Liturgical Year – Page 40

Meat On Lenten Fridays: A Mortal Sin?

A common question at this time of year is whether or not deliberately violating the law of abstinence is a mortal sin. It is. The relevant law is found in Paul VI’s 1966 apostolic constitution Paenitemini, which provides that:

The time of Lent preserves its penitential character. The days of penitence to be observed under obligation through-out the Church are all Fridays and Ash Wednesday, that is to say the first days of "Grande Quaresima" (Great Lent), according to the diversity of the rite. Their substantial observance binds gravely [Norm II §1, emphasis added].

That the keeping of abstinence (and fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday) is part of the substantial observance of these days is evident from the fact that the second half of Norm II names this as the chief requirement of observing these days:

Apart from the faculties referred to in VI and VIII regarding the manner of fulfilling the precept of penitence on such days, abstinence is to be observed on every Friday which does not fall on a day of obligation, while abstinence and fast are to be observed on Ash Wednesday or, according to local practice, on the first day of ‘Great Lent’ and on Good Friday [Norm II §2, emphasis added].

The faculties mentioned "regarding the manner of fulfilling the precept of penitence on such days" have to do with the ability of pastors to dispense the faithful from the obligation of abstinence and fast or commuting it to something else. If such dispensation or commutation is not obtained then "the manner of fulfilling the precept" is abstinence.

Thus one must substantially observe the law of abstinence on such days, and the obligation to do so is a grave one, meaning that it satisfies the condition of grave matter required for mortal sin. If one knowingly and deliberately fails in this obligation then one has committed mortal sin.

As to the reason for this, the Code of Canon Law notes that:

The divine law binds all the Christian faithful to do penance each in his or her own way. In order for all to be united among themselves by some common observance of penance, however, penitential days are prescribed on which the Christian faithful devote themselves in a special way to prayer, perform works of piety and charity, and deny themselves by fulfilling their own obligations more faithfully and especially by observing fast and abstinence, according to the norm of the following canons [Can. 1249, emphasis added].

It is thus a matter of divine law that the faithful are to do penance (a fact we could have determined from Scripture), and the regulations regarding fast and abstinence are simply the Church’s specification of this divine requirement, made in keeping with Jesus giving the church the power to bind and loose (Matt. 16:18, 18:18).

Housework on Sundays

A reader writes:

My wife and I have a large family, my wife homeschools, and I work six days a week.

I do not want a special dispensation to do work on Sundays, but if my wife and I do not work around the house on Sunday the place would fall apart.

I do not do really hard labor on Sundays — no home improvement or lawn work. But just doing the necessary work keeping the house picked up and my wife doing a load of laundry or two is fairly hard work.

I have no doubt that if my wife and I were more diligent during the week we probably could cut down on Sunday work a lot. But it is hard. And we simply are not diligent enough.

So what is too much on Sunday? I try to sanctify the work I do by offering it to God, but obviously if He wants me not to do it, the sanctification won’t take, so to speak.

I know the standard "more than two [or some say three] hours of work is a mortal sin." I know I should strive for as little as possible. But if my wife and I get to the end of the week and the work needs doing, are we permitted to do it?

I find it hard to advise in this situation, because there are not hard and fast rules about what can and can’t be done on Sunday. In fact, I would be hesitant to employ the "two or three hours" rule that you mention. That kind of rule of thumb coheres well with the way the law used to be written, but the law on Sunday observance has been integrally reordered. The current law applies the principles of Sunday observance in a way that makes such prior rules of thumb unreliable.

Let me show you what I mean. Here’s the old law:

On feast days of precept, Mass is to be heard; there is an abstinence from servile work, legal acts, and likewise, unless there is a special indult or legitimate customs provide otherwise, from public trade, shopping, and other public buying and selling [CIC(1917) can 1248].

Now, here’s the new law:

On Sundays and other holy days of obligation, the faithful are obliged to participate in the Mass.

Moreover, they are to abstain from those works and affairs which hinder the worship to be rendered to God, the joy proper to the Lord’s day, or the suitable relaxation of mind and body [CIC(1983) can. 1247].

You’ll notice that the concept of "servile work" is gone from the new law. So are prohibitions on any specific affairs (legal acts, public trade, shopping). Instead, there is a general prohibition on "those works and affairs which hinder" the goals of worship and rest.

The concept of servile work was problematic, which is why it was eliminated. Servile work was understood principally as physical labor, and the concept worked fairly well in an age when people largely lived by manual labor. If you’d worked all week, you needed a day of physical rest. On this day it was permissible, however, to do non-servile work, meaning non-physical labor.

But today a large number of people do not do manual labor for a living. They sit in offices and do non-physical labor all day long. To prevent them from doing physical work on Sundays could result in them getting little or none of the physical activity they need to be healthy. Also, allowing them to continue to do non-physical work on Sundays, just like they do all week, would result in long-term mental strain due to not getting adequate time to rest and recharge their batteries. It would leave them stuck in a rut.

As a result, the law was re-written. As it is now, the law leaves it to the individual to figure out which specific works and affairs interfere with these goals in his particular case.

This means, among other things, that the old rules of thumb about how much servile work you could do on Sunday aren’t reliable.

Now to deal with your particular situation, I am a bit hesitant due to lack of information: I don’t know what kind of work you do during the week, I don’t know how many kids you’ve got or what ages they are, and (quite importantly) I don’t (yet) have the experience of managing a large household. All of these give me pause, but let me offer what I hope are some useful points:

You don’t have to kill yourself the other six days in order to provide yourself with a restful Sunday. You need some rest on the other days, too, so if you find it too difficult to get your work done on those days, don’t worry about it.
Consider the possibilities of using your kids to help with the housework. If you have a large family, some of the kids may be getting to an age at which they could be of use picking up, doing laundry, etc. Enlisting them in doing the tasks also would be of benefit to them, both spiritually and in establishing good habits and skills for the future.
Try to group the things you do on different days so that you end up doing things on Sunday that shake you out of your rut, either by raising or lowering your physical activity level or just changing what tasks you do so that you flex different mental and physical muscles on Sunday.
Re-think what tasks you let yourself do on Sunday in light of the above discussion of the law. It might be that some tasks you have up-to-now have been classifying as servile work (e.g., lawn work, gardening) might actually be fun for you or your wife to do and constitute restful activities.
Think about what you do on Sunday and other days in terms of value: Which is more valuable to you and your family: Doing the work and having the environment you like (which is restful in itself) or not doing the work and not having the environment you would like. It might be that it is more restful to do the work and get the environment you want, or it might be that physically resting and having a sub-optimal environment is more restful.
If you have trouble sorting out these issues, that’s understandable. The way the law is written now, we don’t have the kind of simple rules we used to, and more of a burden is placed on the individual in applying the principles to his own circumstances. Just do your best to figure it out, act on the results, and that will be pleasing to God.
If you need, try consulting a spiritual director who knows you, your family, and your situation. Make sure he also understands the principles embodied in the current law regarding Sunday.

Hope this helps!

It's Okay To Eat Meat Today (Solemnities in Lent)

Although eating meat on Fridays during Lent normally is prohibited, this does not apply on Fridays that are solemnities. The Code of Canon Law provides that:

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 (Can. 1251).

Since today–Friday–is the solemnity of St. Joseph, the law of abstinence doesn’t apply.

Patrons of the highly-effective Atkins Diet, rejoice!

It’s Okay To Eat Meat Today (Solemnities in Lent)

Although eating meat on Fridays during Lent normally is prohibited, this does not apply on Fridays that are solemnities. The Code of Canon Law provides that:

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 (Can. 1251).

Since today–Friday–is the solemnity of St. Joseph, the law of abstinence doesn’t apply.

Patrons of the highly-effective Atkins Diet, rejoice!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

One apologetic note: Some of Protestants–particularly those of Irish descent–have sought in recent years to claim St. Patrick as one of their own. In other words, they have argued that he believed in Protestant Christianity and was not a Catholic.

This is completely false. It amazes me that they can even make such a preposterous claim. St. Patrick was a Latin-speaking bishop commissioned by the pope and whose writings abound with Catholic teaching. Only a person who had never read them, or never read them with any degree of attention, could miss this fact.

For the evidence, see here. Also you can read St. Patrick’s Confession.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

For the evidence, see here. Also you can read St. Patrick’s Confession.

Sundays in Lent: Part V

A reader writes:

Lent is a time of following the Lord’s 40 days and 40 nights in the desert; a time of self-denial and penance, leading to new life at Easter. The point of this time period is to spend 40 days in spiritual discipline. If you count from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday (inclusive), but excluding Sundays, you arrive at 40. Again, the point is to spend 40 days of penance before Easter. That the number 40 neatly fits within the technical bounds of Lent is not, it seems to me, the point. Counting in this fashion is yet another support to the notion that Sundays, though certainly within the season of Lent, are not observed as days of penance, but rather days of celebrating the Lord’s Day.

It is true, poetically speaking, that "Lent is a time of following the Lord’s 40 days and 40 nights in the desert; a time of self-denial and penance, leading to new life at Easter." However, the Church’s law does not appear to support the claim that "The point of this time period is to spend 40 days in spiritual discipline . . . before Easter." As noted above, there are more than forty penitential days in this period, and penitential days are days of spiritual discipline. I don’t think that the Church would regard any particular number of days as "the point," but it has established more than forty in this period.

It is true that "If you count from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday (inclusive), but excluding Sundays, you arrive at 40," but this does not correspond to the Church’s law. One can say that "Counting in this fashion is yet another support to the notion that Sundays, though certainly within the season of Lent, are not observed as days of penance, but rather days of celebrating the Lord’s Day," but this posits a false opposition between Sunday being a day of celebration and Sunday being a day of penance. It can be, and during Lent is, both.

The Church’s law is clear that Sundays in Lent both involve the celebration of the Resurrection and the practice of penitence. The penitential practice of the Church is even reflected in the liturgy on Sundays of Lent, as illustrated by the fact that the Gloria and the Alleluia are omitted, purple vestments are worn, and special readings (e.g., this coming Sunday is the "unless you repent you also will perish" passage). It’s also worth noting that, as the General Instruction provides, "Rose may be used, where it is the practice, on Gaudete Sunday (Third Sunday of Advent) and on Laetare Sunday (Fourth Sunday of Lent)" (GIRM 346f). The standard interpretation of the use of rose vestments on Laetare Sunday is that it is a lessening of the penance that is already in place.

The decisive fact, though, is simply that the law (quoted above) provides that "The penitential days and times in the universal Church are every Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent." It doesn’t say "except Sundays."

Hope this helps!

Sundays in Lent: Part IV

A reader writes:

For whatever it may be worth…

Ash Wednesday (inclusive) through Holy Saturday (inclusive), less Sundays, would yield a count of 40 days.

So, if you’re skipping Sundays (dealt with in another post), you could say that there are 40 penitential days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. Note, though, that this little system would consider the Solemnities of Saint Joseph and the Annunciation as 2 of the 40 days – hardly days of penance in most minds.

I appreciate the effort and ingenuity involved in this solution, but it does not appear to correspond to the Church’s law. It is true that "if you’re skipping Sundays (dealt with in another post), you could say that there are 40 penitential days between Ash Wednesday and Easter," but one would be making up one’s own rules to get this total. The Church’s law is different on this point. According to the Code of Canon Law:

The penitential days and times in the universal Church are every Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent [Canon 1250].

The limits of the season of Lent are defined as follows:

"Lent runs from Ash Wednesday until the Mass of the Lord’s Supper exclusive [General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar 28].

This means, as we saw below, that Lent includes forty four days of penance. If you want to have the number of "penitential days between Ash Wednesday and Easter," then the total will be forty five because Good Friday is also a day of penance under Canon 1250. (Holy Saturday, while it is a day on which fasting is recommended, is not technically a days of penance in the law.)

Sundays in Lent: Part III

A reader writes:

The suspension of penitential practice on Sundays, I would think, is more than just one option among many. I would say that the Catholic devotional and liturgical tradition, taken as a whole, inveighs against any attempt to practice penance on the Lord’s Day.

In the Liturgy of the Hours, every Sunday of Lent begins with this reading from Lauds:

Today is holy to the Lord your God. Do not be sad, and do not weep; for today is holy to our Lord. Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength! (Nehemiah 8: 9, 10).

The disposition demanded by this reading seems incompatible with normal penitential practices. Your take on the matter?

I would say that "inveighs" is too strong a term, especially when one is speaking of "any attempt to practice penance on the Lord’s Day" (see below on Sundays as days of penance). I also would say that "demands" is too strong a term for what the reading from Nehemiah is doing regarding our dispositions. The disposition described in Nehemiah is applicable to a particular historical situation, and the Liturgy of the Hours holds it up to us as something to be emulated to the extent our situation mirrors the one in which it was demanded–a mirroring which is only partial.

I would say, however, that the nature of Sunday as the day of commemorating the Resurrection of Our Lord makes it reasonable and even suitable to modify penitential practices on that day. It is certainly more reasonable to lessen penitential practices on Sunday than it would be, for example, on Monday. So if you are going to lighten up on yourself on a weekday of Lent, that would be the day to do it. However, Sundays remain days of penance, and if someone chooses to continue their Lenten penitential practice on Sundays while still celebrating it the way that the Church envisions it according to law, I cannot fault the person. I’m not going to tell someone who has decided to give up ice cream and television for Lent that they must plop themselves down in front of the tube with a bowl of Haagen-Dazs.

Sundays in Lent: Part II

Are Sundays part of Lent? This question often arises because of the custom (mentioned in Part I) of many people giving themselves a break from penance on Sundays in Lent.

The answer is yes, Sundays are part of Lent. Here is the definition of Lent from the General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar:

Lent runs from Ash Wednesday until the Mass of the Lord’s Supper exclusive [no. 28].

There’s nothing in that about Sundays not counting, so Sundays are indeed part of Lent.