VATICAN CORNER
Historically, the Catholic Church has observed the disciplines of fasting and abstinence at various times each year. Fasting is the reduction in the intake of food, while abstinence is the refraining from a particular food, like meat. The Church teaches that all people are obliged by God to perform some penance for their sins, and penance is both personal and corporeal (affecting the body). The purpose of fasting and abstinence are for spiritual focus, self-discipline, imitation of Christ, and performing penance. On Fridays, abstaining from eating meat and instead eating fish has long been a tradition in the Church. Up until 1966, church law prohibited meat on all Fridays throughout the entire year, not just during Lent. A false story about the beginning of this tradition says that a powerful medieval pope make a secret pact to prop up the fishing industry. Many people have searched the Vatican archives but have found no evidence for that story. The real reason for fish on Friday comes from Christian teaching that Jesus died on a Friday, his death redeemed a sinful world, and to commemorate this sacrifice, people abstain from eating the flesh of warm-blooded animals, that in a sense sacrificed its life for us. Fish are coldblooded, so they are considered ok to eat on Fridays. Also fish had been associated with sacred holidays even in pre- Christian times. The medieval Christian calendar, required not only meatless Fridays, but Wednesdays and Saturdays as well, and during Advent, Lent and other holy days. As a result the need for fish grew greatly and consequently so did the global fishing industry. At first herring was the fish of choice because they were plentiful, but they were also dry and tasteless when salted or smoked as was necessary for preservation. Eventually cod became the more popular fish since it tasted better when cured and it lasted longer. The Vikings became experts at catching and preserving cod and they and others may have followed the range of the Atlantic cod West, discovering the lands of the New World in the process. At the time of England’s Henry VIII in 1509, fish dominated the menu. Henry not being able to get his marriage annulled by the pope broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, starting the Church of England. Suddenly, eating fish became political, and the English turned away from fish. Fishermen were hurting so much that meat abstinence days had to be reinstated. Well into the 20th century, the Church’s policy on meat influenced global economics. When in the 1960’s Pope Paul VI loosened fasting rules, U.S. fish prices plummeted. A few years before the Vatican relaxed the rules, Lou Groen, an enterprising McDonald’s restaurant owner in a largely Catholic part of Cincinnati, found himself struggling to sell burgers on Fridays. His solution was the Filet-O-Fish, which now feeds millions around the world. To be continued …
Sources: npr.org, catholichotdish.com.catholiceducation.org