I started this post right at the start of Lent, didn't finish it, and was going to trash it, but due to a late Lent event, I'm picking it back up.
The United States and Canada are Protestant nations. They don't really notice it as a rule, and quite a few cultural Protestants like to deny it, but if you are an adherent member of an Apostolic Christian religion, or for that matter probably if you are Jewish or Muslim, you'll definitely notice it.
One of the ways that it oddly comes up is the annual "it doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that you can't eat meat on Fridays" discussion that Protestants in particular, and some very weakly evangelized lapsed Catholics, like to have. It's ironic as some of the same people will insist that grape juice was served at The Last Supper (nope, definitely wine) or that the Bible says once you accept Jesus into your heart you can go back to sinning (nope, St. Paul in particular warns you can do that and still go to Hell).
Of course, it doesn't say that you must abstain from meat on Fridays. It's a law of the Church, not biblically imposed. The Bible discusses fasting and gives lots of examples, and it left the office of Bishops to bind and loose. This is a rule of the Church, which has been bound.
It only applies to members of individual Churches. I.e, Catholics are bound, not Lutherans, or members of make it up as you go Christian churches. Moral laws bind everyone. Church laws bind the members of the church.
Also, FWIW, fasting and abstention from meat go way back in Church history and used to be much stricter as a practice than it is now. It's still much stricter in the Eastern churches. In the East, fasting involves abstention from alcohol, eggs, dairy, fish, meat, and olive oil for the 40 days of Great Lent and Holy Week. So the Orthodox, for example, are really down to a very bland menu at this point.
That group of people who like to claim that the Latin Rite practice was made up to support the fishing industry are really out to lunch on this one, particularly as the claim is based on a grossly misconstrued concept of what the food economy was like in the ancient world. If you lived, for example, in a Sardinian fishing town in the Middle Ages, fish is what was for dinner every night. The fishing industry didn't really need anyone's help to be economically viable. And at one time the Latin Rite fast more closely resembled the Eastern one. Claims like that are generally myths of the Reformation, created in jolly old England to justify carrying on with the Reformation when they couldn't come up with any actual good reasons to do so.
For most non-Catholics and non-Orthodox, however, this isn't in the forefront of people's minds. Restaurants get it, as there are a lot of us, which is why fish based fare shows up this time of year darned near everywhere. But rank and file Protestants, particularly of the Christmas/Easter variety, really don't ponder this much. If you live in a state like Wyoming, that's really obvious, as we have very low religious observation here anyhow. There are a lot of Catholics, but we're a minority. Protestants who don't go to church often are no doubt the majority, followed by Protestants who go to the new "non-denominational" churches, which is to say the quasi Baptist, churches (there are no "non-denominational" churches). They can't be expected to know Canon Law.
When you go to a function of any kind during Lent, this becomes pretty obvious. "Here's your entrée". . will say the server, serving the beef sandwich between two slabs of beef served with beef fries. "Would you like gravy with that?"
Oh, well.
That you can't suspend this and just go to meatless on Saturday is something people don't grasp. "You can skip it this time". No, you can't. Violation of the rule is a mortal sin. That seems extreme to non-Catholics, and probably has for a long time, but by the same token we live in an era when a host of other mortal sins, the sexual and marital ones in particular, are ignored by even devout church going Protestants. If you can convince yourself, getting married for the third or fourth time doesn't mean that you are an adulterer, you can pretty easily convince yourself that eating a hamburger on Fridays in Lent is okay this one time. Indeed, in some odd ways, the logic isn't that much different. They both involve appetites and excuses.
This does make Catholics stick out, and the Orthodox even more, maybe. In some ways, as the Catholic Church has suspended so many of these rules, the fact that there are some remaining makes Catholics stick out all the more and, in turn, the few remaining rules offend people all the more. And that is in a way part of the point in the modern world. It sets us apart, and it should. Like those who appear with ashes on their forehead on Ash Wednesday, it's going to mark you.
This came to mind as when I got home last night, Long Suffering Spouse announced, "my mother proposed to have Easter Dinner this Friday. . ."
Eh?
Now, by way of an obvious point, we're clearly a "mixed" family. My side of the family is all Catholic. LSS's is all non-Catholic.
I don't know where the dinner suggestion stands right now, as LSS isn't saying, which means it must be in the air. She protested this as we have "town jobs" which means that a Friday gathering really isn't a viable option anyhow. And one of the things about being married to a Catholic means is that the Catholicism will start to be picked up by the non-Catholic party, no matter what.
Beyond that, however, under the current rules for Latin Rite Catholics, (and I'm sure for Eastern Rite Christians as well) on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the fasting rules allow Catholics to eat only one full meal and two smaller meals which, combined, would not equal a single normal meal. We've already seen that the Eastern Rite is fasting by this point every day. Catholics may not eat meat on these two days, or on any Friday during Lent.
Now, I'm over 60 years old, which means the fasting rules no longer apply to me. As it is, however, that's my normal daily routine anyhow. I never eat big breakfasts or lunch. I used to often skip both, but thanks to my thyroid medication, I'm hungrier than I used to be. Be that as it may, I'm not comfortable with a feast on Good Friday. That's weird, from an Apostolic Christian prospective. "This is the day our savior was murdered. . . let's just skip ahead to the day he was raised".
You can't really do that.
Of course, in Cromwellian influenced Protestant America, you probably can. He wouldn't, as he didn't approve of observing things anyhow, but he so messed stuff up it's never recovered in the English speaking, non-Catholic, world. Another reason that they've had to hide his head.
Anyhow, I love my in-laws, who are great, but this is pretty much something I'm not going to be able to do. I can't go to a big Easter dinner on Good Friday and do something like, "wow, that ham looks great. . . I'll just have the mashed potatoes. . . thanks". The meatless rule still applies to me, and there's probably not going to be a giant cod for an "early" Easter dinner.
That would be weird.
Also weird is that on Good Friday, I have people trying to make appointments. Most law offices are closed on Good Friday. I guess there were enough old Irish and German Catholic lawyers, even here, to make that impact. But most Americans work as Oliver Cromwell was a theologically deficient fun sucker and our Puritan heritage is ruining everything. Working to the grave is one thing that our Protestant founders in this country really gave to us, and it's one of the things that's really wrong with the culture. Now, I usually do work, but I've long looked forward to most of the office being out, and only working a partial day. And it gives me a chance to take Holy Saturday off.
I'm going to have to handle this today. In prior years I think I would have just said yes, to somebody wanting in, or "the office is closed". But instead I'm going to just say, the "office is closed for Good Friday".
I'll let the Puritans ponder it.
