Catholics should refrain eating meat until after Easter?

Question

As faithful catholic, after Ash Wednesday, I refrain from eating meat on Fridays until after Easter Celebration - My Mum and I are having a heavy debate over this, I want to show some proof - I want to end this silly squabble over this debate.

Answer 1

Yes, adult Catholics in good health are required to abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent. Feel free to eat fish, though. See the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website (www.usccb.org) for confirmation of this.

Canon (church) law formerly required Catholics to abstain from meat on Fridays, not just during Lent. This requirement has been modified to allow Catholics who do not abstain from meat on Fridays outside of Lent to substitute some other devotional/penitential practice.

Answer 2

You can have a steak on Easter. Fasting is until Easter not until after Easter.

Here is the link to the Code of Canon (Church) Law: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P4O.HTM

Catholics (at least 14 years old) in the United States are obliged to abstain from the eating of meat on Ash Wednesday and on all Fridays during the season of Lent.

Catholics (from 18 to 60 years old) are also obliged to fast on Ash Wednesday and on Good Friday.

Self-imposed observance of fasting on all weekdays of Lent is strongly recommended. This is where people also give up chocolate, sarcasm, or something else for Lent.

With love in Christ.

Answer 3

According to the General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, "Lent is a preparation for the celebration of Easter. For the Lenten liturgy disposes both catechumens and the faithful to celebrate the paschal mystery: catechumens, through the several stages of Christian initiation; the faithful through reminders of their own baptism and through penitential practices" (General Norms 27).

Lent is the Old English word for spring. In almost all other languages, Lent's name is a derivative of the Latin term quadragesima or "the forty days."

In the Bible, forty days is a traditional number of discipline, devotion, and preparation. Moses stayed on the mountain of God forty days (Ex. 24:18, 34:28). The spies were in the land forty days (Num. 13:25). Elijah traveled forty days before he reached the cave where he had his vision (1 Kgs. 19:8). Nineveh was given forty days to repent (Jonah 3:4). And, most significantly for our Lenten observance, Jesus spent forty days in wilderness praying and fasting prior to undertaking his ministry (Matt. 4:2). Thus it is fitting for Christians to imitate him with a forty-day period of prayer and fasting to prepare to celebrate the climax of Christ's ministry, Good Friday (the day of the crucifixion) and Easter Sunday (the day of the Resurrection).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "'For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sinning' [Heb. 4:15]. By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert" (CCC 540).

Is there a biblical basis for abstaining from meat as a sign of repentance?
Yes. The book of Daniel states, "In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia . . . 'I, Daniel, mourned for three weeks. I ate no choice food; no meat or wine touched my lips; and I used no lotions at all until the three weeks were over'" (Dan. 10:1-3).

Since the Catholic Church requires abstinence from meat only on a temporary basis, it clearly does not regard meat is immoral. Instead, it regards it as the giving up of a good thing in order to attain a spiritual goal.

Answer 4

Actually Catholics are supposed to not eat meat on every Friday of the year. But a lot of them don't know this.
.

Answer 5

I didn't know only Catholics fast until Easter...!!??
For your information first of all, it's not only Catholics that are fasting. The lent period is for ALL Christians.

Answer 6

That is what you are doing for lent. I don't know that it is still a law, they changed so many laws like that one early in the 1960's.

The only way to get proof is to go see your priest and ask him. This is the only proof your mom will accept you know that. Good luck.

Answer 7

Read ROMANS 14.

BTW - "Lent" and abstaining from meat on Fridays is not in the Bible - it is a man-made ritual.

Answer 8

Says who? You.