La Bénédiction des blés en Artois by Jules Breton / Wikimedia Commons
CV NEWS FEED // A prominent U.S. bishop has called for a return to the penitential practices of fasting during Advent and on Ember Days and abstaining from meat on Fridays.
Ember Days are three days of fasting observed periodically throughout the liturgical year; the practice was universally kept in the Church prior to 1969.
At the fall plenary session of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Archbishop Borys Gudziak, the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Archeparchy of Philadelphia in the Ukrainian Catholic Church and chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, made the recommendation to all the assembled bishops.
In a discussion presentation on Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’, Archbishop Gudziak suggested that the bishops of the Latin rite should reintroduce these penitential practices of fasting and abstinence, which were long observed in the Church before Vatican II.
“A second suggestion: We could renew the tradition of Friday abstinence from meat,” Archbishop Gudziak said. He referenced the example of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, who in 2011 “reintroduced the pre-Vatican II practice, actually 2,000 years of practice, of abstaining from meat every Friday.”
The current practice in the Latin rite in the U.S. is the observance of fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and abstaining from meat on those days as well as all Fridays of Lent. Abstinence from meat on all other Fridays is recommended, but not obligatory. Still, Fridays are to be kept as a penitential day by some act of voluntary penance.
The Archbishop said the return to the Church’s older penitential observances in England and Wales was “inspired by Pope Benedict’s pastoral visit to England that year.” Extolling environmental as well as spiritual benefits, Archbishop Gudziak said that, in England and Wales, “scholars calculated the environmental benefits, and they are significant.”
“A return to Friday abstinence would be good for the soul and for the planet, maybe for something else, uniting our devotion to the Lord and reverence for the Lord’s creation,” he added.
Archbishop Gudziak added that reintroducing fasting and abstinence in the Latin church could be a way of uniting it with the Eastern rites as well.
“Furthermore, fasting could be an opportunity for synodal engagement: exploring ancient practices in the Latin rite, such as ember days or Advent fasts, and other rich Eastern Christian practices among Catholics and others,” he concluded.
