Restore Meatless Fridays| National Catholic Register

EDITORIAL: This kind of personal and collective self-denial would serve as a badly needed counterweight to the contemporary culture of indulgence that prevails in consumerist Western societies

At the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ recent fall assembly in Baltimore, Archbishop Borys Gudziak, the metropolitan archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, offered a highly practical suggestion about how the U.S. Church can deliver a more unified Christian witness to our secularized society: Reinstate the obligation for all American Catholics to abstain from eating meat on Fridays.

Restoring the universality of this ancient Friday observance — which dates back to the earliest years of the Church and was practiced universally among Catholics until shortly after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council — would have several key benefits.

First and foremost, penance and self-denial are fundamental elements of Christian spiritual life. By our penances, we acknowledge our sins and our desire to heal the separation from God that occurs because of these sins. And through our penitential sacrifices, we unite ourselves to Christ’s “once for all” sacrifice on the cross, which was offered for our redemption on Good Friday. Abstaining from meat each Friday is a tangible expression of this union with Christ, as we commemorate the day of his passion in love and fidelity.

A renewal of the universal obligation to abstain from meat would also reinstate a powerful sign of Catholic unity that was eradicated over the decades following Vatican II. Previously, the Friday observance publicly displayed that our Catholic convictions induce us to live differently from others. Even the derision it inspired in anti-Catholic quarters, where Catholics were mocked as “fish-eaters” and “mackerel snappers,” ironically served to further reinforce this sense of a shared identity.

Another benefit is that a Friday abstinence requirement for Latin Rite Catholics would promote unity of practice with Eastern Christians — including members of Catholic, Orthodox and other ancient Churches — who have never softened their own penitential practices that go well beyond merely refraining from eating meat on Friday. Archbishop Gudziak, who is an Eastern Catholic himself, suggested that abstaining from meat might also open the door to a renewal of additional “ancient practices in the Latin Rite, such as Ember Days or Advent fasts, and other rich Eastern Christian practices among Catholics and others.”

This kind of personal and collective self-denial would serve as a badly needed counterweight to the contemporary culture of indulgence that prevails in consumerist Western societies. Indeed, it should be pointed out that Pope St. Paul VI had no intention of undermining abstinence from meat in places like the United States when he issued his 1966 document Paenitemini. Instead, he retained the practice as the Church’s standard (as is still stipulated in the 1983 Code of Canon Law), while allowing bishops’ conferences to allow its replacement by exercises of prayer and works of mercy when warranted by local circumstances.

But this provision was primarily intended for poorer jurisdictions. In wealthier countries where food and other material goods are abundant, Paul VI declared in Paenitemini, “so much more will the witness of asceticism have to be given in order that the sons of the Church may not be involved in the spirit of the ‘world.’”

These papal words indicate the subsequent decision by the U.S. bishops of the day to allow individuals to find substitutes for abstinence was a blunder, right from the outset. Certainly it proved afterward to be a major mistake, given the sad reality that the large majority of U.S. Catholics swiftly concluded they were at liberty to abandon Friday penitential practices completely, without any qualms.

In light of these same facts, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales reinstituted abstinence from meat on Friday in 2011. Let’s hope bishops in the U.S. decide to follow suit next year, as Archbishop Gudziak recommended in Baltimore.