I think it is going to happen! We will once again have Friday abstinence, not just during the holy season of lent, but year round!
I know that for me personally, having a year round law on abstinence will force me to choose not to eat meat. Right now my self discipline in this regard is very poor. In other words, I try not to eat meat on Fridays, but not very hard! But if it were the law and a law-motivating practice I'll do it.
You can hear Timothy Cardinal Dolan desiring to reestablish the Friday abstinence here:
The reason I believe that it will become the norm is that our National Council of Catholic Bishops are slowly but surely beginning to realize that we Catholics have lost our way, lost our identity and it has taken a short 50 years to occur.
Fr. C. J. McCloskey III, S.T.D. is a Church historian and Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, DC. From 1985-1990, he was a chaplain at Princeton University. He writes on his blog, "Truth and Charity" that On November 6, the citizens of the United States re-elected perhaps the most anti-Catholic president in its history to a second term.
Even sadder, according to exit polls a majority of Catholics voted in his favor, even after they theoretically had imbibed the bishops’ message, conveyed from the pulpit and in various other media, that no Catholic should vote for a candidate who favors abortion rights and single sex marriage and does not support religious liberty.
What is going on here? Clearly, to borrow a line from the film “Cool Hand Luke,” “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
How has this happened? First, immediately following the Council, my parent's generation were told everything would change and nothing was for sure as it concerned the Church--this was a 360 degree shift that undermined parents of that generation in terms of what they had tried to do to instill the Faith in their children. It pulled the rug out from underneath their authority at home to hand on the faith and what they had handed on they were now being told was out-dated and so pre-Vatican II and that everything was changing, not just discipline but belief! We cannot underestimate the deleterious effect this will have on the Church some 50 years later. So gone was the Latin Mass and Catholic piety and reverence. Gone was fast and abstinence. Gone were habits (and soon nuns of any kind). Gone was papal authority in the areas of faith and morals. Gone was the Baltimore Catechism substituted by coloring book Catholicism, feel good religion, I'm okay, you're okay. Gone was confession. Gone was the very real fear of hell or damnation. Gone was healthy Catholic Faith and traditions that led saints of old to die for the Faith. Would my generation of Kumbaya Catholics do the same? I somehow doubt it!
To be honest with you, I'm surprised that we have any form of Catholic identity today and that at least we have 20% of Catholics practicing their faith, albeit somewhat watered down and highly individualistic in terms of Catholic morality but highly communal in terms of feel-good, hand holding Protestant, fundamentalist euphoria as it concerns individual piety.
Our parish is being used as a pilot parish to implement a new concept in religious reawakening in our diocese. It is called "Strong Catholic Families: Strong Catholic Youth."
The bottom line, in line with what I just described, is that we Catholics rank the poorest in handing on our Faith to our youth. The Mormons are #1. It is based upon their Church encouraging them to hand the faith on at home in family practices and supported on Sundays by the institutional Church--but the bulk happens at home.
I hope it works. I hope that I don't hear parishioners asking for fragmentation of their children from the family even on Sunday by youth Masses that feature worship and praise music and life-teen Masses. I hope they attend Mass as a family on Sunday morning and attend the Mass that will have a tradition of music and tradition Catholic Mass reverence that will stay with the teenagers when they become adults and have their funeral Masses. It is sad to see my generation of Catholics, my age and older still nostalgic for the tripe that we called liturgical music and seeking it for their funerals now! But at least we are passing from the scene and none too soon! :)
What we baby-boomers did was to help the fragmentation of the Catholic family by providing folk Masses for the younger generation, our generation of the 1960's and 70's. Back then about 75 percent of us baby-boomer Catholics attended Mass every Sunday, but the vapid music we loved was only skin deep and fad-like and trendy and didn't serve most of us into adulthood. Today there is only about 20% of us babyboomers brought upon on Folk music tripe that still practice our Faith. We also encouraged Polka Masses, Mariachi Masses, Gospel Masses, quiet Masses, traditional Masses and so on and so on! And now we are encouraging Mega Church, Protestant piety worship and praise Masses and in the same genre as our Protestant non-denominationalists which has also seduced more traditional mainline Protestantism.
The Catholic families today that are consistently handing on the Faith in their home lives are our home schoolers. They are the ones who bring their children to our EF Mass! They don't want vapid, trendy Masses with guitars and worship and praise music that gives their children a superficial high when they listen to the music but does nothing to make them strong Catholic youth and later strong Catholic adults. We need to learn from them what they are doing, for I think their Faith lives at home is more similar to what Catholics in general were like in the 1950's where Catholic and family practice were much stronger.
We have to start to regain our strong Catholic identity and that will start with strong Catholic families who form strong Catholic youth, tomorrow's (the future's) aging Catholics. Hopefully this generation for their funerals in the future will be seeking the EF Requiem or at least Gregorian Chant, Dies Irae and the actual propers of the Funeral Mass rather than vapid, feel-good worship and praise tripe. I hope I'm not too strong here.
14 comments:
Despite the change to meatless Fridays being optional during my growing up years (the 60's and 70's), my 1950's convert (former Baptist) mother still raised us with this rule (and she still adheres to it).
As an adult, I did not closely adhere to it until I had children. Now, my girls, aged 12 and 14 have been raised with meatless Fridays which they know means fish or vegetarian options (their favorite is cheese pizza with anchovies!).
My convert (former Baptist) wife has also become used to this rule and she cooks accordingly. So, you see, as to my house, we are ready for the return of obligatory meatless Fridays!
And, as I place my felt fedora on my head and leave for work, I am still chuckling to myself about "Excedrin headache number 666!"
I wouldn't trust the USCCB to get it right any farther than I could throw a side of beef on Friday...
The Vegetarians picked up where we left off. They have Meatless Mondays. It's so disappointing. There has been a vacuum that was filled by the Secularites. I do hope it comes back. It does seem part of the Catholic identity.
I will support Joseph's position with my own. I have not eaten meat on a Friday in almost 18 years. I started adhering to the traditional practice while in college and have continued it ever since.
There has been and continues to be a great witness to abstaining from meat on Fridays and all other days of fast and abstinence (which I also practice).
It is a little thing that I can do, personally, to offer up for the atrocities from which Holy Mother Church has suffered since the decline after Vatican Council II.
Speaking as someone in their early 20's, I plan on having both my wedding and funeral in the EF. I know a few others that say they either want to use the EF or want a very traditional OF for theirs. So it's promising!
First, the Friday Penance was never done away with. Vatican II said abstaning from meat was just now one option. If one didn't want to abstain from meat, they would have to do some other form of penance on Friday, be it charity work or a devotion. But of course, the Church at large never bothered to teach anything beyond "abstaining from meat on Fridays is now optional".
Second, if you really want to revive Catholic identity, the Vatican needs to supress the Novus Ordo order of the Mass and replace it with the 1965 Order of the Mass for the Ordinary Form of the Roman Missal ASAP during this Year of Faith, with perhaps a long term goal (about 10 to 20 years) of phasing out the OF and just having the EF/TLM/1962 Missal. They also need to encourage or even mandate Mass Settings consisting of Chant, or Chant like melodies, instead of all the contemporary/pop/folk/secular style Mass Settings we currently have (speaking about YOU, GIA and OCP).
Third, it simply does not look good for the Bishops and Obamacare. As some other posters pointed out, the precident has been set by Catholic Campaign for Human Development and Catholic Relief Services for Catholic money going to pay for/support birth control, abortion, gay rights, even legalizing prostitution. I'm sure should this get to the Supreme Court, they will take that into consideration for their verdict.
I say while we're at it, we go further back and return to Wednesday and Friday fasting. If we're going to be traditional... That's the most Traditional, being a practice that, I believe, is traced back to the Apostles.
I have treated Friday as meatless for most of my adult life even though some lax clerics preach otherwise. My problem is that I like fish and almost every restaurant offers salmon. Oh, the sacrifices we make for our faith!
You're not too strong, Father. You are right on target.
And again I say: Still more talk. The bishops, if they're serious, must quit publicly mulling and prognosticating about this stuff and simply do it. Instead, they try to win points for being Catholic by paying lip service to stuff that they refuse to enforce and put teeth into.
To latch onto A5's point: it's something that Cardinal Dolan is discussing this, but what does MY bishop day about it? NOTHING!
Every bishop is this country, except maybe Chaput and formerly Bruskewitz is letting Dolan set policy in his diocese. Where are the bishops? Where is MY bishop? This national bishops conference as an excuse to abdicate responsibility for ones own diocese has really gone too far. I'd bet most bishops spend more time outside their diocesan boundaries than they do inside. A shame.
Perhaps there is an alternative, or at least a complementary, explanation for why the majority of Catholics voted for President Obama, despite the anti- Catholic nature of some of his positions. I will not be tiresome and repeat the arguments I have made in comments to earlier posts regarding the reasons why a Catholic might be able in good conscience to vote for either Obama or Romney, following the guidance in the USCCB document “Faithful Citizenship.” Instead I will quote a passage from a recent article (in “Public Discourse”) by Archbishop Chaput, whom Marc mentions in his comment. In that article, entitled “Life in the ‘Kingdom of Whatever’”, Archbishop Chaput says:
“The day may come when Catholics can support neither of the main American political parties or their candidates. Some think it's already arrived. Alasdair MacIntyre, the Notre Dame philosopher, argued along those lines a few years ago, explaining why he couldn't vote for either a Democrat or a Republican.
I don't know what Professor MacIntyre will do this year. For my part, along with my brother bishops in Pennsylvania, I believe it's important to vote today and on every election day. A well-formed Catholic conscience can choose wisely between the candidates. And this year, vital issues are at stake.
Still, elections are tough times for serious Catholics. If we believe in the encyclical tradition — from Rerum Novarum to Evangelium Vitae; from Humanae Vitae to Caritas In Veritate — then we can't settle comfortably in either political party. Catholics give priority to the right to life and the integrity of the family as foundation stones of society. But we also have much to say about the economy and immigration, runaway debt, unemployment, war and peace. It's why the US bishops recently observed that "in today's environment, Catholics may feel politically disenfranchised, sensing that no party and few candidates fully share our comprehensive commitment to human life and dignity."
Any committed Christian might be tempted to despair. But the truth is that it's always been this way. As the author of Hebrews wrote, "here we have no abiding city" (Heb 13:14). Augustine admired certain pagan Roman virtues, but he wrote the City of God to remind us that we're Christians first, worldly citizens second. We need to learn — sometimes painfully — to let our faith chasten our partisan appetites.
In the United States, our political tensions flow from our cultural problems. Exceptions clearly exist, but today our culture routinely places rights over duties, individual fulfillment over community, and doubt over belief. In effect, the glue that now holds us together is our right to go mall-crawling and buy more junk. It's hard to live a life of virtue when all around us, in the mass media and even in the lives of colleagues and neighbors, discipline, restraint, and self-sacrifice seem irrelevant.”
(continued)
As I have said before, “a pox on both their houses.” However, the alternative to despair or withdrawal is the exercise of prudence in the face of complexity, and as Aristotle observed over two millennia ago, there is no simple, clear answer to matters that are necessarily indeterminate because many different considerations have to be weighed in the balance before reaching a final judgment. Although I suspect that Archbishop Chaput and his fellow Bishops in Pennsylvania went as far as they felt able, in their own diocesan pre-election statement, to indicate their view that Romney-Ryan was a better choice in resolving the dilemma than Obama-Biden, given the configuration of issues in this particular election, I also suspect that they might be open to sound countervailing prudential arguments. In any event, Archbishop Chaput is surely correct to advise against reflexive and uncritical support for either party.
Archbishop Chaput situates our dilemma within a broader historical narrative by reviewing Brad Gregory’s book, “The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society” (2012). For those interested, here is a link to Archbishop Chaput’s entire article:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/politics/pg0298.htm
The problem with no consistent marker on Fridays it is all too easy to forget. Since everyone does there own thing, if they even remember, no one in the office will ask you to go grab a fish sandwich on a Friday. Or Catholics just having that on the tip of their lips every week helps people to remember. And there is continuity. It should never have been relaxed this far. It was a bad idea because most people I know do not remember it, myself included. I think re-instating it will make the observance easier for everyone with small, consistent reminders every week. I hope the Bishops vote in favor of this for the US..
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