What is the Church’s teaching on abstaining from meat during the regular Church year?
As Catholics we are well aware of the sacredness of time, of liturgical seasons such as Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter. These seasons form our worship and continually remind us of the mysteries of our salvation in Christ. The sacredness of time not only applies to the year, but also applies within the week. Sunday is the day we especially remember our Lord’s Resurrection, a weekly Easter. Friday is the day we especially remember Jesus’ Passion and Death, a weekly Lent. As such, we should treat Friday’s as a “mini-Lent.”
In 1966, the Catholic Bishops of the United States removed the requirement to abstain from meat on all Friday’s outside of Lent. They stated that “the renunciation of the eating of meat is not always and for everyone the most effective means of practicing penance….” In other words, going out for a lobster dinner on Friday is not very penitential for most of us. However, the bishops urged Catholics to do some penitential act on Friday’s outside of Lent and still recommended as a first choice the abstinence from meat. Yet, there are many other things we could give up on a Friday to remind us of our own personal sins and the sins of humankind. Television might be a challenging thing to give up. Perhaps an alternative practice would be to do something good such as visiting the sick or lonely, or doing some sort of service. In this way, every Friday truly becomes a miniature Lent where we prepare for the coming of Easter each Sunday.
-Fr. Greg
