Pork on Fridays in Lent?

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I’m perplexed. My wife and some friends recently had dinner with our parish’s liturgy director. It was a Friday in Lent. And he served… pork!?

Not wanting to be bad guests, and wondering if our liturgy expert knew something they didn’t, the guests ate the pork and didn’t question the host.

But I’m questioning. I know that this isn’t right, and I have a hard time believing that this guy could simply have forgotten. Is there some dissent about pork on Fridays? I wonder if he was making a point, and waiting for someone to question him. Does anyone know of any line of reasoning that claims that Catholics may eat pork on Fridays during Lent?
 
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Duffy:
I’m perplexed. My wife and some friends recently had dinner with our parish’s liturgy director. It was a Friday in Lent. And he served… pork!?

Not wanting to be bad guests, and wondering if our liturgy expert knew something they didn’t, the guests ate the pork and didn’t question the host.

But I’m questioning. I know that this isn’t right, and I have a hard time believing that this guy could simply have forgotten. Is there some dissent about pork on Fridays? I wonder if he was making a point, and waiting for someone to question him. Does anyone know of any line of reasoning that claims that Catholics may eat pork on Fridays during Lent?
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  1. He may have forgot.
  2. It may have been on St. Patrick’s Day when quite a few bishops gave a dispensation from regular lenten abstinence requirements.
 
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Duffy:
I’m perplexed. My wife and some friends recently had dinner with our parish’s liturgy director. It was a Friday in Lent. And he served… pork!?

Not wanting to be bad guests, and wondering if our liturgy expert knew something they didn’t, the guests ate the pork and didn’t question the host.

But I’m questioning. I know that this isn’t right, and I have a hard time believing that this guy could simply have forgotten. Is there some dissent about pork on Fridays? I wonder if he was making a point, and waiting for someone to question him. Does anyone know of any line of reasoning that claims that Catholics may eat pork on Fridays during Lent?
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Why would someone intentionally commit a Mortal sin because they did not want to be bad guests? How foolish!
 
DeFide said:
1. He may have forgot.
  1. It may have been on St. Patrick’s Day when quite a few bishops gave a dispensation from regular lenten abstinence requirements.
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A dispensation is not automatic and several Bishops do not give it. Also just because it is granted it need not be used. If he actually did forget someone else should have reminded him. I went out to eat lunch this past Friday with some people. After some ordered shrimp dinners another ordered a chicken pasta. to which the others chimed in almost in unison “It’s Friday!!” The person changed it to shrimp pasta. When It came to me I ordered an oriental chicken bowl and the waitress replied “without the chicken” before I could get the words out myself. “Fish on Fridays” is very well known even among young non-Catholics.
 
Did any of them think to ask the poor fellow? It probably did not even dawn on him and no one brought it to his attention. Now they’re all whispering behind his back.

What’s up?
 
Pork on Fridays during Lent? What an atrocity. He ATE PORK during a random forty-day period measured around the time it takes the earth to travel around the sun on a random day of a seven-day cycle. They should burn that sinner at the stake.

Sick_Heretic
 
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sick_heretic:
…They should burn that sinner at the stake…
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We don’t do that anymore. We have a worse punishment for the most egregious offenders. We make them correspond with trolls on internet discussion forums.
 
I don’t want to start a new thread to ask this, but is crab considered meat?

I know it isn’t fishy fish, but it comes from the sea…and I ate crab last friday. Just curious.
 
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Unfinished:
I don’t want to start a new thread to ask this, but is crab considered meat?

I know it isn’t fishy fish, but it comes from the sea…and I ate crab last friday. Just curious.
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No crab is not considered ‘meat’.

Personally when I think of ‘meat’, I think of any muscle tissue from any animal…but that isn’t the Catholic meaning of meat.

The Catholic meaning of ‘meat’, for abstinence, is only warm blooded animal’s meat. Feel free to eat all the frogs, snakes, lizards, gators, crabs, shrimp and fish you want.

However, ‘fish’ such as whales and porpoise would be warm blooded and therefor forbidden. (though I doubt you’d eat Flipper or a whale).
 
He probably forgot, but then again you said he was
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Duffy:
our parish’s liturgy director.
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😉

Liturgy Directors as a group are not necessarily the most…orthodox members of the church. But he probably forgot. Either way—it doesn’t matter. The onus is on each person who intends to put the food in their mouth to find out whether it is correct or not and make a decision. Remember that old saying:
“Your safety first, their feelings second”? It was originally used for personal safety in a possibly threatening situation, but it can apply here.

I completely agree with Br Rich:
“Why would someone intentionally commit a Mortal sin because they did not want to be bad guests? How foolish!”

(Last Friday I fasted completely all day and I was getting a little out of it because I had accidentally not eaten very much the day before. I was having these weird thoughts—I remember actually asking myself at one point “What is a duck?” “Is that meat?” Luckily my blood sugar stabilized before Mass and Stations. :whacky:

Anyone for Rattlesnake on Friday? :cool: It only tastes like chicken. :bounce:
 
Br. Rich SFO:
Why would someone intentionally commit a Mortal sin because they did not want to be bad guests? How foolish!
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For that reason it is NOT a mortal sin- EVER!!! This seems quite pharisaical to me- violating simple charity to follow “the rules”. If you are invited to someone’s house on a Friday during Lent, you should try to avoid the situation entirely by subtly asking for a different night, or if they ask you what you like, say you like fish. Don’t go to someone’s house as their guest and refuse their food. That is just plain rude. If anyone did that to me, they likely would not be invited back- regardless of why they wouldn’t eat it. If they do it to mock your religion, that’s one thing- but not as an honest mistake. Jesus healed on the Sabbath…
 
I have to wonder about this.

From what I can see, since the 1983 code of canon laws, eating meat on Friday is no longer a mortal sin as long as one replaces the penitential act with something else.

ewtn.com/vexperts/showmessage.asp?number=463262&Pg=Forum6&Pgnu=1&recnu=7

However, a sin against charity i.e “love thy neighbor” by humiliating your host by reminding them that they forgot and served meat and either not eating the meal they worked hard to provide, or inconveniencing them to provide a separate meal just for you seems to me to be where the mortal sin would lie.

As a conscientious catholic, if I am invited to dinner I mention when first invited that Friday is a day of abstinence, which would give the host time to prepare for a proper meal.
 
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m134e5:
For that reason it is NOT a mortal sin- EVER!!! This seems quite pharisaical to me- violating simple charity to follow “the rules”. If you are invited to someone’s house on a Friday during Lent, you should try to avoid the situation entirely by subtly asking for a different night, or if they ask you what you like, say you like fish. Don’t go to someone’s house as their guest and refuse their food. That is just plain rude. If anyone did that to me, they likely would not be invited back- regardless of why they wouldn’t eat it. If they do it to mock your religion, that’s one thing- but not as an honest mistake. Jesus healed on the Sabbath…
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If God says ‘Thou shalt not’ then he means it. If God almighty says not to eat meat on Fridays in Lent then it should not be done. The host should understand that a persons God comes before them. If someone refuses to have me over to their house again because I polity refrain from eating any meat, then so be it. Men in the past have given up their life for such (In the book of Maccabees for example)! The least I could do is be mocked and never invited over again for following Gods law! God and his laws are more important than man-made-laws saying not to offend someone that is too easily offended, nay, someone that is going out of their way to be offended.

By the way Jesus healing on the Sabbath in no way has any bearing on this. Jesus also is telling us not to eat meat on Fridays in lent.

Yes, when I say that God and Jesus tell us not to eat meat on Fridays in Lent I mean it. He gave the authority to the Church to bind us in such matters. To disobey that God given authority is to disobey God.
 
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AugustineFL:
If God says ‘Thou shalt not’ then he means it. If God almighty says not to eat meat on Fridays in Lent then it should not be done. The host should understand that a persons God comes before them. If someone refuses to have me over to their house again because I polity refrain from eating any meat, then so be it. Men in the past have given up their life for such (In the book of Maccabees for example)! The least I could do is be mocked and never invited over again for following Gods law! God and his laws are more important than man-made-laws saying not to offend someone that is too easily offended, nay, someone that is going out of their way to be offended.

By the way Jesus healing on the Sabbath in no way has any bearing on this. Jesus also is telling us not to eat meat on Fridays in lent.

Yes, when I say that God and Jesus tell us not to eat meat on Fridays in Lent I mean it. He gave the authority to the Church to bind us in such matters. To disobey that God given authority is to disobey God.
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But God, (and I am assuming you are meaning the church) says Thou shalt not eat meat on Fridays, but if there is a reason you must eat meat (i.e. to be charitable to your host) then you may substitute some other penitent act.

Edit OOPS.

This is now becoming very interesting, according to canon law, the substitution of another penance is only available for the Fridays outside of lent.

But then one has to ask, how many people are as scrupulous about no meat on Fridays for the rest of the year?

ewtn.com/expert/answers/fast_and_abstinence.htm
On the Fridays outside of Lent the U.S. bishops conference obtained the permission of the Holy See for Catholics in the US to substitute a penitential, or even a charitable, practice of their own choosing. They must do some penitential/charitable practice on these Fridays. For most people the easiest practice to consistently fulfill will be the traditional one, to abstain from meat on all Fridays of the year. During Lent abstinence from meat on Fridays is obligatory in the United States as elsewhere.
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EDIT Again

It seems I may have been right in the first place.

from the same EWTN link

ewtn.com/expert/answers/fast_and_abstinence.htm
Those who are excused from fast or abstinence Besides those outside the age limits, those of unsound mind, the sick, the frail, pregnant or nursing women according to need for meat or nourishment, manual laborers according to need, guests at a meal who cannot excuse themselves without giving great offense or causing enmity and other situations of moral or physical impossibility to observe the penitential discipline.
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Those bishops think of everything!!! 😃
 
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m134e5:
If anyone did that to me, they likely would not be invited back- regardless of why they wouldn’t eat it.
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If you invite a vegetarian over without knowing they are vegetarian (I admit it would be nice if they let you know beforehand) I take it you would find it very rude and never invite them back. Very charitable of you!

Actually with the ‘regardless of why they wouldn’t eat’ is true then you would be intolerant of people with food allergy, or someone that just dislikes the dish you serve so much that they cannot force themselves to eat it.

The fact is, it is rude to expect someone to have to eat what you give them. The guest should be polite to his host but the host is usually the one that is going more so out of their way to please their guest. Forcing them to eat your favorite dish or meat is far from being a good host. You might not have to worry about never inviting them over again. Chances are they’d not want to come back again!
 
Mortal? Venial? The point is—Why hide your faith?!? Why let your faith depend on which way the wind blows?

Let me get this straight—Subtly ask for a different night because the Catholic Parish Liturgist might serve meat?!?Or if the Catholic Parish Liturgist is enough of blockhead that he serves pork, then the unprepared guests should gulp it down on the off-chance he or she may be “humiliated”?!? guffaw!
He should be embarrassed for putting his guests in such a predicament!

But it would be a mortal sin to tell your host you don’t eat meat on Fridays during Lent?!? double guffaw!!!

As if this is some intractable situation. Here’s a tip—eat everything but the meat! :banghead:
 
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Pjs2ejs:
Did any of them think to ask the poor fellow? It probably did not even dawn on him and no one brought it to his attention. Now they’re all whispering behind his back.

What’s up?
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No, they were too surprised and kind of intimidated to ask him what’s up. In addition to being their host, and their parish’s liturgy director, this was also their choir director (this was a “thank you” dinner for the choir members), and a graduate student in theology. Needless to say the choir ladies were rather more deferential than is perhaps appropriate. And so far as I know, they’re not whispering behind his back. My wife just asked me if I knew a reason why this would be OK.
 
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