I found myself looking at fasting rules in the United States of America for Roman Catholics. I found myself startled at the changes in their fasting rules since the 1940’s. Having been raised as a Roman Catholic, I know that we were never supposed to eat meat on Fridays and that we were supposed to fast during Lent and eat no meat during that period. In passing, that is how I learned about fish sticks in the USA. Back when I was growing up, fish sticks were a regular part of the Friday cuisine of many Roman Catholics. Fish sticks made life easy for Roman Catholic parents of the 1950’s.
But, how have the fasting rules changed over the centuries for Roman Catholics (and even for Orthodox)? Well, about fasting, Pope Gregory the Great (Papacy: 590-604) said, “We abstain from flesh meat, and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese, and eggs.” That rule lasted all the way through the 1400’s and was incorporated into canon law. By the 1400’s, dairy products were generally allowed even if the canons had not quite been changed yet. Having said that, there was a crucial difference as to what was defined as meat between the East and the West. For the East, if it has a backbone, it is meat. For the West, if it lives in the sea, it is not meat. In parts of the West, birds were not meat. Why not? Well, because fish and birds were created on the fifth day while creatures of the earth were created on the sixth day.
Thus, some in the West interpreted the fasts as meaning fasting from all creatures of the earth, of the sixth day. Creatures of the fifth day were permitted. However, this interpretation never fully caught on in the West, yet fish has continued to be permitted to this day. That definition is strongly found within Western culture. Look inside yourself and you will realize that you really do not consider fish to be meat. Even in the East, there is some ambivalence about fish. After all, even during fasting seasons there are days in which the fast is relaxed and fish is permitted. Allowing fish on a relaxed fasting day indicates that, if we are honest, we Orthodox, too, are not as sure as we claim as to whether fish should be classified fully as meat.
The East and the West also had in common that no fasting is to be done on Sundays. In fact, in the East, no fasting was to be done on either Saturday or Sunday. You need only go to the website of the Greek Orthodox Church in America to read some of the history of fasting to see where it says:
“If any of the clergy be found fasting on the Lord’s Day, or on the Sabbath, excepting the one only, let him be deposed. If a layman, let him be excommunicated” (Canon 66 of the Apostles; cf. Canon 18 of Synod of Gangra).
Zonaras, the profound 12th century commentator on canons, wrote that fasting on Sundays is not permitted “for Christ rose from the grave … we should spend it in offering joyous thanks to God.”
To this day, even in Lent, Orthodox fasting is lightened on both Saturday and Sunday. But, and as an aside, let me say that I have an issue with the modern Orthodox practice of including Sundays in the fasting period. This is a change in over 1,000 years of Christian history and canon and I have strong questions as to whether this should be considered a good change. To argue that this is a disciplinary issue, in that our hierarchs have changed the discipline, is also untenable in that the tradition of the Sunday feast continues this day in our very Divine Liturgy and in what fasting rules the West has left.
But, let me go on. The other feature of fasting in the West that did not change until after the 1940’s is that on fasting days, including all the days of Lent, you were supposed to eat only one full meal a day. If necessary, you were allowed to have a small snack, but that was an allowance, not the rule. For instance, in the Father Lasance Missal of 1945, published here in the USA, it said:
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The Law of Abstinence forbids the use of flesh meat and the juice thereof (soup, etc.). Eggs, cheese, butter and seasonings of food are permitted.
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The Law of Fasting forbids more than one full meal a day, but does not forbid a small amount of food in the morning and in the evening.
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All Catholics seven years old and over are obliged to abstain. All Catholics from the completion of their twenty-first to the beginning of their sixtieth year, unless lawfully excused, are bound to fast.
Notice in point two that only one full meal a day was allowed. Then, rather than saying snacks are permitted morning and evening, it merely says that such snacks are not forbidden. Thus, it points to the expectation that you will try to keep the once a day fast, but that if you cannot, then and only then, are you allowed additional food to help you tide over. According to the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, that rule now applies only to Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
If you read today’s modern Roman Catholic fasting rules, you can see how drastically the fasting rules have changed since the time of my grandparents. What used to be a real call to fasting has become almost a “please fast” attitude. I quote again from the website of the USCCB:
Apart from the prescribed days of fast and abstinence on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and the days of abstinence every Friday of Lent, Catholics have traditionally chosen additional penitential practices for the whole Time of Lent. These practices are disciplinary in nature and often more effective if they are continuous, i.e., kept on Sundays as well. That being said, such practices are not regulated by the Church, but by individual conscience.
Notice that the actual days of Lent are not listed as prescribed days of fast and abstinence any more. They are optional. That is a major change from less than 100 years ago.
Frankly, most Catholics no longer keep any of the fast days. Somehow, the reforms of Vatican Council II missed the mark significantly when they so drastically changed the fasting rules. I do notice one other thing. For centuries, the West has listed age 60 as the end of the fasting period of your life. I am almost 63 years old. Do you think I can convince my bishop that I am now too old to fast?
I am puzzled. I am a “cradle Catholic” When has the no meat on friday changed,, as well as the removal of that for Advent?–Anne jcwamw@aol.com
I did not say that meat on Friday was permitted. I quoted the Conference of Catholic Bishops and said that Fridays ARE days of abstinence (see above). But, the rest of the days of Lent are merely optional days. Moreover, Fridays used to be days of FAST and ABSTINENCE, not just of abstinence. Abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent is still the rule, unless that Friday is a solemnity. It is, however, only encouraged on all other Fridays.
As we Orthodox ourselves are wont to do, you’re equivocating between “fasting” and “abstinence” in our usage. Most modern Orthodox do not make a clear distinction between the two, usually meaning “abstidence” when they use “fasting”, but this is not surprising as the emphasis in our modern usage, due to centuries of growing laxity, is on abstaining from certain foods rather than limiting our food intake. Excepting Holy Saturday, we never fast on Saturdays and Sundays, but during the fasts we do abstain from animal products on these days, but not wine and oil. Historically, both East and West abstained on Sundays, but neither fasted. The problem, of course, is that we say we are “fasting” but in reality we are abstaining. It is due to a change in semantics, not practice.
Well, I would comment that you are both right and wrong. You are completely right in your description of Orthodox history. However, one also has to consider current word usage. The USA’s language on fasting is heavily influenced by American Evangelicalism. Fasting in America does not mean eating less; it means eating nothing. In comparison to that normal cultural usage of the word, what we do is abstinence, not fasting.
You can argue that I should use only Old Country Orthodox word definitions. But then, I run the danger of being misunderstood by an American Evangelical reading this article. And, I have quite a few non-Orthodox readers. So, I chose to use the USA terminology, whether right or wrong.