Fasting - Our Lost Rite

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So fasting is now confined to a derisory two days of the year, and compulsory Friday abstinence has been replaced by a genteel and totally individualistic injunction to do some penitential act on a Friday - an injunction, incidentally, that most Catholics know nothing about.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

Now I am confused, I know that it used to be that Catholics never ate Meat on Friday. I thought however that now it was only during Lent?

And your confusion is justified! As a 'seasoned' citizen, I grew up with meatless Fridays and was in high school when the rules were 'relaxed'. Perhaps I wasn't paying much attention but I don't recall any admonitions to maintain abstinence, on the part of the bishops.

Earlier this year, someone else in the forum issued a reminder to the catholics. Like you, I was truly stunned. But, after researching it, I have now voluntarily elected to personally restore Friday abstinence. As the canon law states:

"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."

According to the USCCB:

Canons 1252 and 1253 - Observance
of Fast and Abstinence

c. 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.

c. 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.

Complementary Norm: Norms II and IV of Paenitemini (February 17, 1966) are almost identical to the canons cited. The November 18, 1966 norms of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on penitential observance for the Liturgical Year continue in force since they are law and are not contrary to the code (canon 6).

Approved: Administrative Committee, September 1983

Promulgated: Memorandum to All Bishops, October 21, 1983

Amended: "... the age of fasting is from the completion of the twenty-first year to the beginning of the sixtieth" (Paenitemini, norm IV) is amended to read ‘... the age of fasting is from the completion of the eighteenth year to the beginning of the sixtieth' in accord with canon 97."

Promulgated: Memorandum to All Diocesan Bishops, February 29, 1984

There is a vast difference between a law (fasting, in this case) binding upon every member of a group, and a personal practice, even if it involves the same act. In other words, it was one thing when the entire Church fasted on Fridays; it is quite another thing when an individual, as an act of personal piety, chooses to fast or do something else on Fridays.

One of the other peculiar things about VatII is that, in addition to being oddly authoritarian while protesting that it was not, it was also oddly non-communal while protesting that it was really the soul of community.

A corporate identity is forged by participating in an action that is not of your own choosing, but that is something you do because you are a member of whatever group it is that has decided upon this action. Granted, each individual member will have his own personal response to it, or personal interpretation of it, but the act is the same for all, and it is not the result of a personal decision.

We fast on Wednesdays in memory of Christ's betrayal. On Fridays for his death.

The fasting we do is so complex and should be set up with a spiritual father for each individual. After 8 years in the Orthodox church I can almost say I have made it to the serious fasting. But when I began I was very cautious, as all newcomers should be.

We fast from all animal products for the most part.

link which explains our fasting.

Here is the explanation of our seasonal schedule of fasting. It is really overwhelming for most newcomers to the church and can be hard to follow.

"Some of the fasts of the Orthodox Church are for one day, some for many days. Among the single-day fasts are included Wednesday and Friday throughout the whole year with the exception of fast-free weeks and the days between Nativity and Theophany; the eve of the Baptism of Christ (eve of the Feast of Theophany, January 5); and feasts that are held as fast days - the Beheading of John the Baptist (August 29) and the Exaltation of the Cross of the Lord (September 14). There are four fasts a year which extend for many days. On the Monday after Cheesefare week begins the first fast of the Spring- it is called Great Lent due to its special importance, and consists of the fast of the Holy 40 Days in imitation of the 40-day fast of the Lord in the desert and the fast of Passion Week, dedicated to the commemoration of the saving sufferings of Christ. A week after the Sunday of the Holy Trinity (Pentecost), the Apostles' Fast begins and this extends to the day of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (June 29). The faithful use the Dormition Fast (from August 1 to 14) to prepare for the celebration of the Dormition of the Theotokos. The Nativity or St. Philip's Fast extends for 40 days from November 15 through December 24. According to the Church Typicon, during Great Lent and the Dormition Fast only vegetable products are allowed to be eaten, [Tr. note: except during Great Lent on the Feasts of Annunciation and Palm Sunday, and during the Dormition Fast on the Feast of the Transfiguration] whereas during the Apostle's Fast and Nativity Fast fish is allowed."

On exceptionally holy days I try to fast by eating only one small meal a day. I have done this a few times and truly found it to be blissful. Once I went 24 hours with nothing except communion, and simultaneously attended several services. On Holy Saturday I usually go without anything but a glass of wine. It seems to only be a greatly rewarding task when I am able to be in church most of the time.

LOL, the dang everyday world really gets in the way of spiritual practise. :-)

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

Having given a lot more thought to fasting in the past couple of years, I now think of it as iconic: it's a way to both symbolise and personally encounter the call to pennance and conversion through a withdrawal from both world and self. Just as it's necessary frequently to put distance between ourselves and the world, I find fasting helpful in establishing a spiritual distance between soul and disordered will.

I try to remember the essential link with humility as a test of whether a fast is being properly pursued.

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Canons 1252 and 1253 - Observance of Fast and Abstinence

Canons 1252 and 1253 - Observance
of Fast and Abstinence