We all know some of the strange rules with eating certain animals during Lent. In general, every Catholic is obliged to abstain from "flesh meat" during Fridays of Lent. However, they can eat fish of almost any kind.
But did you know there are some animals that are not fish that can be eaten during Lent in certain areas? Dispensations were given in some parts of the world to alloy people to eat non-fish animals on Fridays of Lent.
For example, in Quebec, beaver was permitted in the 1700s. In Venezuela, Capybara is allowed to be eaten. And in Newfoundland, at least in previous centuries, seal meat was an allowable food to be eaten during Lent and even Fridays of Lent.
One of the reasons for this was that our modern-day taxonomy did not exist prior to Carl Linnaeus who lived between 1707 and 1778. He started the classification of the animal kingdom into various groups such as Mammals, Birds, Fish, etc.
So animals were classified in different ways. One way was by their predominant behavior. All of the animals listed above which are exceptions to the rule of only eating fish spend most of their time in the water. In an older classification system, these animals could be considered types of fish.
When you think about a seal, it, in many ways, acts and behaves as a fish, even though it is a mammal and spends much of its time on land (or ice).
In any event, seals are permitted to some people. To be honest, I am not sure if seal meat is currently permissible to be eaten during Lent in Newfoundland as it once was.
As a side note, if you are interested, I sell seal oil capsules which contain high levels of omega-3 fatty acids. You can check out my website at www.TerraNovaSealOil.com
Thanks for stopping by and reading. I will try to update this blog frequently!
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