S
Scotty_PGH
Guest
The whole idea in lifting the obligation was to liberate us to meet the needs of the Church and God’s people in a variety of ways:
“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.” NCCB, “On Penance and Abstinence,” 1996.
But if you rather abstain from meat …
Roll your eyes at that.
- Among the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance which we especially commend to our people for the future observance of 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.