Posted on 03/02/2017 7:28:42 PM PST by NYer
I am a Methodist. Five years ago I gave up meat on Friday for Lent. It was such a good spiritual experience, that I have foregone meat on Fridays ever since (3 exceptions in 5 years).
Like others point out, in America eating fish is easy and hardly a sacrifice. What it does for me is to remind me for at least one day each week that there is more to this ol’ world than myself. It is the spiritual equivalent of tying a string to your finger to jog your memory. Sadly, I still need reminding often.
Olplayer
I read someplace the Pope owned a fish market and didn’t want inventory laying around over the weekend.
Probably fake news.
Yes.
It is a sin for a Catholic to eat meat on Friday without an adequate reason.
Same here. Always fish in Fridays. No probs! Always looked forward to it.
Friday abstinence is required only during Lent. Some sort of penance is required on every Friday.
Not really. (at least not in my neck of the woods, which is 50%+ Catholic)
CC
Oh, for Pete’s sake, I’ll put it more simply:
Christ gave up His flesh on Good Friday so now we give up flesh on Fridays to both commemorate what He did and as a penitential mortification.
There. Done.
Here, as well. It was fish sticks, fried fish or baked fish fillets. The baked fish was cooked in a lemon sauce of some type. Years after graduation, still pine for some of the food which was served - ie. the bread pudding being one remembered. This was long before MO ever walked into a kitchen and began giving orders.
Says one who then gives us some of that old time "legalism".
A sin. Says who? The guys wearing funny hats, who thinking they sat upon seat of Moses, could create and dispense rules such as this which all must forever after then follow?
I checked into the original regs -- there was no such custom.
“Actually, Catholics don’t eat meat on any Friday.”
That’s how it was with Catholic friends when I was a kid. But that was a long time ago. Wonder when it changed?
“
That’s how it was with Catholic friends when I was a kid. But that was a long time ago. Wonder when it changed?”
Back in the 60s——when just about everything changed.
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If I was nailed to a cross I would consider my day to be anything but good. I would probably think it's a bad Friday.
Catholics are supposed to abstain from meat EVERY Friday. They have the option of giving something else instead, but that’s not supposed to be the default. (If they, for some reason had to eat meat, they could do the same thing during Lent)
When I was young, we eat fish on Fridays during lent and the rest of the year, we try to eat fish as often as we can on Fridays, since it’s more expensive than meat. A good ritual imho.
Here in the South of France, we also eat muskrats (mostly pâté or confits, available from neighbours or some local artisanal vendors only), which are swimming creatures and considered like fish by the Church, so permitted for Fridays. Again, a good tradition.
I thought they stopped the Friday meat ban decades ago - was it re-instituted?
I read years ago that the reason for meatless Fridays was because Italy was experiencing a cattle shortage at the time & officials convinced the pope to declare Friday meatless to alleviate the shortage.
Does anyone know if this is true?
I don’t know if the ‘meatless Fridays’ reason for Italy is true, but it sounds like a government form of rationing, such as many food items were rationed in the US during WWII. Watch some of the old movies that were produced during the war and occasionally there is a scene in a diner where a person orders a hamburger and the server says: “Sorry no hamburger’s today, this is meatless Tuesday.”
That is different from giving up something for religious reasons, such as meat on Fridays, sweets and other food items during Lent.
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