Fasting - Our Lost Rite

The Tablet ^ | 1/31/2004 | Eamon Duffy

[livius]

Fasting - our lost rite Eamon Duffy

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 was the effective abolition of the Church's ancient observances of fasting and abstinence.

The ritual observance of dietary rules - fasting and abstinence from meat in Lent, and abstinence from meat and meat products every Friday, as well as the eucharistic fast from midnight before the reception of Communion - were as much defining marks of Catholicism before the council as abstention from pork is a defining characteristic of Judaism. The Friday abstinence in particular was a focus of Catholic identity which transcended class and educational barriers, uniting "good" and "bad" Catholics in a single eloquent observance. Here was a universally recognised expression of Catholicism which was nothing to do with priests or authority.

But instead of seeing this as one of its greatest strengths, it was often used as an argument against Friday abstinence. Bad or badly instructed Catholics - who it was thought drank their wages or beat their wives, yet who were nevertheless punctilious in eating fish on Fridays - were adhering to the mere externals, it was claimed, while ignoring the essence of "real" Christianity. What was needed was a more spiritual sort of religion that offered no such crutches to lame practice.

So fasting is now confined to a derisory two days of the year, and compulsory Friday abstinence has been replaced by a genteel and totally individualistic injunction to do some penitential act on a Friday - an injunction, incidentally, that most Catholics know nothing about. What had been a corporate mark of identity has been marginalised into an individualistic option.

Why did it happen? Certainly not because fasting was in some sense peripheral to Catholicism, an inessential and minor aspect of the tradition that needed tidying away. Fasting was an important element in Israelite religion, and Christ's own defence of his disciples' failure to fast during his lifetime specifically envisaged that they would fast after his death. From at least the end of the first century Christians have observed Fridays, and later the 40 days of Lent, as fast days in commemoration of the Passion. At the heart of Catholicism for a millennium and a half lay a dialectical dividing of time, a rhythmic movement between the poles of fast and feast, Lent and Easter, renunciation and affirmation.

Catholics shared that rhythm with most of the world's great religious traditions, a fact which ought to have suggested that there was something essential about fasting not only for our specific identities as Catholic Christians, but as religious beings - as human beings. But since 1967 what was once a truly corporate observance, reminding us of the Passion of Christ, of our own spiritual poverty and, even more concretely, of the material poverty of most of the human race, reminding us what it was like to be hungry, has become another individual consumer choice, like going on a diet. Though we pay liturgical lip-service to the old dialectic, and still nominally observe Lent, in practice all our time now has become "ordinary time", and there is nothing in this respect to distinguish Catholics from anyone else.

Yet religious communities depend on the differentiation provided by such shared observances to sustain their identities. The long and noble pilgrimage of Israel through a multitude of cultures and times, without a temple, without a priesthood, has been possible, at least in part, because of the unifying and sustaining effect of their dietary laws. The Jews knew who they were because of what they did and did not eat. Christian fasting and abstinence did not, of course, spring from a ritual distinction between clean and unclean meats, but it was just as deeply embedded in theological conviction as the older dispensation. Its abandonment was not therefore a simple change in devotional habit, but the signal of a radical discontinuity in the tradition and a decisive shift in theological perception.

The theological and practical shift represented by this abandonment of an ancient part of the tradition was not merely a matter of theological emphasis, and more, too, than a question of whether ascetical exercises like fasting are good for the character. What was also at stake was the Church's prophetic integrity: its claim to solidarity with the poor. Considered from this perspective, compulsory fasting and abstinence, practised regularly, routinely and in common, was a recognition by the Church that identification with the poor and hungry, with those who know themselves to be needy before God because they were needy among men, is not an option for Catholics, but a necessary and definitive sign of their redemption, as essential in its way as attendance at Mass. The Church has always linked personal asceticism and the search for holiness with this demand for mercy and justice to the poor; the Lenten trilogy of prayer, fasting and almsgiving is both fundamental and structural. By making fasting and abstinence optional, the Church forfeited one of its most eloquent prophetic signs. There is a world of difference between a private devotional gesture, the action of the specially pious, and the prophetic witness of the whole community - the matter-of-fact witness, repeated week by week, that to be Christian is to stand among the needy.

What was striking about the instructions issued by the English bishops in abolishing compulsory Friday abstinence in 1967 was the total absence of any attempt to explain the power and meaning of the traditional observances. The American bishops did much better: while also making the matter optional, they offered a powerful and sympathetic discussion of the religious reasons for the old observance, and urged American Catholics to continue the practice as a gesture of solidarity with, and gratitude for, the Passion of Christ, as an act of fidelity to the Christian past, and to help "preserve a saving and necessary difference from the spirit of the world". In total contrast, the English bishops recited the problems and inconveniences surrounding abstinence. Many people, they pointed out, have their main meal at work, in a canteen; social events are often arranged for Fridays; abstinence therefore made Catholics an awkward squad. As the bishops wrote: "While an alternative dish is often available, it is questioned whether it is advisable in our mixed society for a Catholic to appear singular in this matter. Non-Catholics know and accept that we do not eat meat on Fridays, but often they do not understand why we do not, and in consequence regard us as odd."

This misses the point. The whole rationale of symbolic gestures requires that they disrupt and disturb the secular order. Their power to witness - not only to others but to ourselves - comes precisely from their awkwardness. The abolition of such observances strikes at the heart of tradition, the distinctive language of belief. Catholic value cannot be sustained without its proper symbolic expression. Spiritual needs are expressed in physical needs. People can know the fundamental neediness which is the foundation of faith only if they feel our involvement with those who fast because they have nothing to eat.

But none of those arguments prevailed, or were even explored. The bishops saw in the plight of the hungry not a reason for communal fasting as a gesture of solidarity and a call to justice and charity, but as a demonstration of the emptiness of any such gesture. Many Catholics, they wrote, "have begun to ask themselves if going without meat on Friday is penance enough. Some find it no penance at all. Meanwhile in Asia, Africa and South America many Catholics have to go without meat not only on Fridays but every day. Millions are starving or at least underfed. The bishops have therefore decided that the best way of carrying out our Lord's command to do penance is for each of us to choose our own way of self-denial every Friday".

The abandonment of fasting and abstinence was symptomatic of a more widespread levelling down and disappearance of much that was distinctive in the symbolic lives of Catholics. That drift continues. Holy days of obligation are celebrated on the nearest Sunday so as to avoid inconvenience or the interruption of secular patterns of living. Sunday Mass can be heard on a Saturday to make way for a day's work or cleaning the car or a morning in bed with the papers, like our pagan neighbours. From time to time there is talk of a fixed date for Easter and Whitsun - all part of the minimising of symbolic distinctiveness, in the service of secular convenience, and a slow form of ritual suicide for any religious tradition.

For this aspect of tradition - the dimension of symbolic distinctiveness preserved in the ancient patterns of the worship and ritual life of the Church - is at least as central to Catholic identity as many of the doctrinal positions worried about by those who conceive of tradition primarily as a body of authoritative teaching. Indeed, the massive desensitisation to the meaning and value of symbolic gesture and symbolic differentiation in the two generations since the council would not have been possible had Catholics not long since parked responsibility for all that with an abstraction called the Magisterium, thereby absolving themselves from understanding and teaching the value of their symbols and traditional practices. How else could the Catholic people have allowed their pastors to assail and abolish these ancient continuities in the name of convenience and the avoidance of oddity?

The authoritarian narrowing of the tradition to, in essence, a body of doctrines to be believed and orders from above to be obeyed, was a decisive factor in desensitising ordinary Catholics, clerical as well as lay, to the beauty and independent value of their inherited observances - matters over which no authority has or ought to have absolute control. The ordinary members of the Orthodox and Byzantine Rite Catholic Churches have a far less authoritarian mentality than Catholics, a far more widespread and lively sense of the richness of their traditions of prayer and practice, and a far more secure sense of ownership by the people of the symbols which provide continuity with the Christian past and guidance to its future.

The realisation that perhaps too much was carelessly abandoned in the years after the council is now widespread - it is even something of an official view in the later years of the present pontificate - and has helped fuel sometimes scary projects for a restoration of "real Catholicism", programmes in which the vigorous exercise of authority from above loom very large. Such programmes are at least as bad as the ills they seek to remedy. There are no quick fixes: tradition cannot be rebuilt to a neat programme and by orders from Rome. Our shared past can only be excavated by shared endeavour, by a painful and constant process of re-education and rediscovery; in that process, we start from where we are, not where we wish we had stayed. The Church cannot afford the pleasures and false securities of reaction. But that is not to say that in our march into the needs and opportunities of the twenty-first century we should not try once more to summon up some of the deeper resources of our own tradition, and try to rediscover within it once more some of the supports which helped our fathers and mothers to live the Gospel. We could do worse than rededicate ourselves to the observance of fasting and abstinence.

Eamon Duffy is Professor of the History of Christianity in the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Magdalene College. This is an abridged extract from his Cardinal Hume Memorial Lecture given at Newcastle, 27 November 2003.

[livius]

This ties in with our discussion yesterday of changes in the liturgy, modernism, etc.

[livius]

The authoritarian narrowing of the tradition to, in essence, a body of doctrines to be believed and orders from above to be obeyed, was a decisive factor in desensitising ordinary Catholics, clerical as well as lay, to the beauty and independent value of their inherited observances...

I thought this was a particularly good observation. I have always felt that the approach taken by the architects of Vat II to liturgy and practice was extremely authoritarian and legalistic, despite their claims to be just the reverse.

Ping to a few names I could think of off the top of my head. Please ping anybody else you think might be interested in this.

[Unam Sanctam]

Eamon Duffy is right on the mark -- bring back a real rather than just a token fast and abstinence!

[MarMema]

The ordinary members of the Orthodox and Byzantine Rite Catholic Churches have a far less authoritarian mentality than Catholics, a far more widespread and lively sense of the richness of their traditions of prayer and practice, and a far more secure sense of ownership by the people of the symbols which provide continuity with the Christian past and guidance to its future.

I can certainly agree with this statement, for my part.

The theological and practical shift represented by this abandonment of an ancient part of the tradition was not merely a matter of theological emphasis, and more, too, than a question of whether ascetical exercises like fasting are good for the character. What was also at stake was the Church's prophetic integrity: its claim to solidarity with the poor.

This would be a strictly RC thing. For the Orthodox, fasting is a liberation from dependence on earthly food and a daily reminder about dependence upon the true "Bread of Life".

Additionally I would comment that fasting should never, for us, be intended as a witness to others, as the author suggests here. Christ instructed us to fast secretly.
It can be difficult! We fast all year on two days of the week, Wednesday and Friday, and I often find I am struggling to come up with an excuse about why I am refusing dairy products at a gathering. Avoiding a lie and not admitting to fasting can be a tricky endeavor.

[MarMema]

Sunday Mass can be heard on a Saturday to make way for a day's work or cleaning the car or a morning in bed with the papers, like our pagan neighbours.

This is an excellent observation, but I think that in addition to having to stretch oneself and give up the world, what is at risk with these kinds of watering-down of customs and traditions - and you can see them in our mission churches, where a working priest is a necessity for a small parish - is the loss of fellowship. If people attend church on separate days, they don't share the liturgy together. It can be the same for fasting. (Check out any Orthodox mailing list about one month into Great Lent, and you will see a lot of posts about food.)

[Salvation]

The three practices of Lent:

prayer,
fasting,
almsgiving

[Salvation]

Catholic Discussion Ping!

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[livius]

Yes, that's true.

I think that it's a sort of "secret handshake" with other Orthodox, though, and not eating fish on Fridays was the same for Catholics. Eating meat on Fridays was such a well-known prohibition (because it is very ancient) that anyone who specifically ate fish or non-meat meals on Friday virtually identified themselves as Catholic, something that was not viewed as a very positive thing in many parts of this country and often exposed them to ridicule and dislike.

A friend who grew up in a Protestant family in Pittsburgh quite some time ago once told me that the only regional food tradition she could recall was eating bacon on Fridays - she said it was probably to prove that you were neither Jewish nor Catholic, both of these being groups regarded with suspicion or even hostility by the Protestant majority.

And I remember being in situations where, when you saw somebody order the non-meat meal on a Friday, you knew there was a fellow Catholic there. To say nothing of the jokes everybody made about their mother's Friday tuna casserole...

[MarMema]

Thought some might also find this interesting...

Effects of Greek orthodox christian church fasting on serum lipids and obesity.

[MarMema]

Just a few other things...

Do you or did you, in the RC church, practise sexual abstinence as well?

And I wanted to share this stress diet with you, from a Russian Orthodox church in Texas.

[MarMema]

And I remember being in situations where, when you saw somebody order the non-meat meal on a Friday, you knew there was a fellow Catholic there. To say nothing of the jokes everybody made about their mother's Friday tuna casserole...

Exactly. Just like our jokes - you can tell someone is Orthodox because they don't flinch when water is thrown at them. I see these shared experiences as an essential part of unity within the church. And I see this unity as something that provides a backbone for the rest of what Christ wants from us.

[MarMema]

Some other examples, hopefully encouraging RC to share as well.. some of these you might share with us or they could be used to develop your own list!

You might be Orthodox if...

You have developed ways of stretching your legs while standing in place without drawing attention to yourself.

You’ve ever gotten into an argument with somebody about the ingredients in marshmallows.

History Channel shows about the Byzantine Empire make you wistful.

Bestselling paperbacks containing obscure historical tidbits about the 4th century make you go, “Hey, that’s not the way it happened!”

You have an emergency head scarf in your glove compartment.

You know all the take-out restaurants near your place of employment that serve meat-free, dairy-free meals.

You think of peanut butter as one of the essential food groups.

You can’t describe your Sunday morning church service to co-workers without using foreign terms.

Sending your misbehaving teenager off to a monastery on a Greek island doesn’t seem like a bizarre idea at all but a very practical one.

You use “icon” as a verb.

You consider an hour long church service to be "short."

You can name a brand of chocolate that doesn't have milk or animal fats in it.

You know how to remove wax from clothing.

You have varicose veins by the time you're twenty.

You forget to change your clock at Daylight Savings Time, show up an hour late, but the service is still going on....

A greasy forehead doesn't bother you.

[FormerLib]

You have varicose veins by the time you're twenty.

I never understood this one. Maybe it has something to do with Slavic genes that makes some of us immune? My folks are in their eighties and have none, but some of those poor converts in church...

[FormerLib]

Our priest always adds "increase your reading of Scripture" to that.

[MarMema]

Prolonged standing increases chances of getting varicose veins.

[Salvation]

**Our priest always adds "increase your reading of Scripture" to that.**

Good suggestion, however, I would include that with the prayer part!

[Aestus Veritatis]

I had the same thought and was reminded of GK Chesterton writing something to the effect that those who scream tolerance the loudest show themselves to be the least tolerant.

[John Beresford Tipton]

"The three practices of Lent:

prayer,
fasting,
almsgiving"

Ths Five Pillars of Islam are the same three plus, Faith and the Haj.

[NYer]

The laws regulating abstinence were 'relaxed' but not changed. Here they are:

* * * * *

THE CODE OF CANON LAW: A TEXT AND COMMENTARY
IV THE OFFICE OF SANCTIFYING IN THE CHURCH
Canon Law Society of America -- © 1985

CHAPTER II
DAYS OF PENANCE

[cc. 1249--1253]

Purpose and Observance of Penitential Days

Canon 1249 -- All members of the Christian faithful in their own way are bound to do penance in virtue of divine law; in order that all may be joined in a common observance of penance, penitential days are prescribed in which the Christian faithful in a special way pray, exercise works of piety and charity, and deny themselves by fulfilling their responsibilities more faithfully and especially by observing fast and abstinence according to the norm of the following canons.

This entire section of the 1917 Code had been reformed by Paul VI on February 17, 1966 with the apostolic constitution Poenitemini (see bibliography following c. 1253). The five canons in this chapter of the Code are a summary of part of this document and must not be understood apart from it, especially the very rich discursive section of the document treating the history of penance and its role in the life of every Christian.

Penitential Days

Canon 1250 -- All Fridays through the year and the time of Lent are penitential days and times throughout the universal Church.

This canon is taken from Poenitemini, part III,


Days of Abstinence and Fasting

Canon 1251 -- Abstinence from eating meat or another food according to the prescriptions of the conference of bishops is to be observed on Fridays throughout the year unless they are solemnities; abstinence and fast are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and on the Friday of the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

This canon is taken from Poenitemini, part III, 112. Poenitemini exempted holy days of obligation from Friday abstinence; this canon extends that exemption to all solemnities whether they are of obligation or not. The Code also gives the conference of bishops the power to substitute another penance to be observed on Fridays in place of abstinence from meat.

Neither Poenitemini nor the Code mentions fasting on Holy Saturday whereas The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (SC 109) states:

The paschal fast must be kept sacred. It should be celebrated everywhere on Good Friday, and where possible should be prolonged throughout Holy Saturday so that the faithful may attain the joys of the Sunday of the resurrection with uplifted and responsive minds.

Poenitemini adds the following explanation of abstinence and fast:

The law of abstinence forbids the use of meat, but not of eggs, the products of milk or condiments made of animal fat. The law of fasting allows only one full meal a day, but does not prohibit taking some food in the morning and evening, observing--as far as quantity and quality are concerned--approved local custom (III-1 & 2).

Obligation to Abstain/Fast

Canon 1252 -- All persons who have completed their fourteenth year are bound by the law of abstinence; all adults are bound by the law of fast up to the beginning of their sixtieth year. Nevertheless, pastors and parents are to see to it that minors who are not bound by the law of fast and abstinence are educated in an authentic sense of penance.

The completion of the fourteenth year means the day after one's fourteenth birthday. The beginning of the sixtieth year means the obligation ceases at midnight between the fifty-ninth birthday and the next day.

Poenitemini stated that the law of fast bound those who have completed their twenty-first year; the Code uses the term "adults," i.e., those who have completed their eighteenth year (c. 97, §1).

The admonition to pastors and parents to educate those of a lesser age in a true sense of penance is taken from Poenitemini and is new to the Code.

Discretion of Conference of Bishops

Canon 1253 -- It is for the conference of bishops to determine more precisely the observance of fast and abstinence and to substitute in whole or in part for fast and abstinence other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety.

The National Conference of Catholic Bishops in their pastoral statement of November 18, 1966 determined the following:

Catholics in the United States are obliged to abstain from the eating of meat on Ash Wednesday and on all Fridays during the season of Lent. They are also obliged to fast on Ash Wednesday and on Good Friday. Self-imposed observance of fasting on all weekdays of Lent is strongly recommended. Abstinence from flesh meat on all Fridays of the year is especially recommended to individuals and to the Catholic community as a whole.

The entire statement can be found in Canon Law Digest (CLD 6, 679--684).

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[FormerLib]

Yes, that would work well. For me, I find that by keeping them separate, I remember to work on both of them. But that's just me, of course!