tradition that probably seems either silly or unnecessary to our Evangelical (Protestant) brothers and sisters? (who I am not knocking! Love you all! Take this in the spirit in which it is intended, educating and entertaining!)
Well, first, there is no law saying that we HAVE to eat fish on Friday. Go ahead, read that again. What we do have to abstain from is the meat of warm-blooded animals in observance of the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for us...on a Friday. In layman's terms, that means mammal flesh. Fish, on the other hand, are cold blooded, so eating fish passes the test as far as being acceptable to eat on days of Fast and Abstinence during Lent. To be even more pedantic, you could eat snake or another form of reptile meat (as reptiles are cold blooded), but unless you live in a backwater bayou somewhere, I doubt that reptile meat would be seen as appetizing. I'll stick with the fish...but if you enjoy alligator and have been abstaining from that on Fridays...abstain no more and eat to your content. Bon Appetit! Also, if you happen to be a vegan or vegetarian Catholic, you truly have nothing to worry about as you pretty much eat Lenten already.
Also, go back to the time of around A.D. 40-50. You could not walk down the block in Jerusalem and pick up a Big Mac at the local McDonalds. You could not go to a strip mall in Nazareth to dine at Outback Steakhouse. Meat was a luxury and not as plentiful as it is now. Fish, on the other hand, was almost omnipresent in the lives of Jesus and the Apostles. Before Andrew and Simon Peter became "fishers of men", they were fishers of fish! One of the central foods of the Feeding of the 5,000 was fish. Due to the proximity of the Sea of Galilee, fish was easy to obtain and due to it being plentiful, cheap! It was seen as a humble food, the food of a pauper.
Meat was also seen as being associated with feasts. According to Fr. Mike Schmitz, chaplain of the University of Minnesota-Duluth "...meat was singled out because it is associated with celebrations and feasts. I understand that there has been a slight cultural shift in the last number of years with more and more people eating a more vegetarian diet, but most of us still base the food we eat during celebrations around a meat entrée (Thanksgiving turkey, Easter ham, Fourth of July brat, burger and a steak). A day devoted to remembering Christ’s Passion doesn’t seem like a day to feast. Interestingly enough, the day we celebrate the Resurrection is a day for feasting (and we get one of those every single week: Sunday)."
Also, one thing to understand, is that this is not a "dogma". It is just a discipline of the Church. It is subject to change. Fr. Schmitz: "In a 1966 document, “Apostolic Constitution on Penance”, Pope Paul VI reorganized and clarified the Church’s practice. He determined that abstinence forbids the use of meat, but not of eggs, milk products or condiments made of animal fat. Moral theologians have taken varying sides on this, but it seems that gravies, broths, and soups cooked or flavored with meat are permissible. It would seem a bit “off” to me to take this so far as to serve beef barley soup at the Lenten Soup Suppers, but one rule of thumb could be “if you can drink it through a straw, you’ve got nothing to worry about”. (You may be completely missing the point as you sip on your pepperoni milkshake, but I guess that’s why we have a distinction between the spirit and the letter of the law.)" I love this priest's sense of humor. My favorite priests are the one's who are dedicated to their faith and stay true to it, but also don't take themselves too seriously. I still miss the priest I knew who was a King Crimson fan.
We all know how necessity is the mother of invention. True story: A McDonald's franchiser in Cincinnati, OH noticed a huge drop off in hamburger sales on Fridays during Lent. He found out that his restaurant was located in a neighborhood in the Queen City that had a large Catholic population. So, he created a new sandwich for his menu: the Filet-O-Fish, and sales picked up again. It is now a common item on McD's menus all over the world, and they still sell at a brisk pace during Lent. Take it from someone who has spent many a Friday during Lent in a McD's drive-thru. It's all true, I swear! If I'm lying, I'm dying!
Another interesting little tidbit: In the early days of Christianity, practicing your faith in public could have possibly ended in you being literally raked over the coals or thrown to the lions. The drawing of a symbolic fish in the dirt was a way that the early Christians knew each other without tipping off the centurions.
So, my Catholic friends, while you dig into your Friday meal tonight, remember to give thanks to the one who was sacrificed for us on a Friday, and stop complaining about eating fish! Don't worry, I'm telling myself this as well, because Lent is a time for sacrifice, and sacrifice is not holy without love.
Some of this stuff may be familiar to you, some of it may not, but I hope you found it entertaining and educational! Dominus Vobiscum!
Source: https://bulldogcatholic.org/why-dont-catholics-eat-meat-during-lent/
No comments:
Post a Comment