Still Not Supposed To Eat Meat On Friday

[Guest]

This will be pretty easy for me...I've cut my red meat consumption down to about once a week....Although I do like chicken breast and from what I read its not that unhealthy...I will try to remember this Friday meat thing...I had no idea till I saw someone post something here...

[Norseman82]

Well, fish IS brain food, and more of that couldn't hurt (especially in today's world)......

[Lil Red]

i agree with whatever Al says. 

[Laudate_Dominum]

Yeah, whatever Al just said.

[Lil Red]

Yeah, whatever Al just said.

 

we need an "All Aloysius All The Time" channel.

[cmaD2006]

Well, fish IS brain food, and more of that couldn't hurt (especially in today's world)......

 

Except for us that are allergic to fish.... needless to say I abstain from fish constantly (not all seafood, but specifically most fish because I am allergic to it).

 

Lent is very tough on me ... I can't eat most fish, a lot of seafood products contain fish, and my blood sugars go out of whack if I don't eat enough proteins.  Let alone fasting...

 

Needless to say I am quite happy with the american indult that allows me to eat meat on Fridays :).

[Aloysius]

of course any health reasons would have always qualified you for a dispensation, which you would have wanted to go to your local parish priest to discuss.  we're not looking to wack out anyone's blood sugar here, though I'd also say not to be too quick to seek out dispensations, only seek them out if you really believe you cannot engage in the penance of abstinence in a way that won't negatively impact your health.  the current law gives you your own personal ability to choose something else to regularly do, my main beef with the current indult is that it is way too ambiguous and therefore no one thinks of it.  if all Catholics had, say, three specific options that said that on Fridays they either had to abstain from meat, pray the stations of the cross, or volunteer at a local charity, then people would be regularly talking about it like they talk about what people give up for lent.  for that matter, if they had made it "abstain for meat or give up something else on Fridays" even that would've been specific enough that it'd have been a topic of conversation, a constant meme on catholicmeme.com, et cetera, and people would say things to you like "what do you give up for Fridays?".  as it is now they made it so ambiguous that it doesn't stick in anyone's minds because the very loose definition leaves anyone that does choose to do something to be all doing things that are so completely unrelated that they don't feel they make common topics of conversation.

 

anyway, after that little shpiel, if the American bishops do ever go the way of the English bishops you might want to discuss with your local priest to see if he'd dispense you and let you continue with doing whatever other penance you had chosen for Fridays.  anyway, even now if Friday is an issue with blood sugar etc, then during lent you have every right to ask for a dispensation.  I'd advise cheese or eggs for protein if you're allergic to fish seeing as we're Roman and we gave up on any of the hard vegan-style abstinence during lent long ago.

[qfnol31]

I just want to add something here that I discovered only recently when I began teaching on creation. If you read the story of creation, God gives us permission to eat of all fruits and vegetables in the Garden (minus the fruit of the tree), but He does not give us permission to eat meat of any sort. This comes only after the renewal of the creation covenant that God makes with Noah in Genesis 9, though we are forbidden to eat flesh with blood in it. This is one of the signs of the second covenant made between God and man, and in many ways it looks forward to the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery. That means that now when we forgo meat, we're recalling the paschal mystery in the same way. Flesh is a very particular type of animal meat, most often associated with those animals used for sacrifices. I don't mind the arguments about fish having been a factor at some point in history, but there was most definitely a theological development about the use of meat in our diet before the Incarnation took place, as evidenced in the Old Testament, and so I think we ought to remember that when we abstain from meat, we do so for a reason.

 

By the way, alligator can be an acceptable substitute for the friday abstinence. It tastes a lot like chicken. Amphibians fall into a weird category, even though they're cold-blooded.