Contrariwise

It’s Lent (she says to the three people in the world who missed the last five weeks). That means that all Catholics ages fourteen and up have been obliged to abstain from meat every Friday. I stopped eating meat on all Fridays about two years ago. In the wealth of Catholic resources online, I discovered that, although the USCCB gave us permission to eat meat on Fridays outside of Lent, we were supposed to choose an alternate act of penance. I chose to just not eat meat, and have stuck by that decision ever since (excluding solemnities and the occasional major feast).

However, with every Lent come the traditional fights. How many days are there? Do Sundays “count”? And, is it really so bad to eat meat on Fridays of Lent?

Well, yes. Not because eating meat ought to be a crime (thanks, PETA), but because Christ gave the Church the authority to decide things like this. As with all sin, though, the situation isn’t cut-and-dry. Marcel at Aggie Catholics submitted a post to Catholic Carnival 162 about the objective and subjective natures of this issue.

If you have nothing to eat but meat on a Friday of Lent, you can eat it and not be in sin. Fr. Gurnee (former GWU chaplain) was building a Habitat house in North Carolina when a man offered his group home-barbecued spare ribs. You don’t reject a Southerner’s gift of free food. I once ate half a beef taco before I realized what I was doing. I kept eating it. My friend Joey accidentally got a chicken wrap for lunch last Friday. I advised him that wasting the food and money was worse than just eating it and taking up another penance (like the Stations of the Cross). Fr. Kyle gave the same advice just minutes later.

The penance is the point. At Real Life Rosary, James discussed fasting way back on the first Friday of Lent. Fasting is hard. Sometimes it’s really, really hard. But when we take on hardship and give forth charity and kindness despite our suffering, we give such glory to God. When we give up, we walk right into Satan’s outstretched arms. You can’t win the race unless you run so as to win.