Fish on Friday?

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Being Jewish, we have eaten chicken on Friday for thousands of years. Fish is a delicacy reserved for feast days.
Hence, as a Catholic I eat chicken. It is a penance. I think we focus too much on the fish and not enough on the penance
 
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LilBiddyLeah said:
Being Jewish, we have eaten chicken on Friday for thousands of years. Fish is a delicacy reserved for feast days.
Hence, as a Catholic I eat chicken. It is a penance. I think we focus too much on the fish and not enough on the penance
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It isn’t really fish on Friday, but no meat on Friday. Some people just substitute fish as protein, in lieu of whatever meat they would have been having. We don’t eat fish on Friday because my kids don’t like it and I like it a little bit too much for it to be penitential.
 
For thousands of years, most of humanity lived on the brink of starvation and did not eat meat, except on special occassions. This changed fairly recently for us in the West.
People in the Meditrranean basin had much easier access to fish (product of the sea) than meat.
 
LilBiddyLeah said:
Being Jewish, we have eaten chicken on Friday for thousands of years. Fish is a delicacy reserved for feast days.
Hence, as a Catholic I eat chicken. It is a penance. I think we focus too much on the fish and not enough on the penance
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We avoid the meat of warm-blooded animals (“bloody” meats) as a penance and a reminder that Christ’s blood was shed on a Friday.
 
I eat meatless on Friday as a symbolic gesture towards tradition.
There’s nothing particularly “penitential” in me eating donuts and cheese pizza, or tuna salad, or pasta salad, or a peanut butter sandwich. I like all those things.
I often have a meatless day without planning it because I just feel like eating a roast veggie sandwich or whatever.

If I really want to do penance I eat something I hate, like grapefruit.
Omission of meat for one day isn’t much of a penance.
 
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We avoid the meat of warm-blooded animals (“bloody” meats) as a penance and a reminder that Christ’s blood was shed on a Friday
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I have never been given that explanation for meatless Friday. I’m fairly new to Catholicism and I learn every day. Looks like veggie and bean stir fry on Friday
 
I agree with you 100%. It’s about abstinence. Outside of a few specific days on the calendar (Lent), U.S. Catholics aren’t even required to give up meat on Fridays, anymore. That is they can substitute something else. I choose to abstain from meat on Fridays. For me it is actually pretty tough, as I am a meat lover.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Omission of meat for one day isn’t much of a penance.
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Until the food truck serving your favorite thing for lunch decides to park right outside your office on Friday…Not that I have any experience with that…please stop doing this to me!!!
 
LilBiddyLeah said:
We avoid the meat of warm-blooded animals (“bloody” meats) as a penance and a reminder that Christ’s blood was shed on a Friday
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It has to do with consuming blood of land and air animals (not water dwellers, generally). Also land animal skins were used to store olive oil and wine, so in eastern practice, there is abstinence from olive oil and wine sometimes also. Dairy products and eggs included. St. Thomas Aquinas mentions that fast and abstinence is good in overcoming concupiscence.
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Regardless whether you personally consider abstaining from meat on Fridays during lent a penance (I agree - it’s not really), it is still a precept of the Church. Just thought I’d make sure people are clear on that.
 
Excellent read. Answered a lot of questions. So people like us, who cannot afford fish, are really not obligated to it. However beans contain more than adequate protein and are delicious.
 
You sound like my mom who loved grapefruit broiled with brown sugar. I find grapefruit to be horribly bitter. Have hated it my whole life.
 
I think you’re focusing too much on what you ‘think’ and not enough on obedience.

But I still have to give you props for being able to eat for thousands of years.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
You sound like my mom who loved grapefruit broiled with brown sugar. I find grapefruit to be horribly bitter.
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Yellow grapefruit tends to be bitter.

Pink grapefruit, particularly the Texas strain, tend to be sweet. The ones from my tree are as sweet as oranges . . .
 
No, my mom would buy pink grapefruit by the box, mail order, and insist to me it was sweet. I would eat it and yuck…still bitter.
Nothing like oranges. It must be my tastebuds.

Last time I was eating the stuff for a penance during Lent I went to the organic store and bought the “good” pink kind…nope…still awful.
I could barely get it down.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
You sound like my mom who loved grapefruit broiled with brown sugar. I find grapefruit to be horribly bitter. Have hated it my whole life.
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I agree! And now that I have high blood pressure, I have yet another legitimate reason for not eating it. Grapefruit is not compatible with my blood pressure medication.
 
I’m learning. As a Catholic I’m only 7 years old. Let me learn. And yes I do what I think Jesus wants me to do. Is that a problem?
 
I’m not trying to force you into anything. I’m just telling you what the teaching of the Church is; in the US, not eating meat (and chicken is meat) on Lenten Fridays and Ash Wednesday.

So, if fish is out (I admit, anything other than tuna I cannot stomach), rice, beans, etc. and cheese are the way I’d go!
 
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