Prompted by this thread, back when I was an alter boy, Catholics were not allowed to eat meat on Friday except in certain circumstances, for example, I think the elderly and/or ill were exempt, among others.
When the rule was changed, by the Vatican II council I believe, I asked several times if people who had been sent to hell for eating meat on a Friday would be let out, or if God, having known all along that the rule would be changed, had simply not sent them to hell in the first place, or if having committed the sin they were out of luck.
I never got a satisfactory answer, the catechism nun correctly assuming that I was just being a smartass. What is the official doctrine regarding this situation?
I agree with the nun and assume you’re joking too. The basic nature of Hell, as taught by the Catholic Church, is a **permanent ** state of separation of the soul from God. One can’t be “let out”.
I think your initial assumption is faulty, namely that anyone ever merited Hell simply for not following the (then) disciplinary rule of the church that required Catholics to abstain from eating meat on Fridays.
Not eating meat on Fridays is a self-imposed discipline. And so, to the extent that a sin is committed, it comes from breaking this self-imposed restriction, rather than from any inherent sinfulness in the act (eating meat) itself.
Well, at the time I was preadolescent, so not really up on the doctrine, and the nuns may have simplified things to try to avoid confusing us, but I sure was taught that it was a sin to eat meat on Friday.
I suppose a nun teaching catechism to a bunch of 10 year olds in a small town could be forgiven for glossing over the fact that skipping out on a disciplinary rule wouldn’t get me sent to hell. The threat of sending me to hell wasn’t even keeping me in line 100% at the time, so who knows how it would have turned out if that had been removed.
Thanks for the answer.
The old (and sloppy) “Know it, Will it, Do it” triad applies.
If a person knew that breaking the abstinence laws was a sin, wished to commit that sin despite that knowledge, and chose to commit the sin, then the person would be responsible not for happening to consume a warm-blooded animal on a particular day of the week. Rather, the person would be responsible for deliberately choosing to thumb his (or her) nose at God as represented by the church. (It was never a sin to grab a late night burger on Thursday and suddenly remember that it was 15 minutes into Friday. Worrying about the “sinfulness” of that sort of thing was (is) its own problem of scrupulosity. It would never have been considered a sin to be rescued from a life raft or the desert in a starved condition and accepting the first food offered which happened to have been beef stew on a Friday.)
So, since the sinfulness of the act was found in the intention to flout the rules (through the church) from God and not the simple act of eating, changes to the particular rules would not have an effect on the sinfulness of the act–or the presumptive punishment for it…
Besides which, it would probably be considered a venial sin, which you don’t go to Hell for (as single sins, anyway…I’m not sure where a whole pile of unforgiven venials would send you), but are “burned” off in Purgatory, from which place you’d go to Heaven when your soul was clean. If the only sin on someone’s soul was eating meat on a Friday, it would be expiated eventually anyway. Hell, if the only sin on someone’s soul was eating meat on Friday, they’d be in pretty darn good shape compared to most people regardless…