Fish <><

[immaculata]

Why are fish not considered a meat?

<><

[Adeodatus]

You're right. A fish is an animal, animals provide meat, so fish ought to be 'meat'. I suspect that Catholics in days of yore realised this too, because when they talked about mammal-meat they used the word 'flesh-meat', which suggests that there's another kind of meat: 'fish-meat'?

If we avoided 'flesh-meat' on Fridays in honor of Jesus our true Paschal sacrifice, then I suggest the reason we didn't avoid 'fish-meat' is because it symbolised Christ (and this is a very early Christian symbol). In the catacombs you have depictions of the five loaves and two fish, and the bread and fish are both Eucharistic symbols of Christ. The consecrated bread is truly Christ's flesh, and the fish stands for "Jesus" in Greek.

The Greek word for 'fish' is 'ICHTHUS', which the early Christians saw as an acronym of 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior' (Iesous CHristos, THeou 'Uios Soter). Hence the Christian symbol of a fish : <>< if you see what I mean.

At the heart of this is that Fridays are a day of penitence for Christians, in gratitude for God's great love for us and what Jesus did for us in His Passion and death. We can never pay Him back, we can never deserve what He did. But He loves us lavishly, and the little we do on Fridays by way of penitence is our way of showing our love for Him and to impress on ourselves "Christ, and Him crucified" as Scripture says. Of course this doesn't ignore the Resurrection. Catholics are Resurrection-people, but that doesn't mean we gloss over the Passion.