M
MarieVeronica
Guest
Correct…What we are required to do on Fridays outside Lent is to do some form of penance of which abstaining from eating meat is one of the choices.
God bless :curtsey:
Correct…What we are required to do on Fridays outside Lent is to do some form of penance of which abstaining from eating meat is one of the choices.

From my experience it is like this in the vast majority of countries. I believe there might be a couple of eastern European countries where abstaining is still required.What MarieVeronica said. Canon 1251 is the default discipline which means Catholics are bound not to eat meat on Friday unless otherwise provided by the local conference of bishops. It is otherwise provided by the American Conference of Bishops, but not by every other conference or equivalent authority in the world. If you aren’t American, you need to check how it is in your country.
I’ve done it. I’ve eaten meat on the occasional non-Lent Friday when I was not feeling well, or doing heavy physical labor (ha! THAT’S pretty far behind me though!), or at a dinner. I always picked some other penance.Yes, it is a requirement. Please see my post on Canon Law… above.
You wouldn’t believe the number of good, practicing Catholics… who simply think “we don’t have to abstain from meat on Friday anymore”… but they DO NOT do a substitute penance. :nope: They simply leave out the “substitute penance”… or they aren’t aware of that stipulation. I have spoken to many of these people… and I myself, wasn’t aware of the “substitute penance”… for a long time.
There seems to be a major misunderstanding about this, since Vatican II. That is the point, I was trying to make. We are required to abstain from meat on ALL Fridays of the year… OR do a substitute penance, as stated in Canon Law (above).
God bless.