N
Nigel7
Guest
Interesting article from the Denver Catholic Register concerning meat on Fridays and/or Friday penance.
**What to do about meat on Fridays?
Forty-six years ago, on the first Sunday of Advent 1966, U.S. bishops announced the end of the mandatory obligation to abstain from “flesh meat” every Friday, even though the requirement to do a Friday penance was never terminated.**
But the long-vanished practice has recently come back in the news. Last year, for example, the Church leadership in England and Wales reinstated the year-round obligation of “no meat on Fridays.” (For the Church at large, the age-old discipline of giving up meat on Good Friday and all the Fridays during Lent has never changed.)
A few weeks ago, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, raised the issue of a year-round obligation as he lamented, “What are the external markers that makes us (Catholics) stand out? Lord knows there used to be tons of them, Friday abstinence from meat was one of them.”
The idea still hits a nerve with ordinary Catholics, too. An informal sample of Catholics in the Denver Archdiocese suggests everybody has an opinion about “meatless Fridays.”
“Initially I thought it was simply an old practice, but my family actually started the practice as well,” said 25-year-old Patricia Morkert, who works for a Web-based marketing company and also holds a theology degree from the University of Dallas. “I thought it was a good idea. It was a very do-able sacrifice that can be applied very easily to my life.”
Her mother, Gloria Morkert, 52, said she didn’t realize that year-round “meatless Fridays” used to be an obligation until, inspired by the urging of Pope John Paul II, she began to study the newly promulgated Catechism of the Catholic Church issued in 1992.
“Oh my gosh, really—every Friday?” she recalled thinking. From then on, her family began to voluntarily abstain from meat on Fridays, and she said “if the bishops catechized us and taught us the reason for it,” she would “fully support” a return to a Friday obligation.
For some, even after the obligation was lifted, the tradition held on for years afterwards.
“I went to Polish Catholic school and the nuns didn’t serve us meat on Fridays anyway, plain and simple,” said Lisa Bessette, 50. To this day, her usual Friday penance is abstaining from meat and breakfast. But she also lives by her mother’s teaching that the higher forms of penance involve “doing things—like works of charity—not giving up things.”
With a laugh, she adds that she’s proud her family also avoided one familiar cultural icon of the “meatless” era: “We never did fishsticks!”
Then there is the startled and negative response of one 30-something Catholic who wanted to remain unnamed: “Wow. I thought (meatless Fridays) ended with Vatican II. Are people really talking about going back to that?”
To put it precisely, Catholics were never completely supposed to leave it.
Advent 1966 marked the change
The big change—some would say, the confusion—began when the new rules became official on the first Sunday of Advent, Nov. 27, 1966.
The following Friday, Dec. 2, 1966, became the first “meat allowed” Friday, a deviation from a Church-wide custom going back centuries.
In a document issued the previous week, U.S. bishops had freed American Catholics from the mandatory obligation to abstain from “flesh meat” every Friday: “we hereby terminate the traditional law of abstinence binding under pain of sin … except as noted above for Lent,” wrote the bishops in a document titled Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence.
Those freeing words, which appeared in the last third of a 2,000-word statement, would govern the thinking of many, if not most, Catholics for the next half-century.
However, largely ignored were the document’s opening words, which referred to “the Church’s constant recognition that all the faithful are required by divine law to do penance.” In principle, Friday penance—done in recognition of Christ’s passion and death—wasn’t changing. It has been the rule for Christians from the first centuries of the Church, what the bishops called “from time immemorial.”
Canon lawyer Carlos Venegas of the Archdiocese of Denver has further pointed out that canon 1250 of the Code of Canon law specifies:
“The penitential days and times in the universal Church are every Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent.”
“That would indicate that some sort of penitence is mandated for every Friday,” Venegas said. He added that canon 1249 “reminds us that divine law binds us to do penance in our own way, indicating that penitence can consist in prayer, performing works of piety and charity, or by self denial in fulfilling our own obligations more faithfully. The observance of fasting and abstinence continues to be held in highest regard, nevertheless, by the Church.”
What say you? (and don’t forget to vote)
**What to do about meat on Fridays?
Forty-six years ago, on the first Sunday of Advent 1966, U.S. bishops announced the end of the mandatory obligation to abstain from “flesh meat” every Friday, even though the requirement to do a Friday penance was never terminated.**
But the long-vanished practice has recently come back in the news. Last year, for example, the Church leadership in England and Wales reinstated the year-round obligation of “no meat on Fridays.” (For the Church at large, the age-old discipline of giving up meat on Good Friday and all the Fridays during Lent has never changed.)
A few weeks ago, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, raised the issue of a year-round obligation as he lamented, “What are the external markers that makes us (Catholics) stand out? Lord knows there used to be tons of them, Friday abstinence from meat was one of them.”
The idea still hits a nerve with ordinary Catholics, too. An informal sample of Catholics in the Denver Archdiocese suggests everybody has an opinion about “meatless Fridays.”
“Initially I thought it was simply an old practice, but my family actually started the practice as well,” said 25-year-old Patricia Morkert, who works for a Web-based marketing company and also holds a theology degree from the University of Dallas. “I thought it was a good idea. It was a very do-able sacrifice that can be applied very easily to my life.”
Her mother, Gloria Morkert, 52, said she didn’t realize that year-round “meatless Fridays” used to be an obligation until, inspired by the urging of Pope John Paul II, she began to study the newly promulgated Catechism of the Catholic Church issued in 1992.
“Oh my gosh, really—every Friday?” she recalled thinking. From then on, her family began to voluntarily abstain from meat on Fridays, and she said “if the bishops catechized us and taught us the reason for it,” she would “fully support” a return to a Friday obligation.
For some, even after the obligation was lifted, the tradition held on for years afterwards.
“I went to Polish Catholic school and the nuns didn’t serve us meat on Fridays anyway, plain and simple,” said Lisa Bessette, 50. To this day, her usual Friday penance is abstaining from meat and breakfast. But she also lives by her mother’s teaching that the higher forms of penance involve “doing things—like works of charity—not giving up things.”
With a laugh, she adds that she’s proud her family also avoided one familiar cultural icon of the “meatless” era: “We never did fishsticks!”
Then there is the startled and negative response of one 30-something Catholic who wanted to remain unnamed: “Wow. I thought (meatless Fridays) ended with Vatican II. Are people really talking about going back to that?”
To put it precisely, Catholics were never completely supposed to leave it.
Advent 1966 marked the change
The big change—some would say, the confusion—began when the new rules became official on the first Sunday of Advent, Nov. 27, 1966.
The following Friday, Dec. 2, 1966, became the first “meat allowed” Friday, a deviation from a Church-wide custom going back centuries.
In a document issued the previous week, U.S. bishops had freed American Catholics from the mandatory obligation to abstain from “flesh meat” every Friday: “we hereby terminate the traditional law of abstinence binding under pain of sin … except as noted above for Lent,” wrote the bishops in a document titled Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence.
Those freeing words, which appeared in the last third of a 2,000-word statement, would govern the thinking of many, if not most, Catholics for the next half-century.
However, largely ignored were the document’s opening words, which referred to “the Church’s constant recognition that all the faithful are required by divine law to do penance.” In principle, Friday penance—done in recognition of Christ’s passion and death—wasn’t changing. It has been the rule for Christians from the first centuries of the Church, what the bishops called “from time immemorial.”
Canon lawyer Carlos Venegas of the Archdiocese of Denver has further pointed out that canon 1250 of the Code of Canon law specifies:
“The penitential days and times in the universal Church are every Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent.”
“That would indicate that some sort of penitence is mandated for every Friday,” Venegas said. He added that canon 1249 “reminds us that divine law binds us to do penance in our own way, indicating that penitence can consist in prayer, performing works of piety and charity, or by self denial in fulfilling our own obligations more faithfully. The observance of fasting and abstinence continues to be held in highest regard, nevertheless, by the Church.”
What say you? (and don’t forget to vote)
I try not to do too many or ones that are too general (eat right, exercise more, pray more, etc.) but this is a very specific task that would be for my spiritual benefit.
It can be difficult if we have a party or event, but there is usually something at a party to eat. Also, depending on the situation, we eat what is served out of charity and respect to our hosts.
Most of the ideas were from various blogs that swirled together