FISH SCARCITY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 194, 18 August 1942, Page 6

FISH SCARCITY

AUSTRALIAN POSITION

CATHOLIC DISPENSATION" (0.C.) SYDNEY. August 15. Because trawlers are mostly on war duties fish is very scarce and correspondingly expensive. So the Catholic bishops of Australia have obtained from the Holy See a dispensation absolving Catholics from the obligation not to eat meat on Fridays. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday will now be the only davs on which Catholics will observe the abstinence law.

A statement by Archbishop Gilroy to be read at all Masses on Sunday says the dispensation was "granted by the Holy Father with characteristci understanding," and points out that the abstinence law is disclipinary and "not immutable as are other doctrines of the faith."

As a matter of fact, the greatest haul of fish ever made in Australia is now being exploited in a bay near Eden, where hundreds of thousands of salmon have been trapped in prepared pens and are now being caught as fast as possible for the canning factories at Eden and Xarooma, which are working exclusively on defence contracts. There are eight acres of salmon in the pens in which they were trapped after they had entered the bay at high tide.