Spike is Best

I've always wondered why people post pictures of seafood on Catholic social media whenever Lent approaches. Are you abstaining from meat throughout Lent or something?

But I have wondered more often about seafood being the traditional fare on days of penance, like Fridays. It is a discipline that can be changed. In Europe, bakers were not allowed to use butter during a certain time (I think it was Advent) and had to use oil instead. And then this was later overwritten. I wonder if the Pope should issue a binding declaration ruling that fish and all seafood is now meat, along with all the other meats, and must be abstained from on the days appointed, like Fridays.

If the Pope decided that seafood is too easily a luxurious dish - very often way over and above typical meat dishes - and not in the spirit of penitential observance, and he changed the discipline so that days of abstinence were more like "flatbread and hummus days", and no longer "fish days", can you imagine the traditionalist reaction?

Restaurants that have developed business models on reaping the benefits of Catholic Fridays over the century would be lobbying all kinds of ideologues. People in New Orleans would burn effigies of Francis in the streets. Conservative venues like First Things would burn every drop of midnight oil churning out imperious essays that teach as doctrine mere human precepts. The keepers of holy tradition would go nuts - all because they could no longer have fish tacos, breaded prawns, fried calamari, sushi rolls, shrimp gumbo, deep-fried fish and chips and lobster tails with clarified butter for their Friday penitential observance. They would explode with holy outrage.

But we have been called to make a mess.

Journalists who have a line to the Pope should really posit this question to him. If any journalists who get to ask him questions on airplanes or wherever are reading this, or you know someone, maybe it would be a good idea to ask Pope Francis: "Do you think with the abundantly luxurious forms of seafood in the world, that it would be a good idea to change the discipline of abstinence to also include seafood as meat?"

Go to it. Lets get it done.