It’s always fish on a
Friday, at least if you’re a Catholic. The practice of abstaining from meat as
penance on the day Jesus was crucified is a long-held tradition within the
Roman Catholic Church, though substituting it for fish was a compromise that
many decided to make. And now the Bishop’s Conference of England and Wales have
decided to re-introduce the practice once more.
Leaving aside any
theological issue over the need to add to the sacrifice Jesus made (and there’s
a whole bagful of points to be made there) and the necessity to fast in order
to get God’s attention, the eye-catching aspect of this re-introduction is that
they want to revert to this tradition so that the faithful can project a ‘clear
and distinctive mark of their own Catholic identity’. I like this reason.
As Christians, we should be
distinctive; we should stand out; we should be different. And in many ways
we’re not. So looking for things which would differentiate us from the world is
no bad thing. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to mark out our
differences within the church either – for the church is such a variety of
opinions and practices.
So I applaud the Bishops and
bless their Dover Sole.
