In the Year of Our Lord 866 ce, Pope Nicholas I decreed that all Christians should abstain from eating the flesh, blood, or marrow of warm-blooded animals on Fridays as a way to honor Christ, a warm blooded animal who gave His life to redeem us from a sin His father sprung on Adam and Eve without sufficient warning about consequences especially as anything He might have explained came before they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and would have understood none of it.

This began centuries of people fearing that even the accidental or unavoidable, sometimes necessary, consumption of meat sent even the nicest people to hell for eternity with no one having to worry about that anymore since the rule changed.

The steak that sent Gramama to the fiery pits of Gahanna for all of eternity is now okay with a few beers with the guys at the local Steak and Ale pub after a rough work week.

What was considered meat had to be established because there seems to be very little wiggle room when it comes to divine laws on the oddest, yet strangely important, things,

According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops meat is considered something that comes only from animals that live on land, like cows, sheep, pigs and chickens with fish considered a different category of animal, and, although the rule, Canon Law 1252, promotes abstaining from any animal-derived products, foods such as gelatin, butter, cheese and eggs are an exception.

While it was not acceptable to eat lamb, chicken, beef, pork, ham, and most other meats, things like milk, fish, grains, fruits and vegetables, and eggs were all allowed.

If you cannot eat chicken because it is meat, but can eat eggs because they are not meat, at what point does what is in the shell become a chicken?

Whence the Transubstantiation?

Isn’t it a chicken from the moment of conception?

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