No Meat On Fridays?

[Anastasia13]

[quote name='beatitude' timestamp='1353766895' post='2515902']
I'm vegetarian anyway (mostly vegan) so this particular Friday observance has never held much meaning for me and I've always had to substitute something else in. I thought the concept of Friday penance was quite widely known and understood, even though people may not practise it.
[/quote]
You are fortunate. Vegetarian is delicious.

[quote name='NonNovi' timestamp='1353758052' post='2515889']
The Belgian episcopal conference has allowed us to eat meat and do other penances long time ago. Nevertheless many people (especially the older ones) don't eat meat on friday. Friday = fish day.
[/quote]
That doesn't seem like a downer at all. Fish is great, especially with a little lemon over the rice and veggies.

Where did the Friday penance thing come from? That's the start of shabbat our Lord grew up with.

[Not The Philosopher]

I didn't find out about this until fairly recently myself. My current understanding is that intentionally failing to do any penance on Friday is a venial sin, though I could be wrong. Nihil's comment about us being bound, but not under pain of sin is kind of confusing to me. It seems that the very nature of an obligation is such that, all things being equal (i.e., fulfilling it wouldn't involve committing a sin), failing to keep it would be a sin.

[Not The Philosopher]

Random guy in the combox [url="http://wdtprs.com/blog/2012/11/quaeritur-clarity-about-pius-xiis-cool-thanksgiving-friday-indult/"]here[/url] says that Friday abstinence/penance is binding for Canadians under pain of mortal sin. I'm having trouble finding something a little more official on this.

[beatitude]

[quote name='Light and Truth' timestamp='1353790814' post='2516064']
Where did the Friday penance thing come from? That's the start of shabbat our Lord grew up with.
[/quote]

It is the day of the crucifixion.

[Anastasia13]

[quote name='beatitude' timestamp='1353850844' post='2516297']
It is the day of the crucifixion.
[/quote]
I take it the tradition includes all of Friday, not just dinner then, since the day before shabbat started Thursday at sunset?

Edited November 25, 2012 by Light and Truth

[Aloysius]

The Universal Law makes sense: it maintained the Friday meat penance but allowed the bishops conferences to permit other penances in place of it if people wanted it. It was the bishops conferences that really dropped the ball from there, IMO, because they came out with this very general kinda of "do any kind of penance you want" that turned into people doing nothing at all. They should have listed specific options: ie, you can either abstain from meat, or pray a decade of the rosary, or pray the divine mercy chaplet, or do the stations of the cross, or x, y, or z. The most generic they should've gotten would be having one of the options be "giving up something you really enjoy" like you do for lent, and really spread around the idea so that just like everyone asks everyone what they gave up for lent, there'd also be the idea of everyone having something that they gave up for Fridays... even that kind of direction would've been more concrete and helpful. The generic "just do something" very quickly turned into doing nothing at all. What we lost by that over-generalization was the social factor that kept it fresh in everyone's minds, clearly defined penances would've maintained that social factor (people might get together to do their Friday rosary decade, or like I said talk about "what they gave up for Fridays", or maybe one of the options is to go to a Friday daily mass and people treat Friday as their own personal day of obligation for mass and have a social connection to all the other people who do the mass option weekly, just like the Sunday mass social connection)

As regards the idea that meat is no longer as much of a sacrifice as it used to be because people like fish? I don't buy that. For one thing, people actually eat meat much more frequently than they did a century ago or in the middle ages; daily meat consumption is a relatively modern thing in most parts of the world. so actually I'd say in modern times it's even more of a sacrifice, since people are used to multiple meat-filled meals per day (whereas in previous times at most a few meat-filled meals per week would've been more normative)... and the fact that you enjoy fish is not all that relevant, because you are still missing out on opportunities for meat. I've heard countless people give the excuse that they were eating a burger on a Friday in lent because they like fish anyway so it wouldn't have been a sacrifice to eat fish; to which I always respond: oh really, so what was it that made it so hard to pass up on that burger? the mere fact of not being able to have something generally sticks to someone's mind and abstaining from meat even when you end up eating something you do enjoy is still a penance, maybe on some occasions it'd be more conscious than on other occasions as it might sometimes feel like nothing at all, but the practice itself reminds you of why you're doing it. in the extreme, even lobster tails would still call something to mind, because you consciously made the choice to not have something with meat in it... now something luxurious like lobster is a little out of keeping with the penitential spirit of the whole thing, but I still see it as a valid expression of a marker for the specialness of the day. not everyone's going to get the right thing out of it, but then again not everyone gets the right thing out of an obligation to go to Mass every Sunday either, but it generally solidifies our Catholic identity and has a unifying effect on us as Catholics and provides an opportunity for us to get something out of it, which people will get to varying degrees over the course of their lives.

the only sin that was ever involved in these penitential directives was the sin of disobeying your pastors; with the looseness with which the pastors have bound us these days (the norms talk about taking away the binding under pain of sin for example), the sin is relatively minimal, but it could be serious depending on your intention (and it must, of course, be intentional knowing disobedience to be sinful, so just eating meat doesn't cut it to be a sin at all); it would be a serious sin to look at the Church calling you to do penance and thumb your nose at the Church in a "you can't tell me what to do!" "non-serviam" kind of way; whereas if you know about it and neglect to do some penance on Fridays due to lack of proper diligence it's probably venially sinful just as a general neglect of your spiritual life.

[Anastasia13]

[quote name='Aloysius' timestamp='1353851875' post='2516300']
The Universal Law makes sense: it maintained the Friday meat penance but allowed the bishops conferences to permit other penances in place of it if people wanted it. It was the bishops conferences that really dropped the ball from there, IMO, because they came out with this very general kinda of "do any kind of penance you want" that turned into people doing nothing at all. They should have listed specific options: ie, you can either abstain from meat, or pray a decade of the rosary, or pray the divine mercy chaplet, or do the stations of the cross, or x, y, or z. The most generic they should've gotten would be having one of the options be "giving up something you really enjoy" like you do for lent, and really spread around the idea so that just like everyone asks everyone what they gave up for lent, there'd also be the idea of everyone having something that they gave up for Fridays... even that kind of direction would've been more concrete and helpful. The generic "just do something" very quickly turned into doing nothing at all. What we lost by that over-generalization was the social factor that kept it fresh in everyone's minds, clearly defined penances would've maintained that social factor (people might get together to do their Friday rosary decade, or like I said talk about "what they gave up for Fridays", or maybe one of the options is to go to a Friday daily mass and people treat Friday as their own personal day of obligation for mass and have a social connection to all the other people who do the mass option weekly, just like the Sunday mass social connection)[/QUOTE]
It is a shame when a devotion becomes nothing yet is regarded as something.

[QUOTE]As regards the idea that meat is no longer as much of a sacrifice as it used to be because people like fish? I don't buy that. For one thing, people actually eat meat much more frequently than they did a century ago or in the middle ages; daily meat consumption is a relatively modern thing in most parts of the world. so actually I'd say in modern times it's even more of a sacrifice, since people are used to multiple meat-filled meals per day (whereas in previous times at most a few meat-filled meals per week would've been more normative)... and the fact that you enjoy fish is not all that relevant, because you are still missing out on opportunities for meat.[/QUote]
Is this in regard to my comment? I'm one of those weird people that wants to eat have vegetarian (and that half doesn't have any animal fertilized flesh, although that would add more omega 3 fatty acids...).

[QUOTE]the only sin that was ever involved in these penitential directives was the sin of disobeying your pastors; with the looseness with which the pastors have bound us these days (the norms talk about taking away the binding under pain of sin for example), the sin is relatively minimal, but it could be serious depending on your intention (and it must, of course, be intentional knowing disobedience to be sinful, so just eating meat doesn't cut it to be a sin at all); it would be a serious sin to look at the Church calling you to do penance and thumb your nose at the Church in a "you can't tell me what to do!" "non-serviam" kind of way; whereas if you know about it and neglect to do some penance on Fridays due to lack of proper diligence it's probably venially sinful just as a general neglect of your spiritual life.
[/quote]
Sin is sin. Doesn't matter how you do it. It still falls short of the perfection of God, and without Christ's sacrifice, it would be enough to condemn our souls.

Edited November 25, 2012 by Light and Truth

[Basilisa Marie]

Meat was the sacrifice because it used to be a nice pseudo-luxury item, and fish was an exception because it was a food staple of the poor. Nowadays you can get away with a meatless Friday by having a spinach and feta omelet for breakfast, eggplant lasagna for lunch, and salmon for dinner. It's enough to make giving up meat feel like a special occasion, not a sacrifice. So many forms of vegetarianism are so popular nowadays, you can even find a lot of delicious [i]vegan[/i] meals at many restaurants. So really, giving up meat on Fridays was no longer the same meaningful penance and imposed no hardship on Catholics like it used to.

So I'm with HSmom - re-instituting meat as the mandatory sacrifice really wouldn't do anything to improve the spiritual lives of the faithful in the US. Instead, it might be a better idea for bishops to re-emphasize the SACRIFICE one is supposed to make on Fridays. That could be meat, or it could be TV, or unnecessary internet time, or whatever, just something that would be an actual sacrifice for the person. This way, we'd be giving people a clear "rule" to follow (make a sacrifice) but encouraging them to find something that would be actually meaningful. Or maybe we could make meat the standard, and unless you're doing something else, you have to give up meat. It really just comes down to how a bishop wants to shepherd his diocese.

[AnneLine]

This is a really interesting discussion. I'm one of those who isn't as convinced that 'giving up meat' is the only alternative, but I do think we need to remember the WHY we do stuff, and choose to do it for that reason.

While most of us think of giving up meat on Fridays or during Lent and/or Advent as purely religious, I think an argument can be made that many of the dietary restrictions are based on those things that are in limited (or non-existant) supply during the winter and early spring months. Choosing to associate those with the Passion and freely choosing to 'give them up' and/or associate their loss and return with Christ's passion and Resurrection makes good sense on a physical and spiritual level!

Interesting discussion of LENTEN fast & abstinence, that contains some relevant discussion:
[url="http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0527.html"]http://www.catholice...ion/re0527.html[/url]

And then there is this, which adds another whole level to choices regarding abstaining from meat / eating fish:


[indent=1]Her Majesty [Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England] was also very instrumental in meat-free Fridays. According to [i]To The Queen's Taste[/i], "In 1563, by an act of Parliament, Elizabeth proclaimed that her countrymen had to eat fish on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Infraction of her command was punishable by three months' imprisonment or a three-pound fine." Though the law was rooted in religion, it was really implemented in order to boost the English shipbuilding industry and lower the cost of meat. She was a sneaky magistrate.[/indent]

Some or all of you might enjoy this link to an episode of the BBC historical series "Tales of the Green Valley" (about recreating life on a 17th Century Welsh farm) discusses Lenten abstinance as well.... and makes a really good point that what would have been NECESSARY back then because of seasonal fluctuations in availablity of meat and dairy (few eggs, no milk, no cheese, no meat during the period that would be our Lent... and their return with a VENGENCE during Easter and summer!). (They make a similar comment regarding Advent and Christmas/new Year, by the way... if you are poor, and you want to have a blow-out celebration of Christmas, one NEEDs to give up some food during Advent or you won't have it to eat at Christmas!) In much the same way, it was traditional in medival and/or Elizabethan times to ONLY have cooked meat on Sundays and maybe on Thursdays.... so choosing to skip eating meat on Wednesdays Fridays and Saturdays falls into part of a regular pattern... with left-overs on Mondays, Tuesdays... yup, kind of does make sense.... Also, possibly fasting on Friday allowed for more to enjoy on Sunday? Possibly....

Whole series is great (Search for [url="http://www.dailymotion.com"]www.dailymotion.com[/url] and 'Tales from the Green Valley'), but the relevant section of this episode is the first few moments (through 0:25), and again starting at 22:35 thru 23:50 or so.....

[url="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqpsv1_e6-tales-from-the-green-valley_lifestyle"]http://www.dailymoti...alley_lifestyle[/url]

I agree that there is a value to a communal penance that we all do in solidarity. There is also a huge value in it being an 'obedience' as our Bishops have assigned to us. And yes, Choosing to avoid meat (or to eat very simply) on Fridays can be one way of doing this.

But as many have noted, for many in OUR world, other restrictions really could be as helpful or more helpful. Choosing to voluntarily limit or refrain from our use of technology and to substitute prayer and good works could be as penitential or MORE penitential for many of us! Choosing to do or not do something that leads us closer to Christ (or away from sin) can be a better option. But each person (or each conference of Bishops) needs to prayerfully discern this one I think....

Edited November 25, 2012 by AnneLine