Lent

[kjn1980]

Well lent is here again which is always a big deal in Buffalo.  All the catholics drink them selves into a stupor (i'm sure many protestants and atheists help them) then they get their own dot of ash followed by weekly complaints about not being able to eat meat.  The friday fish fry ads will now fill the news papers and as i was reading Willa

Comments

those people are idiots...

[sadsortosinging]

I don't know anyone who is mildly intelligent who considers fish not a meat. None of my vegetarian friends would call themselves vegetarians if they ate fish.

[pineapple_jack]

I am told that one reason we eat fish is because, unlike fowl or land animals, fish do not have "an abundance of blood" and were thus often put in a different category. It's not that we do not classify fish as meat... later generations adhere to the fish allowance merely out of a sense of historic continuity. The fast is not really about meat at all.

The thing to remember about the fast is that it is not about preserving the life of animals or about living like a vegetarian or anything like that. The fast is about abstaining. So it's not ultimately important WHAT we give up, but that we give up something important and routine. Abstaining from meat is merely a norm in the Church, to ensure that people are abstaining from SOMEthing.(Interesting trivia: we do not fast on Sundays or feast days during Lent).

yes

[kjn1980]

I have looked this up on the internet and found a great number of people feel that the origin of fish being permissible is in the socioeconomic grouping of the early church. The poor could always get fish so they were allowed while the rich ate meat so they were forced to go without. Here in Buffalo there are many people who eat fish almost every friday regardless of Lent. It has become one of those things that everyone does.