The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, Inconveniently Moving Easter for Convenience, and Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.

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.

Blog Mirror: A Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent

 A Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent       

Blog Mirror: 1924 Menus for Meatless Meals

Given that Lent is coming up:

1924 Menus for Meatless Meals

Sunday, April 18, 1943. A vengeful Palm Sunday.

Admiral Yamamoto's airplane was ambushed by American P-38s in Operation Vengeance, which brought the plane down over Bougainville, killing him.

It was a very rare targeted action, in which Yamamoto was the purpose of the mission.  The mission remains somewhat debatable as a result.  Adm. Yamamoto was a very capable Japanese commander, and perhaps for that reason it was justified, although he also held mixed feelings about the war itself.

The intercept was made possible by the U.S. having broken the Japanese naval code and, for that  reason, it was also a bit risky as it may have revealed that fact to the Japanese as the P-38s were really beyond their normal range and their presence peculiar.

Sarah Sundin covered this in her blog as well.

Today in World War II History—April 18, 1943: Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of Japanese Combined Fleet, is killed when his plane is shot down by US Thirteenth Air Force P-38s over Bougainville.

She also covered the "Palm Sunday Massacre" in which the Allies shot down over half of an Axis 100 plane supply mission from Sicily to North Africa.

The Soviets denied the Katyn Massacre.

It was Palm Sunday, 1943.  Both of my parents would have attended Palm Sunday Mass with their families.

Message to the Faithful Priests of the Church in Germany. An die gläubigen Priester der Kirche in Deutschland.

Message to the Faithful Priests of the Church in Germany

ON APR 02, 2023

Reverend and Dear brothers in Christ,

You have been very much in my prayers throughout the time since the beginning of the so-called Synodal Way. After the conclusion of the Fifth Synodal Assembly on March 11th last in Frankfurt/Main, I have been praying for you most especially, so that you remain faithful to the Apostolic Tradition, to the truths regarding faith and morals handed down to us by Christ in the Church, which we, as priests, are ordained to safeguard and promote. The faithful have never needed more than today priests who announce to them the truth, who bring them Christ, above all, in the Sacraments, and who guide and govern them in the way of Christ.

I can only imagine your profound sadness at the positions taken by the Assembly, including the great majority of the Bishops, which are directly opposed to what the Church has always and everywhere taught and practiced. I share your sadness and experience the temptation to discouragement, which you, no doubt, also experience. At times such as these, which priests have experienced at other times in the history of the Church, we must recall the promise which Our Lord, who never lies and is always faithful to His promises, has made to us, when, at His Ascension, He placed into our hands the Apostolic mission: “… and behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28, 20). Taking to heart, once again, the mission and Our Lord’s promise, we must soldier on, we must be His faithful “fellow workers in the truth” (3 Jn 8).

At times such as these, when even those who are Bishops betray the Apostolic Tradition, faithful Bishops, priests, consecrated persons, and lay faithful will necessarily suffer greatly precisely because of their fidelity. As we begin Holy Week, the week of Our Lord’s Passion and Death, and anticipate the Easter Season, the time of His Resurrection and Ascension, let us take to heart His words to those who would be His disciples: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mt 16, 24). During these holiest of days, Our Lord pours out from His glorious-pierced Heart the strong graces of His victory over sin and death to strengthen us to be good, faithful, and generous disciples. During Holy Week and the Easter Season, let us lift up to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, especially through the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the sufferings of His Mystical Body, the Church, which is passing through a time of pervasive confusion and error, with their fruits which are division, apostasy, and schism.

Let us always remember, especially when the suffering we endure seems too much to bear, that we are not alone, that Christ is alive in us, that divine grace – sanctifying and actual – is at work within us. Let us ever remember Our Lord’s words to His Virgin Mother and Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist, with whom we stand mystically at the foot of the cross: “Woman, behold thy son… Behold thy mother” (Jn 19, 26-27). The Mother of God is the Mother of Divine Grace and is, in a special way, the Mother of Priests who, in her Divine Son, bring countless graces to many souls. Our Lord’s Virgin Mother is ever at our side, even as she lovingly instructs us: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2, 5).

One in heart with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we also ever enjoy the fellowship of all the saints who will never fail to assist us, if only we call upon their intercession. In dark moments, let us not forget the reality and exhortation divinely spoken to us in the Letter to the Hebrews: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12, 1-2).

In closing, I assure of my union with you and of my daily prayers for you. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we have been discouraged for a time before the Mystery of Iniquity, but now, with our eyes fixed on Our Risen Lord and His unchanging teaching, may our hearts be renewed in ardor by His grace (Lk 24, 32). I urge you to be close to Our Lord Who has chosen us to be His brothers in the Holy Priesthood and to be close to one another in pure and selfless love of the Church, His Mystical Body, and in the suffering offered for the sake of love of Him and of our brothers and sisters for whom we have been ordained as true shepherds.

Please remember me in your prayers.

With deepest fatherly affection, I impart to you and to Our Lord’s flock in your priestly care my blessing.

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

Rome

Palm Sunday, 2 April 2023

An die gläubigen Priester der Kirche in Deutschland 

Hochwürdige und liebe Brüder in Christus, von Beginn des sogenannten Synodalen Weges an waren Sie besonders in meine Gebete eingeschlossen. Nach Abschluss der Fünften Synodalversammlung am 11. März in Frankfurt am Main habe ich ganz besonders für Sie gebetet, damit Sie der Apostolischen Tradition, den von Christus in der Kirche überlieferten Glaubens- und Sittenwahrheiten, treu bleiben. Wir als Priester sind geweiht, um diese zu bewahren und zu fördern. Mehr als jemals zuvor brauchen die Gläubigen heute Priester, die ihnen die Wahrheit verkünden, die ihnen Christus bringen, vor allem in den Sakramenten, und die sie auf dem Weg Christi führen und leiten. 

Ich kann Ihre tiefe Traurigkeit über die Stellungnahmen auf der Versammlung nur erahnen, auch die Traurigkeit über die große Mehrheit der Bischöfe, die sich in direktem Gegensatz zu dem positioniert haben, was die Kirche immer und überall gelehrt und praktiziert hat. Ich teile Ihre Traurigkeit und spüre die Versuchung der Entmutigung, die Sie zweifelsohne auch verspüren. In Zeiten wie diesen, die Priester auch zu anderen Zeiten in der Geschichte der Kirche erlebt haben, müssen wir uns an das Versprechen erinnern, das Unser Herr, der niemals lügt und der Seinen Verheißungen immer treu ist, uns bei Seiner Himmelfahrt gegeben hat, als Er die apostolische Sendung in unsere Hände legte: "... Seht, ich bin mit euch alle Tage bis zum Ende der Welt." (Mt. 28,20). Indem wir uns erneut den Auftrag und die Verheißung Unseres Herrn zu Herzen nehmen, müssen wir weiterkämpfen, müssen wir seine treuen "Mitarbeiter in der Wahrheit" sein (3. Joh,8) 

In Zeiten wie diesen, in denen selbst Bischöfe die Apostolische Tradition verraten, werden treue Bischöfe, Priester, geweihte Personen und gläubige Laien gerade wegen ihrer Treue notwendigerweise sehr leiden. Wenn wir nun die Karwoche, die Woche des Leidens und Sterbens Unseres Herrn, beginnen und die Osterzeit, die Zeit Seiner Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt, erwarten, nehmen wir uns Seine Worte zu Herzen, die Er an diejenigen richtet, die seine Jünger sein wollen: "Wenn jemand mir nachfolgen will, so verleugne er sich selbst, nehme sein Kreuz auf sich und folge mir nach." (Mt. 16,24) In diesen heiligsten aller Tage gießt Unser Herr aus Seinem glorreich durchbohrten Herzen die mächtigen Gnaden Seines Sieges über Sünde und Tod aus, um uns zu stärken, damit wir gute, treue und großzügige Jünger sein können. Die Leiden Seines mystischen Leibes, der Kirche, die durch eine Zeit um sich greifender Verwirrung und Irrtümer geht, deren Früchte Spaltung, Glaubensabfall und Schisma sind, wollen wir in der Karwoche und Osterzeit besonders durch das Eucharistische Opfer zum Herzen Jesu emporheben. 

Denken wir immer daran, besonders dann, wenn das Leid, das wir ertragen, unerträglich zu werden scheint, dass wir nicht allein sind, dass Christus in uns lebendig ist, dass die göttliche Gnade - heiligmachend und helfend - in uns wirkt. Erinnern wir uns immer an die Worte Unseres Herrn an Seine jungfräuliche Mutter und den heiligen Johannes, dem Apostel und Evangelisten, mit denen wir mystisch am Fuß des Kreuzes stehen: "Frau, siehe, dein Sohn ... Siehe, deine Mutter" (Joh. 19, 26-27). Die Muttergottes ist die Mutter der göttlichen Gnade und in besonderer Weise die Mutter der Priester, die durch ihren göttlichen Sohn vielen Seelen unzählige Gnaden bringt. Die jungfräuliche Mutter Unseres Herrn ist immer an unserer Seite, auch wenn sie uns liebevoll anweist: "Was er euch sagt, das tut!" (Joh. 2,5). 

Ist unser Herz, durch das Unbefleckte Herz Mariens, mit dem Heiligsten Herzen Jesu vereint, genießen wir auch immer die Gemeinschaft aller Heiligen, die es nie versäumen werden, uns zu helfen, wenn wir sie nur um ihre Fürsprache anrufen. Vergessen wir in diesen dunklen Augenblicken nicht die Wirklichkeit und die Ermahnung, die uns im Hebräerbrief auf göttliche Weise zugesprochen wird: "Da wir nun von einer so großen Wolke von Zeugen umgeben sind, lasst uns alle hemmende Last abwerfen und die Sünde, die so sehr an uns haftet, und lasst uns mit Ausdauer den Wettlauf laufen, der vor uns liegt, indem wir auf Jesus schauen, den Begründer und Vollender unseres Glaubens, der angesichts der vor ihm liegenden Freude das Kreuz erduldete, ohne der Schmach zu achten, und zur Rechten des Thrones Gottes sitzt" (Hebr. 12,1-2). 

Abschließend versichere ich Ihnen meine Verbundenheit mit Ihnen und meine täglichen Gebete für Sie. Wie die Jünger auf dem Weg nach Emmaus haben wir uns eine Zeit lang vom dem Geheimnis des Bösen entmutigen lassen; doch nun, mit unseren Augen fest auf Unseren auferstandenen Herrn und Seine unveränderliche Lehre gerichtet, mögen unsere Herzen durch Seine Gnade mit neuem Eifer erfüllt und erneuert werden (Vgl. Lk. 24,32). Ich bitte Sie eindringlich, Unserem Herrn nahe zu sein, der uns zu Seinen Brüdern im Heiligen Priestertum erwählt hat, und einander nahe zu sein in reiner und selbstloser Liebe zur Kirche, seinem mystischen Leib, und im Leiden, das wir aus Liebe zu Ihm und zu unseren Brüdern und Schwestern, für die wir als treue Hirten geweiht wurden, aufopfern. 

Bitte denken Sie an mich in Ihren Gebeten. 

Mit tiefster väterlicher Zuneigung erteile ich Ihnen und der Herde Unseres Herrn, die Ihrer priesterlichen Obhut anempfohlen ist, meinen Segen. 

Raymond Leo Kardinal BURKE, 

Rom Palmsonntag, den 2. April 2023

Related Threads:

Compromise and Compromised

I guess it doesn't hurt to ask, but . . . well, asking it is pushing it.

 

But can you have it on Friday's during Lent?

 White Gator Chili

Probably not.

Tuesday, March 9, 1943. Rommel departs. Air Force limits. De La Rocque arrested. Goebbels looks in the Stable. We Will Never Die opens. Mardi Gras.

Erwin Rommel was recalled by Hitler from North Africa and put on medical leave. General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim assumed command of the Afrika Korps, and would remain in command until its surrender.  Effectively, Hitler had rescued Rommel.

Von Arnim.

Von Arnim bore a remarkable resemblance to actor Keenan Wynn, who played Col. "Bat" Guano in Dr. Strangelove.

Wynn, left.

Von Arnim would go into captivity in the UK and then later the U.S.  He would not enter the Bundesheer following its establishment, perhaps due to age, and died in 1962 at age 73.

Sarah Sundin notes on her blog:

Today in World War II History—March 9, 1943: US Eighth Air Force Central Medical Establishment recommends 25-mission combat tour for bomber crewmen and 200 hours or 50 missions for fighter pilots.

Of note, making it through 25 bomber missions at the time was against the odds.  Also, I didn't know that there was a limit for fighter pilots.

De La Rocque.

French right wing political figure François de La Rocque, who had gone from accepting the French surrender and Petain's rule to being a secret opponent of it and founder of a right wing resistance movement, was arrested by the Germans. Regarded by some as a precursor to de Gaulle, he would survive the war and die in 1946 at age 60.

De La Rocque had interestingly gone from the far right into moderation prior to the war, first being part of the Croix de Feu and then being a founder of the French Social Party.  The latter party was a combination of conservative and corporatist, but it was not anti-democratic. Some credit it with giving the French middle class an alternative to fascism, thereby preventing fascism from rising in France.

German poster in Dutch, part of an effort to recruit occupied Europeans to German arms out of fear of Communism.

German propagandist Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary

The anti-Bolshevik theme is the best horse in the stable.

Goebbels' comments are something that are frighteningly relevant in our current society.  Communism was the enemy of mankind, but so was Nazism.  Indeed, they both shared the common trait of mass murder as a central element of their ethos, which gave the regimes an odd sense of being constantly imperiled by huge plots, in their view, which necessitated murder, in their view, which in turn made millions of people culpable, and therefore loyal, through guilt.  

Victory or Bolshevism was the theme of this poster, which ironically portrayed starving Germans in the manner of which recalls Holocaust victims.  After 1943 the theme of this poster was in fact becoming increasingly true, although victory was no longer possible, as the Red Army was now advancing toward the German frontier.  Germans would have recalled that being a threat during the Russo Polish War of the early 1920s, when Trotsky seriously imagined entering Germany after defeating Poland, but now it was rapidly becoming an inevitability, which the German government implicitly acknowledged through this poster.  In fact, the German government would take no action to withdraw the civilian population from Prussia, although individual German commanders sometimes did, which mean that thousands of German men were shot and tens of thousands of German women raped when the Red Army entered the country.  The final months of the war would be a combat blood bath as German soldiers often went down fighting attempting to let the civilian population get out, a situation which was brought upon them by a barbarous Nazi government.

The Nazis, right from the onset, portrayed themselves as the cultural defenders against Communism, which made many forget, and then adopt, their radical views which were not "conservative" in any real sense. After reaching an accord with the Soviets just prior to World War Two, this was downplayed, but it was ramped back up again prior to Operation Barbarossa and kept at a fever pitch through the remainder of the war.  The message to Germans was that the Nazis were the only defense of Western culture against an "alien" Communism, although Communism itself was originally a German movement.  The message was sufficient for many Germans, including high ranking ones, to put aside their doubts about Nazism on the basis that it seemed to be, based upon what they were hearing, their only alternative to Communism.

Of course, for millions of Germans, the end of the war and Germany's fighting it out past mid 1943 would bring Communism to them.

By way of contemporary analogy, millions of Americans today have been listening, and continue to, to populist propagandist who spread lies and whip up panic over their being the only alternative to "wokeism".  Tucker Carlson and his ilk portray the far populist right as the only means of combating a host of truly concerning liberal ideas.  By espousing lies, they bring those ideas closer to implementation.

We Will Never Die, a Jewish pageant featuring spectacular artwork (copyright protected) on its cover, opened on the East Coast.  It acknowledged that it was held in memory of what it then thought to be Europe's 2,000,000 then Jewish dead, showing that knowledge of the Holocaust was in fact widespread, contrary to what some will claim.

Today was Mardi Gras for 1943.  On the same day, readers of the nation's newspapers learned that the wartime ban on sliced bread had been lifted the prior day.  The ban had been to save steel needed for slicing machines.

Start of Great Lent on the Old Calendar.

 

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Ash Wednesday

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Ash Wednesday: I may have never covered a bronc in rodeo, but I never missed a mark-out and I never turned-out. Turn-out is when you've signed up for a...

Churches of the West: A Lenten Plea for the Working Man.

Churches of the West: A Lenten Plea for the Working Man.: 

A Lenten Plea for the Working Man.

I used to go to daily Mass, save for Saturdays.

I no longer do, as the Mass I went to, daily, was cancelled.

In every Parish which is served by an attendant pastor, there is daily Mass.  Locally, there are three parishes, and they all have a daily mass.  Their schedules are:

Downtown:

6:30 a.m.

East:

9:00

West:

9:00.

And that's why I don't go to daily Mass.

9:00 a.m is a time guaranteed to wipe out any working person from attendance.  If you have a job, you are not making it.

6:30 a.m. is pretty early in the morning.

Now, it could be argued that, well, anyone could make that. 

Not hardly.  Again, if you work, that means that you pretty much have to be prepared to go to your office by about 6:00 a.m.  It's 5:35 a.m. as I start writing this, and I'm still trying to wake up from not getting enough sleep the night before, drinking my coffee.

Today, I have to shave, shower, put on my lawyer costume and head out the door prepared to take on the plethora of other people's problems I deal with every day.  I'm not going to be able to do that, and make a 6:30 a.m. Mass.

I could make a noon Mass, and that's the daily Mass I used to attend.

I certainly wasn't alone, there were always others there. By and large, they were people who walked up from their offices or drove there.  Working people who came on their lunch hour, skipping lunch,.

Indeed, I often notice, as I sometimes drive by when its getting out, that early morning attendees downtown have a sort of social schedule built into attendance at that Mass.  Not all of them, by any means, but some.

And that's 100% okay.

What I mean is that I see them walking from Mass to a nearby café. They probably do that all the time.  I don't have time, however, to engage in that sort of activity in the morning, and I probably wouldn't go to a café in the morning much if I did.  I point that out, however, as the people who hiked up at noon were giving their lunches up, in some cases, just to be there.  They were dedicated.

I fear, sometimes, that it's easy to forget the working folks.  They don't say much, they just go to their jobs and back, and come on in on Sunday.  They aren't retired, so they don't have time to get to a 9:00, and frankly a lot of them couldn't easily make a 6:30.

Noon worked great.

Lex Anteinternet: Secular suffering for nothing & on Ash Wednesday

A couple of reruns. for the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, 2023, from a couple of years ago:  Lex Anteinternet: Secular suffering for nothing.

Secular suffering for nothing

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent.

While Catholic observances tend to at least somewhat baffle those who are not familiar with them, and therefore reinterpret them either though the bigoted Anglicization of popular history they've received, or through their own broken lenses on the world, lots of people are at least somewhat familiar with them.  One of the things they're somewhat familiar with is fasting.

We've dealt with this before, but Latin Rite Catholics have a minimal duty of fast and abstinence during Lent.  And it is indeed very minimal. The fast days are now down to two.  There are more days of abstinence during Lent.

And this post isn't about that.

Rather, this post is about American secular suffering and its pointless nature.

I'm occasionally the accidental unwilling silent third person in a long running conversation between two people on diets, which they're constantly off and on. The oddity of it is that neither of the two people involved have any need whatsoever to be on a diet. They aren't even ballpark close to being overweight.  None the less, they'll go on diets and the diets tend to be based on pseudoscience.

I don't want to be harsh on people for this as there's now so much pseudoscience in American culture it's simply mind boggling. We've gone from a society that in the 1960s and 1970s emphasized science  to one that now abhors it and goes for non scientific faddism.  There are so many examples of this that actually going into all of it would require a blog the size of the Internet at this point.  Food faddism is common.

Not a day goes by when I don't get a bunch of spam posts (and how ironic that they'd be called "spam" devoted to dietary bullshit, most of which has to do with eating something that will "melt away fat", probably overnight so that you don't have to be inconvenienced while watching television during the day.  It's not going to do that.  A wild example of that is one that bills itself as some sort of ice cream, with the photographs in the spam showing chocolate ice cream.  Chocolate ice cream is disgusting in the first place, and it's not going to make you think.  

Anyhow, these two fit people are constantly on diets of the faddish variety, involving such things as "cleanses" and the like.  None of that does anything, at least not in the way a person thinks.  Some of it might, accidentally, such as abstaining from alcohol. That'll do something, but not in a cleanse fashion.  And some of it probably does something as it approaches a sort of low yield style of intermittent fasting.

I've now watched people on diets for decades, and I'm wholly convinced that none of them doing anything whatsoever.  I've watched people on Keto lose weight and then balloon back up to just as heavy as they were before, for example.  

Nothing ultimately escapes from the basic fact that weight=calories in-calories out.   That's it.

So you can be on keto, but if you eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, a ham for lunch, and then go eat a big dinner, you're going to be really heavy if you are an office worker.  Pretty simple.

That is why, I'll note, intermittent fasting actually does cause people to lose weight, but it's not a diet, it's fasting.  I'll also note that I'm not a doctor and I'm not telling you to fast to lose weight.  If you need to lose weight, see your doctor.  A real doctor.  Not the homeopathic doctor of Burmese weight loss and orthopody.  No, not him.  A real bonafide physician.  They exist.

Anyhow, I don't think that a lot of people need to go on diets at all, including the folks I just noted.

Now, some people really do. A lot of Americans are really, really, heavy.  Some say a majority are overweight.  I get that.  But none the less I'd guess about 60% of the people I see on diets or discussing diets are not overweight.  I don't think they go on diets, deep down, as they're overweight.

They do it as they need to be suffering for something.

Now, this gets back to Lent. Catholics don't fast and abstain in order to suffer. They do it in order to focus and build discipline, and sacrifice for their sins.  If it involves an element of suffering, well so do a lot of things.

But devoted Catholics accept suffering as part of life.  It's inescapable.  Life is full of suffering.  Part of that suffering is brought about by license.

The irony of freedom is that freedom to chose isn't freedom.  License doesn't actually equal liberty.  The freedom to chose is the freedom to chose wisely, and that brings a sort of real freedom.  It doesn't mean, kid like, that I can choose to eat ice cream for dinner, and it doesn't mean, modern society like, that I chose all the members of the opposite sex, or whatever, that I might fancy at the moment. 

And indeed, that sort of "freedom" leads not to freedom but to slavery.  People become enslaved to their wants.  A massive amount of American culture is now presently completely devoted to slavery of this type, particularly sexual slavery of both an intellectual and actual kind.  The entire pornography industry is a type of "white slavery", involving the prostitution of women and the enslavement of men to lust.

Catholic fasting ties into freedom as it has as an element the concept of building resistance to enslavement.  If you can say no to food you can also say no to alcohol, or tobacco, or to vice.  It might take practice, hence the discipline of fasting.

Which is also why the slow Latin relaxing of fasting and abstinence rules was, in my view, a real mistake.  The concept of the Church in North American, for example, that relaxing abstinence on Friday's throughout the year would result in the substitution of a meaningful personal substitute was, frankly, largely wrong.

And it achieves, of course, more than that.

Fasting, experienced as a form of self-denial, helps those who undertake it in simplicity of heart to rediscover God’s gift and to recognize that, created in his image and likeness, we find our fulfilment in him. In embracing the experience of poverty, those who fast make themselves poor with the poor and accumulate the treasure of a love both received and shared. In this way, fasting helps us to love God and our neighbour, inasmuch as love, as Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches, is a movement outwards that focuses our attention on others and considers them as one with ourselves.

Pope Francis, Lenten message, 2021.

Secular fasting doesn't actually achieve anything.  But then, much of modern American life is aimless and directionless.  It's been wholly focused on materialism and nothing else.  People aren't rooted to place or people as those things interfere with "freedom". They aren't bound by traditional rules of right and wrong, obligation and duty, service to country and community, or the obligations imposed by law outside of the civil law, those being the walls of canon law and natural law, and biological law.  They aren't even accepting of the final binds of death, which Americans don't acknowledge as real, and which provides the reason that at 40 years old you aren't going to be the physical specimen you were at 20, and things will certainly be different at 60.

Now, to be sure, most Catholics are no different in the modern world than anyone else.  A people who were once outside of the culture as they were different, where they were a minority, and were outside the world in a way as they were distinct from it even where they were a majority, now fall prey to all the modern vices that are portrayed as virtues, and self excuse those that are regarded by the Church as sins.  Some of the Church religious itself, mostly older baby boomer aged whose time is past but they don't realize it, still campaign to overthrow Church law in the name of temporal freedom, not realizing that they propose to bring in the chains of slavery.  None of that, however, changes the basic point.

Humans sense that abundance can be slavery.  They also reject so often the breaking of their chains. But even when they do, they reach out, darkly, to the disciplines that would free them.  They sense they have to do something, and often substitute suffering, vaguely, for the practices that would open the manacles.

And one on Ash Wednesday itself:

Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday for those churches that follow the Catholic Latin Rite's liturgical calendar, which includes a fair number of Protestant churches.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent for Western Christians, Lent being the (approximately) forty day long penitential season preceding Easter.  Great Lent, the Eastern Christian seasons, precedes Ash Wednesday and commences on Clean Monday for Eastern Christians on the new calendar, but not on the old calendar which has, of course, which departs from the calendar we're otherwise familiar with.   The day is named for the Catholic practice, which is observed by at least some Anglicans and Lutherans as well, of placing ashes on the foreheads of those who come to the Ash Wednesday service, with the reminder being made that from ashes you were made, and from ashes you will return.*

For Latin Rite Catholics, Ash Wednesday is a day of fast and abstinence.  I.e, they eat only one full meal on this day and it can't include meat, which under Latin Rite Catholic rules does not include fish.  For Eastern Christians a much stricter Lenten fast and abstinence set of rules applies.  This sacrifice serves the purpose of being penitential in nature.

It also serves to really set Catholics apart, as fasting and abstinence are the rage in the west now, but for purely secular purposes, not all of which square with science or good dietary practices.

For the members of the Apostolic faiths, Lent also serves as a time in which for penitential reasons they usually "give up" something.  A lot of people have a really superficial understanding of this, assuming that Catholic "give up" desert or chocolate or something, and in fact quite a few people do something like that. Indeed, as an adult I've been surprised by how many Catholics (usually men) give up drinking alcohol, which means that frequent consumption of alcohol is pretty common society wide in a way that we probably underestimate.

Indeed, just recently, on that, I was asked by an exuberant Catholic Midwestern expat, who seemingly has no boundaries at all, on what I was "giving up" for Lent. This was the week prior to Ash Wednesday at which time I wasn't particularly focused on it myself.  The same fellow asked at least one Protestant what she was giving up, with that Protestant being a member of one of the American millennialism religions, to receive a totally baffled reply.  Indeed, I'm sure they don't celebrate Lent at all, so the question was odd.  Anyhow, he was giving up alcohol and asked if I'd like to join him, to which I absent mindedly said sure.  Later he was wondering if I thought it would be tough, which I'm sure it won't be at all and I'll have to find something else to mark Lent really.  But that sort of "giving up" line of thinking is very common.

In a lot of Catholic cultures the Lenten penitential observations have traditionally been much stronger, which helps explain Mardi Gras as we just discussed.  Even well after the Latin Rite rules were very much relaxed, in many Catholic areas, including Catholic areas of the United States, people engaged in much more extensive penitential observations with the "giving up chocolate" type thing really sort of an introduction to the practice.  In Louisiana, without going into it too deeply, there was traditionally a big spike in births nine to ten months after Easter, which reflected a very widespread serious observation among Catholic couples as to their penitential practice, for example.

Some of that is really coming back, which reflects an interesting trend towards a deeper understanding of their faiths by members of the Apostolic faiths and even a return of Lenten traditions in some Protestant ones.  During the full "Spirit of Vatican Two" era there was a lot of attention devoted to not giving anything up but rather to work on some spiritual need.  I.e, be self reflective and work on what that lead you to.  At the same time, the misuse of the word "fasting" became very common, with there being advice, even from the clergy, to fast from things other than food or drink.  You can't really fast from sinful behavior, or from narcissism, for example.  You can't even "fast" from the Internet, although "giving it up" for Lent might be a darned good idea (one that I really ought to consider, probably).

A lot of that is now passing and there's been a real return to more traditional observations of Lent, including fasting but also forms of dedicated worship and observation.

Which brings me to the next thing about "giving up".  One feature of this season is that many Apostolic Christians, as it is the season of repentance, have used the season to break bad conduct when there's support, spiritual and temporal, for doing it.  People with alcohol problems will use it to break them, smokers will quit smoking during Lent so they can quit smoking.  And sometimes people with serious attachments to sin take it head on during Lent, with some people I've known even announcing the renouncement of what are very serious sins from a Christian purpose over Lent in the hopes of breaking from the permanently. And many who do that, succeed at doing that.

Which in turn takes us to our final observation.  This season, which is lead by the Apostolic faiths but which is observed by at least some of the Protestants as well, tend to turn the self indulgent retained Puritan abstinence on its head.  I've noted this before, but North American and the Northern Europe may have strayed enormously from Calvinist influence in terms of faith, but not in terms of the concept that public suffering is really necessary.  That retained concept explains in large part the real focus in these lands, as opposed to others, in "giving up" something for no real purpose other than the sense it must be done.  People give up all sorts of things that Apostolic Christians around the world give up for forty some days, and often on a declared permanent basis (they fail at it more often than not), with it being notable that the purely secular nature of that makes it shallow from the onset.  Indeed, plenty of people who will spend Lent scoffing at Catholics for Lent will spend part of the season or all of it on some no carb, or no meat, or whatever, diet, for no real reason other than a constructed one. Suffering, in many instances, is the ultimate goal of those efforts, but suffering without something to redeem it.

For Apostolic Christians, all fasts are followed by feasts, and that's something to remember.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*I don't think this is a practice in the East and its not a requirement for Catholics, something that in fact even confuses some Catholics.  Ash Wednesday is widely observed by Catholics and the placing of the ashes isn't restricted to Catholics.  Perhaps for that reason quite a few Catholics assume it is a Holy Day of Obligation.

One thing of note here is that Ash Wednesday also serves to point out to everyone who is a Catholic, as if a person has ashes on their head, they're probably Catholic, although not necessarily.  By the same token, if you are known to be a Catholic and don't make it to Ash Wednesday you'll tend to get comments about it.

Pancake Day.

 Amongst other things, the Tuesday before Latin Rite Lent is called Pancake Day.

They can be sweet, and they use up fats, so they helped prepare for Lenten fasting in this fashion.

Blog Mirror. Churches of the West: Ash Wednesday 2022. A day of fasting and prayer for Peace.

Churches of the West: Ash Wednesday 2022. A day of fasting and prayer fo...: 

Ash Wednesday 2022. A day of fasting and prayer for Peace.

Today, March 2, 2022, is Ash Wednesday for this year.

The Pope has also asked for it to be a day of fasting for peace, with the war in Ukraine in mind.

St. John's Ukrainian Catholic Church. Belfield, North Dakota

Belfield, North Dakota has a population of 800 people and four Catholic Churches, which says something about the nature of this region of the United States.  One of those four, St. John's, is a Ukrainian Catholic Church.

We featured a Ukrainian Catholic Church here for the first time yesterday.  Here we are doing it for a second time in the same region, and in fact at a location that's only a few miles down the highway from the one we featured yesterday.

In parts of the United States we've featured before, such as East Texas, seeing something like this in regards to Baptist churches wouldn't be unusual.  Here we're seeing a much different cultural history at work, and a very interesting one at that.

Blog Mirror: “A Good Dish for the Meatless Meal” Recipe

From the always excellent A Hundred Years Ago blog, a Meatless item from a cookbook of the period which included Lenten recipes.

“A Good Dish for the Meatless Meal” Recipe

As will be noted, the recipe included "drippings", which caused some confusion in the secular sense.  How could that be "meatless".  My comments on the same:

“I assume that “drippings” refer to the fat created when cooking beef or pork – though I am a bit foggy why meat drippings would be called for in a recipe for a meatless dish. Maybe a hundred years ago “meatless” just meant that there were no chunks of meat.”

It wasn’t because of that so much so as that vegetarianism was relatively rare a century ago and it remains distinctly different from “meatless” in the Roman Catholic sense. In the latter, for example, fish and seafood is not included as “meat” either, where as quite a few vegetarians would regard it as meat, although some do eat fish.

A person would have to delve into the topic, but generally you’ll find that broths are “technically” not classified as meat for Roman Catholics, and some animal derived foods, such as gelatins, are not. Probably the author of this recipe didn’t regard drippings as in the meat category and at the time perhaps they weren’t either, form this prospective. In more recent years, as the number of Catholic meatless days had declined in some regions and is limited to Lent, in those regions, people have tended to define meatless more strictly and expanding on the meatless category has been discouraged.

Of note, people often associate this with “Catholics”, by which they usually mean Roman Catholics, but the Orthodox and the Eastern Catholics also observe days of fast and abstinence and their practice is much more broad. It progresses in time over Great Lent and ultimately they abstain from not only meat, but dairy products, fats, and alcohol as well.

As an side, during World War One the U.S. government declared there to be an entire series of “meatless” days and while it didn’t enforce it through a law, it pretty heavily pressured Americans to observe them. If I recall correctly one such day was basically beefless and an other was porkless. None of these days was on a Friday, so I’ve always thought that if you were a Catholic that must have been a bummer as you would end up with three meatless weekdays during Lent rater than one.

I should note that the thought of using broth in a "meatless" meal bothers me from a Catholic prospective, and I suspect it does quite a few others as well.  I'm not completely certain how most modern Catholic apologists would look at this today, but I think they'd at least discourage it.

Anyhow, some of what I've noted there, I've noted before, that being the situation that existed during the Great War which would have caused Catholics to be eating meatless about half the week during the war.  One day of the week (Monday if I recall correctly) was meatless, which apparently meant beefless (it's somewhat difficult to tell). Tuesday was porkless.  Another day was wheatless  For Catholics, every Friday at the time was meatless, excluding only seafood, which was difficult to obtain for many people at the time, and for the Orthodox the rules were even stricter.  It's interesting to note that the government never, at any time, proposed "hey, let's just adopt the Catholic rule and make Fridays meatless. . . "  Indeed, in 1917-18, they wouldn't have as the obvious reference to Catholicism wouldn't have gone down well with American society at large at the time.  It probably sill really wouldn't.

I'm publishing this, it might be noted, on a Friday, which remains meatless during Lent for Catholics all over the globe (not all of whom are otherwise, like American Catholics, lacking in that obligation in the rest of the globe).  Oddly enough, today isn't meatless.

That's because today is the Solemnity of St. Joseph, the day dedicated to Jesus' temporal adoptive father.  As Canon Lawyer Edward Peters has pointed out regarding this day, as a solemnity:

This year, the solemnity of my Confirmation saint quashes not only one’s personal Lenten penances but the canonical obligation of abstinence on Friday. Canon 1251.

Canon 1251 provides:

Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

This is so such days can be celebrated.

I have to admit again, I'm a bit squeamish about it.  However, noting that this is in fact the Canon Law, and for a good reason, I had corned beef has made with leftover corned beef this morning.  This is in part because I didn't want to waste it, but I also take the suspension of the obligation for celebratory reasons seriously.

At any rate, I've pointed out elsewhere on this blog, from time to time, the interesting interaction of fasting and abstinence in out largely Protestant society.  Even Catholics often don't understand the nature of these penitential observances and Protestants, to include the large number of secularized Protestants in American society, clearly don't.  But none the less some of the very people who will mock the Catholic observances impose extremely strict similar dietary practices upon themselves.  As recently noted, I've watched people I know go through an endless number of "cleanses" which supposedly are health based, but which are generally based on bogus pop "science" and which really serve as a way of self deprivation by people who feel they need it.  People are atoning for something, even if they don't know what.^[1].

Vegetarianism and even more so veganism are extreme examples of this.  Like societies of Medieval Monks that undertook similar dietary regimens as a way of penance and sacrifice for the entire world, such people often really imagine themselves doing the same somehow, although without the science or logic to back it up, and not grounded in any metaphysical footing, they're mostly making themselves suffer, simply figuring, deep down, that suffering must be good for something in and of itself, rather thank linked to something.  

This really comes across in the occasional lecturing the proponents of such diets make along the lines of quit eating meat in order to save the planet, as cows are directly responsible for global warming.  Large ungulates have been a feature of the planet since day one so they're certainly not responsible for global warming in and of themselves. To the extent that is true at all, and I'm pretty skeptic of a bovine role in that, it would be due to feeding practices, not the cows themselves or their consumption.  Indeed some types of crop farming (in particular rice farming) directly contributes to CO2 in the air as well and frankly meat free diets contribute a lot of CO2 in a secondary fashions, and are otherwise pretty environmentally iffy in some instances so a vegetable based diet is at least as environmentally harmful, potentially more so, than one that isn't.  If a person really wanted a to have a diet that was as environmentally benign as possible, they'd plant their own garden, hunt, and fish.

Of course part of all of that is based on the American belief that there must be something that an individual can do so that they can personally live forever, or if not that, personally escape the ravages of old age.  Suffering from the lack of logic noted in Fairlie's The Cow's Revenge, here too we see some interesting things at work.  To a surprising degree preserving ourselves at all cost for old age, at least right now, preserves ourselves for the torment of dementia. That's not an argument at all for taking up smoking cigarettes, drinking a quart of whiskey per day, and wrestling bears, but it is simply a fact. The common cheerful view that if I "cleanse" for a month and then go on the all Kiwi fruit diet I'll live to 100 with the body of a 20 year old is, frankly, baloney.  The traditional Catholic acknowledgment of the terminal nature of life is something not too many secular self sufferers engage in.  Lots of people hitting the gym every day and running marathons may well extend their lives a bit, and I hope that they do.  They may well be fitter in old age as well, and I hope that they are.  And they may stave off dementia, which exercise and a good diet will help do.  Or they may be sliding into a world of mental torment by age 60 irrespective of all of that.

Nor, for that matter, is imposing the more difficult, perhaps, aspects of traditional morality that goes along with Lenten observations.  Abstaining from meat on Fridays is a pretty minor deal, rather obviously, and for secular abstainers, abstaining from meat in general or going on a cleanse may involve self suffering, but I rarely hear of anyone determining to abstain from conduct that everyone knows is existentially destructive.  People don't do that, and indeed I imagine that some people imagine themselves preserved in good condition in order to be able to engage in their vices until very old age.  Not too many who are wrapped up in an accepting a Big Bang Theory or Friends concept of personal morality, for example, are going to abstain from that sort of conduct for forty days.  Giving up carbs, going on high carbs, abstaining from meat, easting all meat, abstaining from alcohol, or whatever, for a few weeks is one thing.  Society approves. Abstaining from courser conduct? Well society says you can't.

Anyhow, all of this amounts to simple observation, much strayed from where it was originally going.  It's interesting, however.  As noted once before, secularized America isn't a society of self restraint in any fashion, which interestingly causes people, at least as to diet, to self restrain.  But often, they don't really know why.

Footnotes

1. This argument can obviously be taken too far, and it isn't meant to be an eat everything you want, and in as big of quantities as you want, argument.

Indeed, it's clearly the case that Americans eat too much processed food  and food with way too much sugar.  American bread alone is really cake, as a rule.