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Don't Eat Meat* on Fridays

March 1, 2017

In the Catholic Church calendar, today marks the beginning of Lent. It’s 40-day period that precedes Easter (and follows Mardi Gras), and is a period of reflection and fasting. Along with it comes a rule that Catholics abstain from eating meat on Fridays during that period—but fish is fine. What technically constitutes “meat” is a trickier question that one would think.
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Beaver

As Canada is still legally a bilingual country in which the official languages are English and French, it should come as no surprise that France played a big part in the colonization of the area. France is also a predominantly Catholic country, and so French colonists were also Catholic. They also ate what was to be found on the land and in the water, and for 17th century French colonists in Quebec that meant beaver. The Bishop of Quebec asked for an official dispensation from Roman Catholic Church headquarters to classify the beaver as a fish, so his adherents could eat it on Fridays. Two arguments working in his favor: there wasn’t much else to eat, and the beaver swims and spends a lot of its time in the water, so it was fish-like. Dispensation granted—the beaver, in terms of Lenten Fridays, is a fish.

Muskrats

Not long, relatively speaking, after Quebecois Catholics were permitted to eat beaver during Lent, Catholics living south or “downriver” of Detroit” received informal approval to eat muskrats on Fridays in Lent. In 2002, the Archdiocese of Detroit (an affiliate governing body of the Catholic Church) released a document confirming that missionaries in the 1700s ate muskrat (also known as the marsh hare) with the Church’s okay.

Capybara

Similar to the beaver and muskrat is another semi-aquatic rodent of unusual size, the capybara. It’s the largest rodent in the world, and it’s very commonly found in South America, particularly in Venezuela. The Church has given Catholics in the country (where Catholicism is by far the biggest religion) the okay to eat the animal on Fridays.

Puffin

In France in the 1600s, a monastery was found to be eating puffin on Fridays. The bird, which looks like a penguin only more colorful, was said by a Church official to be “as much terrestrial as aquatic.”

Alligator

Also a fish: the alligator. The Archbishop of New Orleans said in 2013 that he, and other bishops, consider the gator to be a fish.