[Catholicguy]

So fasting is now confined to a derisory two days of the year, and compulsory Friday abstinence has been replaced by a genteel and totally individualistic injunction to do some penitential act on a Friday - an injunction, incidentally, that most Catholics know nothing about.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

Claptrap.

CHAPTER II : DAYS OF PENANCE Can. 1249 All Christ's faithful are obliged by divine law, each in his or her own way, to do penance. However, so that all may be joined together in a certain common practice of penance, days of penance are prescribed. On these days the faithful are in a special manner to devote themselves to prayer, to engage in works of piety and charity, and to deny themselves, by fulfilling their obligations more faithfully and especially by observing the fast and abstinence which the following canons prescribe.

Can. 1250 The days and times of penance for the universal Church are each Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent.

Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

Can. 1252 The law of abstinence binds those who have completed their fourteenth year. The law of fasting binds those who have attained their majority, until the beginning of their sixtieth year. Pastors of souls and parents are to ensure that even those who by reason of their age are not bound by the law of fasting and abstinence, are taught the true meaning of penance.

Can. 1253 The Episcopal Conference can determine more particular ways in which fasting and abstinence are to be observed. In place of abstinence or fasting it can substitute, in whole or in part, other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety.

The truth that this was just formally observed with little, if any, understanding of the connection twixt the profound spiritual truthfullness and necessity of fast/abstinence and the pharisaical observance is proved by how fast this practice was abandoned once reforms were instituted.

I,for one, love the reforms.

BTW, Me, my Bride (a convert from Congregationalis)m, and Me Kids are Friday Fish-heads every Friday year-round and this Lent I will be taking ought but water every Wednesday and Friday this Lent - (Didache).

[livius]

I'm glad to hear that you're doing this.

I don't know how old you are; possibly you did not grow up during a time when everybody fasted on Fridays year round, and Lent was a genuinely serious business. Granted, it might have gotten a little too legalistic: You could eat x amount of this, x amount of that, so that your meals would equal x amount.

During Lent, people did not eat meat and most people added another mortification - they gave up smoking or drinking, for example.

But the point is that it was NOT an individualistic expression of piety. It did not limit what you could do if you were pious and wanted to go beyond the requirements for a personal reason. But it was something that everybody did and it was a common bond and expression in the way that individual piety can never be.

And perhaps you could discuss things without screaming "claptrap" at the beginning of your post?