In the old days Catholics were forbidden to eat meat on Fridays. This was serious business for my father's mother who'd been indoctrinated at Manhattan's elegant Convent of the Sacred Heart. When cousin Furlong was served meat on Friday at a Princeton faculty member's house, it was taken as grave insult. My father was told he could not go to Princeton and was bundled off to Holy Cross College in Worcester instead.
My mother's family had a different point of view. The clam chowder on Friday could be served with bacon bits, because the bacon was "only there for the taste."
My mother's grandfather Michael Lafferty was a farmer. His family lived close to the land near the tiny, isolated hamlet of Kilmoon East near the tiny town of Lisdoonvarna, population 822 in 2002. My grandmother claimed she had to walk five miles to school each day. This might be an exaggeration, but maybe she was thinking round trip. These days you can check up on grandma by Googling Lisdoonvarna and you can see that Kilmoon East is not quite a three mile walk to Lisdoonvarna.
Another amazing Internet thing is that you can Google Michael Lafferty's census records. These prove that half the Irish of that era were illiterate. Of course you have to allow that the 1901 Irish census was administered by the British and recorded three children under five and a newborn as "Cannot Read." All of the older family members' "Literacy" is listed as "Read and Write" and as "Irish and English" speakers.
The census lists the Laffertys as "Roman Catholic". This is true. My grandmother remembered her father leading the family in saying the Rosary every night. It was simpler to be pious close to the land, no TV, no radio, and no electricity.
Michael Lafferty's relationship with the village priest was not simple. There was an ongoing feud. The rural Irish had kept their faith for hundreds of years with little help from priests other than an itinerant father passing through to celebrate mass, at times in the open air of a farmer's field, out of sight of the British who were hunting down and eliminating the priests. By 1900 the Catholic Church had agree to a truce with the British in Ireland and had legal if not official status. The Laffertys did not recognize the truce.
The feud between Michael and the priest came to a head during the Easter rebellion. Son Ned had joined the Irish Republic Army and was on the run after disabling (blowing up) some British army trucks. The priest wanted Michael to cooperate with the British and turn in Ned. Michael refused. The priest denied him absolution. Michael growled, "I'll burn in hell before I give my son up to the British", though he knew he wouldn't since, as a devout Catholic, he knew this was a matter of conscience, which the priest in fact had no authority to condemn.
