When I was younger there was a much tougher religious regimen within the Catholic church. The season of Lent today in this year of Our Lord 2025 is still the runup to Easter Sunday, but it is simply not as demanding as it used to be. Fasting and abstention were very much part of our religion upbringing then. I still know two people who give up all alcohol for Lent. Cruel and unusual if you ask me but in school, we were expected to give up SOME things during that season. I’m not sure who came up with that, but I suspect it wasn’t God. It sounds more like the Sisters from the Mercy or Presentation orders. Someone who changes water into wine wouldn’t do it.

With fasting and the like the notion of no meat of any kind on Fridays was just lifestyle for us. It was the way things WERE. Every Friday I was sent down to “the cove” off Water Street, down by the old Parkers store, to get a 50 cent fish from Mr. Boulos, the fish monger. He worked off a barrow made of two planks and a couple of sawhorses. Fresh? The fish was caught that morning.

There is a legend that I heard in school that the “No meat on Fridays rule” came from a Pope in Rome who wanted to help the fishermen of the Tiber river market their catch. Upon further review, as they say in football, that appears not to be the case. The villain of the piece, if that is right word, turns out to be Saint Thomas Aquinas. According to Saint Thomas, Jesus fasted in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. So, it is we so we can honour Him with a small sacrifice of denial. Aquinas in part two of the Summa Theologica also links animal flesh to pleasures of touch. Nudge nudge, wink wink. Saint Thomas was talking about food and sex. Thus, Lent became a period of restraint and sacrifice and a period in general terms of not much fun really.

Somewhere along the way in my youth things eased up. We used to have to “fast” totally, except for water, from midnight the night before Mass in order to receive Holy Communion. That means for the 10:30 in the morning Mass at St. Patrick’s you would have had nothing other than water from the night before. Now the fast is just an hour long, I think. I am not even sure about that. The rules also eased up on Fridays and meat being banned from the menu. It was reduced from no meat on EVERY Friday to just a couple of “fast days” during the year with Good Friday being the main event so to speak.

So, fish it was for us again on Good Friday. I wouldn’t want a steak to make me naughty. My wife also obeys the no meat on Good Friday rule. She is just trying to humour me but that is fine. She is offering her support to my beliefs.

This year I was ready for fried fish, scruncheons and a few scallops, but I made a critical mistake. I forgot that the “NO SCRUNCHEONS FOR YOU” rule was in effect because scruncheons are bits of fried pork. I know the Vatican lets us eat flippers on Friday by declaring seals to be honorary fish. I wonder if the newly-minted Pope Leo might do the same and make scruncheons a part of a Good Friday fish dinner.

You can contact Jim Furlong at [email protected]