DECEMBER 1997

In November 1997, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops Pro-Life Committee proposed reinstating meatless Fridays as a means of improving the "penitence" of the faithful among their flock. The reason American Catholics are supposed to do Friday penance in the first place stems from their belief that Jesus was murdered in Palestine on a Friday afternoon around two thousand years ago. They believe that Jesus died for their sins, and in response they have sardine sandwiches for lunch on Friday. Makes perfect sense to me.

But I am having trouble understanding the nature of those penitences. I don't understand how you can be considered a proper penitent if you have Campbell's clam chowder for lunch, but a sinful backslider if you have the chicken noodle. Actually, I think the clam chowder is much better.

Nevertheless, according to the Catholic powers-that-be, the following Friday menu plan would represent that of a sincere, penitent, observant Catholic:

Breakfast: fresh-squeezed orange juice, lox, bagel and cream cheese, and a half of a honeydew melon filled with strawberries. Mid-morning snack: Cinnamon roll or a jelly doughnut. Lunch: Trout Amandine, rice pilaf, stuffed artichoke salad, and whole wheat rolls. Dessert: raspberry sorbet, or lemon—meringue pie. Hors d'oeuvres : Imported Norwegian pickled herring on rye crackers; or oysters on the half shell; or cashews and smoked almonds; or all of it, if the trout has worn off. Dinner: Shrimp cocktail, Caesar salad, Lobster Thermidor, stuffed mushrooms, and twice baked potatoes. Dessert: Baked Alaska, or Boston Cream Pie, or Napoleon Pastry.

Some people would not call this fasting.

The bishops said that if Catholics would have Friday meals such as the above, it would give them a way to "publicly display their penitence." Agreed. Nothing can make you feel more penitential than eating oysters on the half shell—especially in the wrong month. Of course, if you ate these Friday penitential meals on a regular basis you'd rightly be called a glutton and the numbers on your bathroom scale would soon soar into the stratosphere. I think there's a paradox in there somewhere. "Abstaining" and obesity somehow don't go together.

Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston (do you suppose he likes the cream pie?) expressed regret that Catholics may be losing sight of the importance of being penitential "since the obligation of abstinence on Friday was removed." Uh, say, could we please define this "abstinence?" The first definition in my dictionary says that it is a noun meaning "The act or practice of refraining from indulging an appetite, as for food." Let's look again at the sample menu. It is allowable under the proposed meatless Friday rules, but it positively defines indulging.

Cardinal Adam Maida of Detroit piously referred to his childhood when his Friday staples were potato soup and potato pancakes. Whoa! This is starvation on a masochistic scale! Those pancakes really leave your tummy grumbling, don't they? And Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete of New York "pointed to his portly shape" and admitted he should probably be eating more fish. No, Lorenzo. You should be pushing your portly shape away from the table sooner, and donating the (undoubtedly generous portions of) uneaten food to the poor.

Supposedly the meatless Friday ban is intended to help Catholics express their opposition to, among other things, "war, violence and drugs." Works for me. Stuff yourself with fish 'n' chips and you're promoting peace and nonviolence. Jeez! Where do they get this stuff?

The Friday ban was cancelled back in the '60s, but as the irrepressible George Carlin observed in the '70s, (and I'm paraphrasing), "There are still people in hell doing time on a meat rap. Can you imagine going to hell for a hot dog?" The Catholics really should stop changing their rules so often. It's hard to keep up. When hell awaits, you at least want to be playing with the right set of rules. For example, the Catholic "Limbo," the supposedly eternal resting place of unbaptized babies, was "cancelled," though it's difficult to imagine how one goes about canceling an eternal resting place. Limbo was apparently somewhere between heaven and hell. Referring to this cancellation, Carlin wryly commented, "I sure hope everyone got promoted."

Jerry Pokorsky, a priest from Virginia, said that reinstating meatless Fridays would be "a beautiful expression of our solidarity with the unborn." Solidarity with the unborn? I think he's got this one all wrong. If you want to express your solidarity with the unborn, you go for the caviar. Now fish eggs make sense. Tiny, salty, unborn fish eggs would at least be symbolically correct. And what could possibly be a more self-sacrificing, more humble act of self-deprivation, than to indulge in imported Russian caviar? But then I guess nothing's too painful when you're sacrificing for the Lord.

The sad thing about all this foolishness is that instead of worrying about whether to have filet mignon or broiled lobster for dinner, we should all be worrying about the millions of the world's children who go to bed at night after having had nothing at all for dinner. Starvation is a very real issue. Inexcusably, 40,000 of the world's children under the age of five die every day from starvation, easily preventable diseases, and neglect. And what are the portly priests doing about it? They are threatening Catholic parents with eternal damnation if they try to limit their children to a number they can feed and care for. The Catholic position on this is unshakable, unyielding and utterly cruel: If the babies starve, they starve; so be it. It's no skin off those portly, priestly, Catholic bellies.

As a humanist, I find this reprehensible. But what do we do about it? Many in the humanist movement complain that we spend too much time criticizing religion instead of promoting humanism. The problem with that complaint is that it's almost impossible to do the latter without also doing the former. When an institution as powerful as the Roman Catholic Church causes so much avoidable human misery, how can we humanists not criticize that? Overpopulation is one of the world's worst problems; but Catholicism refuses to budge on birth control. This is inexcusable, and the suffering will never end until their monstrous, archaic policies are abolished. And that's never going to happen until the harsh spotlight of reason and compassion illuminates their cruel practices. But who's going to focus that spotlight if we won't? And, of course, that focusing is known as religious criticism.

We must write those letters to the editor, discussing the world's starving children, and yes, criticizing the inexcusable cruelty of that influential behemoth known as Roman Catholicism. And while you're writing those letters, enjoy a cup of chicken noodle soup. On a Friday.

© 1997 Judith Hayes

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