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MEATLESS  FRIDAYSand  theOfficial  Church  Law The National Conference of Catholic (American) Bishops - NCCB Studies Returning Meatless Fridays        The vast majority of Catholics today do not know that there is an existing obligation to abstain from meat on all Fridays of the year. While it is true that the Code of Canon Law allows for the substituting of another penitential practice, authorized by the NCCB, one has not been defined. As a consequence the abiding custom of the Church has been set aside. Neither bishops nor priests, with rare exception, inform the faithful of their obligations....

Not eating meat on Fridays used to be synonymous with being Catholic. Restoring abstinence would not only revive tradition but signal solidarity with the poor.THE RENEWAL inaugurated by the Second Vatican Council sprang in large part from the liberating discovery of the depth and variety of Catholic tradition. Yet paradoxically the post-conciliar reforms were sometimes implemented in a spirit of philistine dismissal of “tradition” as nothing more than the dead hand of the past. In shedding a past perceived as sterile and oppressive, much that was profound and life-giving was also lost. One of the saddest casualties of that process...