Latest / The Uncensored Catholic / Episode 15: Fish on Friday and Being Culturally Catholic

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Episode 15: Fish on Friday and Being Culturally Catholic · The Uncensored Catholic

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Hey, y'all, welcome today's show. You know, I think a lot
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of times, particularly cratile Catholics seem to take for granted certain aspects of catholicissm
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that I would call being culturally Catholic. You know, it's it's very being
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a convert from Protestantism. One is very aware that much in Catholic culture is
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very different from Protestant culture. But you know, there are certain whether it's
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ethnic traditions or specifically religious traditions, that are unique to the Catholic Church.
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But oftentimes I'm almost surprised to learn someone is Catholic that I've known for a
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while and they say, oh, well, I'm Catholic, or i'll seem
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at Mass, and maybe because they've begun taking such things to granted to the
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extent that they no longer wear those cultural identifiers or follow those traditions in a
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way. And I think it's it's kind of a shame, because it really
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is living your faith when you can incorporate it into the rest of your life.
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You know, if our religion is just you know, forty five minutes
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or so at Mass every Sunday morning, yeah, that's not saying a lot.
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You know that's that's that's isolating our religion from the rest of our lives.
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Now, people may have private devotions, and I know that, I
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get that, and there may be very valid reasons why some people like to
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go kind of under the radar as Catholic. I have had to do that
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before. Really after my conversion, I had to spend time in a very
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rural part of eastern North Carolina, which is very much dominated by most everybody's
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Southern Baptists or Seven Day administ or Methodist or so a lot of holiness churches.
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But really far more than that, the Masonic Order is just they run
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everything. I mean, you don't get a job, you don't get a
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loan unless you're a member of the Masons, or you have a friend who's
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a Mason who can sign off. And the clan is still pops up every
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now and then, and only a couple of generations. Well, even in
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my lifetime, the clan was very active. I mean I mentioned before I'm
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a show that in the nineties, even when Bill Clinton was president, there
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were billboards in that area of North Carolina that said welcome to our county,
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and it had a big clansman on horseback right, full robes and everything.
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You know St Andrew's Cross, and it said welcome to whatever County of North
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Carolina, or the q Klux Clan of such and such county of North Carolina,
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and the Democrat Party of this county welcome. You please remember to obey
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our laws, you know, like I've said, they were not welcoming signs.
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And to have a statue in your yard, maybe if the Blessed Virgin
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Mary or a Saint Francis statue. You might go to store one day and
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come back and find your house was burned down. And if you were known
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to be Catholic, you would certainly be black ball. You would not be
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in the old the Rotary, or the Kawanas or the country club, and
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you probably wouldn't get a job or the loan you would applied for. Certainly
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not a government job. All government jobs were held by Mason's. I don't
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know if it's true everywhere. I think it probably is. You know,
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the Masonic Order is very much associated with the q Klux Klan, or was.
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I think they've tried to distance themselves from that now, but still you'll
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see the Masonic Order as the Scottish Rite, for instance, in most places,
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and they used the Saint Andrew's Cross, which was also the symbol of
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the clan. And you know, probably I didn't even mention the Presbyterians.
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Presbyterians were the dominant church in that area, very much Scott's Irish, but
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most of them over the generations drifted away and become Baptist or Methodists. So
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really it was only the wealthy families that were Presbyterian or Anglican, Episcopal whatever.
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But all of them were Masons. And you know, of course the
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Shriners do good things for handicapped kids. Okay, but you may not know
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this. Actually the Masonic Order is dedicated to this destruction of the Catholic Church.
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All Masons take vowels that they will not belong to a Catholic church.
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You know, actually I shouldn't say all Masons. There are all these various
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levels. I've actually met Catholic Masons before that don't know, the Masons are
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anti Catholic. It may kind of surprise you on that, but actually they
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are kind of learn more as they're initiated into higher levels. They just thought
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it was a social club like the Rotary or something. But if you look
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at your Catechism. You can go to the old Catechism, you can go
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to the New Catechism. Catholics are forbidden to join the Masonic Order because some
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Masonic order is anti Catholic to its core. And you know, at least
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a few years ago, a couple of decades ago, a Mason actually had
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to swear an oath that even on his deathbed, he would not receive the
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Sacrament of Last Rites, or go to confession, or have anything to do
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with a Catholic priest. Historically, they've been very violent, very quite violent.
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If you go back to our Lady of Fatima, you know, the
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Mason's actually kidnapped the three kids and with un thread of torture, tried to
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get them to renounce their visions of the Blessed Mother. And according to my
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friends in Rome, especially a friend that is very much involved in the legal
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system, they have thoroughly infiltrated government and even church organizations for the express purpose
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of destroying the Catholic Church. The Masonic Order is humanist at its core and
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actually quite satanic. That said, most Masons have absolutely no idea. As
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I said, I even know Catholic Masons and members of my family who didn't
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hate anybody, and they were at lower levels of the Masonic Order, had
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not been initiated into the higher orders of the Masonic Order. But I can
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definitely understand, having been in that environment, why someone may wish to be
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a low key Catholic. Keep your crucifix tucked in your shirt, if you
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wear one at all, right, don't be seen with rosary beats. There
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have been times at certain gatherings where a prayer was said before a meal and
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I had to stop myself from crossing myself because it could have been physically dangerous.
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And you may say, well, you should have done it anyway and
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die a martyr when you got people depending on you, when you're taking care
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of family members, that's not always the best thing to do. And actually
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the Catechism says we don't have to necessarily expose ourselves to danger anyway. I
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was talking with a friend about a week ago, and it was funny,
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you know, I think as a convert, we tend to be a little
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more zealous about tradition, you know, and not well, everything's new,
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so we haven't had a chance to take it for granted yet. And I
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abstain from meat on Fridays and when possible, I like to fast on Fridays.
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And it was talking with a friend of mine who was Catholic, and
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she said, you're not gonna believe this, and it's kind of embarrassing.
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Around thirty, you know, she said, I never knew that we were
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not supposed to eat meat outside of Lent on Fridays, abstained from meat on
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Friday's outside of Lent. She said that I had mentioned it, and then
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she was talking with someone else, it was Catholic, who said they didn't
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eat meat on Fridays, and it finally clicked in her mind. Wait a
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minute, We're not supposed to eat meat on Fridays. And you know,
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it's such almost a trivial thing really, And of course most of you know,
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after part of Vatican two was saying that Catholics were no longer required to
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abstain from meat on Friday, and it makes a lot of sense. Okay,
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that's one thing I'm not going to criticize Vatican two about. You know,
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well, certainly, in ancient times and really up until it just a
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couple hundred years ago, most cities were founded on major bodies of water.
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They were at seaports, or on major rivers and such. Think of all
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the great, you know, amazing cities of Europe, they're going to be
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on seaport or a major river. Think about in America where the large cities
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are in New York, Boston, you know, come on down the coast
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to Savannah and Miami and go to the west coast around the Great Lakes.
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The Mississippi River. Water was essential for transportation, for life, for everything,
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and fish was abundant in the I guess I think it was probably the
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eighteen nineties, I mean just as recently as that, or at maybe eighteen
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seventies. In Massachusetts, they actually passed a law saying that prisoners could only
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be served lobster so many times a week because they was thought to be inhumane
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to feed them too much lobster. They were sick of it, they didn't
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want anymore. Lobster was thought to be worthless. Oysters were the food of
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the poor. You could get twelve for a penny, and only the poorest.
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A rich person would not be caught dead eating oysters. What really changed
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was the railroad system. So the railways, people were able to go inland
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and to put towns not anywhere near a major source of water and that,
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and then seafood became a delicacy. Lobster and oysters and you know, did
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you Caviar actually used to be given away free in bars as a salty snack
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to make you thirsty to eat more beer. It was considered to be worthless.
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So between about eighteen seventy with the developer of the rail system to about
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nineteen ten, everything changed and seafood had had just been food for the poor,
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became an absolute delicacy. Blue caviar and lobster and blue crab and oysters
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and all those things. That's actually my favorite kind of food. I'm a
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you know, I'm a seafood fanatic. Before then, the poor eight fish
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meat. You know, people kept chickens, but they were valued for their
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eggs. After three years or so, when your henstop laying eggs, you
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may put it in a soup pot or to a roast I mean like called
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CoA van and all those like really famous now we think of them as upscale
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meals were actually ways to use an old tough hen or well, in that
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instance, a rooster that was worthless for egg production. Some people could keep
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poor pigs if they were on the edges of town. That's a story for
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another day. I can tell you all about Wall Street and how the wall
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was actually built to keep the pigs from running around everywhere. That's a fascinating
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history as well. But as far as beef, beef only came from large
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landowners that had property, and they weren't in the towns. They were out
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in the country. Game was the exclusive for the wealthy. The wealthy landowers
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of Europe had huge states, and if anyone else went on there and shot
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their game, they were poachers. Only the wealthy had pheasant and deer and
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all that. So for almost two thousand years when the church sat on Fridays,
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we'll give up meat, because that's the day that Jesus gave up his
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flesh. We'll give up flesh. Right, that made sense. It made
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sense for the wealthy to have to give up their expensive beef and eat the
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poor folks fish and oysters and such on that day. And most people had
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gardens. Vegetables were not very expensive. They had you know, fresh markets
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people, you know, the old world style markets. You either had a
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little garden in your backyard. If you were a little upper class, maybe
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you had a few pots of your balcony, or you just went to market
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every day and what bault was fresh because there was no refrigeration, so fish
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and vegetables were cheap. Well. By the early nineteen hundreds, things were
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really starting to come to a head as fish and vegetables came defensive because in
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so many areas they had to be shipped in on freight trains, or you
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know with ice, and ice was really hard to make back then. I
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mean a lot of times it was harvested in the winter and kept frozen,
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and I mean ice was expensive, so what had become food for the poor
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became a luxury. So it makes total sense. Set in Vaticanto, they
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would recognize and say, you know, not all Catholics can't even afford to
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abstain from meat on Fridays anymore. And that's a change that makes sense.
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But I think it's really good if we can to continue to do that,
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so we can be more culturally Catholic. If you think about, let's say
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you're just going to Mass on Sundays or Saturday evenings, well that Friday,
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you can make a conscious choice, conscious choice to be Catholic on that day,
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to think about what you're giving up to alter your diet on that one
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day if you can fast, you know, fastening his penance, say some
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extra prayers, pray, pray your rosary, do an extra bit of prayer,
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and focus on being Catholic. And I know that's kind of an odd
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thing to say, but I remember that episode. I think it was perhaps
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the last episode of Agatha Christie's Hercule poiro You know, Poirot is this great
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little Belgium detective and in the last season, and David Suchet is actually a
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very religious Catholic. He did wonderful documentaries on Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
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Wonderful. Do you try to see them if you can. Really some of
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the best Catholic programming I've seen in my wife. But he wanted to emphasize
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the Catholic nature of poiro and he's holding his rosary and he says, God,
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I thank you for making me Catholic. And I think that is something
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that the convert feels on a daily basis, regardless the struggles, regardless what
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you have to put up with. That perhaps the cradle Catholic maybe takes for
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granted that it is such a privilege to go to Mass it's such a privilege
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to pray the Rosary, it's such a privilege to have the books, the
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history the Saints, and to take part in cultural Catholicism in any way,
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shape or form, is just going to enrich your life and your faith more
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and more and more. The other thing that really surprises people, you know,
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America was a very Protestant nation until early nineteen hundreds, late eighteen nineties
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Germans and Italians became coming in and it faced a lot of discrimination actually,
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but they in came one of the polls and the Hungarians, more Irish,
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Catholics, etc. In Protestant New England before the late eighteen hundreds, you
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did not celebrate Christmas or Easter, not the way we celebrate it now.
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No decorations, no parades, no days off. Now Easter falls on Sunday,
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so you'd have had Sunday off. You didn't take Christmas off. If
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you were a factory worker, you had to show up. If you were
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a government employee, you had to show up. There were no Christmas trees,
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you know. I had an ancestor that was on the second voyage of
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the Mayflower and had he put up a Christmas tree at his house. They
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literally would have dragged him out of his house, put him in the stocks,
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and beaten him. That was considered to be Catholic. The celebration of
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Christmas as we know it now was considered to be Catholic. The celebration of
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Easter as we know it now was considered to be Catholic. Really, things
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didn't change until I believe it was Queen Victoria. It was following Charles Dickens
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a Christmas Carol, right, Christmas sort to become celebrated a little more in
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England. Queen Victoria put a Christmas tree up in the Palace and it was
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really publicized all the papers. And whoever the American president was at the time,
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I cannot remember if it was Garfield. I think it was before Garfield,
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had to before Garfield. Anyway, I cannot remember who it was at
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the time. They put up a Christmas tree at the White House, and
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it was featured, you know, in the New York Post and all the
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magazines and everything. And that's the only thing that encouraged people to be in
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putting up even a sprig of holly to celebrate Christmas in America. You know,
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we think about how well now we take Christmas for granted, it's become
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commercialized and all that. I think about what a privilege it was for our
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ancestors to finally be able to celebrate the birth of Christ. And then you
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know, following on that, it was actually the canny companies that encouraged a
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big celebration for Easter. It started with Neco wafers and they were making the
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little candy hearts. Before then, candies as gifts were really expensive things that
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only the wealthy would give as a gift. We take so for granted these
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traditions in our culture, which are actually Catholic. Think about Mother's Day.
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I mean, every year you hear someone complain all the Hallmark card company came
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up with Mother's Day. Well, as Catholics, we realize, no,
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this is the day we celebrate the Mother of God and we celebrate our own
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mothers. It's it's such a privilege, honestly to be culturally Catholic. So,
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you know, I think I took my first risk when when I put
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a bumper sticker on the back of my old pickup truck. Yess a rural
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North Carolinian hillbilly. I drive an old beat up pickup truck and I put
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a bumper sticker on the back of it. Save America. Pray the Rosary.
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When I walk my dog. Wherever I am, I'm praying the rosaries
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I go and you know what, people actually smile and say hello. There's
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actually nothing to be afraid of being culturally Catholic. And it's in some areas,
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as I said, it may be difficult different I remember, Oh,
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Peggy noon Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter from Ronald Reagan. She was a conservative
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before Donald Trump was elected and now she's basically a liberal Democrat. She wrote
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about how when she put up a religious statutory yard, I think it's a
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plus. In Virgin Mary, people vandalized it every day. That's in Washington,
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d C. Okay, you're gonna move to a liberal city with a
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bunch of anti Catholic, anti Christian liberals, you're gonna get some blowback.
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But as long as you're not risking your life. As long as you're not
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and maybe that's your choice, if that's what you want to do, I
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think wearing a scapular, carrying a rosary, wearing a crucifix, and actually
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living your faith will enrich your life really beyond measure. Really beyond anything I
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could actually put into words. It's great if you can go to Mass every
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day. I can't. Many people can't. It's great if you can do
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adoration all the time. But again that's inside the church, where the church
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militant. You know, we take the church to the world, and so
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you know, hey, if you want to have a meatless Friday, if
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you want to abstain from meat on Friday, I've written an entire cookbook.
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It's called The Omnivore's Guide to Home Cooking. It probably has more information on
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cooking fish and seafood than any other book I know of. I mean seriously,
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I'm a fish and seafood fanatic, and I put a couple hundred pages
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into that. If you want to buy the book, that's cool. If
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not, you want to email me and ask for a recipe. Say I've
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got this fish I'm working with. I'll give you a recipe. I got
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this, I got some clams, I got some crawfish, I got some
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blue crabs, I mean, trout, you name it. Just to email
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me, I'll send you a recipe. Let's just enjoy. Remember, our
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entire religion centers around a meal, the meal of the Eucharist and our family
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table is like a reflection of that altar and that meal, and we should
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never never take a single meal for granted, especially a meal we can share
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with the people we love. So y'all have a great evening, and I
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will talk with you tomorrow