Go for it.
Mar. 16th, 2007 11:39 am![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
( 10x3 questions )
A reader writes:
I got hit by the old line that eating fish was related to boosting the fishing industry. The sad thing was the guy said he heard if from a seminarian. I went to EWTN and looked at some posts but wasn’t real happy with what I saw there.
Do you have (at Catholic Answers) or on some simple but documented history of eating fish?
This is one of those things that is hard to verify because of how backwards the situation is. Every year people claim that eating fish on Fridays was introduced to help the Italian fishing industry, but nobody ever comes up with primary source documents to estabish this.
It seems to me that the burden of proof is on the people making this claim. Unless they can produce an original source document saying this, it isn't worth giving any credence to.
I say the burden of proof is on them because I don't believe the claim (I think it's a myth), and the burden of proof is always on the person you disagree with.
It seems to me that the following is far more likely to account for the situation:
If there were a requirement that people eat fish on Friday (there ain't) then one would have a better case for the fishing-industry story, but in the absence of a requirement or any primary source document to the contrary, the above seems to me to be the more likely way to account for the matter.
from jimmyakin.org.