The Other Abstinence

It's not the kind you learned about in Sunday School (well, maybe you did). It's definitely not the kind you learned about in health class (if you learned about any kind at all). This kind of abstinence is the spiritual practice of abstaining from meat. The Church gives it to us as a requirement on Fridays during Lent. It is a discipline that, when done in a spirit of charity, brings us closer to Christ.

Keeping regular days of abstinence from meat, especially on Fridays, has been practiced and enforced by the Church from the very beginning. It is so essential for the life of the Church because of its many benefits: it is an act of penance in communion with all of the faithful; it reminds us of the flesh of Christ sacrificed for us; and it helps us to prepare ourselves for the celebration of His resurrection every Sunday.


Abstinence on all Fridays has been mandatory throughout most of Church history. About 50 years ago, however, the Second Vatican Council made it so that this obligation is no longer a universal requirement for the entire Church, except during Lent. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has likewise not imposed the requirement since that time, so year-round abstinence on Fridays is generally not practiced by American Catholics. (But, being Wisconsinites, we still participate in the age-old tradition of gorging ourselves with sumptuous fried fish every Friday night as if it were.)

But even though it is not a requirement, there are some very good reasons for abstaining from meat on all Fridays of the year.

1. Friday should remain a day of penance. After the Second Vatican Council, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a pastoral letter that made clear the continued importance of acts of penance on every Friday, and a preference for abstinence from meat in the performance of that penance. Paragraph 24 reads: "Among the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance which we especially commend to our people for the future observance of Friday, even though we hereby terminate the traditional law of abstinence binding under pain of sin, as the sole prescribed means of observing Friday, we give first place to abstinence from flesh meat. We do so in the hope that the Catholic community will ordinarily continue to abstain from meat by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law."
2. We are called on to abstain as an act of penance for the cause of peace on Earth. Since 1983, the American Catholic bishops have been abstaining from meat every Friday for this purpose, and they encourage the American faithful to do likewise. This practice was first declared in paragraph 298 of the Conference's pastoral letter The Challenge of Peace.
3. The USCCB is currently reflecting on whether to reinstate the obligation of year-round Friday abstinence. Why not beat them to it, as a sign of our particular commitment to penance?
4. Abstinence from industrial meat is an act of environmental and social justice.  With its terribly excessive use of energy, land, feed and water, not to mention its horrendous generation of animal waste, it is one of the most unsustainable industries we can partake in. Typically, its treatment of livestock is inhumane and uncharitable. Its laborers are often undocumented and work under undignified conditions. Year-round Friday abstinence is a concrete step towards escaping our dependence on this unjust and ultimately inefficient system.
5. It's good for you. Apart from being environmentally and socially disastrous, the effects of industrialized meat production in the United States are also nutritionally disastrous. By ignoring and defying the natural processes by which its livestock ought to live — pumping them with growth hormones and antibiotics and enclosing them in cramped and filthy quarters — the industry jeopardizes the health of those who consume its product. While there is certainly more sustainable and healthy non-industrial meat that is available, it is also the medical consensus that Americans consume meat in general, particularly red meat, much more frequently than they ought to.
6. It is a great witness to the faith. Promoters of worldwide campaigns like Meatless Monday usually don't consider that Christians have been abstaining from meat once every week way before it was cool. Sometimes the best way to evangelize is to more fully embrace the rich tradition of our faith.

 

We should be clear about one notion that is not a reason to abstain from meat: the idea that eating meat is intrinsically evil. God sanctions all of His creatures for human consumption when he tells St. Peter to "kill and eat" (Acts 10:9-15). Further, St. Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:1-5: 

"Now the Spirit explicitly says that in the last times some will turn away from the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and demonic instructions. They forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected when received with thanksgiving, through the hypocrisy of liars with branded consciences, for it is made holy by the invocation of God in prayer."

So, eating meat is no more intrinsically evil than marriage is. Yet, just as some are called to a life of celibacy, so some might be called to a life of vegetarianism. As we already discussed on this blog, it was the theological opinion of St. Thomas Aquinas that humans did not eat meat before the Fall. While eating meat is not intrinsically sinful, vegetarianism may be a heroic act to conform one's life to the harmony enjoyed in the state of innocence.

In any case, we recommend year-round Friday abstinence as a new group resolution, continuing this week where we left off on Good Friday. What do y'all think?