h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And for a great number of Roman Catholics around the world, it means Fish 'n' Chips on Fridays and seafood pizza thoughout the Lenten season.

Oh and Sorry, just in case the Pope missed anything the other day.

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You can't have pizza if you're being VERY strict as dairy products should be out as well, hence the pancakes. But Sundays don't count as part of lent. And if you're of Irish descent you have a dispensation due to the potato famine... Well that's my excuse anyway.

Whoa, what's this? I haven't heard of this particular tradition/belief.

Apparantly, I read somewhere while doing research for a theology essay, that the Irish are absolved from having to fast on any days of 'fasting and abstinance' because of the amount they suffered as a nation during the potato famine. Supposedly it's a papal dispensation BUT I only came across it in one very obscure book and have never heard it referred to anywhere else. Presumably the Vatican could tell me but I rely on it far too heavily (Irish Catholic family) to put it under any great scrutiny.
Also another good one is 'we are the poor who's meals are scant and uncertain' which my Great Grandmother was told by a bishop is also an acceptable reason not to fast, as presumably you'll become ill or something. But if you are a serious Catholic rather than a collapsed one like me, it'll knock a few years off in purgatory if you fast even though you don't have to.

Not a Catholic, so the whole things seems a little unnecessary to me, though I suppose it doesn't hurt to fast if you do it with the right attitude.

So I guess that counting the seconds to your next collation isn't the right attitude then? I never quite understood why the vatican clung to the fasting thing for so long. It's been a long time since five or six courses were the norm for the wealthy and never for ordinary people. There are possibly better ways to prove your good intentions.

Agreed, there definitely are.

I dunno - fasting shows the right kinda spirit if you ask me. Ask someone to do something wishy-washy like "love thy neighbour", and they'll say yeah, sure, and continue to ignore beggars. Ask them to eat no food for a week, and you start to seperate the wheat from the chaff a little more...

Having eaten fish on Lenten Fridays for quite a while... and fancying that I knew some of the history behind the practise.. I was surprised to hear about the "no dairy" thing. Where did that come from? Oh, and does Irish ancestry count?