All Fridays are Fast Days

[dshix]

So you think that the Church which Christ instituted on Earth does not have the right to impose penances on the faithful?

 

[signit]

I once asked this question on “Ask an Apologist” and interpreted the response to say that it’s no longer an obligation “under penalty of sin.”

Still, it’s something I take seriously and on each Friday outside Lent without fail I either abstain from meat or pray an additional five decades of the Rosary.

 

[twf]

I’ve seen this argument before. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but I do wonder how canon law was completely overturned here. The canon grants episcopal conferences the authority to allow a substitution of some other form of penance in lieu of meat abstinence… which is quite different from doing away with the obligation completely.

 

[Lost4words]

I have seen that too. You think the rule would be the same for the WHOLE Catholic church!

 

[dochawk]

I reckon before 1917 there were a whole lot of Catholics in USA who were so poor that one meal’s worth of food was probably what they were eating most non-fast days too.

What constitutes the full fast is indeed largely the diet of the poor in the mediterranean in the first and second centuries–they couldn’t generally afford meat, and ate those “sea bugs” instead of proper fish . . .

I have seen that too. You think the rule would be the same for the WHOLE Catholic church!

the lenient fast was first relaxed for North America because life in the new world was more physical than the mediterranean, and the full fast was incompatible with staying healthy while wresting a farm in the midwestern US . . .

And if you don’t like the lighter fast, there’s nothing stopping a western catholic from observing the fuller fast still observed by most Eastern Catholics . . .

hawk