Fasting And Abstinence In The Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church observes the discipline of fasting or abstinence at various times each year, especially during Lent. For Catholics, fasting is the reduction of one's intake of food, which may or may not include abstinence from meat (or another type of food). The Catholic Church teaches that all people are obliged by God to perform some penance for their sins, and that these acts of penance are both personal and corporate. The purpose of fasting is spiritual focus, self discipline, imitation of Christ, and performing penance.
Contemporary Roman legislation is rooted in the 1966 Apostolic Constitution of Pope Paul VI, Paenitemini, and codified in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. Abstinence is required throughout the year on Fridays, though the bishops' conferences in some areas allow other penitential acts (e.g., prayer, abstinence from another food, giving up an unhealthy or unnecessary habit). During Lent, on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, both abstinence and fasting are required of Catholics who are not exempted for various reasons. Members of the Eastern Catholic Churches are obliged to follow the discipline of their own particular church.
The Catholic practice of abstaining from meat popularized the Friday fish fry.
Read more about Fasting And Abstinence In The Roman Catholic Church: Eastern Practice, Eucharistic Fast
Famous quotes containing the words fasting and, catholic church, fasting, roman, catholic and/or church:
“O Patrick! for a hundred years
The gentle Niamh was my wife;
But now two things devour my life;
The things that most of all I hate:
Fasting and prayers.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“In fact what America expects of its citizens and what the Catholic Church expects of the faithful are sometimes so different that they lead to an enormous ker-KLUNK between democracy and theology.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists—in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record.”
—Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881)
“The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, “All summer in the field, and all winter in the study.” And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy gets the Catholic Church. America gets Hollywood.”
—Erica Jong (b. 1942)
“It is the custom of the Roman Church which I unworthily serve with the help of God, to tolerate some things, to turn a blind eye to some, following the spirit of discretion rather than the rigid letter of the law.”
—Pope Gregory VII (c. 1020–1085)