I’ve never understood how eating fish (or macaroni and cheese, for that matter) can be an act of penance.
I’m fond of both. Ate them every Friday in the school cafeteria when I was a child and didn’t feel like I was missing a thing.
Seems to me that it would be more penitent and do more good to fast and give the savings to the poor.
19. Changing circumstances, including economic, dietary, and social elements, have made some of our people feel that the renunciation of the eating of meat is not always and for everyone the most effective means of practicing penance. Meat was once an exceptional form of food; now it is commonplace.
20. Accordingly, since the spirit of penance primarily suggests that we discipline ourselves in that which we enjoy most, to many in our day abstinence from meat no longer implies penance, while renunciation of other things would be more penitential.
21. For these and related reasons, the Catholic bishops of the United States, far from downgrading the traditional penitential observance of Friday, and motivated precisely by the desire to give the spirit of penance greater vitality, especially on Fridays, the day that Jesus died, urge our Catholic people henceforth to be guided by the following norms.
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27. It would bring great glory to God and good to souls if Fridays found our people doing volunteer work in hospitals, visiting the sick, serving the needs of the aged and the lonely, instructing the young in the Faith, participating as Christians in community affairs, and meeting our obligations to our families, our friends, our neighbors, and our community, including our parishes, with a special zeal born of the desire to add the merit of penance to the other virtues exercised in good works born of living faith.
The idea that it is/was a sin to eat meat on Friday is ridiculous.
Having a jar where you can put in a little money every Friday could be a good way to honor the sacrifice. The money could be donated to the church or a charity.
I was raised Catholic and I never understood it either. It probably made more sense when red meat was a luxury for most people but now days and for many years now, fish, even canned salmon or tuna is relatively more expensive compared to say ground beef. I also never understood why eating shrimp on Friday was any sort of penance either – I’d much rather eat steamed shrimp than the hockey puck hamburgers on Wonder Bread that my mother used to make or …(shudders) liver and onions!
I watched a show earlier today on the History Channel about life in Medieval Europe – “Going Medieval”. For most common people red meat was a luxury, only the landed nobility could hunt big game (deer, wild boar) on their own lands, and the penalties for poaching were severe. Most common folk, except for on very special occasions didn’t eat much red meat and when they did, it was mostly small game like rabbit or mutton, that was if they were fortunate to have any land on which to raise lamb. Fish, especially river fish like Pike was much a more common and affordable protein staple of the poor and working class.
I’m fond of both. Ate them every Friday in the school cafeteria when I was a child and didn’t feel like I was missing a thing.
As a kid I actually looked forward to Friday as that meant some of my favorite dinners/comfort foods that I still like today – fish sticks with mac and cheese and stewed tomatoes or grilled cheese and tomato soup or tuna salad subs, which BTW were the only thing my high school cafeteria made that was worth buying – Fridays the only day I didn’t brown bag it.
Seems to me that it would be more penitent and do more good to fast and give the savings to the poor.
Some Catholic churches do that on Good Friday. I also remember fasting on Good Friday when I was a teenager – little kids were not expected to fast.
After he had been there for a while, a friend visited him and asked if he had any success in getting the cannibals to stop eating people.
"No," he said. "They're still cannibals. But now they only eat fishermen on Fridays."
What am I supposed to do since I don't eat meat anyway, am Traditional Catholic and poor?