Working in a diocesan office, you certainly get strange questions coming across your desk, and it’s hard sometimes not to roll your eyes. But this one made me chuckle. What a great response from a good Archbishop. (Click the image for a larger view.)
*smiles* Thanks – I needed that. We don’t get too much gator here in upstate New York, but you never know! Now I am ready!
During Lent last year, I dug up some references for other animals and the old reasoning behind it.
The petition came from a supplier called Insta-Gator?!? Just add water, rice and red beans or grits, set microwave on high for five and it’s….BAM….Emeril-ready. And what if it, indeed, tastes like chicken? Moral Dilemma!
Perchance they troll for more than prickly reptiles, Diana.
@Charles Culbreth – comment #3:
Hey, gator is good if properly prepared; so is rattle snake and that ever popular frog legs, all of which taste like chicken, so what a great substitute during the Fridays of lent for meat and poultry!
FRAJM, the Andrew Zimmern of Quaint Catholic Cuisine!
Little cognitive dissonance with the “tastes like chicken” proximity to a “near occasion of sin” thingy. Plus, I fear some enterprising reptile merchants might market labeled “only the finest rattlers woodsy preachers have handily inspected, and we gar-uhn-darn-tee that!” or “Only the finest serpants crushed of any imperfections by personal indulgence of the BVM underfoot!”
No thanks, Fr., I’ll stick with my oysters/half shell slime penance, followed by seared ahi/wasabi ala dante, and Black Octupus Linguini. If I not fully then mortified, I’ll get some lutefisk next door from da Lut’erens.
No experience to report on gator. Frog legs are excellent. Rattle snakes? Not so much. Yeah, you could say “tastes like chicken,” but only the boniest parts.
It is interesting how the ancient taxonomies of God’s creatures diverge from the modern ones. I’d assume that gators and crocs are ok on Friday, rattlesnakes and komodo dragons, not so much (I assume those good Catholic mafiosos in “The Freshman” didn’t serve the latter on a Friday in Lent).
I have never eaten alligator but i have had crocodile and I presume that this also applies to crocodile.
Many people say that Orthodox discipline of fasting is much stricter than the Catholic, and they certainly have more days set aside — most Wednesdays and Fridays, all of Advent (the “Christmas Fast”) and all of Lent. No meat, dairy products, fish, olive oil (perhaps no oil at all), wine.
But, “shellfish” seems to be OK — and this includes “lobster, shrimp, crab, oysters, scallops, clams, mussels, etc.” (from a random Orthodox website, but visits to 5 others seem to confirm this). Apparently these were once considered “dregs” fish, of lower status than scaly fish.
Can you really “fast” your way through Lent on lobster, shrimp, crab and oysters?
Jonathan – all are *bottom feeders*; thus, considered to be similar to birds/animals that feed on carrion or dead things – scavengers e.g. vultures.
Passage in Leviticus that forbids eating birds that eat carrion.
Always thought that this was rich – can’t eat meat but you can eat things that are very expensive – crab legs, shrimp, lobster, etc. That is really *fasting* – kind of gives a lie to the whole process and meaning.
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