Capybaras are classified as fish in Catholic canon law, on the grounds that they spend their lives in water. I’m guessing that a party of conquistadors was on the verge of starvation and got their priest to petition the Vatican to issue a retroactive ruling in their favour.
Iirc, both Jewish and Islamic law are explicit that if you can break kosher/eating halal if you have no other options for food. Keeping yourself alive is more important.
Is there not something similar in catholic theology?
If you want to get really technical, in Jewish theory there's an argument in the Talmud or Mishrad that says that as long as the dish is less than 1/16 or 1/32 (something like that,) of the non halal meat, then it can be considered kosher as well
I'm not Jewish, I just studied religions for a while. Someone who is Jewish can correct me on the proper percentage
Fish isn't considered meat because English and Latin are slightly different languages. For hundreds of years Catholics were not allowed to eat meat on Friday. But the language of the church is Latin, and what Catholics were not allowed to eat is 'carne' which is the flesh of creatures from the land or the sky. So fish was fine.
Also. around the mediterrainian, fish is a food staple of the poor. The point is to eliminate excess.
I'd argue that an inlander ordering fish at a fancy restaurant on a Friday during Lent is not following the spirit of the law (which can be more of a discipline than a rule, depending on the local episcopal authority), especially if it's not a special occasion and the fish was caught hundreds of kilometers away.
The Maulbronn monchs once decided that anything living in their pond was fish. Ducks, geese and apparently once a cow drowned and was thus declared a fish.