[livius]

That's good, and I think there are probably many people who also do this and have kept on doing it since the 70s.

But I wish it would go back to being what it had been, simply a given and a communal practice.

I am afraid many people have missed the point here, and do not understand the difference between a personal act of piety, and a corporate or communal practice.

It was the communal practice that Vatican II destroyed.

[livius]

Ping to you guys. I'm curious to know what you think about this issue (please read the article first).

I think that many people don't understand the significance of a "collective" practice, even though in theory Vat II was supposed to make us into this great community. I have found that the Church, in its practices and in the attitude of its members, has much less community identity than it did prior to VatII.

I am in my 50s, btw, so I grew up with one Church and saw it morph into something totally different within the space of about 5 years.

The communal aspect has always bothered me, because I felt that we had much more collective identity and connection with the past (the community that went before us) prior to VII than after it. The fasting rules were a particularly concrete expression of that.