Based on the bishops of the United States, what are the regulations regarding Catholics fasting during Lent? What are they supposed to refrain from? What other obligations are there?
Thank you.
WRS
I can’t help with the specific rules. Not surprisingly, I’m conversant only with the Australian requirements. Perhaps the site of the US Catholic Bishops’ Conference will have the details?
Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of Lent are days of abstinence and apply to all Catholics over age 14 and in good health. Abstinence means that you have to refrain from eating meat unless a dispensation is given. Definitions of “meat” vary a bit.
Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are also fasting days. Which means that you are supposed to eat only one full meal and two other meals which aren’t supposed to be as big as the first meal.
In other words, light breakfast, regular lunch, light dinner.
Fasting is for Catholics between from 18 through 59.
OK, someone please explain this to me once and for all. (Evangelical Protestant here, so I’m not very knowledgeable about Catholic doctrine).
Pre-Vatican II: During Lent, you consumed no meat (I gather that fish was OK). On Fridays when it wasn’t Lent, you couldn’t consume meat then either (fish still OK). Is this correct?
Post-Vatican II: During Lent, you can consume meat except on Fridays (and Ash Wednesday). Fish is OK. Rest of the year, anything goes. Is this correct?
Also, could someone please define “meat” (as it applies to US Catholics) a little more clearly? 'Round here, local restaurants serve “Lenten Specials” (a fish plate at a discounted price) every Friday during Lent. Could a Catholic eat non-fish seafood (lobster, crabs, shrimp, clams, calamari) on Friday during Lent?
BobT mentions Catholics over 14 having to abstain. What if JaneCatholic is 13 on Ash Wednesday but turns 14 before Good Friday? Does she have to abstain the whole time? Does she get a free pass until next year? Or does she only have to abstain after her 14th birthday? If her birthday falls on a Friday during Lent, does she get a break for her birthday party?
Please, I’m not trying to be crass or silly. These are things I’ve never fully understood.
I’m not sure that this is true, but I’ll hold off on making a definitive statement until I research it.
Yes, except that “anything goes” is a bit vague. Catholics still are called upon to not eat meat on Fridays throughout the year, but may substitute another penitential behavior during Fridays outside of Lent. During Lent, abstaining from meat is mandatory.
Yes. Meat is the flesh of any warm-blooded animal or bird and the soups or gravies made from such flesh.
The rule exists as written: age fourteen and over are required to abstain from meat. Those eighteen but not yet sixty years of age are required to fast.
JaneCatholic is thirteen on Ash Wednesday. She does not have to fast or abstain. She turns fourteen before Good Friday. On Good Friday, and in deed on all Fridays subsequent to her birthday, she must abstain from meat.
If her birthday falls on a Friday, there is no exemption for her party. She is required to have a meatless Friday.
- Rick
In the interests of completeness:
If a Holy Day of Obligation should fall on a Friday of Lent, the requirement of abstention is lifted.
Why is this a critical distinction?
Do American Catholics have some form of different religion to other Catholics?
Surely, if you’re an observant and religious Catholic, regardless of your nationality, you observe the same things as all the rest of the Catholics in the world.
Or has there been sort of schism between Rome and the American Catholics that I have never heard of?
I think rules like that are generally left up to the individual bishops.
Becuase local bishops have a great deal of latitude in defining practices that are not fundamental to the faith. And the details of the practices for self-deprivation, while rooted in principles of sacrifice and solemnity that are pretty fundamental to the faith, are not carved in stone. (I’m not using the doctrinally-exact terminology, but this is the gist of it). Catholics do not regard eating meat as a sin per se (obviously not, as it would be a strange sin that was a sin part of the year and copacetic the rest). The Church is supposed to be “holy, catholic [i.e., universal]” and the rest of it, but the set up of the Canon Law is not intended to prescribe every aspect of Church governance, or of applicable rules, and the bishops have some leeway.
Here is an okay (if maybe not the best) site explaining some more of this.
http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Feb2002/wiseman.asp
A couple of e.g.'s:
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Friends who lived in El Paso pre-Vatican II noted that the bishop of neighboring Juarez had exempted his flock from the (non-Lenten) Friday meat abstention, on grounds that Mexico was a poor country and many people were at marginal protein-intake levels to begin with. (Whereupon a certain number of El Pasoite Catholics adopted the rather, well, Jesuitical practice of crossing the bridge every Friday for a steakfest – but that doesn’t invalidate the principle of allowing some local variation).
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Ash Wednesday this week fell on Chinese New Year. Chinese Catholics in certain dioceses were exempted from fast and abstinence as the culture apparently requires a big meat-laden pork-based fest (I know my culture does on most days, but that’s more personal), and shrimp shumai apparently were deemed inadequate).
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I’ve attended big banquets during Lent for special occasions, at which the menu was printed with an ad hoc exemption by the bishop from the abstention principles.
So . . . it’s very adaptable and the focus is in any event on individual sacrifice and contemplation (to which fast and abstinence are generally thought to conduce), rather than to legalistic obsessiveness with uniformity of observance (i.e., while some Catholics, especially in past days, may have been overscrupulous (a flaw against which the Catholic catechism warns, IIRC), I’ve known few if any Catholics who, if they accidentally ate half a bowl of soup based on beef stock on a Friday in Lent, would do much more than mildly blaspheme, perhaps pledge to make it up another day, and go on about their business. Again, it’s a practice, not a taboo or universal law.
I don’t understand your question. I was answering the query, “Could someone please define “meat” (as it applies to US Catholics) a little more clearly?” That is the definition; I don’t know that it creates a particularly critical distinction.
The requirement to abstain from meat is not, per se, a matter of faith or morals. It is a requirement picked to exemplify penetential behavior. It’s not a matter of doctrine that MEAT ON FRIDAY = BAD. It’s a matter of behavior - we, as a universal Church, will deprive ourselves of something on Fridays of Lent to remind us of Christ’s suffering. Theoretically, the Church could decree that henceforth, Catholics will watch “Ishtar” every Friday of Lent to remind us of suffering.
Because it has this particular purpose, there may be areas in which it doesn’t work. For example, consider a very poor nation, where meat was a rarity, and necessary for survival. In that circumstance, the local bishops may substitute some other penetential observance, because forcing the hungry to go without meat on a Friday when that day may be the only day that they happen to get meat goes beyond penetential and into true hardship.
The Ordinary of a diocese has the ultimate say in what is done in his diocese. He is usually guided by the Episcopal Conference, a group of bishops from his nation or area, who meet and set norms for a particular area that are consistent with the pastoral needs of the people in that area.
- Rick
E.g. no. 4 (though I don’t think this one ever got sanctioned by a bishop):
Numbers of Catholic lay theologians (self-taught) in, IIRC, places as diverse as Michigan’s UP and Lousiana, decided that a fish was any creature that spent most of its time in the water, naturellement, and that thus muskrat was hunky dory fare on Lenten Fridays. Why eating muskrat as opposed to a nice beer-battered perch or shrimp scampi seemed like a good idea to these folk is not recorded, but apparently they felt strongly enough about it to go through the tergiversations of concocting a demi-semi-doctrinal basis for it, though as noted it does not seem that their bishop was ever consulted or bought into it.
USA experience here–
One year St. Patrick’s day fell on Friday (during Lent) and we were told from the pulpit that corned beef and cabbage was authorized by the Bishop as a celebration of the Saint’s day.
What the Bishops do seems to vary, because I remember same situation in another diocese and the Mother’s Group had to move the party to the 18th.
Environmental groups in California are lobbying to have U.S. bishops include turtles as “meat” because they are a popular Lenten dish in parts of Mexico and that tradition is heading north of the border. Some feel that this would hurt turtle populations.
I don’t know what type of turtle makes good eating though.
But many things are left up to local bishops. The Archbishop of St. Louis isn’t allowing any announcements of parish fish fries or carnivals in the archdiocesan newspaper during Lent because he feels that such events should not be publicized during Lent. In Los Angeles, there are no such restrictions and I’m sure that in heavily Irish areas that St. Patrick’s Day will be a big celebration and with no complications since it falls on a Thursday this year.
:eek: :eek: :eek:
Crucifixion would be less painful.
I was not aware that it was possible for any Holy Day of Obligation to fall during Lent. Do you know of any examples? It is, however, common practice for bishops to grant exemptions on much-celebrated (though not obligatory) feasts such as St. Patrick’s and St. Joseph’s (Feb. 19).
Since the purpose is self-deprivation, it is within the letter but against the spirit of the rules to eat, say, lobster (unless you’re in Maine where lobster is dirt-cheap and everyone’s sick of it). And Catholics are also encouraged to make personal sacrifices of their own choosing during all of Lent: A given Catholic might, for instance, give up chocolate, or alcohol, or something else they enjoy. The priest at my parish always jokes about giving up brussel sprouts, which of course also isn’t quite in the spirit.
And finally, there are also some blanket exemptions given. In particular, the sick, pregnant women, and travellers are exempt from the fasts. Note, of course, that someone who is exempt from a requirement is still allowed to fast, and many do choose to do so.
Wow, I just found out you can read the official Canon Law online.
Here are the official holy days of obligation:
So not that the feast of St. Joseph is a holy day of obligation, but it is not observed in the U.S. as one.
http://www.ourladyswarriors.org/canon/c1205-1253.htm#par2530
Mathematically, I think there is no way for the Feast of St. Joseph to NOT fall into Lent.
And where does the church think I’m going to get the money to eat those two other meals on a grad student stipend? 
The question is whether it falls on a Friday in Lent.
As BobT points out, the Feast of St. Joseph is a Holy Day of Obligation, although in the US, we slide it to the nearest Sunday. But there are technically ten, not six, Holy Days.