Friday Abstinence

Definition

Abstinence from meat on Friday.

Short Explanation

Lenten Fridays

On Lenten Fridays we must abstain from meat. Eating meat on a Lenten Friday can be a mortal sin.

All Other Fridays

On all other Fridays of the year, we are encouraged to do some penance. The preferred penance is abstaining from meat, but we may choose another penance if we wish. If we do no penance, the present state of Church law on this is sufficiently ambiguous that I don’t see it as sinful.

My view is that Church law appears to require Friday abstinence all year. My reasons are below.

Marty’s View

Background

God’s first command to man with respect to abstinence occurred in the Garden of Eden. Gen 2:17 “

God commanded in the Torah dietary (“kosher”) laws that the people Israel were to abstain from eating particular kinds of animals, Lev 11, Deut 14 and that Jews fast as a penance on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Lev 16:29 “And it shall be a statute to you for ever that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves.” The ancient rabbis understood “afflict yourselves” as a command to fast. Jews fasted in a spirit of penance on similar occasions. Jgs 20:26 “Then all the people of Israel, the whole army, went up and came to Bethel and wept; they sat there before the Lord, and fasted that day until evening.” God further commanded abstinence in the Jewish Passover celebration. Deut 16:3 “You shall eat no leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction.”

Christ fasted forty days in the desert, during which time He took neither food nor drink. Mt 4:2 “And [Christ] fasted forty days and forty nights.” He told the Jews in the synagogue at Capernaum, Jn 6:51 “The bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Christians have abstained from eating meat on Fridays in commemoration of His passion and death since the First Century.

In Christ’s time, the Pharisees fasted twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. In His parable the Pharisee prayed, Lk 18:12 “I fast twice a week.” Christians, following ancient Jewish traditions of fast and abstinence for penance, observed the law of fasting on Wednesdays and Friday abstinence from the time of Christ’s Crucifixion. The Didache (Teachings of the Apostles), chapter 8: “But let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and fifth day of the week. Rather, fast on the fourth day and the Preparation.” (Wednesday and Friday).

Church Teaching

As the centuries passed, the original requirement to fast twice a week was reduced. But, during the Church’s entire history, until 1966, all Fridays have been obligatory days of abstinence from meat on pain of mortal sin.

Since 1966, All Fridays during Lent remain obligatory days of abstinence from meat on pain of mortal sin. All other Fridays remain days of penance. The ordinary penance is absention from meat. However, on non-Lenten Fridays, the faithful may substitute another penance. The substituted penance should involve a level of sacrifice comparable to abstention from meat.

When Friday coincides with a solemnity we are dispensed from penance, in order that we might concentrate more fully on the occasion for the solemnity. All Holy Days of Obligation are solemnities.

Authority

Pope Paul VI published Paenitemini, the Apostolic Constitution on Penance, February 17, 1966. It provided for abstinence from meat for all the faithful over 14 years of age. Paenitemini, Chapter III, section C, Norm II, states: “1. The time of Lent preserves its penitential character. The days of penitence to be observed under obligation through-out the Church are all Fridays and Ash Wednesday, that is to say the first days of “Grande Quaresima” (Great Lent), according to the diversity of the rite. Their substantial observance binds gravely. 2. Apart from the faculties referred to in VI and VIII regarding the manner of fulfilling the precept of penitence on such days, abstinence is to be observed on every Friday which does not fall on a day of obligation, while abstinence and fast are to be observed on Ash Wednesday or, according to local practice, on the first day of ’Great Lent’ and on Good Friday.”

Canon law follows Paenitemini.

Canon 1249 “All Christ’s faithful are obliged by divine law, each in his or her own way, to do penance. However, so that all may be joined together in a certain common practice of penance, days of penance are prescribed. On these days the faithful are in a special manner to devote themselves to prayer, to engage in works of piety and charity, and to deny themselves, by fulfilling their obligations more faithfully and especially by observing the fast and abstinence which the following canons prescribe.”

Canon 1250 “All Fridays throughout the year and the time of Lent are penitential days and times throughout the universal Church.”

Canon 1251 “Abstinence from eating meat or another food according to the prescriptions of the conference of bishops is to be observed on Fridays throughout the year unless they are solemnities; abstinence and fast are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and on the Friday of the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Canon 1252 “The law of abstinence binds those who have completed their fourteenth year.”

Canon 1253 “The Episcopal Conference can determine more particular ways in which fasting and abstinence are to be observed. In place of abstinence or fasting it can substitute, in whole or in part, other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety.”

In the United States

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) , then known as the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated in its Pastoral Statement On Penance and Abstinence, November 18, 1966, stated regarding non-Lenten Fridays:

“… 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;

2. 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 be freely making of every Friday a day of self-denial and mortification in prayerful remembrance of the passion of Jesus Christ;

3. 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 as 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 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.”

For more detail see the complete Pastoral Statement On Penance and Abstinence.

For Catholics who prefer to substitute a penance other than Friday abstinence from meat, Canon 1253 suggests that other appropriate penances are works of charity or exercises of piety. The USCCB offers more detailed suggestions for Penitential Practices for Today’s Catholics.

I follow the principle of sentire cum ecclesia, think with the Church. If there is a sense within the Church’s documents that we are to observe all Fridays as penitential days, then we should, even if it is not hard-coded as Church law. As for me and my house, we observe Friday abstinence all year.

Jimmy Akin’s View

Jimmy Akin is one of the world’s most respected Catholic apologists. His view, expressed on July 1, 2004, and again on July 10, 2004, is essentially that Church law for the United States is sufficiently ambiguous as to invoke the canonical principle that if there is serious doubt among Church authorities as to whether a particular canon is binding, then it does not bind the faithful.

In Other Countries

Catholics who live outside the United States may ask their pastors to help them obtain a copy of the guidance issued by their own country’s national conference of bishops. In the absence of such guidance, Catholics outside the United States may rely entirely on Paenitemini and Canons 1249-1253, quoted above.