Laura Clawson today wrote an excellent Diary on Republicans attacking the poor people of Missouri with legislation that stripped away the right for them to use food stamps to buy items like chips, seafood and steak.
Today, however, is Good Friday. And for Catholics everywhere today is a day of fasting. Good Friday for many Catholics is the last day of the lenten fast, a day to mark the end of lent in some ways. There will be a mass and ceremony which good Catholics attend and they will again not eat red meat, as well as lower all other eating today.
Prior to Vatican II, Catholics were asked to not eat red meat on ANY Friday, not just lent. While no longer a requirement, the Church still "Recommends" that Catholics forgo red meat on Fridays, which is why many churches put fish on their Friday menu for those that run soup kitchens and community outreach.
In the middle of Lent, Missouri Representatives took a monumental swipe at the Catholic Faith - a blow against religious freedom, actually - by dictating that those who were impoverished should not be entitled to seafood with food stamps.
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/...
It is fair to talk about this as an impact on the poor, but I want to pause a second on a day Catholics are supposed to reflect on the life of Jesus Christ and fast, and talk about the importance of fish on Fridays to the Catholic Faith.
Many of you have seen this image:
In Greek, the word for Fish is ichthys. This word became the start of much of the Christian faith, as early Christians referred to Jesus as Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter, a "Fisher of Men". There are a lot of reasons for this, ranging from biblical stories about Jesus feeding 5,000 with fish and loaves of bread, as well as his commentary to his apostles.
But many of the religious believe that the fish symbol grew because it was a way to show people their acceptance of Christ in a way that those who oppressed the faith could not quickly determine to be Christian.
This allowed early Christian groups to grow and thrive, and the symbol has played an important role in the faith for more than two thousand years.
Prior to Vatican II, when Catholics were asked to avoid meat with the exception of fish on Fridays, American companies reached out to fill the void. McDonalds first introduced it's Fish Filet, as an example, to satisfy the Catholic dietary requirements.
Now, we can talk about whether or not the rise of the Anglicans in England caused the return of the fish on Fridays, but it doesn't matter as the it is the rule of the church today.
When Missouri Republicans introduced House Bill 813, I wonder if they thought for one second about the dietary requirements of so many in Missouri.
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/...
Indeed, there seems to be something a bit twisted in Republican Representative Rick Brattin's House Bill 813, which would bar Missouri's roughly 930,000 food-stamp recipients from using their government payouts to buy seafood. The bill would also ban energy drinks, soda, cookies, chips and steak.
Missouri is
19% Catholic in population. At the time that this legislation was introduced, we were in the heart of lent, a time period in which Catholics in the state house should have realized that means a lot of Catholics are part of the 930,000 recipients of nutrition support.
Does being poor mean that your ability to practice your faith in a way that is traditional for hundreds of years should be ignored? Are Catholic children and adults on TANF to be told that a tuna fish sandwich or fish patty is simply too far, and their fast of those kind of proteins should be total?
Canon 1252 All persons who have completed their fourteenth year are bound by the law of abstinence; all adults are bound by the law of fast up to the beginning of their sixtieth year. Nevertheless, pastors and parents are to see to it that minors who are not bound by the law of fast and abstinence are educated in an authentic sense of penance.
While Missouri and other states try to push through their Religious Freedom bills, I want to know: what right does a legislature have to tell poor Catholics that their traditional values should be so eagerly tossed aside in order to punish them. Was bringing up legislation that severs a Catholic tradition in the middle of lent truly in the spirit of the authentic sense of penance practitioners are compelled to believe in?
I'm reminded of this verse:
Matthew 12:40 - For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
The heart of Christianity in the most sacred period of the year will forever be tied to the symbol of the fisher of men, the role of the sea within the faith, and the tradition that ties the followers together.
The Missouri legislature hasn't just went out of their way to attack the poor. Their attack on fish at this moment - at this time of the year - is an open affront to the oldest Christian denomination in the world, and on one of the most significant religious days of the calendar year, they should be ashamed.
2:53 PM PT: Thanks to some for emails and comments. I wanted to clarify something up front: of COURSE I'm not implying that this was an intentional attack on a specific religion. This diary is meant to express the standard by which Republicans have set for religious prosecution by a government and putting that same standard to Republican action. That is the point. There is a tongue in cheek element here of course, but it is mostly meant to show that if they apply their pro-RFRA viewpoint to issues they float, they would be seen as doing a lot of harm to those of faith.
This isn't meant as a diary of "this person hates Catholics" that isn't the point, just a point of fact that those who set the standard that calls for prevention of religious prosecution could be seen as doing the same thing repeatedly in the right lens. Carry on