It’s Good Friday, and people are still searching for Episcopal Lenten observances.
I noticed (checking my site stats a while ago) that at this late date, people are still searching the Internet for information about “Episcopal Lent”, and things pertaining to giving up meat eggs & dairy.
Here is a list of sites that came up on one search.
I see that PETA has a page called ‘Give Up Cruelty for Lent’, and quotes St. Gregory’s admonition to St. Augustine, which I also have posted on mine.
I’m all in favor of giving up cruelty for Lent, in all seriousness. So many of the sites that talk about how people used to give up meat in the past, include other ideas of what people can give up now, as if their lists are more relevant to our time. I get the impression that maybe they think giving up meat as a sign of self-denial was relatively meaningless compared to something else people could be doing instead. So if people actually thought about the inherent cruelty of animal agriculture and the slaughtering of animals (and abuses that are caught whenever undercover investigators bring in their concealed cameras as the HSUS had done recently that caused the largest beef recall in this country’s history), maybe it would be perceived differently — again, whether a person “gives up” something, or “takes on” something. In any case, it’s a shame that so few even mention it.
I thought the following article was particularly interesting, because this is what shows up on the benifitbar.com synopsis:
6. Lent
You could have no meat, eggs, or dairy. There was no restriction on fish, wine or beer. …
decreed a fine for butchers who slaughtered meat during Lent. …
www.practicallyedible.com
I didn’t know that butchers were fined. (It was only last year that I heard people in the Western Church observed a vegan Lent at one time, hence the need for what is now a vestigial Shrove Tuesday.) Of course, this site also mentions how the cost of fish skyrocketted, too, because of the profiteers, including the Church. Kind of like OPEC, with people stuck “over a barrel”….
Read it here: ‘Lent’
What was new to me (this year), was that 1) eating fish was meant to support the fishing industry, and that 2):
“In 1560, Queen Elizabeth decreed a fine for butchers who slaughtered meat during Lent.
“In 1563, Sir William Cecil forced a (Protestant) Parliament to pass a fine of either 3 pounds or 3 months in jail for people eating meat during Lent. His reason is that he felt fishermen, with no trade, were turning to piracy. He added a handwritten codicil to the act assuring the parliamentarians that it was not for religious reasons, but for economic ones. “
Wow. It would seem that Lent was more politically/economically-motivated, than spiritually-motivated.
This is also an interesting observation:
“The only mercy was that Lent came at a time of year when there wasn’t much food to be abstaining from, anyway. There wasn’t much milk, because the cows had birthed calves that needed it, and not much meat, because the meat that had been preserved last fall was mostly gone, and what animals that were still alive were needed to give birth to new ones.”
That they allowed the calves to drink their mothers’ milk, instead of taking it for human use, shows that “veal calves” had not been “invented” yet. This paragraph answers things I’ve read on similar sites, where comments pertained to what readers perceived as a waste of milk and eggs over the Lenten season. I see it as a brief annual moratorium to allow “food” animals to raise their young as they should be able to do, and this makes perfect sense to me to have a moratorium not only on the killing, but on taking the calves milk or the (fertilized?) chickens’ eggs, as a more “sustainable” form of animal agriculture. (Kind of like the times of the year when hunters aren’t allowed to hunt.)
I guess we don’t have to worry about fishermen turning to piracy anymore, although we know that the ones in Newfoundland and environs use this time to supplement their income and while away their down time with their annual government-subsidized seal blood-bath. We also don’t have to worry about preserving breeding animals to replace those we kill, since they are mass-produced on factory farms. There will never be a shortage of “food” animals until consumer demand decreases — unless, of course, we start using their feed to fuel our cars.
(Good Friday was just like Ash Wednesday this year, with 10-12 inches of snow.)
Tags: Lent