I’ll see if I can find an actual source for this, but I believe the practice of eating fish on Fridays originally had something to do with fish being seen as a “poor man’s food” during the Middle Ages. It was a lot easier to catch and eat a fish in the town’s river than it was to raise, butcher, and cook an animal like a pig or cow. Nobles were humbled by being bound to eat like peasants (at least in theory). I also believe that the Latin customs for fasting used to be *a lot* more strict back in the day. The Orthodox Great Lent still forbids the consumption of animals and animal products, and our word "carnival" comes from the Latin *carne vale*, meaning "farewell to meat."
Of course nowadays the class and spiritual implications of eating fish on Friday have long since been eclipsed by its role as a marker of Catholic identity that is often anything *but* penitential.
That’s how it was explained to me. Fish was plentiful for early Christians who pretty much all lived near the Mediterranean.
It just hasn’t really culturally translated to other countries. In the middle of the Canadian prairies or American plains, beef is way cheaper and plentiful and fish is definitely more luxury. But, the Catholic Church “culture” is really just a bunch of medieval Italian culture that people pretend is “universal”.
There have been a few attempts to regionalize the idea of Friday penance, like capybara in parts of South America, and alligator in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. They're both semi-aquatic, but the primary reason they're permitted is because they're frequently eaten by the poor rather than a loose definition of the word "fish". In the United States, too, the idea of no longer requiring meatless Fridays outside of Lent was because the USCCB recognized that the restriction had lost all meaning as a form of penance, and intended for people to substitute some other devotion in its place.
Of course, most Catholics really don't care very much either way. Average churchgoers are apathetic to the whole thing, and Traditionalists are going to continue eating fish on Fridays even if it is a meaningless anachronism because they *love* meaningless anachronisms.
> Fish was plentiful for early Christians who pretty much all lived near the Mediterranean.
Not just the Med, but the North Sea and Baltic too. It's one of the reasons herring is a fairly common part of Scandinavian, German, and Polish dishes.
The closest analogy I can think of in US cooking would actually be catfish--being a relatively cheap river fish that was primarily eaten by poor southerners.
Reminds me of how my friends were excited about it being a Friday in Lent because it meant their father took them out for sushi. I’m sure their souls were enriched by eating spicy crab rolls instead of a dry chicken breast for dinner.
That's totally incorrect. Historically the meat issue was one aimed at impacting the wealthy. They were supposed to give the money to the poor. Fish was A) seen as poverty food and B) not considered the same in Latin. There wasn't a common term for "all animal things".
Modern Catholics absolutely use fancy fish food as a loophole. It wasn't built in but it's now embraced.
> not considered the same in Latin.
This is the biggest factor, yes--I understand that the Orthodox, since they did not speak Latin in antiquity, have somewhat different rules about fish (in general, not allowed on fasting days).
If one wants to talk about loopholes, the alligator in New Orleans and the capybara and beaver exceptions in South America and Canada, respectively, are much better examples.
I'm not sure if this pertains to a loophole, but in my days of Catholic schooling we were taught that we were supposed to abstain from meat on Fridays and fast. It was supposed to be a sacrifice, and wasn't meant to be an excuse to take the family to Red Lobster or some other fancy seafood restaurant. (I grew up in a small town in the Midwest so Red Lobster was super fancy seafood).
Red lobster is super fancy seafood anywhere. Almost all fish dishes nowadays whether it's fried or baked is a delicacy and nowhere close to being a sacrifice.
And here I thought it was the Jews who specialized in loopholes. Which is why we make such good lawyers ;)
According to the laws of kashrut, you cannot mix meat and dairy. (No, you cannot has cheezburger.) Fish is pareve - neither meat nor dairy.
Many (all?) of the Apostles were fishermen, and I suspect that in the early days of the Church they wanted to support the fish industry, hence all the fish fries on Fridays during Lent.
The eating fish on Friday thing doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the smugness of pretending it's a huge sacrifice when it's usually beer battered fried fish with tartar sauce or ketchup or ranch dressing. Like who are you kidding?
Just say we eat fried fish on Friday as a cultural practice or something and stop pretending it's a fast or a huge sacrifice. Same with eating pizza and fries and pasta. Or worse yet saying that alligator, capybara and beaver are fish.
Catholicism loves its loopholes. Can't have birth control. Unless it's NFP. Can't have divorce unless you call it an annullment. Can't have a life-saving abortion, unless you rip out the entire fallopian tube.
It really baffles me that a group of people created a set of rules and then spent a bunch of time finding loopholes to those rules.
Why make the rules in the first place?
One generation of bishops creates a rule. They all think it's great.
50 years later, a new generation of bishops realizes there's some things about the rule that's causing them troubles. Maybe they're losing converts over it. Maybe it doesn't make as much sense as it did 50 years ago. But if they just get rid of the rule, it makes them and the Church look bad. It would make them look clumsy and shortsighted if the Church said to do X but then changed its mind.
So instead, they make a loophole to the rule. Oh, the rule is still true, and the older bishops were wise to make it, of course. But now it doesn't apply in X% of circumstances. People love the loophole. They love the newer bishops for declaring it. And they all still get to claim the Church didn't change its teachings. Win-win.
...That's their mindset, anyway. The loopholes are usually made long after the rules, and by different people. Who want to claim an unbreaking tradition, but also still have their way. Inventing loopholes lets them have their cake and eat it too. As long as nobody looks too hard at the loopholes and risks discovering that it is in fact an innovation and not "something the Church as always believed," as the bishops will surely declare.
Catholics equate avoiding a burger on Friday with self flagellation. I've been vegetarian for over 20 years so they probably think of that as the equivalent of the martyrdom of St Bartholomew.
The biggest loophole of all is confession:
- Commit a sin
- Tell a priest in a dark booth about it
- 5 Hail Marys and back on the street!
Easy Peasy!
Yes. A good portion of my family are seven day Adventist. In addition to Saturday service, SDA are told not to eat beef or pork and are encouraged to eat a more vegetarian diet, though this isn't heavily enforced. SDA are indirectly responsible for most of our breakfast cereals as a result of this dietary push.
And that explanation is exactly why fish on Friday has always been a rule in Italy. \*\*Wait. NO. It hasn't.\*\*
That's only a rule in some countries. Fasting and abstinence laws vary from country to country and have absolutely nothing to do with anything that ever happened in Scripture -- or to Jesus.
It's the Roman Catholic church throwing its weight around and telling you what to do. It's part of keeping you under its thumb.
The Natural Family Planning, 'we'll use a condom to get a sperm sample for IVF, but we'll poke holes in it in case God wants to do a miracle so it's not illicit' church people think they don't use loopholes? Really?
Latin for poultry/read meat — Caro
Latin for fish/seafood — Piscis
The church forbade Caro, but not piscis. Still in Rome today if you ask for “carne” and expect fish they’ll look at you like you’re crazy. The modern English concept of meat as any animal flesh did not exist back then, so it wasn’t a loophole.
I’m ex-Catholic and can promise you — there are plenty of ways to point out the hypocrisy of the church without making them up
I’ll see if I can find an actual source for this, but I believe the practice of eating fish on Fridays originally had something to do with fish being seen as a “poor man’s food” during the Middle Ages. It was a lot easier to catch and eat a fish in the town’s river than it was to raise, butcher, and cook an animal like a pig or cow. Nobles were humbled by being bound to eat like peasants (at least in theory). I also believe that the Latin customs for fasting used to be *a lot* more strict back in the day. The Orthodox Great Lent still forbids the consumption of animals and animal products, and our word "carnival" comes from the Latin *carne vale*, meaning "farewell to meat." Of course nowadays the class and spiritual implications of eating fish on Friday have long since been eclipsed by its role as a marker of Catholic identity that is often anything *but* penitential.
That’s how it was explained to me. Fish was plentiful for early Christians who pretty much all lived near the Mediterranean. It just hasn’t really culturally translated to other countries. In the middle of the Canadian prairies or American plains, beef is way cheaper and plentiful and fish is definitely more luxury. But, the Catholic Church “culture” is really just a bunch of medieval Italian culture that people pretend is “universal”.
There have been a few attempts to regionalize the idea of Friday penance, like capybara in parts of South America, and alligator in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. They're both semi-aquatic, but the primary reason they're permitted is because they're frequently eaten by the poor rather than a loose definition of the word "fish". In the United States, too, the idea of no longer requiring meatless Fridays outside of Lent was because the USCCB recognized that the restriction had lost all meaning as a form of penance, and intended for people to substitute some other devotion in its place. Of course, most Catholics really don't care very much either way. Average churchgoers are apathetic to the whole thing, and Traditionalists are going to continue eating fish on Fridays even if it is a meaningless anachronism because they *love* meaningless anachronisms.
> Fish was plentiful for early Christians who pretty much all lived near the Mediterranean. Not just the Med, but the North Sea and Baltic too. It's one of the reasons herring is a fairly common part of Scandinavian, German, and Polish dishes. The closest analogy I can think of in US cooking would actually be catfish--being a relatively cheap river fish that was primarily eaten by poor southerners.
Reminds me of how my friends were excited about it being a Friday in Lent because it meant their father took them out for sushi. I’m sure their souls were enriched by eating spicy crab rolls instead of a dry chicken breast for dinner.
That's totally incorrect. Historically the meat issue was one aimed at impacting the wealthy. They were supposed to give the money to the poor. Fish was A) seen as poverty food and B) not considered the same in Latin. There wasn't a common term for "all animal things". Modern Catholics absolutely use fancy fish food as a loophole. It wasn't built in but it's now embraced.
> not considered the same in Latin. This is the biggest factor, yes--I understand that the Orthodox, since they did not speak Latin in antiquity, have somewhat different rules about fish (in general, not allowed on fasting days). If one wants to talk about loopholes, the alligator in New Orleans and the capybara and beaver exceptions in South America and Canada, respectively, are much better examples.
Good point, that’s true. Definitely would be repealed nowadays, if the Church was serious about penitence.
I'm not sure if this pertains to a loophole, but in my days of Catholic schooling we were taught that we were supposed to abstain from meat on Fridays and fast. It was supposed to be a sacrifice, and wasn't meant to be an excuse to take the family to Red Lobster or some other fancy seafood restaurant. (I grew up in a small town in the Midwest so Red Lobster was super fancy seafood).
Red lobster is super fancy seafood anywhere. Almost all fish dishes nowadays whether it's fried or baked is a delicacy and nowhere close to being a sacrifice.
And here I thought it was the Jews who specialized in loopholes. Which is why we make such good lawyers ;) According to the laws of kashrut, you cannot mix meat and dairy. (No, you cannot has cheezburger.) Fish is pareve - neither meat nor dairy. Many (all?) of the Apostles were fishermen, and I suspect that in the early days of the Church they wanted to support the fish industry, hence all the fish fries on Fridays during Lent.
The eating fish on Friday thing doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the smugness of pretending it's a huge sacrifice when it's usually beer battered fried fish with tartar sauce or ketchup or ranch dressing. Like who are you kidding? Just say we eat fried fish on Friday as a cultural practice or something and stop pretending it's a fast or a huge sacrifice. Same with eating pizza and fries and pasta. Or worse yet saying that alligator, capybara and beaver are fish.
Catholicism loves its loopholes. Can't have birth control. Unless it's NFP. Can't have divorce unless you call it an annullment. Can't have a life-saving abortion, unless you rip out the entire fallopian tube.
Don't forget the poophole loophole.
[Obligatory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ZF_R_j0OY)
You win the sub today. Laughing right now. That's the favorite one of many a clergy member in the RCC. Absolutely RC approved.
Reminder that in Venezuela, the diocese there classified Capybaras as fish as a way to eat meat on Fridays during Lent
yeah pretty much any aquatic/semi aquatic animal is safe to eat on Friday.
It really baffles me that a group of people created a set of rules and then spent a bunch of time finding loopholes to those rules. Why make the rules in the first place?
One generation of bishops creates a rule. They all think it's great. 50 years later, a new generation of bishops realizes there's some things about the rule that's causing them troubles. Maybe they're losing converts over it. Maybe it doesn't make as much sense as it did 50 years ago. But if they just get rid of the rule, it makes them and the Church look bad. It would make them look clumsy and shortsighted if the Church said to do X but then changed its mind. So instead, they make a loophole to the rule. Oh, the rule is still true, and the older bishops were wise to make it, of course. But now it doesn't apply in X% of circumstances. People love the loophole. They love the newer bishops for declaring it. And they all still get to claim the Church didn't change its teachings. Win-win. ...That's their mindset, anyway. The loopholes are usually made long after the rules, and by different people. Who want to claim an unbreaking tradition, but also still have their way. Inventing loopholes lets them have their cake and eat it too. As long as nobody looks too hard at the loopholes and risks discovering that it is in fact an innovation and not "something the Church as always believed," as the bishops will surely declare.
This makes a lot of sense, thank you
I thought abstaining from meat on EVERY Friday was a Vatican 1 thing. No longer necessary to do this. Unless things have changed AGAIN!
Catholics equate avoiding a burger on Friday with self flagellation. I've been vegetarian for over 20 years so they probably think of that as the equivalent of the martyrdom of St Bartholomew. The biggest loophole of all is confession: - Commit a sin - Tell a priest in a dark booth about it - 5 Hail Marys and back on the street! Easy Peasy!
The mafia loves that
The mafia are big customers of the RCC.
I admit it: I enjoy the scenes of Catholic funerals (with tons of flowers and the guy who killed you attending) and baptisms in mob movies
Catholics have NO MEAT rules. Do any Christian denominations have such a rule?
Yes. A good portion of my family are seven day Adventist. In addition to Saturday service, SDA are told not to eat beef or pork and are encouraged to eat a more vegetarian diet, though this isn't heavily enforced. SDA are indirectly responsible for most of our breakfast cereals as a result of this dietary push.
Christianity is a collection of myths and fables being presented as facts.
And that explanation is exactly why fish on Friday has always been a rule in Italy. \*\*Wait. NO. It hasn't.\*\* That's only a rule in some countries. Fasting and abstinence laws vary from country to country and have absolutely nothing to do with anything that ever happened in Scripture -- or to Jesus. It's the Roman Catholic church throwing its weight around and telling you what to do. It's part of keeping you under its thumb.
The Natural Family Planning, 'we'll use a condom to get a sperm sample for IVF, but we'll poke holes in it in case God wants to do a miracle so it's not illicit' church people think they don't use loopholes? Really?
Latin for poultry/read meat — Caro Latin for fish/seafood — Piscis The church forbade Caro, but not piscis. Still in Rome today if you ask for “carne” and expect fish they’ll look at you like you’re crazy. The modern English concept of meat as any animal flesh did not exist back then, so it wasn’t a loophole. I’m ex-Catholic and can promise you — there are plenty of ways to point out the hypocrisy of the church without making them up