A. Are Catholics obligated under pain of sin to abstain from meat on Fridays, even outside of Lent?
Q. I don’t know how many times growing up when I would tell my peers I was Catholic their immediate response was “aren’t there a lot of rules you have to follow?” Rules was the thing they associated with Catholicism. It was a different time so maybe that has changed but I would venture this is still the case because, well, there is some truth to it.
Many of these “rules” or laws come from Divine Law or Natural Law. The rest though are Ecclesiastical Laws. Divine law and Natural Law have God as their source, either through revelation or creation, while Ecclesiastical Laws have the Church as their source. Divine Law and Natural Laws are unchangeable. The ultimate purpose of law is to inform us how to live our lives in accord with our dignity and we will never know better than our Creator how to do that.
Ecclesiastical Laws (sometimes referred to as merely Ecclesiastical Laws in the canon law world) are changeable. The intention of Ecclesiastical Laws is for the good ordering of the Church and Her members. They typically touch upon more of the day-to-day life and operation of the Church. These laws are developed by human beings and conditioned by time and place and, as such, they can be (and often are) amended or done way with even as new laws are added.
The prohibition on eating meat on Fridays falls into the category of Ecclesiastical Law. While abstaining from meat on Fridays (and Saturdays) can be traced to the early Church, the 1917 Code of Canon Law codified the prohibition. The 1983 Code of Canon Law allowed for the Episcopal Conferences to amend the prohibition in their territory. Canon 1251 states that “Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.”
While c. 1251 seems to only allow for substituting some other food for meat, c. 1253 states that “The conference of bishops can determine more precisely the observance of fast and abstinence as well as substitute other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety, in whole or in part, for abstinence and fast.”
In 1966 the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (then called the National Conference of Catholic Bishops), issued a statement on Penance and Abstinence in which they stated that “our people are henceforth free from the obligation traditionally binding under pain of sin in what pertains to Friday abstinence, except as noted above for Lent.” This was done because, in the determination of the U.S. bishops, “the spirit of penance primarily suggests that we discipline ourselves in that which we enjoy most, to many in our day abstinence from meat no longer implies penance, while renunciation of other things would be more penitential.”
While the 1983 Code of Canon Law was promulgated after this statement and abrogated all contrary law, since the decision of the USCCB is not contrary to the law contained in the 1983 Code, this decision is still in effect.
In the same statement from 1966 the U.S. bishops do encourage people to continue to voluntarily abstain from meat on Fridays, but it is not binding. They do however give abstaining from meat pride of place in terms of penances that can be done on Fridays. They also single out abstaining from alcohol as a (in their judgement) particularly fruitful form of penance.
The U.S. Bishops go to great lengths to try to make clear that they are not doing away with Friday as a day of penance. “Friday should be in each week something of what Lent is in the entire year” (Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence).
What a person does for penance is less important than that they do some form of penance and that it is for them a real sacrifice so that we all might, “prepare for that weekly Easter that comes with each Sunday by freely making of every Friday a day of self-denial and mortification in prayerful remembrance of the passion of Jesus Christ.”
This question was answered by Father Caleb La Rue, chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln. Write to Ask the Register using our online form, or write to 3700 Sheridan Blvd., Suite 10, Lincoln NE 68506-6100. All questions are subject to editing. Editors decide which questions to publish. Personal questions cannot be answered. People with such questions are urged to take them to their nearest Catholic priest.
