What happened when we gave up Friday abstinence

You know you are getting old, Catholic style, when you are no longer obliged to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

That’s reserved for the younger set — the under-60 crowd.
Most aging and creaking baby boomers such as myself consider that an insult and maintain the classic fast on those days anyway — two very light meals and a main meal. I’d like to say it’s devotion.

But it really is our Peter Pan complex where we refuse to acknowledge getting older. And the fact that our digestive systems don’t allow us to eat much more than that anyway.

Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of Lent are also days of abstinence where we refrain from eating meat.

And there’s the rub. Most baby boomers — at least those born between the end of World War II and the late 1950s — remember when every Friday of the year was meatless “under pain of sin.”

The reason for the Friday abstinence was penitential. Every Friday was to be a day of self-denial, acknowledging our sinfulness while remembering the Passion of Christ on Good Friday and in preparation for the weekly “Easter” that is our Sunday Mass.

For many years the Friday abstinence from meat defined Catholicism to non- Catholic Americans.

Then came November 1966. The bishops of the United States made the fatal mistake of thinking we were all grown-ups.

The bishops lifted the mandatory obligation to abstain from meat on the Fridays outside of Lent.

Their collective reasoning was that for many Catholics the abstinence from meat was no abstinence at all. Without consulting with me, they argued that fine meatless meals were no penance for many.

Instead, they said, choose a Friday penance, a mortification, that challenges your life, that fits your spirituality, that meets a need in your devotional life.

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