Today I found a light church-bulletin piece by Deacon Greg Sampson (Rochester, NY) on the Catholic discipline of abstaining from meat on Fridays — not during Lent, but the rest of the year. Deacon Greg begins with a humorous anecdote and ends with a comment and question:
Why was the obligation to abstain from meat on Friday removed? It was not because it was felt that penitential practices were unimportant. Rather, it was felt that penitential practices were so important that they should not be made obligatory. So when we were told that we were not obliged to abstain on Friday, we were also told that voluntary abstinence was an excellent practice. And – here’s the biggy – we were asked to perform some act of alms-giving and/or service as our Friday offering, instead of simply munching on haddock.
The idea was this: Instead of having millions of Catholics eating fish on Friday "because they have to", it would be better to have millions of Catholics practice the abstinence on a voluntary basis, coupled with prayer and specific acts of charity. Has it worked out like that? Well, not exactly. Shall we work at it?
Briefly, this used to be something we were all required to do, with local variations (e.g., in some places, dairy products and eggs were also off the menu) and certain exemptions (e.g., sick people and pregnant women). In 1966, the U. S. Bishops’ Conference altered the discipline for the dioceses of the United States, so that abstaining from meat on Fridays outside Lent became a voluntary option. Penance of some sort is still required, but the faithful are allowed to substitute some other kind of penance, particularly acts of charity. Many other Bishops’ Conferences have, by now, made similar changes.
What were the famous words? "It seemed like a good idea at the time?" These words from the 1966 bishops’ document (linked above) are hopeful:
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.
It would, yes. But… it really hasn’t happened. When was the last time you heard of a Catholic friend who made a point of doing volunteer work of any kind on Fridays? Maybe there’s a large number of Catholics out there who quietly and privately engage in special penitential practices on Friday — but I suspect not.
Even though they lifted the requirement of abstaining from meat as a means of meeting the non-Lenten Friday penitential obligation, the bishops still recommended it:
[E]ven though we hereby terminate the traditional law of abstinence…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 in 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.
Except that this didn’t happen either. What happened is that Friday penance simply disappeared from Ordinary Time in the lives of ordinary Catholics. People ate meat on Fridays, never got around to picking up any other penitential practices, and now Friday penance has been forgotten entirely.
I submit in obedience to the U. S. Bishops, of course, but I am still free to think that some of their decisions are, frankly, unwise. This has turned out to be one of them. I’ve already pointed out that their prediction of a new springtime of Friday charity turned out to be completely wrong. They’re wrong elsewhere too: Their justification of the change rests on two arguments, for which there are strong counter-arguments.
First, they write, "Meat was once an exceptional form of food, now it is commonplace." The implication is that penitential abstinence should require us to abstain from something exceptional rather than something common. This is ludicrous. It puts me in mind of declaring that I should give up expensive French champagne for Lent. Abstaining from something pleasant that I enjoy only on rare occasions anyway is not abstinence at all.
Back when the poor didn’t eat much meat, the obligatory meatless Friday was actually progressive. People who ate meat daily got a weekly taste of a kind of poverty. People who couldn’t afford meat were barely inconvenienced by the rule. And who knows — maybe the artificially depressed demand for meat marginally lowered its cost for the poor.
And now that the poor in the U. S. generally can afford meat, because we’re generally much better off than we used to be, the meatless Friday is less progressive but more universally penitential. It’s a sacrifice available to everyone. (I have heard some people argue, "But fish is more expensive than meat." To those people I have an assignment: Visit your local grocery store and check the prices of eggs, peanut butter, cheese, and beans. And have you ever heard of canned tuna?) The only Catholics not doing penance by keeping a meatless Friday are vegetarians, and I am sure that those folks are creative enough to come up with an alternative.
Secondly, the bishops write, "The spirit of penance primarily suggests that we discipline ourselves in that which we enjoy most" and "[T]o many… renunciation of other things would be more penitential."
Where to begin? Let’s start with "the spirit of penance." Arguments from "the spirit of" almost anything are a cop-out. Generally the words "the spirit of" are properly translated as "our opinion of" (cf. "the spirit of Vatican II.") This is no exception. The spirit of penance (i.e. the bishops’ opinion of penance) may suggest that we should restrict ourselves in that which we enjoy most, but no Church law that I can find has ever suggested this, nor does Scripture in my knowledge. Furthermore, the problems created by the subjectivity of the requirement are obvious. What if the thing I enjoy most is going to daily Mass, or cooking dinner for my family? Let’s be frank about this: The bishops made this bit up.
The next part is true: To many, renunciation of something other than meat would indeed be more penitential. I can think of dozens of things that I would be harder-pressed to give up, for a day, than meat. For that matter, it is much easier for me, a busy mom, to give up meat for a day than to plan some "positive" act of charity or penance: to get to Friday morning mass with children in tow, to leave my children so that I can do volunteer work, even to find time to spend an extra half-hour in prayer, all of these are more challenging (and not always charitable).
But even though it is true, what does this sentence imply about penance? Is the more penitential practice always a better choice than the less penitential practice? Certainly not. If we take this too far, we’ll all be flagellating ourselves again. Immoderation is possible even in the practice of usually good things.
When meatless Fridays were prescribed outside Lent, the amount of penitence was regulated. Now it’s not limited at all. Whereas the most widespread problem with pick-your-own-penance is that many do not choose penance at all, or choose too little, the more damaging problem is associated with scrupulosity: the feeling that one has not done enough penance, and has to keep doing more and more and more, to the detriment of one’s ordinary duties. Prescribed penance is much healthier for those afflicted with scrupulosity, which can be a serious form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
So, what might the bishops have done better? My suggestion: They could have given permission instead to pastors to dispense from the meatless Friday as the primary means of meeting the Friday penitential obligation. Under this system, most Catholics would abstain from meat on Fridays; those who had a better idea for their own Friday penance (say, a person who proposed to sign up for regular soup-kitchen work on Fridays, or another who proposed to spend an hour in adoration on Fridays, or a vegetarian who proposed to give up bread instead of meat on Fridays) could approach their parish priest for the dispensation, which is really nothing more than a verbal o.k. and blessing.
Lest some pastors be too stingy with the dispensations, pastors could be exhorted to accept without question nearly all proposed alternative penances unless they seemed truly meaningless ("I’d like to give up caviar instead of meat on Friday") or excessive ("Instead of giving up meat, I’d like to spend eight hours every Friday in front of the Blessed Sacrament.")
In this system, too, pastors could suggest from the pulpit many alternative ways to meet the Friday penance, and even set up specific penances for the whole parish: exposing the Blessed Sacrament all day Friday, for example, and dispensing anyone who makes a special visit, or offering a Friday Stations of the Cross and dispensing all who attend.
This system would better meet the Bishops’ intentions. Abstinence from meat, to which the bishops gave "first place" "among the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance," would remain the ordinary form of Friday penance. Friday penance would remain an important tradition of the faithful. And yet, the alternatives of works of charity or special attention to prayer would always be a choice, and perhaps would be even more widely practiced, because a good pastor with a devotion to social outreach or to contemplative prayer, would likely feel more encouraged to preach these activities from the pulpit, specifically as a penitential practice for Fridays.
There’s still time. I hear the U. S. Bishops are considering reviving the meatless non-Lenten Friday, as an expression of Catholicity and in reparation for the sin of abortion. What do you think?
bearing blog 