PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Current
March 5, 2019
By Sue Kerr
Lent is arriving in Pittsburgh and that means fish fry season is upon us.
A mainstay of Catholic culture in Pittsburgh, this is the first fish fry season since the release of the Grand Jury Report in August 2018 describing sexual violence by nearly 100 priests in the Diocese of Pittsburgh and the complicity of Diocesan officials in covering up that abuse.
For decades, fish fries have been important fundraisers for parishes throughout the region, staffed by stalwart volunteers of all ages.
Fish fries have also expanded to fire halls and local restaurants and the sheer volume of events that have cropped up in recent years has led to many media outlets to launch bracket challenges, Facebook groups, and a Google map. You can find fish fries with hipster themes, locally sourced fries, and everything from fish tacos to fish pizza to help meet the Lenten obligation when you tire of a 29-inch piece of fried cod on a hamburger bun.
For the past several years, I’ve featured a blog series called Fish Fry Fridays, essentially my reviews of assorted fish fries throughout the region. I dive into the food quality, portions, and price, but I also consider the accessibility of the venue, the friendliness and welcoming attitudes of the community, any evidence of recycling, and more. Examining the tension between my personal experience of Catholic culture and our shared experiences at the fish fries has been a useful starting point for some of my reviews.
But the whole time I wrote these, I knew about the sexual violence occurring in the Church. I was one of the kids who grew up knowing that most of the priests in our parish (Holy Spirit in West Mifflin) were just terrible. That was proven true when I discovered that the parish was staffed by child predators for at least 23 consecutive years. My friends were preyed upon and still deal with those scars today. I have never been unaware of the magnitude of sexual violence in the Catholic Church or Christianity writ large. It has shaped my life in ways that are difficult and painful to describe.
I read accounts of local parishes struggling to reconcile the realities of the grand jury report and hear very little acknowledgement of how these remaining parishioners were complicit in these events. Instead, people focus on what they will lose — their church buildings might close, their schools might be consolidated, their losses are potentially catastrophic. But very few people take that next step of considering that all of these things were built on a culture that has been skewed toward violence, abuse, and power hoarding for the past several millenia. Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, have violent histories.
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