THE
P RTAL
July 2011
things by corporate decision-making in this or that
region of the far-flung Latin Church.
In mediaeval Norway, bishops were asked to judge
whether whale should count as meat or not. And after
the vast missionary expansion of the Church since the
Renaissance, and especially in the nineteenth century,
there are no doubt places where meat is hardly ever
available anyway, or where fish (the most obvious
replacement for meat) is difficult to come by. In
England, however, there were no special circumstances
of this kind, and the Catholic bishops, accordingly,
made a mistake (not an error of doctrine but a failure
of prudence) when they departed from the general
norms of the Latin Church and left the choice of Friday
penance to each individual. This their successors have
now recognised.
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Catholics marked their identity thus fell by the wayside.
But just as our religion should not be confined to
Sundays so likewise it ought not to be restricted to
churches.
Letting it spill out in publicly registered ways onto
weekdays and into kitchens and homes, snack-bars
and restaurants (the Gospel expressed in time and
space?), is one way of putting into practice its entirely
comprehensive character.
By their meatless Fridays
you shall know them!
A very small way, you may say, compared with the
virtues, the moral law, Christian charity, and the life
of sanctity. You are right in one way, and wrong in
another. It is small morally and spiritually, yes, but
It’s not just that once there is no particular prescribed in terms of the symbolic structure of human life it is
penance, the whole idea of Friday penance is likely to actually quite big – as cultural anthropologists like the
go by the board. (Concrete wins over abstract every late Mary Douglas underlined.
time.) It’s also that, where the choice of penance is left
to individuals, it simply cannot be ‘common’, whatever
By their meatless Fridays (unless a solemnity falls
else it may be.
on a Friday, see Canon 1251) you shall know them,
because until you know them rather better you may
Religion should
not be aware of anything else. A people is recognised
first by its customs, then by its ethos and finally (in the
not be confined to Sundays
case of the Church) by the treasure of the Revelation
One of the ways in which English (and Welsh) it guards.