Fish and Lent and the Church

[TomH1]

Well, to paraphrase Samuel L Jackson’s soliloquy about dogs in Pulp Fiction , a fish doesn’t have much personality. And personality goes a long way.

Fish do not have personality because a personality is a human trait. We should not anthropomorphise animals.

I would love to post that clip, but there is language that would not exactly pass muster at the weekly Legion of Mary meeting. Google or search YouTube if you’re interested.

I shall take your word that it is worth watching. However, for science I shall go to a peer-reviewed learned journal rather than a crime film.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

Well, to paraphrase Samuel L Jackson’s soliloquy about dogs in Pulp Fiction , a fish doesn’t have much personality. And personality goes a long way.

Fish do not have personality because a personality is a human trait. We should not anthropomorphise animals.

Common knowledge and wisdom. Most people think of pet animals, at the very least, as having a certain “personality”. This might not pass academic muster, but again, in everyday life people think this way.

HomeschoolDad:

I would love to post that clip, but there is language that would not exactly pass muster at the weekly Legion of Mary meeting. Google or search YouTube if you’re interested.

I shall take your word that it is worth watching. However, for science I shall go to a peer-reviewed learned journal rather than a crime film.

That’s precisely what to do, then.

Pulp Fiction was an incredibly entertaining film for adult moviegoers who are not shocked or scandalized by a torrent of foul street language (the Holy Name is only taken in vain three or four times or so) and two fleeting sex scenes (one of which was a rape). People of more delicate sensibilities need to find other movies to watch.

 

[Michaelangelo]

Sounds like your priest was explaining it badly. What he said is true – in a sense, if you look at the Latin language. In Latin, carnis (from which we get the word carnivore, meat-eater) means the flesh of mammals and birds, and THAT is what we are forbidden to eat on the Fridays of Lent. Note, the definition of carnis does not include seafood.

Jimmy Akin has more on this:

The Law of Abstinence – Jimmy Akin

A Latin dictionary does not confirm what you just said.
https://latin-dictionary.net/definition/8271/carnis-carnis

 

[TomH1]

Common knowledge

Perhaps

and wisdom

With wisdom it would not be done.

Most people think of pet animals, at the very least, as having a certain “personality”.

I would agree but anthropomorphism is certainly best avoided with wild animals because it creates problems rather than resolving any.

People of more delicate sensibilities need to find other movies to watch.

My sensibilities are not delicate but it is a film I have never had an inclination to watch. I think there’s more to choosing a film than whether anything in it will offend you.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

Common knowledge

Perhaps

and wisdom

With wisdom it would not be done.

Most people think of pet animals, at the very least, as having a certain “personality”.

I would agree but anthropomorphism is certainly best avoided with wild animals because it creates problems rather than resolving any.

I am going to leave you to make these fine distinctions for yourself. Common, unscholarly people think of their pets as having a certain “personality”. Even my favorite girl feral cat, whom I still feed on the sly even though the omniscient HOA recently issued a fatwa against feeding ferals, has a distinct “mode of individual animal behavior that in some ways resembles what we think of in humans as a ‘personality’”, though in everyday parlance I would just chop off the first 18 words. Sometimes people just use colloquial words. Even educated ones (BA magna cum laude, MA, MBA, a year of post-graduate study in modern languages and real estate, and permanent tenure in the School of Lifelong Autodidactism).

HomeschoolDad:

People of more delicate sensibilities need to find other movies to watch.

My sensibilities are not delicate but it is a film I have never had an inclination to watch. I think there’s more to choosing a film than whether anything in it will offend you.

I didn’t mean you. I don’t know where your sensibilities lie. Some Catholics of the more traditional stripe (both TLM and conservative Novus Ordo) organize their lives as though it were some random year between the end of WWII and 1959, and for some that includes movies. Some of the more raw, coarse, gut-churning, upsetting, interpersonally frank movies of more recent years would send them crawling (or storming) out of the theater in horror. Even for myself, when I do watch television (aside from the news), I opt for the corny old rural sitcoms that my aged parents still love. Not a thing profound about them, but it is the kind of television you could sit down with the Blessed Virgin Mary herself and enjoy without embarrassment.

 

[Pitcairn17]

billcu1:

I was always confused by eating fish and sea food on Fridays during Lent. I talked to a priest at my Parrish I know and he told me fish were not animals. He said “You can look at them and see they’re not animals”. And I guess in Jesus’ day, anything from the sea wasn’t an animal. I’m not to clear on this can anyone help me understand what he was saying?

Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote in Summa Theologiae > Second Part of the Second Part > Question 147 Fasting, Article 8. Whether it is fitting that those who fast should be bidden to abstain from flesh meat, eggs, and milk foods?

I answer that, As stated above (Article 6), fasting was instituted by the Church in order to bridle the concupiscences of the flesh, which regard pleasures of touch in connection with food and sex. Wherefore the Church forbade those who fast to partake of those foods which both afford most pleasure to the palate, and besides are a very great incentive to lust. Such are the flesh of animals that take their rest on the earth, and of those that breathe the air and their products, such as milk from those that walk on the earth, and eggs from birds. For, since such like animals are more like man in body, they afford greater pleasure as food, and greater nourishment to the human body, so that from their consumption there results a greater surplus available for seminal matter, which when abundant becomes a great incentive to lust. Hence the Church has bidden those who fast to abstain especially from these foods.

SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: Fasting (Secunda Secundae Partis, Q. 147)

So at its root the Friday abstinence is about sex? Not penance, not sacrifice, but sex? There’s a twist I was never taught in theology classes. The Church’s preoccupation with, and discomfort with, even legitimate sexual expression continues to amaze me. If Christ hadn’t sanctioned marriage through the Cana event, I think under the strong influence of St. Paul’s writings the early Christian communities would have become celibate like the Shakers.

 

[billcu1]

“News” is largely nowadays, a sitcom IMO. An opinion show. And
political propaganda.

 

[billcu1]

Lust to me easily becomes fornication, adultery, and gluttony.
Gluttony is IMO too overlooked nowadays. It’s eat to live or live
to eat. One can be going through hard times emotionally and
otherwise and the first thing is start eating. Then start watching
porn. And one thing leads to another. One isn’t going to be able
to avoid things things without the Mass. It’s just the way it is.
And if there’s porn or masturbation, then the best thing is the
confessional. Since these are mortal sins. Nudity and porn are
another thing that I found kind of confusing but best left for
another conversation.

 

[Vico]

…
So at its root the Friday abstinence is about sex? Not penance, not sacrifice, but sex? There’s a twist I was never taught in theology classes. The Church’s preoccupation with, and discomfort with, even legitimate sexual expression continues to amaze me. If Christ hadn’t sanctioned marriage through the Cana event, I think under the strong influence of St. Paul’s writings the early Christian communities would have become celibate like the Shakers.

As stated in the S.T. it is not about sex per se but about lust. Marriage and reproduction are not about lust for that use is ordered.

Catechism

2351 Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Vico:

Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote in Summa Theologiae > Second Part of the Second Part > Question 147 Fasting, Article 8. Whether it is fitting that those who fast should be bidden to abstain from flesh meat, eggs, and milk foods?

I answer that, As stated above (Article 6), fasting was instituted by the Church in order to bridle the concupiscences of the flesh, which regard pleasures of touch in connection with food and sex. Wherefore the Church forbade those who fast to partake of those foods which both afford most pleasure to the palate, and besides are a very great incentive to lust. Such are the flesh of animals that take their rest on the earth, and of those that breathe the air and their products, such as milk from those that walk on the earth, and eggs from birds. For, since such like animals are more like man in body, they afford greater pleasure as food, and greater nourishment to the human body, so that from their consumption there results a greater surplus available for seminal matter, which when abundant becomes a great incentive to lust. Hence the Church has bidden those who fast to abstain especially from these foods.

So at its root the Friday abstinence is about sex? Not penance, not sacrifice, but sex? There’s a twist I was never taught in theology classes. The Church’s preoccupation with, and discomfort with, even legitimate sexual expression continues to amaze me. If Christ hadn’t sanctioned marriage through the Cana event, I think under the strong influence of St. Paul’s writings the early Christian communities would have become celibate like the Shakers.

I would question the Angelic Doctor’s science — I have to think there are a lot of libidinous vegetarians and vegans, and a lot of carnally sedate, quiescent carnivores. I’m not sure this has ever been scientifically studied.

The Church has no issue with “legitimate sexual expression”. The Church teaches that “legitimate sexual expression”, as you put it, is between two married spouses with the act ordained unto procreation (even if procreation is unlikely or impossible) and no deliberate, voluntary, directly willed barrier to procreation. Any other acts — unnatural, solitary, contraceptive, homosexual, what have you — are mortal sins of the flesh.

Some Christians find marriage not to be a calling to which they are agreeable. They simply stay single. Nobody has to marry.

I have wondered why Our Lord did not make a commandment along the lines of “thou shalt marry, and unless nature directs otherwise, thou shalt bear children unto the glory of My Name”. But He didn’t. Besides, some people are not equipped to marry on one or more of many levels, even though they have the physical ability to procreate.

 

[billcu1]

Another thing that causes us to fall to these sins is weakness.
So we need the body and blood. As well as laziness. I am bored,
lets go eat a 25" pizza. Or have sex with 5 prostitutes. Shrug.

 

[Michaelangelo]

I totally agree with you in your questioning of Thomas here. I will go further and say that he have no support what so ever for this idea in form of empirical data. All he does is formulate an idea on philosophical word constructs. I lack word to describe how annoying I find this. It’s like fingernails on a black board.

 

[bluerose]

For what it’s worth, this is how I always understood it (and my husband, who came from a different part of the country than I, also understood it this way)…

Back in the day, when only the rich could afford to own land and thus have a place to graze their cattle and livestock, only the very rich ate meat. Since no one owned the waterways (rivers, lakes, etc.) the only “meat” the poor could eat was fish. So as a sign of humility, fish was allowed to be consumed on Fridays as a “sacrifice” or form of penance. That’s what the nuns in El Paso TX taught me and that was what the nuns in Colonie, NY taught my husband 40+ years ago. Right or wrong, it made perfect sense to us, except that now the fact that hamburger is probably cheaper than a lot of fish kind of negates that explanation. Still the tradition continues… (except growing up in El Paso, we had a lot of cheese enchiladas on Fridays in Lent… fish is kind of hard to come by in the desert!)

 

[HomeschoolDad]

I totally agree with you in your questioning of Thomas here. I will go further and say that he have no support what so ever for this idea in form of empirical data. All he does is formulate an idea on philosophical word constructs. I lack word to describe how annoying I find this. It’s like fingernails on a black board.

Doesn’t bother me a bit. It’s just the way people thought back then. There are other ways to gather knowledge and draw conclusions than the scientific method, and people just went with what they knew. Five hundred years from now, people may look back on us, and think we were ignorant.

Common, unscholarly people (which Thomas surely was not) were heavily reliant upon superstitions, folk wisdom, old wives’ tales, and so on. Once before I was born, my mother was cooking a turtle for my uncle — he liked turtle soup. My grandfather saw her doing this and threw a fit — he told my mother that this would “mark that baby as a turtle”, a folkloric way of saying I would be born with turtle features and characteristics. People in that part of the country (Southern Appalachian piedmont) just thought that way. Maybe it got started way back in time, when a mother was frightened by a bird and the baby was thought to have avian features or something. It was just a folk legend.

I emerged unscathed, aside from the fact that I do tend to go back into my shell now and then…

And my uncle enjoyed his soup immensely.

 

[TomH1]

I didn’t mean you. I don’t know where your sensibilities lie.

If it is written in a reply to me I can only infer you are addressing me. Unless you state it I don’t know your intent.

am going to leave you to make these fine distinctions for yourself.

I am happy to conclude our interaction. Thank you for your engagement.

 

[TomH1]

I find it confusing that we get taught different things by different people when we are all supposed to be following the same teaching from the same Church.

I was taught that the abstinence of meat on Friday was about abstaining from something, i.e. giving something up. Therefore, the Church had never taught that we should eat fish on Fridays. Because if you eat fish on Fridays you are not giving something up; you are swapping it for something else.

When my mother and father were children they never had large amounts of meat anyway because their families could not afford it. So in one sense they had no abstinence on Fridays because having no meat was like most days other than perhaps Sunday. My mother said most people ate fish on Friday. She still does and treats it like an obligation.