MERGED: Is eating fish on Friday REALLY a penance/Over fishing

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chrisetree

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I love mcdonalds fish fillets. They happen to be on sale right now and will be for 6 more weeks. Am i really doing penance by eating them every friday until easter? Me thinks not.
😃

So why have the rule of no meat on friday when Mac and cheese, tuna salad, shrimp,
salmon steaks, and grilled cheese and tomato soup are delicious?
 
chrisetree said:
I love mcdonalds fish fillets. They happen to be on sale right now and will be for 6 more weeks. Am i really doing penance by eating them every friday until easter? Me thinks not.
😃

So why have the rule of no meat on friday when Mac and cheese, tuna salad, shrimp,
salmon steaks, and grilled cheese and tomato soup are delicious?
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It’s less about eating fish, and more about abstaining from meat (beast or fowl…non-fish)

But I do understand your point. Penance ultimately is an attitude of soul and spirit, shown thru acts of contrition.

Going out for lobster would not be in the spirit of having abstaining on Fridays in Lent. 😉
 
For someone like me, who dislikes most fish and seafood, it would be a penance.

I have visited “fish frys” at Midwestern parishes that were veritable bacchanalias of meatless delicacies, with something for every palate. These really seemed to stretch the whole meaning of Friday abstinence.
 
I’ve abstained from meat on Fridays my entire life with a few exceptions of a day here and there. There’s nothing at all hard about it for me. I often eat a lot of meatless meals on days other than Fridays and they are equally delicious as a hamburger or something with meat in it.

So, no. Not a penance for me. 😃
 
chrisetree said:
I love mcdonalds fish fillets. They happen to be on sale right now and will be for 6 more weeks. Am i really doing penance by eating them every friday until easter? Me thinks not.
😃

So why have the rule of no meat on friday when Mac and cheese, tuna salad, shrimp,
salmon steaks, and grilled cheese and tomato soup are delicious?
Click to expand...
Its a matter of attitude. Nobody is forcing you to eat the other items you listed.
 
If it isn’t a penance for you (it is for me, I hate fish, e-yuck) . . .

Remember that there is no ‘rule that says "you must eat fish on Friday in Lent’. . .

The rule is 'you may not eat meat on Friday in Lent."

Big difference.

So if you just love everything and would eat anything from tofu to cheese or eggs or fish yum yum. . .

Why not try fasting or cutting portions or ‘simplifying’ food instead?

You don’t have to eat the fish (or other meatless delights) you enjoy. . .

You can eat less.

You can ‘eat bland.’ Ditch the salt and pepper on your scrambled egg and eat the toast dry, no butter or jelly.

Meatless and penitential.
 
heck after reading YOUR post…I just might have a Big Mac!😃
 
Cavaille-Coll said:
For someone like me, who dislikes most fish and seafood, it would be a penance.

I have visited “fish frys” at Midwestern parishes that were veritable bacchanalias of meatless delicacies, with something for every palate. These really seemed to stretch the whole meaning of Friday abstinence.
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We have more choices than simply “fried fish” in recent years which is wonderful. Bacchanalia brings to mind eating and drinking to excess along with other carnal pleasures, but I don’t agree that having choices equals such a sinful event. Some people have more limited diets and should not have “fried” anything, while others go totally vegetarian or vegan for Lent (in the ancient fashion of the more strict fast the Orthodox still follow). We appreciate that all in our parish whether eating fish, plain pasta & sauce or bread and water can come together in prayer and fellowship after our Stations of the Cross on Fridays in Lent.

Fridays are not “fast” days for all of Lent, just abstinence from meat. If someone wants to make food their only form of sacrifice during Lent, then of course they may go more strict than someone else for whom that is not their primary sacrific. It does not make one a better Catholic than the other, nor does it mean they are not truly “abstinent” if they want more than a dried out fish stick. I’m having Cajun beans and rice for lunch today and the leftovers for dinner later. I don’t think I have to also seek out plain, unappetizing food when the church asks for me to refrain from having meat. I had a hard enough time finding something soft and meatless that I can eat with my recent dental work.

We serve many 1000s of people every Friday in Lent at my parish and it funds a large portion of our teen mission trip every year. I dare say if it was simply a bread and water in silence type of meal that it would be sparsely attended. It still requires a special effort on the part of our people to abstain from anything containing meat all day, but we choose to use part of that day as a special time to gather our rather huge parish together as much as possible for “family” prayer and dinner along with some fellowship that never happens any other time of year. At the meal we are loud and laughing and having a great time sharing food at large communal tables with people we may not have seen much since the last Lenten meals. I’ve reconnected with old friends from some past ministry or seen teens all grown up who I worked when they were in school years ago at these meals. I think that God would be pleased to see His children together in community in a wholesome environment building ties that bind instead of holed up at home alone sipping some veggie broth or gnawing an old crust of bread. I don’t think that meatless must equal miserable or somehow it is stretching the rule.
 
I wonder if eating fish is really the way to go, as far as giving up meat? Considering we are over-fishing our oceans at the moment, shouldn’t we be also giving up fish and eating something else? Say, lentils?
 
Ailina said:
I wonder if eating fish is really the way to go, as far as giving up meat? Considering we are over-fishing our oceans at the moment, shouldn’t we be also giving up fish and eating something else? Say, lentils?
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The Church doesn’t require that fish is eaten. It requires that meat is not. There a lot of people that don’t eat fish when abstaining because they don’t like it. There doesn’t need to be a Church rule on this point. Anything outside of abstaining is a personal choice that one is free to exercise. I eat a lot of beans and tofu in addition to seafood thrown in on occasion.
 
Ailina said:
I wonder if eating fish is really the way to go, as far as giving up meat? Considering we are over-fishing our oceans at the moment, shouldn’t we be also giving up fish and eating something else? Say, lentils?
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That’s up to the individual, but talking about ‘overfishing’ makes me wonder where it’s going.

Too many human beings on the planet demanding fish?

And then where do we go from there? Abortion and euthanasia? Or merely forcing people to eat beans when animal flesh is a higher-quality food?
 
For me fish is one of my favorite foods. So giving up fish is not a penance. I usually eat eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, veggie pizza, salads. There are many non-meat foods that can be replaced.

The purpose of abstinence is penance. It is not to be legalistic.
 
here is my point: why doesn’t the church just say, do your own penance?
NOT eating meat is NOT hard! DUH.

Cheese pizza, alfredo, salmon steaks, broiled Walleye…not bad not bad my friend.

So obviously it is NOT a penance to eat fish on fridays (unless you HATE fish)

Maybe the church should let people make their own dietary decisions.:rolleyes:
 
chrisetree said:
here is my point: why doesn’t the church just say, do your own penance?
NOT eating meat is NOT hard! DUH.

Cheese pizza, alfredo, salmon steaks, broiled Walleye…not bad not bad my friend.

So obviously it is NOT a penance to eat fish on fridays (unless you HATE fish)

Maybe the church should let people make their own dietary decisions.:rolleyes:
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Because every man’s meat is another’s poison, to coin a phrase. There’s no single thing that would be a sacrifice for everyone.

The Church might say ‘give up sugar’, but there would be diabetics who say ‘I don’t have sugar anyways, so it’s no sacrifice’. The Church might say ‘don’t eat at all’, but there would be some (in fact I know some) who would say ‘I’m the sort of person who eats very irregularly anyways, so 24 hours without food is no hardship for me’.

Obedience to the rules the Church sets, while not a source of physical discomfort for many, IS a source of spiritual mortification in this day and age of mostly unlimited licence, truly.

I am one who doesn’t eat meat all the time, but I DO enjoy having the freedom to eat whatever-the-heck-type-of-food-I-want according to my cravings on any given day. And being the contrarian I am do tend to think about/crave meat on those very days when it’s not permitted me. I suspect most people find the same happens to them.

And the Church does leave things up to the individual to a degree. We are meant to give up things of we enjoy for Lent, of our own free will, as well as obeying the set rules of fast and abstinence. Some give up sugar or other foods, others will focus on eliminating the TV or internet or whatnot.
 
chrisetree said:
here is my point: why doesn’t the church just say, do your own penance?
NOT eating meat is NOT hard! DUH.

Cheese pizza, alfredo, salmon steaks, broiled Walleye…not bad not bad my friend.

So obviously it is NOT a penance to eat fish on fridays (unless you HATE fish)

Maybe the church should let people make their own dietary decisions.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Because the point was no meat on Friday to identify with the poor…as meat was expensive at that time.

Now…my husband…eating tuna would be a pennance for him:D. We usually eat vegetarian patties…in fact we ate them all this week…so today it was tomato soup…in the spirit of pennance.

Now my grandma used to serve smelt…YUK! :eek: That is a BIG pennance!
 
Annabelle_Marie said:
Because the point was no meat on Friday to identify with the poor…as meat was expensive at that time.

Now…my husband…eating tuna would be a pennance for him:D. We usually eat vegetarian patties…in fact we ate them all this week…so today it was tomato soup…in the spirit of pennance.

Now my grandma used to serve smelt…YUK! :eek: That is a BIG pennance!
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I really, really, really like breaded smelt! Unfortunately, it’s been ages since I’ve had any. That wouldn’t be a penance for me at all. Now such foods as peanut butter I could do without.

I think, however, that if someone finds that avoiding meat is not a real penance for them they can always easily think of something that is (while still abstaining from meat, of course).
 
Trivia,

McDonald’s Fil-a-o-fish was developed by a Catholic man (Cincinnati Ohio area) who back in 1965-ish. He owned a McDonald’s franchise and realized he was losing customers on Fridays to a fish place down the road…!!
 
Marie, I saw that in the little Lenten book I got at my parish!

For me, eating fish is not a particular penance because I would happily eat fish every day of the week. (And, er, usually do.) So what I am trying to do instead is a sort of fasting and abstinence each Friday of Lent. I am a grazer and perhaps a comfort eater, and definitely a “foodie.” So throughout Lent I am making an effort to eat more simply, and on Fridays I don’t just go “WOO FISH FRY!” (which is what I’ve done in years past, having grown up in a rather Catholic city). Fried fish and haluski? Yes please!

Anyway… I am, on Fridays, eating only one moderate meal and two small meals, no snacks, no dessert, and not using it as a reason to go in for 18 plates of shrimp cocktail. The Operation Rice Bowl site has a lot of recipes that are meatless and fishless, and I am trying some of those instead. This is only my first year doing this and the biggest thing is that I sometimes feel pretty cranky without my grazing through the day, but I work in customer service and I have to keep in mind that each person I help is one of God’s children and treat them accordingly.

That’s just me, though. And I can also relate to LilyM, because for whatever reason on Fridays I find myself thinking: “I could really devour a steak right now.”
 
For me it truly is a penance. While you are right that those other options are yummy, I find that while on Thursday I may want a Grilled Cheese I find on Friday’s of Lent, I really really want meat. We tend to desire things that are forbidden to us. All I could think of all day was buffalo wings. I stayed strong and I did not have wings, in fact I did not have breakfast or lunch, and dinner was at church before Stations.

Know, I can promise you tomorrow when I can have those buffalo wings, I won’t want them. I will eat oatmeal or cold cereal or a bagel instead. All of these things I could have had today, but didn’t because all I wanted was wings.
 
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