The Theology of Chocolate | Hacker News Reader

The Theology of Chocolate

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40 pointsThevet18 comments

"Pope Innocent refused the Carmelites’ request and it was not, in fact, until almost a century later that Pope Pius VI issued a definitive ruling that clerics could drink chocolate (albeit only away from Church premises)."

The only Carmelites I knew were cloistered. Kind of hard to get away from Church premises under such conditions.

Interesting, I didn't know that there were cloistered Carmelites. I thought that mendicant == itinerant. According to this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discalced_Carmelites it's mostly nuns that are cloistered. Were they nuns or friars?

Nuns. Frankly, I don't know much about the rest of them.

Theology is a funny thing. Once upon a time, Lent was a time of fasting for the entire period. Then it was a period where you didn't eat meat. Now you don't eat meat on Fridays and you give up some other random thing for the 40 day period. I might have gotten some of that slightly incorrect, but the main thing was that you were supposed to give something up that you really wanted and then refrain from eating meat on a certain day.

Well, in South Louisiana, seafood is a huge part of the local food culture and crawfish season starts about the same time as Lent. It's a time of the year when crawfish are plentiful and fat, and their shells aren't as hard as they get during the summer and fall months. So instead of fasting on Fridays, they gorge themselves silly with shellfish and beer when they aren't eating fried fish and oysters either by themselves or in po-boys. Hell, the archbishop of New Orleans even declared alligator meat to be fish for Lent. From time to time, you will find stern condemnations of such activities in opinion pieces from well-heeled socialites who grew up in the upper class New Orleans area Catholic social scene... but those are the sort of people who would never be caught dead at an average man's crawfish boil to begin with.

So the local Catholics will go be pious with ash-smeared foreheads and palm leaves drying on the rest behind the back seats of their cars, then party it up for 6 straight Fridays.

I've always thought it funny how theology changes to suit man's needs/purposes.

No surprise here. All religions are pretty transparently a system of asserting control.

How did you come to that conclusion? Did you study all of them?

you confuses theology/doctrine and discipline. doctrine does not change. theology expresses doctrine as much as human can. theology changes in expression as human develops in (supernatural and natural) knowledge and understanding. discipline (where more fasting rules and outward signs people notice belong to) changes with society and also in connection with the secular world, and also people-to-people. Eastern churches keeps the lent not only on Fridays but also on Wednesdays, while Westerns not. are there theology disagreements? not at all.

it's like saying "look how funny computer system design principles are because it's implemented in dozens of different instances to suit users needs"

where I live, it's more commonly held that's it's no meat and fast on Friday during Lent. And with the idea that you're not feasting on Friday, even without meat (but feasting on Sunday is fine, especially as Sundays are supposed to breaks from Lent).

Sure, the all-you-can-eat sushi buffet is technically allowed, but it's poor taste at the very least.

There are plenty of people who voluntarily fast the whole time, though, and it's widespread enough that almost everyplace has a fish special on Fridays. Anyone 'feasting' on anything is kind of missing the point. This is the kind of thing where you can find examples of whatever you care to look for, though.

One can also fast from an insular nature and take steps towards community building, which is definitely a sacrifice for many.

A sample of New Orleans residents isn't exactly a sample of deep Catholic theologians. It's a party town by definition; you wouldn't study the Constitution by polling people in Las Vegas.

You may not study it by polling them, but you could by watching them, people exercise their rights hard in Sin City.

The people having a good time as New Orleans residents aren't the same idiots puking their guts on out Bourbon Street and then telling people the city stinks because they never moved from that location. Those churches are packed for mass every day that there's a service, including people you would never expect. Buddy Diliberto, for example, was an infamous radio talking head and a degenerate gambler but he showed up every single day for church services.

New Orleans residents are perfect for this example because how how deeply rooted Catholicism is into the heart of the city. And I started out by saying South Louisiana, which is a whole lot of NOT New Orleans.

your description very much confuses theology with discipline. the visible signs of lent and fasting are only disciplinary questions, which is a kind of an implementation of theology. one can implement it worse or better. i agree that it's sad that people takes only the "dry words of the canon law" into consideration and not open to accept the greater underlaying idea which manifests in lent - or it is the church teachers who should to a better job educating. well… more likely both aspects are responsible at once. in some sense they are right not abstaining from some foods just for the sake of abstinance. if there is no consciousness in it, if you don't know why and don't agree what do you, then it's probably more harm than gain.

a little fun on the "theology" side made it all the way into chemistry:

> Theobromine (3,7-dimethylxanthine) is the principle alkaloid in Theobroma cacao (the cacao bean)

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/theobromine

> at name in turn is made up of the Greek roots theo ("god") and broma ("food"), meaning "food of the gods".[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine#Etmyology

Very interesting article. It shows the cultural disruption brought upon tradition and a religious canon by a new product. After a long time when the many theological discussions did not solve anything the supreme argument of business interests solved the matter swiftly. Not different from today!

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