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Dietary disciplines are by nature changeable, as Jesus lifts Old Covenant dietary norms in the New Covenant era (Acts 10). So too have the leaders of his Church in the New Covenant, as we have observed with changes to Lenten Friday norms over the years. Further, the sin in violating these norms is disobedience to God, not simply eating certain types of food, as if their consumption were intrinsically bad.
In Europe, “meat” has historically referred to the flesh of warm-blooded land animals: e.g., beef, lamb, poultry, and pork. These were considered luxury or celebratory foods, so giving them up was a real sacrifice. In contrast, fish was typically considered a “poor man’s food,” and thus not associated with festivity.
In addition, some think the practice to abstain from meat—and yet permit fish—on Ash Wednesday and Lenten Fridays dates only to the 1500s, or perhaps later medieval times. However, it was well–established in the 400s:
For example, the historian Socrates (Hist. Eccl., V, 22) tells of the practice in the fifth century:
Some abstain from every sort of creature that has life, while others of all the living creatures eat of fish only. Others eat birds as well as fish, because, according to the Mosaic account of the Creation, they too sprang from the water; others abstain from fruit covered with a hard shell and from eggs. Some eat dry bread only, others not even that; others again when they have fasted to the ninth hour (three o’clock) partake of various kinds of food.
More recently, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) decreed in 1966 and reaffirmed in 1991,
12. Wherefore, we ask, urgently and prayerfully, that we, as people of God, make of the entire Lenten Season a period of special penitential observance. Following the instructions of the Holy See, we declare that the obligation both to fast and to abstain from meat, an obligation observed under a more strict formality by our fathers in the faith, still binds on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. No Catholic Christian will lightly excuse himself from so hallowed an obligation on the Wednesday which solemnly opens the Lenten season and on that Friday called “Good” because on that day Christ suffered in the flesh and died for our sins. . . .
13. In keeping with the letter and spirit of Pope Paul’s Constitution Paenitemini, we preserved for our dioceses the tradition of abstinence from meat on each of the Fridays of Lent, confident that no Catholic Christian will lightly hold himself excused from this penitential practice (emphasis added).
The Problem Is Disobedience, Not Because Eating Meat Is Inherently Evil
Some non-Catholics scoff that the Church could decree that eating meat on certain days is a mortal sin. God created meat and gave it to us to eat (Gen. 9:3-4), so how could eating it be gravely wrong!? Of course, the answer to their question is contained in the very act of their asking it: most of the time the Church is fine with the Catholic faithful eating meat, especially on feast days, including Christmas and Easter.
In contrast, because of the penitential nature of certain days, such as Ash Wednesday—as well as Fridays throughout the year because they recall weekly our Lord’s suffering and death—the Church binds the faithful to aid their growth in holiness. So the problem of eating meat on such days is disobedience to the divinely ordained authority of Christ’s Church, which has the God-given power to bind and loose on disciplinary matters (see Matt. 16:18-19; 18:15-18). In addition, it’s important to remember that committing a mortal sin has three components: 1) grave matter, 2) full knowledge, and 3) complete consent (CCC 1857-1859).
Also, because they are changeable disciplines, as distinguished from unchangeable dogmas, the Church is free to bind and loose differently at different periods in Church history, e.g., not requiring abstinence from meat on Fridays outside of Lent beginning in Advent 1966, yet reminding the faithful that Friday retains its penitential character:
24. Among the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance which we especially commend to our people for the future observance of Friday, even though we hereby terminate the traditional law of abstinence binding under pain of sin, as the sole prescribed means of observing Friday, we give first place to abstinence from flesh meat (emphasis added).
We also see God himself making changes over salvation history on what he has bound and loosed for his people. For example, in the Old Covenant, the Lord prohibits the Israelites from eating certain foods because of their association with their pagan neighbors, and thus as a means to safeguard his people from dangerous spiritual fraternization (Lev. 11:1-47; Deut. 14:3-21; see Deut. 7:3-4). However, in the New Covenant, as a sign that God’s people are now to “make disciples of all nations,” i.e., “all Gentiles” (Matt. 28:18-20, emphasis added), Jesus relaxes the Jewish disciplines regarding unclean foods associated with those same Gentiles (Mark 7:14-19; Acts 10:9-16).
So the sin was—and is—willfully disobeying God’s directives that he first communicated through human authorities he established for his people on earth in the Old Covenant, particularly Moses, and which he now binds or looses in heaven regarding the New Covenant Church’s discipline on earth, not because consuming certain food was or is necessarily immoral.