This excellent blog is well worth reading, great link, thanks. To this day I eat fish on Fridays - but that's more because I'm rather partial to fresh fish, particularly if accompanied by a crisp sauvgnon blanc.
Like many, I had understood that this particular abstinence had been abolished long ago, as apparently do many esteemed members of the clergy, but according to Australia Incognita, Friday is still a day of abstinence. However, he also helpfully notes that you can do an alternative penance if you fancy a steak for an extended Friday lunch. My own view is that it shouldn't matter what you eat.
I recall an old mentor of ours telling me that he ascribed the dramatic fall in people - especially children - fainting during mass to the lifting of the 12 hour fasting rule.
Mind you, with the obesity crisis threatening to engulf the western world (truly an obscenity when you compared with famine in developing nations), it might not be a bad thing to reintroduce it.
2 comments:
This excellent blog is well worth reading, great link, thanks. To this day I eat fish on Fridays - but that's more because I'm rather partial to fresh fish, particularly if accompanied by a crisp sauvgnon blanc.
Like many, I had understood that this particular abstinence had been abolished long ago, as apparently do many esteemed members of the clergy, but according to Australia Incognita, Friday is still a day of abstinence. However, he also helpfully notes that you can do an alternative penance if you fancy a steak for an extended Friday lunch. My own view is that it shouldn't matter what you eat.
I recall an old mentor of ours telling me that he ascribed the dramatic fall in people - especially children - fainting during mass to the lifting of the 12 hour fasting rule.
Mind you, with the obesity crisis threatening to engulf the western world (truly an obscenity when you compared with famine in developing nations), it might not be a bad thing to reintroduce it.
Andrew,
There was never a 12 hour fasting rule per se. The Eucharist was to be the first Food of the day and hence the Apostolic Fast from midnight.
The Eucharistic Fast was not penitential in character and as such was different from fasting during Lent and on Vigils & Ember Days etc.
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