DB#424 - Fish, Cheese and Tulips
Today on the Daily Breakfast: Lisa in London; Dutch passport photos; My trip to Canada: Winnipeg and Montreal? Why do Catholics eat fish on Friday? Questions about the Netherlands: more than cheese, tulips and wooden shoes? The Wii and the Writer’s Strike; Phone Jingle Contest!
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Welcome to Canada! I live in Vancouver so I won’t have the opportunity to meet you in person. While in Montreal you have to visit Quebec City as this year marks the 400th Anniversary of the founding of the city. Also the city is host to the International Eucharistic Congress from June 15 to 22, 2008. Pope Benedict XVI has not announced his participation yet. Please pray that he will come. We need his presence there as the population of Catholics in the Province is in a dismal state. After all Quebec was the seat of Catholicism in Canada and home of many Saints. Father please spread the word of the 49th International Eucharistic Congress.
Montreal is a beautiful city, and the area around Toronto and Saint Catherine’s has great charm. I’ve never been up there this time of year, but in the spring and in the fall the whole Ontario and Quebec regions are gorgeous. And I supposed that there are some ill-tempered, impolite or unfriendly Canadians - but I’ve never met any.
What I really like about Montreal, as I roamed around with my eaves-dropping tourist ways, was the conversations between the locals. One person would speak french, the other english - and they were conversing. The francophone understood english, just didn’t speak it well; the anglophone was just the opposite. And while I know you think Quebec francais sounds, well, odd, this old english-only boy can understand a lot of it, unlike Parisian french.
And a comment about the fish-on-Friday thing - I’m a convert. In addition to all the obvious things that there is to love about the Church (repository of truth, my guide and access to God, all that stuff), I really love the human parts of it; I never felt more at home than when I could finally say, without any qualifiers or explanations, “I’m Roman Catholic”. And part of that is things like fish-on-Friday. It just makes me feel even more a part of the 2,000-year-deep and a billion-people-wide Church. It’s nothing theological, but it’s important when you’re the only guy in the room who was never an altar boy.
Keep up the great work, Father R.
Hi Fr.! I’m a Christian and am 14 and I have been listening sense episode 200. I have a question for the Peculiar Bunch, it’s about approaching family about God, I thought you might do something on that on your show because I am at a loss. My cuz once told me “O gosh,” she said as she went though her MySpace friends, “Sam is so weird, he actually sits down and reads the Bible.” Taken aback I asked, “And what is wrong with that?” She doesn’t reply. I want to save my friend and cousin Rae. Our grand parents are catholic, and our mom’s were raised as Catholics, but I don’t know much more about our religious history. Plz help, God Bless, (God Bless, that’s so cool, I never herd that before until I started listening to the Daily Breakfast.)
one last thing, my mane is german so it sounds like (DEETLINE), not diet or lean, for we are neither lean or good at keeping diets.
The people from the far North of the Netherlands have the same feelings about called ‘Hollander’ as the people of the South (below the Rivers) have.
So don’t say I’m from Holland, I’m from The Netherlands, it’s so not the same
I’m not Dutch anyway. 
(According to Struik Bouillon).
Dutch winter: not cold enough for skating or skiing, but cold enough to make you sick.
That explains why a Dutch friend of a friend gave me a frosty reception when I asked him about the names Holland and The Netherlands. I seem to recall he was from the south!
When you get to Montreal, Father, do not miss the Notre Dame cathedral. It is absolutely breathtaking!
Fr. Roderick, it is interesting to note that everyone I’ve ever known from the Netherlands spoke English, but with a Dutch accent. Why is it you speak English with only a bit of what I would call a “Scottish kind” of accent… whatever that is. (WOOOOD instead of ‘Woud’. ‘Caller’ instead of ‘Cu-Ler’)
It was also interesting to hear you talk about what your parents did… I sometimes forget that so many don’t remember those days. We used to wait up until midnight on Friday (Saturday morning) to eat luncheon meats etc. at 12:01 A.M. It was a pretty poor sacrifice when we did that, but we we children.
The bishops of the US have asked Catholics to abstain (no meat) and even fast if possible on all Fridays as a gesture for peace.
It was a good and bad thing that was done when they made abstaining form meat optional. People didn’t see it as a sacrifice as much as a “law” to be obeyed. Now that it is optional, no one seems to want to take it on to themselves to make the sacrifice. Ofr course, as you said, eating fish isn’t a sacrifice for most of us. It is a treat!
Congrats on your new niece!
Hi Fr. Roderick, I just found your podcast between Christmas and New Year! What a wonderful show you produce! My 3 Teens( 14,16,18) get alot from your podcast,they listen to it with me and it has even started a few conservations Thank you! You will never guess where I heard about you…on a knitting podcast called Cast-on with Brenda Dayne she does her show in Wales.
I am a Canadian and was very excited to here you are coming to Canada. I hope you have great weather and an even more spirit filled time! I live in Prince Edward Island, the smallest province in Canada. I am presently going though a great journey…I am taking a Pastorial Associate course that runs for 2 years..we meet one weekend per month and stay in a Convent (turned community centre) where we are so well cared for,3 meals +3snacks per day, our own rooms and lots of time for prayer and fellowship along with our course load of wonderful topics that is presented every month by a different priest or lay minister. It’s quite hard to feel like we are missing our families at all. Our province is going through a restructuring of our Catholic Parishes we are moving from 59 parishes and missions to 17 Parishes with 31 churches. I was excited to here that you also have been doing something similar. I hope all goes well for your parishes and wish that you would pray for us too as we go through this growth. I would like to quote from an article that was put out by our Diocesan Pastoral Initiatives Council “…this discusion is based on a goal to have a pastoral awakening of the people of God that will renew our parish life, acknowledge explicitly the many good works already done in the community by people of faith as a result of their love for God and celebrate all that is our faith through the sacramental and liturgical life of the parish.”
Thanks you again Father and I look forward to hearing lots more great podcast from you.
PS I have been checking out SQPN website …its wonderful and I have been finding lots more great stuff. One question…. as long as I go to amazon through your site does it matter what I buy… will you still get credit or is it only books and stuff mentioned in SQPN store?
Thanks,
Darlene and Family,
Fish Friday - I don’t know if this is true or not, but this is what I had heard why Catholics eat fish on Fridays.
The tradition of eating fish on Fridays goes back to the early days of the Church. It was started so members of the larger Christian community could economically help those who were less well off, the fishermen. The story goes that fisherman and their families were experiencing hardship, because other sources of food was plentiful and readily available. In an effort to help, the Christian community asked their members to eat fish one day of the week. Thereby providing support to those in need, the fishermen and their families.
@ Darlene- It doesn’t matter what you buy as long as you enter the Amazon website from the SQPN link.
Good luck with your courses.
Happy New Year!
Bonita
The sad thing about the tradition of not eating meat on Fridays going away is that we Catholics are supposed to replace that with a different penitential sacrifice… people seemed to have lost that part of the change.
I have chosen to observe the tradition of no meat on Fridays (and that doesn’t mean you have to eat fish). One of the nice things about not eating meat is that it has created opportunities to discuss my Catholic faith with other people when it comes up in social situations.
Some people just have a natural gift/talent for languages I guess :). Also practicing a lot does help as well. I bet his speech is better now than when he started out.
We were on the Catholic Answers Apologetics Cruise through the St Lawrence River. It was in the autumn a few years ago and it was quite beautiful. One of he most spectacular places we visited was the Shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré. If it’s at all possible, you should pay it a visit.
http://www.ssadb.qc.ca/en/index.htm
This is the rubrics for Catholics in the US related to Friday Penance.
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0501bt.asp
Father, thanks so much for sharing with us a greater part of your world, and thanks for answering all my questions. The tulip photo is gorgeous!
God bless!