Eating meat on Friday is itself not morally problematic like adultery or murder. So, for a Catholic, it has to be religious or cultic. The word "religion" comes from "religio" which means the bonds that connect us with each other and God. All religions involve acts that are sacred and others that are wicked. Jews and Muslims abstain from pork. I don't understand why. Most ancient religions focus on "cleanliness." But the Catholic Church is not concerned with that. Then what is the meaning of abstaining from meat on Friday? Four themes come to mind.
1. Confession of sin. It is an act of penance whereby we admit that we have sinned; that we are sinners; that we are in need of God's forgiveness and help to avoid sin and become holy.
2. Remembrance and adoration of our crucified Jesus. We do it on Friday because Jesus died on Good Friday. So, every Friday we remember Him and this supreme act of love. We give thanks and love and praise.
3. Solidarity with all Catholics. We are all doing this together; we are not lonely, isolated individuals, but part of a family, the Church. It is a sign of belonging.
4. Obedience. Even if we can't give the reasons for the practice, we obey the Church which we trust. To be Catholic is to be a child, to be childlike but not childish, to be trusting, receptive, obedient; to be faithful and filial to God our Father, the promptings of the Holy Spirit, the influence of our Mother Mary, and the teachings of our mother the Church. It is not to be an autonomous, independent monad.
There are very few Church rules. Your freshman soccer team has more rules than the Catholic Church. One of the six current rules is to do some act of penance on Friday and to abstain from meat the Fridays of Lent. Perhaps 2 % of Catholics obey this rule. The other 98 % are sinning. Imagine the soccer coach who has six rules: come to practice on time, in a clean uniform, follow directions, keep all grades at D or better, do not be suspended for from school for behavior, do not be arrested for a felon. If 98% of his players flout these rules, will he (or she...sorry!) build a strong program? If he wants a serious team, he needs to suspend and even expel players who violate the rules. No?
Are those 98% of Catholics in a state of mortal sin? Unlikely. Almost all of them are ignorant of them. If they are asked, perhaps by a pious cousin: "What are you giving up on Fridays?" the question will be some form of Greek or Sanskrit. Is their ignorance "invincible" in that they could not have avoided it and therefore they are not culpable? Very hard to judge.
Let's imagine an ordinary guy; who practices his faith and understands it pretty well; who loves hamburgers. He is out with his buddies at a steakhouse on a Friday in lent. He is starving. The only non-meat on the menu is fish patties, which he hates. They have the most delicious bacon double cheeseburger in the world. He caves: orders and eats the burger. Is that a sin? Is it mortal? Definitely a sin. Pretty serious! Is it mortal? Hard to say. For sure he is weak: gluttony is one of his problems. But his motive, his intention was not directly to disrespect God Church or Jesus on the Cross or his communion with the Church. But that is what he did, objectively, even if it wasn't his intention. He was blinded by his hunger and gluttony. If he has a heart attack half-way through the burger, does he go to hell? Not if he repents. But what if it happens so quickly he cannot repent? Don't know. He is such a weak character that it was probably less than full consent of the will. But if I were him, I would err on the side of caution; consider it mortal; and confess it as soon as possible and absolutely not receive communion until it is confessed and absolve. And he needs a program of restrain and moderation.
But let's imagine a very intelligent, well-educated Catholic who is unburdened by serious emotional or mental troubles. He knows full well about the Friday practice and its meaning. So he quite calmly decides: I am NOT sorry for my sins, as a matter of fact I love them and hope to intensify them. I despise this Jesus and everything he stands for, including his disgusting death. I am me and me alone and want no part of the Church or any other community like that. I obey my own preferences only; no way I could obey the Church, of all things. In his resentment, isolation and suspicion, he is already in the state of sin. Yes, he is on his way to hell.
So: could people who ate meat on Friday be in hell? Could be! We just don't know! But the smart money in Vegas is following Pascal's wager: they are going for shrimp and lobster on Fridays in lent.
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This is my response to Uncle Matt's post on eating meat on Friday. I'm writing with my phone so please excuse any grammatical errors. I spoke to Matt about some concerns about his post, namely that he sounds like a pharasee and that he is using Pascal's wager backwards. In the Gospels, Jesus never engages the Pharasees on a legal level because their interpretation of the law was correct and likewise, Matt's legal interpretation of eating meat on Friday is correct and I will not argue with it. The problem is that, like the Pharasees in the gospel, it misses the point, they miss the one who is in their midst- Jesus- in their effort to make sure they were following the rules properly. Also, Matt's use of Pascal's wager is a regression away from any expression of mature faith into a fear based expression. A proper use of Pascal's wager can be used with someone who is stuck outside the door of faith and it can lead them to the door, in which they personally can open into a life of faith. Matt's use can actually lead a person back to that door and potentially outside altogether by use of fear. These are the main issues that I spoke to Matt about but I wish to further elaborate my serious concerns.
Firstly, the analogy of the team I find to be accurate and extremely problematic. I don't think that Matt has an accurate interpretation of the analogy though. Here's the problem, the Church has decided to take nice and basic spiritual practices/disclipines i.e. not eating meat on Friday, which Matt nicely explained the spiritual benefit, and uses them to form allegiance (obedience) to the institute of the Church with a punishment of eternal damnation i.e. mortal sin. To use Matt's analogy of the team, I think it would be equivalent to using a nice and basic practice that is meant to help your performance i.e. getting 8 hours of sleep, showing up on time for practice, eating healthy and saying that not only can you not be part of the team, but you can not play the sport anywhere at any point, and not only that but if you don't follow these basic rules, which are made up by the coach, which are simple practices meant to help you play better, if you know the rules and willfully neglect them, you're going to be eternally damned to hell. It's not that you have to sit out for a bit, take two minutes in the penalty box, but that you break these rules and you get in a car accident on the way home and die, you'll spend eternity in hell. The punishment for not obeying is severely and maybe infinitely disproportionate. Somehow, the Church has turned basic spiritual practices and used the fear of eternal damnation, mortal sin, to create a pathological allegiance/obedience to the team/institute and in doing so has overshadowed, surpressed, and substituted any freedom and joy of playing the game into a fear based obedience to the team/institute.
It has substituted an authentic religious expression of faith with a pathological allegiance to the team. It also creates a self-righteous, (in the sense that you're making yourself right, not losing your salvation if you follow the man made rules) pathological, and dualistic worldview of us versus them, we're right/safe because we follow these rules and you're salvation is at jeopardy because you don't. It substitutes allegiance/institute to the team with an actual authentic expression of faith. Like the Pharasees, they completely miss Jesus in their midst. People have been born into this team environment, been formed into it and it is deeply entrenched in the culture. Now, this formation would "work" really well for someone who happens to be the first born of a large family and has a personality/temperament that gravitates towards rule following, authority, tradition, and hierarchy. But, I could also see how this pathology might manifest/surface in other unhealthy expressions. And could it be that "faith" is reduced to satisfy a personality and/or psychological need for security? Or it might "work" well for someone who had a positive family upbringing and association with the Church. My Catholic association to this mentally was relatively benign due to a "watered down" catechetical formation and it wasn't until I had my "conversation" that I became formed in this sense of obedience to the Church.I can also see how this systemic pathology could lead to a massive systemic cover-up of severe sexual abuse of the hierarchy because unwavering loyalty and protection of the institute/team is considered the highest good and an absolute expression of faith and loyalty to Jesus. Any blemish or blow to the institute i.e. sexual scandal would feel like a personal disobedience to the institute and the possibility of eternal damnation.
I could also see how masses of people, maybe not inclined towards rule following, could leave the Church and make statements like "I'm spiritual not religious", "I'm a recovering Catholic", and "I have a lot of Catholic guilt that I'm working through." I could also understand how someone might even say that the Catholic Church is the whore of Babylon- because this systemic fear based obedience to the institute keeps people exiled from the freedom of a life of authentic faith and spirituality. I speak mostly from experience: I've been entrenched/formed in and lived the pathological, self-righteous, self-deceptive "faith" of the pharasee. It's a "faith" that looks really good, acts and thinks correctly, but is really just an expression and mask of the false self. Since leaving the friars, I have been trying to form a healthy Catholic identity and to discern my place in the Church, while healing from this systemic pathology. It has taken a lot of time and work. I've taken solace in the set aside prayer as a path forward. I needed the assistance of AA, an organization outside the entrenched culture of misguided obedience, and other persons/resources to have an authentic spiritual experience.
https://images.app.goo.gl/72x9R1e6MvTu3iBV7
I could elaborate a lot more on this topic but I will leave it at this, mostly because I'm writing with my phone.
Brendan
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