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FISH ON FRIDAY And Other Sketches Leonard Feeney (Sheed and Ward, 1934) TO THOUSANDS of our fellow Americans we Catholics are
known merely as the people who eat fish on Friday It amuses us (up to a
point) to be thought of in this way, as some queer sort of “Sixth Day
Adventists” waiting with outstretched frying pans for the weekly arrival of
the fishmonger, or rushing periodically to market and calling for halibut or
clamoring for clams in order to fulfill a strange religious superstition. It is a pity so little is known about us. We now number
twenty millions in this country, and sooner or later we are bound to be
reckoned with as a Christian body in terms of something more substantial than
our Friday fare. For it never fails to happen that people who know only a
little about us get that little wrong. As a matter of fact we do NOT eat fish
on Friday. That is to say, not unless we like fish and want to eat it of our
own accord. I am one of those many moderately good Catholics in whom the
persuasive power of Canon Law has not developed a taste for fish either on
Friday or any other day, and stands no chance of doing so. It is true I do
not eat meat on Friday, but the distinction between abstaining from meat and
partaking of fish is not too difficult to comprehend, and ought to offer food
for thought. Oddly enough, the learned explanations of why we eat
fish on Friday are more stupid than the stupid ones. The ordinary friendly
Protestant who sits beside us in restaurants and notices our hebdomadal
horror of meat, puts us down as “just a little bit queer on that point,”
somewhat in the manner of the orthodox Jews, who are “a little bit queer” on
the subject of ham all the year round. We like this simple explanation of our Friday observance
best of all those which do not explain it. A misunderstanding is never
unpleasant provided it is straightforward and uninvolved. What drives us to
desperation is a treatise on the subject of “Catholics and Friday Fish” by a
savant, a theological psychologist, or a student of “comparative religion.” We are amazed to learn from Professor Puffles that the
practice of eating fish was introduced into the Christian ritual because the
Apostles were fishermen; or to be informed by more erudite authorities that,
whereas pictures of little fishes were enscrolled on the walls of the
Catacombs, the early Christians became gradually devoted to fish worship,
which aroused in them intermittently a religious symptom known as “an
icthophagus esophagus.” What annoys us in the theories of these polysyllablists
is not what they say, but what they imply. They imply, of course, that the
Christian tradition is merely a superior form of myth, and if archeologists
and other diggers had time to go into the matter, it could probably be shown
that the Roman Pontiff is a development of the god Neptune, and that the Holy
virgins of the Litanies were originally a school of mermaids. The true explanation of the ICTHUS inscribed as a
devotional rebus in the Catacombs, has no more to do with our practice of
eating fish than the presence of an embroidered pelican on the back of a
Benediction vestment has to do with our failure to eat pelicans, whether
embroidered or otherwise. If our religious development followed the
psychological rules which professors of religion imagine, we would most
certainly be consuming lambs and devouring doves on Friday, instead of
avoiding them in favor of fish, because, of all the animal symbols employed
by Christians in their sacred liturgy, unquestionably the commonest and most
pronounced have been the lamb and the dove. In
my younger days, when our adversaries were the good old (and thoroughly
honorable) Protestant Evangelicals, who had sense enough to see that what we
were doing on Friday was not eating fish but abstaining from meat, there was
often quoted against us the text from Saint Matthew: “Not that which goeth
into the mouth defileth a man”; and I remember the great flurry which
occurred in the “Question Box Departments” of Catholic magazines in trying to
answer this difficulty. What a pity the Catholic apologete of those days had not
tact enough to be less apologetic! Instead of trying to belabor the exegesis
of a Scriptural text to nobody’s satisfaction, not even our own — he could
have pointed out the enormous compliment we were paying to meat by
considering its absence from our table to be a hardship. One does not offer
God, by way of penance, what one thinks is bad but what one thinks is good.
And nobody really understands how good meat is until he tries going without
it one day a week. And why has it not been noticed that whenever a big feast
of the Church — let us say Christmas — falls on Friday, we become joyously
carnivorous out of schedule, openly abandon our loyalty to fish and transfer
it to roast turkey? Indeed, the truth of the matter is, if we dared tell
non-Catholics the number of reasons which will legitimately permit us to eat
meat on Friday, they would be scandalized. And I have always considered this
a most amusing situation, namely, the constant danger we are in of giving
scandal to those outside our Faith, should we neglect to do what they would
think it absurd for us to do, even if we did it. There is, in view of these considerations, a resolution
we ought to make. And it is this: not to waste our time and the time of
unbelievers in discussing our religion with them any longer in terms of its
nonessentials. There is no use trying to explain Friday fish, devotional
prayers, incense, holy water, candles, relics, medals and such incidentals to
anyone who has not studied the Catholic Faith “from the ground up.” We only
beget confusion of mind in those who question us, and arouse inordinately our
own risibilities. I remember once being asked by a very ponderous
Protestant Divine: “When you read Matins in your Breviary, do you believe
everything that is written in the lessons of the Second Nocturne concerning
the lives of the Saints?” “Well,” I replied, “that all depends on what you mean by
the word ‘believe.’ I do not BELIEVE them as part of the Christian
Revelation. Nevertheless I credit them with some authority, let us say as the
best record of a saint’s life available when an account of it was being
prepared for recitation in the Divine Office.” “You
know,” he added, paying not the slightest attention to the explanation I had
given, “the French pay compliment to a skillful liar by saying, ‘He can lie
like a Second Nocturne.” I laughed out loud. But my reverend adversary, strange
to say, did not laugh at all. He looked very serious. Now why did I laugh, and why did he not laugh, at a joke
which was entirely on me? For the simple reason that I have , in common with
those of my Faith, a sense of humor radically different from that of an
outsider. There are — let there be no mistake about it — Catholic quips and
drolleries which no one but a Catholic can tell, and no one but a Catholic can
see the point of. I hate to analyze a joke, but let me do so for once, in
order to illustrate what I mean. Every Catholic knows that our Church sometimes speaks
directly in the name of God. To each phrase of God’s revelation we attach a
sacredness that would not warrant our making a joke about it. If anyone (even
a Frenchman) should say about a liar, “He can lie like the Apostles’ Creed,”
I should not only resent the remark, I should not only think it not in the
least funny, but I should promptly wither my opponent with one of the retorts
I keep at hand for just such a situation. But the lessons of the Second Nocturne do not always
come to us directly from God. Many of them were written not by inspired
writers, but by some holy old monks whose purposes were not historical but
panegyrical, who were trying to compose not chronicles but eulogies. Now
there is between a good panegyrist and a good prevaricator an apparent
similarity, in that both over-tell their story, the former to delight, the
latter to deceive. That is why a comparison of the two is so funny. But the
universal law of all humor achieved by comparison demands that underneath an
apparent similarity there be a real difference. And if one doesn’t see the
real difference, one doesn’t see the joke. Furthermore, every authentic Christian joke is at once
humorous and pathetic. One smiles not in ridicule but in tenderness at the
poor old scribe who wrote lessons for the Second Nocturne in order to
commemorate a saint whom he loved, and who tried so hard to tell the truth,
he told it too well. For charity is the most childlike of all the virtues,
and it thinks sometimes, in its innocence, it can do service for every other
virtue besides itself, even for the virtue of veracity. This idea as it exists in the minds of simple Christian
folk was brought home to me strikingly on a certain lovely morning in Galway,
when I went for a walk, and asked an Irish peasant to tell me how far it was
to — let us call the place, for I forget it — Corofin. “Good morning! How far is it to Corofin?” He was sitting on a wall. He raised his hat and gave me
a bow. “About a half mile down the road, Father. And God speed
you!” “Thank you.” I walked a half mile. I walked another half mile,
examining sign-posts as I went. And another half mile. And another. And not
until I had duplicated this distance twelve times did I arrive at Corofin,
for it was six full miles away. When I returned in the late afternoon, I met the same
Irishman sitting on the wall. I went up to him indignantly. “What did you mean by telling me Corofin was only a half
mile away?” I shouted. “It was six miles away! You knew that when I spoke to
you! Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” “Well, you poor man,” he answered quietly and with great
seriousness, “I didn’t want to knock the heart out of you, and you looking so
tired in the early morning. I gave you a half mile to Corofin. That got you
started. Somebody else gave you another half mile. That drove you on a bit
further. In Ireland we do be always wanting to soften the journey of a
stranger by giving him little dribbles of encouragement. Sure, there’d be
nobody going any place here on a hot day, if people knew how far they had to
go to get there.” “Now listen,” I said, refusing to smile, “I don’t think
that’s really funny It may be Irish, but it isn’t honest. I just came from
England. In England one doesn’t get fooled that way. An Englishman takes
great care in giving any information that is asked of him, and he takes great
pride in giving it truthfully.” “Do you know the trouble with the English, Father?” he
replied vehemently, as he pounded the wall with his fist. “Do you know the
trouble with the English? They wouldn’t think enough of you to tell you a
lie!” I am not defending the naďveté of this Galway playboy,
nor holding it up as either a convincing or authentic example of Christian
perfection. To be an ideal Catholic, it is not enough to be a Celt. One needs
also to be a saint. But surely there can be detected in him a thorough sense
of self-forgetfulness not found in any save the children of the Faith, whose
failing it is to love a person more than a thing and a man more than a
measurement. Undisciplined Christian generosity of this sort has its
drawbacks, I admit, but I prefer it greatly to the cold exactitudes of
post-Reformation skeptics, whose social courtesies are governed solely by an
undistracted interest in their own good breeding. True, they are pleasant
people to meet on a short walk, especially when one is in need more of
information than of affection, but in the long run give me “a half mile down
the road to Corofin” any day, and I’ll walk the rest of the way myself. It can be seen from this homely example, that one source
of Catholic humor is human nature itself in the act of being transformed
(with all its absurdities, stupidities, scruples and superstitions) into
something serene and noble. For a religion as universal as ours embraces all
classes, and patiently tolerates among its members even the most ridiculous
types, provided they be men of good will. But this is to take Catholic humor in its passive sense.
This is not what makes a Catholic laugh. It is what makes him laughable. I am
anxious to discover, in some fashion or other, what is the inner secret of
our joy, and what it is that makes us laugh by ourselves, and within
ourselves, even when we are alone. I am sure the reason lies in our knowing, through the
light of Faith, paradoxes too magnificent to be contradictions. And this is
the secret not only of our mirth, but of our sorrow as well. There is an
empty amusement and an empty sadness that come from a mere knowledge of
life’s contradictions. But these are the portion of the skeptic and the
stoic, who seldom laugh and seldom weep. But the Christian may look into a
world of mystery in which all contradictions are reconciled, even though
paradoxes re0main. And the fruit of his wisdom is his gaiety and his tears;
for laughter and tears are the safety valves of sanity, and by these
beautiful outlets the strain within our nature is relieved. I may illustrate this animadversion by another little
story. There is a convent not far from where I live, to which I
have gone on occasions to give a retreat. At this convent one meets a very
nice old lay sister, who has charge of the priest’s dining-room, and whom I
may call Sister Mary. Sister Mary spends half the day indoors and half the day
outdoors, for her duties are twofold: to feed the chaplain and to feed the
chickens. Now this in itself is a paradoxical situation, and I am sure
accounts for the merry twinkle in Sister Mary’s eyes, who, knowing nothing of
either Evolution or Relativity, has faith enough to see, apart from apparent
similarities, the enormous difference between a chaplain and a chicken. Indeed,
I have often thought it would be delightful if Sister Mary should some day
get her functions confused, and should walk out to the hen-coop with a cup of
coffee, and come clucking into the chaplain’s refectory throwing handfuls of
corn. “Sister Mary,” I said to her one day, as I sat beaming
over a splendid dinner which she had just brought in on a tray, “if you were
going to order a nice meal for yourself, what dishes would you choose? What
would you like best to eat?” She rubbed her hands on her apron and stood for a while
speculating, and then said, finally and decisively: “I think I’d love a nice
thick beefsteak!” Whereupon she began to laugh, and laughed and laughed and
laughed, until tears streamed from her eyes. I must confess I was not prepared for such a mirthful
explosion, and it puzzled me. I knew, of course, the traditional Christian
custom (which nuns observe most scrupulously) of laughing whenever anything
pleasant is either spoken of or thought of. But this was sheer hysterics, and
seemed unwarranted by anything either Sister Mary or I had said which was so
dreadfully funny. It was only after I returned to my room and had time to
meditate on the matter, that I arrived at a solution of my perplexity. I am
sure the reason for Sister Mary’s hilarity, even to the point of turning
herself into a fountain, was her use of the word “love” in the sentence, “I
think I’d love a nice thick beefsteak.” One begins to see how funny this concept is when one
remembers the love employments of Sister Mary’s heart during the rest of the
day. My question, I daresay, had distracted her from some holy thought. She
is not often asked about the amours of her appetite. But being asked, she
must admit that the same heart which loves God and His angels and archangels
in her moments of contemplation, has lowlier and less ethereal preferences
when she studies a bill of fare. Now it is a shatteringly laughable
experience to transfer one’s attachment suddenly from something sublime and
eternal to something desperately temporal and comestible, to be loving at one
moment a living angel and at another a dead cow. But, because a Seraph is
just as real to Sister Mary as a sirloin, she saw the absurdity of their
conflict in her heart’s affections, and went into a paroxysm. It is interesting to notice that in non-Catholic
circles, and in Catholic circles which have been influenced by non-Catholic
culture, (and many of us have adopted, more than we are willing to admit, the
moods of the pagans and the manners of the heretics in whose midst we live)
there is no genuine humor of this kind. An honest Christian joke, in which
the very roots of one’s being are shaken with laughter, has been supplanted,
in this country at least, by what is known as a wise-crack. A wise-crack is a
bogus form of humor in which a ridiculous sense of the sublime is combined
with a sublime sense of the ridiculous. Its physical reaction is not a laugh
but a snicker. Being rarely capable of more than two variations, the one
uncharitable, the other unchaste, it is noticeably the most tiresome form of
humor ever invented. It will eventually destroy one’s power to laugh
altogether, as well as raise havoc with one’s nervous system. There is no
reckoning how much mental harm is being done to the amusement audiences of
America by reading and listening to professional wise-crackers, to whom their
own fun-making is a drudgery, and who, after a short spasm of popularity,
inevitably succumb to melancholia, alcoholia and other poisons. But where am I who, a few pages back,
started to write on fish? I am where every Catholic finds himself who
undertakes to write on anything. I am writing on everything. For if one is a
Catholic, one cannot think without being cosmical, or without being comical
either, because the Faith links all realities together and fills the world
with surprises. Nevertheless,
in deference to one of the favorite penitential practices of my
co-religionists, I feel bound to say something directly favorable about my
subject before I conclude. So I shall say this: On that day of the week when
meat is forbidden me, I like to go to a Catholic kitchen and listen to little
fishes being fried in their skins. Because I think one of the very nicest of
all noises is the sound of hot silver sizzling in a pan. But the palatability
of these little creatures, when they arrive on my dinner plate, depends upon
whatever success I have in obliterating their natural flavor with strong
doses of fish-sauce. Which reminds me that I have never yet seen a bottle of
fish-sauce which did not claim to have won a medal at the World’s Fair. |