Muskrat on Lenten Fridays

Michigan Catholics have a few options for Friday night dinner during Lent:  fish frys, fish sticks, pizza or muskrat.

A long-standing permission allows local Catholics to eat muskrat, a rodent native to the area, “on days of abstinence, including Fridays during Lent.” The custom dates to the region’s missionary history in the 1700s.  Missionary priests realized food was scarce in communities close to the Detroit River, so they did not want to deny settlers an available source of protein. 

The Rev. Tim Laboe, dean of studies at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, grew up in an area of Michigan where muskrat dinners have long been a tradition.  He remembers eating muskrat with his grandfather.  “I don’t know if I enjoy more eating the muskrat or watching people try it for the first time, because it doesn’t look in any way appetizing.”

Laboe, who said he enjoyed muskrat, recalled a quote attributed to the late Bishop Kenneth Povish, the former head of the Lansing Diocese: “Anybody that eats muskrat is doing an act of penance worthy of the greatest of saints.”