Fish on Friday

                           

         When I was growing up in the 40s and 50s, most Catholics religiously kept the no meat on Friday law. It was a Mortal Sin to eat meat on Friday. You could actually go to hell if you flaunted Canon Law.

        

I guess it didn’t seem worth risking damnation for a hamburger.

        

This meant that after six days of meat meals mothers faced the question what to make on Friday.  Fish seemed like the obvious answer and maybe it was for people who lived near the sea or even a lake.

But for us in Dayton, Ohio, unless you knew someone who actually fished in the Miami River, the fish selection was meager. You could go downtown to the Arcade and buy halibut, a bland rather tasteless fish by the time it traveled to Ohio, but most other seafood never reached our tables in those days before flash freezing.

        

This left us with cans of tuna, salmon or cod. The infamous tuna and mushroom soup casserole was a frequent offering.  A cold meal of salmon salad was another. The one I liked was canned codfish mixed with egg and mashed potatoes and fried in patties. Mama served them with fried noodles and stewed tomatoes. That was a ‘gooder’.

        

We ate plenty of vegetarian meals too even though the word was not in our vocabulary. There was macaroni and cheese, made from scratch before Kraft took over. With ketchup, maybe some canned peas and applesauce.  

        

German potato pancakes were a treat. Mama would joke that they didn’t quite qualify as non-meat since she always scraped her knuckles on the grater.

        

Another thing my family loved was noodles, butter and cheese. We didn’t know this was Fettuccini Al Fredo, we thought it just something my Italian dad would whip up when he was home to save us from another dinner of tuna fish casserole.

        

It came as a surprise - call it a shock - when sometime in the sixties the Church actually reversed the law and it was no longer a Mortal Sin to eat meat on Fridays.

        

I think this must be the reason why so many people of my generation left the church. Our confidence was shaken. If meat could just arbitrarily be taken off the table, so to speak, as a deal breaker on Judgment Day, what else could be changed? We asked ourselves why going to Mass on Sunday was so important? It didn’t seem like much of a sin to miss a time or two.  We began taking birth control pills and forgot to mention it in Confession.

        

The whole question of who decided right and wrong was up for grabs. There was no longer any logic to it. If the Church could so cavalierly change the rules, why accept the rules at all?

        

Anyway, that was a long time ago. The fish on Friday rule gave us something to fuss about. And maybe we did get a few points with God for the effort.