Traditional Rule of Fasting and Abstinence

As we begin Lent a friend has forwarded to me, as part of the answer to another friend's enquiry, the traditional rules on Fasting and Abstinence as well as the current ones. They are taken from the website of the SSPX in the US and can be read at http://sspx.org/en/rules-fast-and-abstinence

Almost at the same time yet another friend sent me from the same website the following comments from Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre on the same subject: http://sspx.org/en/archbishop-lefebvre-on-fasting-and-abstinence-1982

A while ago an Oratorian friend made the good point that dietary practices have changed with the times. In an age of central heating and better domestic insulation and similar conveniences, together with far less in the way of demanding physical work, we eat less because we no longer need to ingest so much fuel to keep warm. Add to that our concern to be healthy, to diet and to lose weight, and we end up eating normally what was formerly seen as being a fasting meal.The age of three substantial cooked meals a day, not untypical a century ago, would seem like gross over-indulgence to many today. Even where it survives in a modified form - such as an Oxford college - it is there to cater to and for young people burning up calories on the river or sports field.

Whilist thinking of how to observe Lent last Momday Peter Kwasniewski at New Liturgical Movement had a good post which is well worth looking at and entitled Things That Remit Venial Sins — The Traditional Liturgy Is Full of Them

Friday abstinence

The restoration by the Bishops of Friday abstinence from meat, which comes into force today, is a welcome return to traditional practice. It will make no real difference to me, as I have consistently observed this custom for upwards of thirty years both as an Anglican and as a Catholic, and made a point of eating meat on those Solemnities which do fall on Fridays to emphasise the point to myself. I think that many of my friends have done the same. Anyway I really like fish, though of course eating it on Fridays is not obligatory for those who do not, which is the sort of silly claim a few have tried to make.

Now that the Bishops have undone the wrong signal sent out in 1984 in this respect let us hope and, indeed, pray that the rumours we hear of them requesting the restoration of the transferred Days of Obligation to their proper days will also come to pass.

Universae Ecclesiae and Friday abstinence

I have now managed to read Universae Ecclesiae rather than just rely, as I had done hitherto, on digests on various blogs. In one way the document is rather bland, being a tidying up of various questions and procedural points. Doing that is good in itself, and underlines the fact that Summorum Pontificum is now part of normative practice - it cannot be dismissed as some tried or would have wanted to do as a concession to tiresome old fuddy-duddies.

The fears about the introduction of restrictions on the use of the Extraordinary Form seem largely to have been unfulfilled, or in the point about ordinations, is at least consistent.

As usual there seems to be a problem with translations from the Latin into the vernacular as in the point about the right of individual members of Orders to celebrate their own traditional rites. This is a not unknown problem of translation which one would think would be attended to before publication, but it is not a serious handicap, just a bit of a time-waster having to explain things with reference to the definitive Latin.

If Universae Ecclesiae reinforces traditional practice, then so too does the decision of the English and Welsh bishops to reinstate Friday abstinence on days other than Solemnities. The rule was, I understand, relaxed in 1985. Now I have observed the traditional Friday discipline for years, long before I became a Catholic, so it is no novelty for me. The argument about marking ourselves out from the rest of the population by so doing I find considerably less appealing that the point about personal discipline - and makes meat-eating on a Solemnity part of one's own participation in the sense of celebration.

So last week was a good one for reinforcing good practice on both the liturgical and personal front. In both cases the important thing now is to use that practice to build up the life of the Church.