“Do you feel religiously obligated to eat meat every day?”
No. I am just pointing out that the Bible says we aren’t supposed to forbid certain foods.
That’s true. However, it’s also not relevant to a personal decision to deny *oneself* something for one day.
As I mentioned above, I find preparing and cleaning up meat meals all the time to be much more penitential than doing without meat - as most of the world does most of the time, anyway.
Considering the Torah has an entire list of forbidden “foods”, you’re interpretation of the text quoted is faulty.
And so who's forbidding here? If meat were forbidden, we couldn't eat it the other days of the week, could we?
This is *fasting* from a particular kind of food. Which the Bible says we are supposed to do.
Dear friend, the bishop is not forbiding any foods. From the time of Christ, Christians opted to take Wednesdays (the day Our Lord was betrayed) and Fridays (the day Our Lord was crucified) as their penitential days for fast and abstinence. Over the years, the fast was lightened, then erduced only to Fridays and, more recently, made optional. The good bishop is reminding his flock of these ancient traditions.
We fast for many reasons. Even if there were no other reason to fast, we fast out of obedience: Our Lord and His Apostles tell us to (Matthew 17:17-20). We also fast to discipline the body so that we can focus more intently on the spiritual. And we fast to do penance, for our own sins and those of the world. We fast in reparation for abortion.
There was once a Catholic missionary who was sent to convert a tribe of cannibals. After a while he was visited by another missionary who asked him if he had made any progress in getting the tribesmen to stop eating people. He replied, "I've got them to the point that on Fridays they only eat fishermen."