Expert: Fr. Michael - 8/29/2010

Question
College student at Xavier Univ.  Theology professor has been trying to find out for a few years why Catholics eat fish on Friday and consider fish to be "not meat".  Some dictionaries define meat to include fish and fowl.  Who was the person who said that fish is not meat.  The myth about fish is that somewhere a long time ago someone was promoting the notion that Catholics could eat fish on Friday in order to help fishermen, fishing industry to sell fish.

Answer
       Such principles are traditionally interpreted according to common convention (Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas).  By common convention fleshmeat is the edible part of a mammal or a bird, not a fish.  Personally, I've never heard anyone call fish fleshmeat!  Yes, I have heard of that about fishermen, and it is indeed a myth, as you say.  Catholics abstain from fleshmeat on Friday for penitential reasons.

       Explicit mention is made of the practice of abstaining from fleshmeat on Fridays in a document from the end of the first century A.D., the “Didache of the Apostles,” as well as by St. Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian in the third century.  The perpetual tradition of the Church is clear beyond possibility of mistake on this matter.

       The Friday abstinence was the universal custom from the very
beginning, as Friday was dedicated to the memory of the Passion of Our Lord, as a day on which we should make a special effort to practice penance.  It is in recognition of the fact that Christ suffered and died, and gave up his human flesh and life for our sins on a Friday that Catholics do not eat fleshmeat on Fridays.

       By our abstinence on Friday, we recall, and participate in some small way, in the great sacrifice of Our Lord for us on that Good Friday. Moreover, by abstaining from fleshmeat, we give up what is, on the whole, the most pleasant as well as the most nourishing food, and so make satisfaction for the temporal punishment due to sin even when its guilt has been forgiven.

       The law of abstinence forbids fleshmeat and gravies and soup made from fleshmeat.  All persons over seven years of age must abstain.  This means that they may not take fleshmeat, meat gravy, or meat soup at all on days of complete abstinence, which are all Fridays (except on Holydays of Obligation), Ash Wednesday, Holy Saturday (until noon), and the Vigils of the Immaculate Conception and Christmas.  They may take fleshmeat, but only at the principal meal, on days of partial abstinence, which are Ember Wednesdays and Saturdays, and the Vigils of Pentecost and of All Saints' Day.

       The abstinence from fleshmeat is an ecclesiastical law with associations to Divine Positive Law, as expressed, for example, in St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (9:25) and Second Epistle to the Corinthians (6:5).  It has long obliged under pain of mortal sin, since Pope Nicholas I in the ninth century.  Pope Innocent III at the beginning of the 13th century confirmed this teaching, and Pope Alexander VII anathematized those who would minimize the character of a breach as only venially sinful.  Traditional Catholics know full well that they have a grave obligation of maintaining this immemorial practice since the Apostles.  They can and should confess a knowing and willful breach as a mortal sin.

       The Church does not forbid certain kinds of food on the ground that they are impure (the Jewish belief, disputed by St. Paul in 1 Timothy 4:4).  The abstinence required is a reasonable one and is not exacted from those whom it would injure in health or incapacitate for their ordinary duties.  Abstinence is a means, not an end, and is meritorious only insofar as it proceeds from faith and love of God.  Abstinence promotes our spiritual health by
enabling us to subdue our flesh (1 Corinthians 9:27).