Uncle Cecil, you got it wrong (at least by four years). Contrary to what you have been led to believe, contrary to what you have been told is in Vatican Council II, contrary to whatever impression or statement that was given you by a Cardinal, bishop, priest or a whole council of them — the fact is that Roman Catholics are still, today, obliged, under pain of mortal sin, to abstain from eating meat on Friday if they have reached the age of 14. The only concession is for the sick who are excused from observance.
The law of the Church is:
(1) You must not eat meat on Friday. It is based on the divine precept, that is the Divine command by Jesus Christ Himself, that you must do penance. To quote Our Lord directly, He said, "Unless you do penance you shall all likewise perish." Since Catholics are bound to try to save our soul, they are bound to do penance.
(2) You must, in strict justice and gratitude, acknowledge and continuously acknowledge the debt we owed to Our Lord for dying on the Cross to save us from our own personal sins. This acknowledgment is not simply a private one between Catholics and God (although that is important), it also must be public, that is, acknowledged before your fellow man, at least those within the household of the Church, the household of the Faith, fellow Catholics.
The Church, in its wisdom over the centuries, has compressed these two solemn obligations that each Catholic personally has, into a simple law which the Church has the authority to impose on each member. Namely, that you abstain from meat on Friday as a penance as acknowledgment for the suffering and death that Christ endured for our salvation on Good Friday. That law of the Church is still in effect to this very day.
I am sure that some will protest, "this is not true, it was changed at the Council." Well, what was changed? In February 1966, Pope Paul VI promulgated an Apostolic Constitution (17 Feb. 1966) entitled Paenitemini in which he said that the law of the Church still says to abstain from meat on every Friday throughout the year.
However, he gave permission to go against the letter of the law if the conference of bishops of a particular country petitioned the Holy See (the Pope) for permission for their people to do another penance on Friday in place of not eating meat. So, in those countries whose bishops have gone through the channels to petition the Pope for permission to substitute another penance instead of not eating meat on Friday, those individuals in those countries can substitute another penance.
But what many have not been told, and no one seems to know, is that Catholics still have the obligation to do another penance on that Friday and are still bound under pain of mortal sin.
So now, some Catholics think that they can continue to eat meat on Fridays because their neighbor — even if he goes to Church every day, even if he happens to be a pastor or bishop — does that, and they do not substitute another penance in place of the penance of abstinence on Friday, they will commit a mortal sin (baring a legitimate dispensation) and go to hell for it unless they repent and confess this sin, or in the absence of the possibility of going to the Sacrament of Confession before death, they make an Act of Perfect Contrition. Otherwise, they will go to hell.