From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
We pray you are well.
Concerning the upcoming celebration of our Nation’s founding, obviously it is not a religious feast day. However, given it’s great importance to Americans, no less to us as Catholic Americans, are we legally exempted from the Friday penance of abstaining from meat this coming 4th of July?
A blessed Independence Day to you!
Thank you for your faithful witness – may God continue to bless you richly!
Thank you for your kind words. Please pray for me.
To your query.
You can ask your parish priest to dispense you or commute your Friday penance.
Can. 1245 Without prejudice to the right of diocesan bishops mentioned in can. 87, for a just cause and according to the prescripts of the diocesan bishop, a pastor [parish priest] can grant in individual cases a dispensation from the obligation of observing a feast day or a day of penance or can grant a commutation of the obligation into other pious works. A superior of a religious institute or society of apostolic life, if they are clerical and of pontifical right, can also do this in regard to his own subjects and others living in the house day and night.
Abstinence from meat has good reasoning behind it. For some, however, abstinence from other things can be of great spiritual effect.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops encourages Catholics to observe Friday penance, usually through abstaining from meat …. there’s always an option …. or by choosing another form of penance.
In this case I don’t have a lot to gripe about. Some people don’t have any interest in eating meat… which is a little weird but, hey, God’s chandelier is complicated. Moreover, there are seriously non-penitential meals one can whip up on a Friday. It’s important not to think that God doesn’t know if you have done PENANCE in some way on Friday. He cannot deceive or be deceived.
Be honest.
Again, pastors can commute. That’s not a dodge. It’s a provision you can request if it is for your true benefit.
It doesn’t mean, “you don’t have to do penance”.
BTW… the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart is coming up on a FRIDAY.
Canon 1251 of the Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church says:
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.
Under the Code of Canon Law in force now, the Feast of the Sacred Heart is a Solemnity.
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Well, the Friday penance was never meant to be the utmost penitential sort of thing, as much as you can bear, etc. The usual abstinence from meat has been called by Msgr Knox “a mere gesture, as it were”.
Right now, the US bishops apparently have given, for time outside Lent, a general dispensation to do some other stuff. This doesn’t mean that the other stuff then has to be really feelably hard. It’s got to be something. – Until such time (much as we may desire it) when this dispensation is revoked, traditional Catholics habitually (and laudably) don’t make use of it; but sure attending a barbecue on the National Holiday would qualify as an exception to do so? (It is, after all, not excepting oneself from the law, but from not using a possibility the law now contains.)
For the “some other penance”, my usual go-to (it’s not often necessary…) is a Litany of the Passion of Christ. But sure attending a Holy Mass, on a day-not-of-precept, would count too (that this feels good doesn’t mean it’s not penitential… so does fasting), and to do that would be good idea anyway to pray for one’s country?
Well, the Friday penance was never meant to be the utmost penitential sort of thing, as much as you can bear, etc. The usual abstinence from meat has been called by Msgr Knox “a mere gesture, as it were”.
Right now, the US bishops apparently have given, for time outside Lent, a general dispensation to do some other stuff. This doesn’t mean that the other stuff then has to be really feelably hard. It’s got to be something. – Until such time (much as we may desire it) when this dispensation is revoked, traditional Catholics habitually (and laudably) don’t make use of it; but sure attending a barbecue on the National Holiday would qualify as an exception to do so? (It is, after all, not excepting oneself from the law, but from not using a possibility the law now contains.)
For the “some other penance”, my usual go-to (it’s not often necessary…) is a Litany of the Passion of Christ. But sure attending a Holy Mass, on a day-not-of-precept, would count too (that this feels good doesn’t mean it’s not penitential… so does fasting), and to do that would be good idea anyway to pray for one’s country?
My priest commented recently on Friday Solemnities.
If you are going to celebrate the solemnity by eating meat, then don’t neglect to attend the Solemn Mass for that day.
It’s like cheating God.
If I substitute another penance for Friday abstinence, I will use abstaining from using the internet for the period. I really enjoy coming daily to the blog, New advent and various other sites. I also use this abstinence for fasting. Fasting from the noise. At 78 yo it isn’t always good for me to fast from food. My dear husband yells at me when I do, lol.
If the USCCB has said we can commute ordinary Friday Abstinence to another penance, why would an American Catholic have to bother their pastor for a dispensation?
Beings that I stole my wife from a Methodist mother and a raised baptist father and converted her, an elder brother converted later and they sort of blame me. I’m condemned to spending the fourth with her family including an obese sister in law and her even larger pompous evangelical pastor husband, is that penance enough?
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Sorry for the double post, that was not intentional.
Dear The Egyptian, well, I’d have assumed the word “penance” means something objective… so… I wouldn’t be sure about that…
But maybe you find time to say, maybe, a decade of the Rosary with the mystery “Jesus, who for us bore the heavy cross”, or the like? – Of course, this may mean that the penance is the relaxing thing, and the non-penance the stressful… but that may well be so.