Genuflectimus non ad principem sed ad Principem Pacis!
Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. (Isaiah 49:1 KJV)
Posted on 11/18/2012 3:18:25 PM PST by NYer
Want to feel old? Talk to anyone under the age of 50 about meatless Fridays. Odds are, they will have no memory of it. They will have no knowledge of why Catholics were called “mackerel snappers,” nor will they laugh at tired George Carlin routines about going to hell for eating a hot dog.
And they sure as heck won’t know why many restaurant chains still have their fish specials on Fridays.
But for all you youngsters, you might get ready: Friday abstinence may be coming back.
Once upon a time, children, Catholics abstained from meat on Fridays as a small act of penance. Not just Fridays during Lent, but all Fridays. Friday was the day of the Lord’s death on the cross, and throughout the year, not just on Good Friday, Catholics would commemorate that day in a special way. One still finds this practice in religious communities like monasteries, and the British bishops restored the practice last year.
In general, however, meatless Fridays disappeared after the Second Vatican Council, despite the fact that canon law (Canon 1251) still asks us to abstain from meat or other food on Fridays subject to the requirements of the local conference of bishops.
The irony is that of all the many changes when the Church windows were opened to the fresh wind of aggiornamento, this one may have been one of the more significant. It was a small act of penance that was thoroughly integrated into everyone’s lives.
Of course, not everyone did it with full consciousness of what it was intended to commemorate. For many, it just became a rule, and junior theologians like young George Carlin loved to debate whether eating a hot dog on Friday led one straight down the brimstone path to hell.
Yet when Friday abstinence was done away with, it had a rather oversized impact on Catholic identity. It turned out it was a significant public acknowledgement of one’s faith, like ashes on the forehead. The bishops hadn’t meant for such small acts of penance to go away. They had intended to open up other options for sacrifice. But, of course, they weren’t.
And all those junior theologians? They wondered why one day you could go to hell for eating meat on Friday and the next week it was no big deal. Ultimately, this was a case when punishments became more important than catechesis, and what had a historic and pastoral value became instead a rule for a rule’s sake. Then, over-emphasizing the penalties was compensated for by abandoning the practice all together, and neither response was right.
However, the Church may get a chance to try again. In his speech to his fellow bishops Nov. 13, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, suggested that it might be time to return to the practice of Friday abstinence.
“The work of our Conference during the coming year,” he said, “includes reflection on re-embracing Friday as a particular day of penance, including the possible reinstitution of abstinence on all Fridays of the year, not just during Lent.”
Now to be fair, he did not specifically mention giving up meat. And, of course, one could give up television screens, or dessert, or a hundred other little pleasures we all enjoy. But I hope we do go back to those meatless Fridays. There is something to be said for Catholics knowing they are all in it together. This time, maybe we will not put the focus on the threats or the punishments, but use this as a teaching moment and a positive reinforcement of our Catholic identity.
My real hope is that we will also keep in mind why we are doing it: To remember Someone who gave up a lot more for us.
I just don't know what to think of Dolan. He seems somewhat astute, yet overall his approach to the Left in general (and Obama-ism, specifically) is either hopelessly naive, or hypocritcally political. My cynicism leads me to believe the latter.
He was always free to observe Friday abstinence.
Why not just eat pasta and cheese pizza?
Make the sign of the cross and say grace when eating out and see how people react to you.
Eating meat on Fridays was not a mortal sin. Ergo, one was not in danger of being sent to hell upon death. Rather, it was a venial sin.
Yeah, those darned Bible-based Christians. Where do they get off?
Can. 1249 All Christ's faithful are obliged by divine law, each in his or her own way, to do penance. However, so that all may be joined together in a certain common practice of penance, days of penance are prescribed. On these days the faithful are in a special manner to devote themselves to prayer, to engage in works of piety and charity, and to deny themselves, by fulfilling their obligations more faithfully and especially by observing the fast and abstinence which the following canons prescribe.
Can. 1250 The days and times of penance for the universal Church are each Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent.
Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
Can. 1252 The law of abstinence binds those who have completed their fourteenth year. The law of fasting binds those who have attained their majority, until the beginning of their sixtieth year. Pastors of souls and parents are to ensure that even those who by reason of their age are not bound by the law of fasting and abstinence, are taught the true meaning of penance.
Can. 1253 The Episcopal Conference can determine more particular ways in which fasting and abstinence are to be observed. In place of abstinence or fasting it can substitute, in whole or in part, other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety.
I suppose I'm one of those "Bible based Christians" of whom you speak. Personally, if done for the reasons you cite (to remember what Jesus did for us), I think it's wonderful.
I always think of one thing when I hear people talk about Catholics not eating meat on Fridays. When I was in college (30 years ago), I served food in the cafeteria and usually on Friday evenings. I was in a building that had a bar in it and they had happy hour every Friday afternoon/evening. One after another, kids would stumble in, drunk as skunks, ask for meat and then exclaim, "Oh, no! I can't eat meat! It's Friday! I'll take the fish!" Seemed kind of odd.
Balut! Balut! Balut!
Balut is for friday’s
Balut is a chick just before hatching and ok for Friday. Meat that isn’t meat
Other students fornicate on Saturday and go to church on Sunday. It has a lot to do with the age. And college. Ignorance. And sheer stupidity.
Is it possible to do a quick “dummy” version of the Vatican conferences? I bet I’m not the only clueless one. Thanks. I also will understand if it’s way too complicated to condense.
I grew up in a town where there were just a handful of Catholics. There was and is a Catholic church but it is about the size of a one bedroom house.
Our school from grammar school through high school always served fish on Fridays, I suppose for the Catholics. No one minded and the fish was pretty good. In fact all their food was decent especially the rolls.
I teach in a public school (30 years now) We still have meatless Fridays in our cafe.
Those of us who are Traditional Catholics have observed Friday abstinence and all other aspects of Catholic orthodoxy that the new religion of Vatican II sought to destroy.
Here is the appropriate section of canon law:
From the 1983 Code of Canon Law:Can. 1249 All Christ's faithful are obliged by divine law, each in his or her own way, to do penance. However, so that all may be joined together in a certain common practice of penance, days of penance are prescribed. On these days the faithful are in a special manner to devote themselves to prayer, to engage in works of piety and charity, and to deny themselves, by fulfilling their obligations more faithfully and especially by observing the fast and abstinence which the following canons prescribe.
Can. 1250 The days and times of penance for the universal Church are each Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent.
Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
Can. 1252 The law of abstinence binds those who have completed their fourteenth year. The law of fasting binds those who have attained their majority, until the beginning of their sixtieth year. Pastors of souls and parents are to ensure that even those who by reason of their age are not bound by the law of fasting and abstinence, are taught the true meaning of penance.
Can. 1253 The Episcopal Conference can determine more particular ways in which fasting and abstinence are to be observed. In place of abstinence or fasting it can substitute, in whole or in part, other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety.
The USCCB established the fasting norms for those of us in the US in their "Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence"
22. Friday itself remains a special day of penitential observance throughout the year, a time when those who seek perfection will be mindful of their personal sins and the sins of mankind which they are called upon to help expiate in union with Christ Crucified.23. Friday should be in each week something of what Lent is in the entire year. For this reason we urge all to prepare for that weekly Easter that comes with each Sunday by freely making of every Friday a day of self-denial and mortification in prayerful remembrance of the passion of Jesus Christ.
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.
We do so in the hope that the Catholic community will ordinarily continue to abstain from meat by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law. Our expectation is based on the following considerations:
a. We shall thus freely and out of love for Christ Crucified show our solidarity with the generations of believers to whom this practice frequently became, especially in times of persecution and of great poverty, no mean evidence of fidelity to Christ and His Church.
b. We shall thus also remind ourselves that as Christians, although immersed in the world and sharing its life, we must preserve a saving and necessary difference from the spirit of the world. Our deliberate, personal abstinence from meat, more especially because no longer required by law, will be an outward sign of inward spiritual values that we cherish.
19. Changing circumstances, including economic, dietary, and social elements, have made some of our people feel that the renunciation of the eating of meat is not always and for everyone the most effective means of practicing penance. Meat was once an exceptional form of food; now it is commonplace.
20. Accordingly, since the spirit of penance primarily suggests that we discipline ourselves in that which we enjoy most, to many in our day abstinence from meat no longer implies penance, while renunciation of other things would be more penitential.
21. For these and related reasons, the Catholic bishops of the United States, far from downgrading the traditional penitential observance of Friday, and motivated precisely by the desire to give the spirit of penance greater vitality, especially on Fridays, the day that Jesus died, urge our Catholic people henceforth to be guided by the following norms.
...
27. It would bring great glory to God and good to souls if Fridays found our people doing volunteer work in hospitals, visiting the sick, serving the needs of the aged and the lonely, instructing the young in the Faith, participating as Christians in community affairs, and meeting our obligations to our families, our friends, our neighbors, and our community, including our parishes, with a special zeal born of the desire to add the merit of penance to the other virtues exercised in good works born of living faith.
I do that all the time. No one has ever given me a dirty look. I do it for Jesus, but also it just may remind another person to think of Jesus, however briefly.
The idea that it is/was a sin to eat meat on Friday is ridiculous.
He was always free to observe Friday abstinence
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Thank you...
It appears, from the article (especially the ‘head line’) and some of the comments that people seem to think they can’t ‘observe’ because it isn’t an edict.
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