Eating meat on Fridays.

[on_the_hill]

Regardless , it’s not worth being a mortal sin.

I don’t eat meat on Fridays of Lent because I’m Catholic and it’s a way for me to remind myself of my Catholicism. I don’t avoid meat out of fear of sin. In fact, I never knew it was a sin until reading it on CAF awhile back, and I’m 50 years old. I’ve mentioned the Meat as Mortal Sin ito other Catholics and they ask, “You’re kidding, right?”

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

It is grave matter to disobey the particular law in your location. In the UK the law is abstinence from meat every Friday. In the US, the law is different, but we are not free to disregard it.

So “grave matter” is relative to your location and the times you happen to live in? Furthermore… if a Catholic visits the UK, then does that rule apply to her, too? Or only the local Catholics are bound by it? Conversely, if a UK Catholic travels abroad, is she bound by the “law”? So many questions… and the most important one: “Who decides what actions constitute a grave matter”? The week before this “law” was enacted, eating meat on Fridays was NOT a grave matter, was it?

Ecclesial law changes over time to meet the needs of the people in the time and place.

One must wonder… what specific “needs” of the UK Catholics warranted this modification of the law?

 

[Blue_Horizon]

So “grave matter” is relative to your location and the times you happen to live in?

Relative to the Diocese of Country in which you reside actually.

Yes the details are clearly arbitrary in the sense that the gravity lies not in the particulars but the principle that all followers of Christ are called to ascesis. Further, the Church in its fifth precept (like going to Church on Sundays) has arbitrarily decided that this should be done communally on set days of the year.

So the issue is probably grave by reason of the obedience due to a formal (and traditional) Precept. Details of implementation may be changed by local bishops.

Having said that it is not intrinsically grave and it may even be rendered “light” by any number of only moderately challenging circumstances, perhaps like theft…to say nothing of the fact that many laity just cannot “understand” it is considered grave.

“Who decides what actions constitute a grave matter”?

For arbitrary “positive law” it is the Pope who authorises the Precepts and the local bishops who have some freedom in its implimentation.
Clearly when we speak of “natural law” (eg the Commandments) gravity is discerned by reason applied to the the intrinsics of the matter itself.

But of course your shrill questions are not looking for explanations - they are mere rhetoric to push your own closed views that these matters cannot be justified.

Hence I write more for lurkers than your good self.
Which raises the question as to why you bother getting involved on a Catholic forum at all.
Perhaps to educate us superstitious barbarians, perhaps to enhance your rhetorical skills, maybe to reinvigorate yuour own sense of enlightenment and rationality?

Whatever it is I don’t think it is doing you any good as a person.

 

[Roseeurekacross]

Nelke ,

Please , rather then reading all this to and fro,

ASK YOUR PRIEST.

 

[jmcrae]

Regardless , it’s not worth being a mortal sin.

I don’t eat meat on Fridays of Lent because I’m Catholic and it’s a way for me to remind myself of my Catholicism. I don’t avoid meat out of fear of sin. In fact, I never knew it was a sin until reading it on CAF awhile back, and I’m 50 years old. I’ve mentioned the Meat as Mortal Sin ito other Catholics and they ask, “You’re kidding, right?”

Possibly because they think “mortal sin” refers to actions that kill someone in the body.

And they don’t value their souls enough to avoid things (such as disobedience) that kill the soul.

 

[Lucretius]

Regardless , it’s not worth being a mortal sin.

I don’t eat meat on Fridays of Lent because I’m Catholic and it’s a way for me to remind myself of my Catholicism. I don’t avoid meat out of fear of sin. In fact, I never knew it was a sin until reading it on CAF awhile back, and I’m 50 years old. I’ve mentioned the Meat as Mortal Sin ito other Catholics and they ask, “You’re kidding, right?”

The relationship between ecclesial law and moral law is like the relationship between Mosaic law and moral law.

Mosaic law had multiple aspects, such as ceremonies and custom, all of which had a particular purpose in the context of the era before Christ. Many of the customs were in order to separate the people of Israel from others, and the ceremonies and sacrifices were the shadows of a promise by God to cleans us of our sins.

However, with the coming of Christ, especially his Sacrifice and his opening of the new convent with gentiles, these ceremonies and customs were fulfilled and became without purpose in the context of the last days which we live in now. And so, we have been unbound in following them: in fact, to follow, say, the rituals of the Temple Sacrifices, would be acting as if Christ Sacrifice didn’t cleans us of our sins!

However, just because a new context arose, doesn’t mean that the people of God wouldn’t need guidance in particular customs and how particularly to celebrate the Liturgy in order to promote unity and order and harmony among the members of Christ. He foresaw this need, and so he imputed to the Apostles the authority to “bind and loose” the Church through the guidance of the Spirit and his gifts of wisdom and prudence in a way similar to how He himself guided Moses to bind and loose Israel by the old testament law. This is where the Church is coming from when the bishops make certain days holy days of obligation, or Wednesdays and Fridays fasting days, or change the details of the Liturgy, etc.

These decisions are in a sense customary and arbitrary, as result of prudence and discernment. They do not derive from the moral law necessarily, but they can bound how the Church approaches certain moral issues practically, like how, for the longest time, only bishops were allowed to absolve the sin of abortion, just like how Moses bound how Israel was to deal with adultery. The moral law and its principles are not changeable, and so adultery and abortion are always evil in every circumstance, but how we deal with it from a practical standpoint in different situations is.

This is why the Church cannot just make anything prohibited by the natural law just. The bishop is simply exercising this ability to bind and loose his diocese regarding the specifications of the general principles expressed in both the moral and Divine laws.

Christ says we should fast, and the bishops say we should fast on Wednesdays and Fridays for a multitude of practical reasons, such as the understanding that fasting at the same times every week help develop the habit, promote unity in the Church (since everyone is fasting together), giving Christians more ability to lean on each other for help when the temptation to break fast arises, to separate the people of God from non-Christians and Jews (Wednesdays and Fridays we’re chosen, according to the Didache, in order to separate Christians from religious Jews, who fasted on Tuesday and Thursdays), and so on. Most of these intentions in the binding of this law can be fulfilled in another way, but they are all fulfilled in this way as well, and if the situation changes that it would be more prudent to loosen this tradition of men, than the Church should and could do so.

These bindings are mortal sins in the sense that a Jews eating pork is a mortal sin: the act isn’t inherently wrong like murder or adultery are, but they are wrong because Moses or your bishop binded it to be so, for whatever practical reason(s).

We just must always remember that we shouldn’t allow these traditions of men, although good in themselves, conflict with the traditions of God.

Does that help make more sense of these seemingly arbitrary customs?

Christi pax.

 

[Vico]

I do feel like I need a doctorate to understand what I have just read on the Bishops conference for England regarding Fridays.

It all seems ambiguous. What about vegetarians do they get off scot free?

Excerpts (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. 24 January 1985):

1. Lent is the traditional season of renewal and repentance in Christ. The New Code re-affirms this. It also prescribes that Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are to be observed as days of fast and abstinence. Fasting means that the amount of food we eat is considerably reduced. Abstinence means that we give up a particular kind of food or drink or form of amusement.

4 … What the Church does require, according to the new Code, is that its members abstain on Fridays from meat or some other food or that they perform some alternative work of penance laid down by the Bishops’ Conference.

1. In accordance with the mind of the universal Church, the Bishops of England and Wales remind their people of the obligation of Friday penance, and instruct them that it may be fulfilled in one or more of the following ways:
   
   a) by abstaining from meat or some other food;
   b) by abstaining from alcoholic drink, smoking or some form of amusement;
   c) by making the special effort involved in family prayer, taking part in the Mass, visiting the Blessed Sacrament or praying the Stations of the Cross;
   d) by fasting from all food for a longer period than usual and perhaps giving what is saved in this way to the needy at home and abroad;
   e) by making a special effort to help somebody who is poor, sick, old or lonely.
   [*]The form of penance we adopt each Friday is a matter of personal choice and does not have to take the same form every Friday. …
   ​

 

[paperwight66]

When the announcement was made, urging the faithful to omit meat on Fridays as a good penance, Briefing Notes for the press were issued. In the Q & A section, it was clearly stated that failure to abstain was not a matter of mortal sin.

To be honest, I can’t remember Lent being mentioned, but abstaining is certainly never alluded to in sermons in our parish.