Friday Penance

[mommamaree]

Hi all!
I don’t often ask questions regarding moral issues, but I have a nagging question about Friday penance. My husband and I are fairly recent converts (2010). So we have taken the approach of learning how to be faithful in the big things and then working up to more devout practices. For example, we use the examination of conscience we were given to learn how to keep the 10 commandments and we follow the precepts of the Church. With our free time, we often talk about what we have learned in our reading regarding our new faith, but there are some things that we have read about and don’t know how urgent it is for us to adopt that practice immediately. Friday penance is one of them. It seems pretty important to a lot of people here at CAF, but how urgent is it? The reason why I ask is that at this point in our life, we are kinda already working very hard to avoid anything that would necessitate confession, and we don’t want to pile on too much too soon and burn ourselves out.
So is it a situation where we are mortally sinning if we do not yet do Friday penance? (Of course, I am not referring to Fridays in Lent)
Thank you in advance!

 

[Mrs_Sally]

Everyone is obligated to do some penance on Fridays, what that is depends on where you are and what your bishop’s conference has said.

In the US, the Friday penance outside of Lent does not need to be abstaining from meat, but can be any appropriate penance of your choosing - perhaps giving up some other food (dessert, say) or saying additional prayers.

You two should decide on something that you can do together and will be likely to remember - actually giving up meat is not all that hard especially if you carry your own luch to work, but it can be something else as well.

Next time you regularly attend confession, mention that you have not been keeping a Friday penance. No reason to make a special trip for this.

 

[jmcrae]

Hi all!
I don’t often ask questions regarding moral issues, but I have a nagging question about Friday penance. My husband and I are fairly recent converts (2010). So we have taken the approach of learning how to be faithful in the big things and then working up to more devout practices. For example, we use the examination of conscience we were given to learn how to keep the 10 commandments and we follow the precepts of the Church. With our free time, we often talk about what we have learned in our reading regarding our new faith, but there are some things that we have read about and don’t know how urgent it is for us to adopt that practice immediately. Friday penance is one of them. It seems pretty important to a lot of people here at CAF, but how urgent is it? The reason why I ask is that at this point in our life, we are kinda already working very hard to avoid anything that would necessitate confession, and we don’t want to pile on too much too soon and burn ourselves out.
So is it a situation where we are mortally sinning if we do not yet do Friday penance? (Of course, I am not referring to Fridays in Lent)
Thank you in advance!

This law varies by region. Check with your local Bishop to find out what the exact requirements are in your area.

In my area, abstinence from meat or some other kind of penance is required on every Friday of the year except for solemnities. (Most people choose to do another kind of penance instead of abstaining from meat.) The exception is Good Friday, on which abstinence from meat is required (along with fasting) - and it is customary to add other penances as well, especially the Way of the Cross. We also fast and abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday.

 

[mommamaree]

Okay, so based on what the first two posters (thank you) have said, not keeping Friday penance is grave matter? Are there any Church documents I can view online that would explain the what and why of this? By the way, I live in the US, so I know another penance can be substituted, that it need not be abstinence. However, I was at first under the impression that this is a strongly recommended practice. I did not realized we were obligated under pain of sin.
So where can I learn more about this?

 

[Mrs_Sally]

From here.

Christ Died for Our Salvation on Friday

1. Gratefully remembering this, Catholic peoples from time immemorial have set apart Friday for special penitential observance by which they gladly suffer with Christ that they may one day be glorified with Him. This is the heart of the tradition of abstinence from meat on Friday where that tradition has been observed in the holy Catholic Church.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. Every Catholic Christian understands that the fast and abstinence regulations admit of change, unlike the commandments and precepts of that unchanging divine moral law which the Church must today and always defend as immutable. This said, we emphasize that our people are henceforth free from the obligation traditionally binding under pain of sin in what pertains to Friday abstinence,except as noted above for Lent. We stress this so that "no"scrupulosity will enter into examinations of conscience,confessions, or personal decisions on this point.
2. Perhaps we should warn those who decide to keep the Friday abstinence for reasons of personal piety and special love that they must not pass judgment on those who elect to substitute other penitential observances. Friday, please God,will acquire among us other forms of penitential witness which may become as much a part of the devout way of life in the future as Friday abstinence from meat. In this connection we have foremost in mind the modern need for self-discipline in the use of stimulants and for a renewed emphasis on the virtue of temperance, especially in the use of alcoholic beverages.

1. 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.

1. In summary, let it not be said that by this action, implementing the spirit of renewal coming out of the Council, we have abolished Friday, repudiated the holy traditions of our fathers, or diminished the insistence of the Church on the fact of sin and the need for penance. Rather, let it be proved by the spirit in which we enter upon prayer and penance, not excluding fast and abstinence freely chosen, that these present decisions and recommendations of this conference of bishops will herald a new birth of loving faith and more profound penitential conversion, by both of which we become one with Christ, mature sons of God, and servants of God’s people.N.B. The effective date of these regulations is the first Sunday of Advent, November 27, 1966.

 

[jmcrae]

Okay, so based on what the first two posters (thank you) have said, not keeping Friday penance is grave matter? Are there any Church documents I can view online that would explain the what and why of this? By the way, I live in the US, so I know another penance can be substituted, that it need not be abstinence. However, I was at first under the impression that this is a strongly recommended practice. I did not realized we were obligated under pain of sin.
So where can I learn more about this?

Again, the best source for the law in your area is your local Bishop. Most Bishops use e-mail, and they are very approachable. Don’t be afraid to ask him this simple question - he is not too busy to help you; this is exactly the sort of thing that you pay him for.

He is the interpreter of the law in your area, so even if you find something in writing that you can understand, you would still need him to tell you how he understands it, and how he visualizes the practice of it in your Diocese.

 

[VivienneJ]

I can’t help you with a link, the ones I have saved are for the countries in which I live - I’m sure others will supply you with that. But I, as a relatively new Catholic too, have found that observing the abstinence from meat is the ‘easiest’ Friday penance for me, simply because I have not had to think up something that I do every Friday that I can ‘give up’ for Fridays. Making meat my penance means that I think about it often from Thursday evening onwards.

 

[mommamaree]

Again, the best source for the law in your area is your local Bishop. Most Bishops use e-mail, and they are very approachable. Don’t be afraid to ask him this simple question - he is not too busy to help you; this is exactly the sort of thing that you pay him for.

He is the interpreter of the law in your area, so even if you find something in writing that you can understand, you would still need him to tell you how he understands it, and how he visualizes the practice of it in your Diocese.

Haha. Sorry but not gonna email my bishop. Maybe you are confident enough to do so, and that is wonderful, but I am not nearly so bold. I have trouble bringing myself to say hello to our pastor.

 

[mommamaree]

I can’t help you with a link, the ones I have saved are for the countries in which I live - I’m sure others will supply you with that. But I, as a relatively new Catholic too, have found that observing the abstinence from meat is the ‘easiest’ Friday penance for me, simply because I have not had to think up something that I do every Friday that I can ‘give up’ for Fridays. Making meat my penance means that I think about it often from Thursday evening onwards.

I find abstinence quite difficult actually, because I am always pregnant or breastfeeding, and I can’t get my kids to eat nonmeat forms of protein, unless I serve them peanut butter at every meal. I am trying, but it is a work in progress. During Lent, my children and I were exempt from fasting and abstinence, due to age and medical reasons. So, since I was going through prolonged labor and childbirth and postpartum issues during Lent, I decided to wait till now to investigate this matter further. Abstinence is probably the form of penance that is easiest to remember, though!

 

[jmcrae]

Haha. Sorry but not gonna email my bishop. Maybe you are confident enough to do so, and that is wonderful, but I am not nearly so bold. I have trouble bringing myself to say hello to our pastor.

He is the Head Teacher; he is the guy to ask when you have a question like this - it’s what he gets paid for; he will be glad to answer you - it will be a nice change for him from all the stuff he puts up with that he doesn’t actually get paid for. (Get your husband to ask him, if you are too shy.)

 

[mommamaree]

From here.

Thank you for the link! My husband and I read it several times. We both agreed that Paragraph #27 is the one for us to focus on right now, and aim for abstinence over time. my husband, before we read this, said only half-jokingly, that our whole lives are penance right now! But honestly, we spend so much of ourselves in our vocation as parents of 4 young children that we do not have much time for anything extra. I like the idea of serving our family with zeal on Fridays as being a penitential practice.

 

[mommamaree]

He is the Head Teacher; he is the guy to ask when you have a question like this - it’s what he gets paid for; he will be glad to answer you - it will be a nice change for him from all the stuff he puts up with that he doesn’t actually get paid for. (Get your husband to ask him, if you are too shy.)

Thanks for the idea. I read your post to my husband and he said he would start with emailing our pastor, who used to work directly with our bishop, as rector of the Cathedral.

 

[Jeanne_S]

Thank you for the link! My husband and I read it several times. We both agreed that Paragraph #27 is the one for us to focus on right now, and aim for abstinence over time. my husband, before we read this, said only half-jokingly, that our whole lives are penance right now! But honestly, we spend so much of ourselves in our vocation as parents of 4 young children that we do not have much time for anything extra. I like the idea of serving our family with zeal on Fridays as being a penitential practice.

Awwww,God bless you and your family!

 

[Mrs_Sally]

So glad it helped! Hope your Fridays are very special from here on out.