The restoration of the Friday fast is a historic day for English and Welsh Catholics

 Cheers for the Bishops of England and Wales!

However, I cannot agree with your opinion that it is obedience that binds us together. Obedience is only valuable when it is an expression of love. CVII made a fatal mistake: it assumed the people were spiritually ready for complete freedom and autonomy, when in fact most were not, because they had been educated with this mentality of “obey, obey, obey!”. And when it wasn’t a matter of law anymore, they felt free to disregard it completely, with tragic results even in Mass attendance.

Still, the goals of CVII were the true ones: a people inspired by faith and love of God is ever more capable of greater autonomy. It is not obedience to the dead letter of decrees and disciplines that holds us together; if it is, then we are together only on an external and pointless level. True togetherness is the result of personal choice. Not a once in a lifetime choice after which we give up reason and merely submit to whatever our superiors say; but a continuous choice to grow in holiness and love for each other, which includes following the guidance of our superiors, out of our trust for them and the desire to live a faith that is public as well as private. 

This is a genuine question and does not deprecate the positive intentions of the church. What is the logic of eating fish on Fridays? As children we woke up the cooking bouquet of kippers, instead of bacon. It was wonderful, and there was no penance in enjoying this lovely breakfast. In the evening we enjoyed haddock or plaice with chips and in the summer we enjoyed a salmon salad. As stated, I am not being difficult, but I cannot see the logic in doing without meat, which is proving to toxic and unhealthy. Therefore instead of doing meaningless ‘symbolic’ penance, why perform an altruistic act to relieve the hardship and suffering of another person.  

The Bishops wish to re-establish the practice of Friday penance in the
lives of the faithful as a clear and distinctive mark of their own
Catholic identity. They recognise that the best habits are those which
are acquired as part of a common resolve and common witness. It is
important that all the faithful be united in a common celebration of
Friday penance.
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Mature Catholics are fully capable of making Friday holy in their own way. Those who are going to derive any spiritual benefit from it don’t need bishops dictating to them what they must or must not do.  At a time when the Roman episcopacy has lost all moral authority, this is a weak and  flabby statement filled with escape clauses. A statement only the brain dead will take seriously. Those who will obey it will do so, and those who are capable of thinking for themselves will ignore it.

The spirit of this decree is what is important here and not the fact that it is an imposition. You should want to eat fish on Friday, or fast, or abstain from beer and whiskey. The People of God don’t need these bishops to tell us or anyone to be holy and how to go about doing it.  They are the last people on earth to be telling the rest of us to be penitent.

If anyone should be doing public penance for their sins they’re to be found in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, not the laity.
As for me not embracing publc penance I refer you to Mt6,1-4; Mt6, 6-7; Mt6, 14-18; Luke11, 46 and Mark7,17-23. 
I have always been brought up to suffer in silence (with a happy face as much as possible) and pray in private.
If the bishops said or mean that this is something voluntary then I have no beef (no pun intended!) with it, but if they said its obligatory under pain of mortal sin I can’t in all good conscience agree with them.
I also resent the implication that Catholics who do not subscribe to this new resolution are are any less Catholic than those Catholics who do or that they are worse witnesses to Christ merely because they do not publicly proclaim they don’t eat meat on Fridays.

 Apparently you haven’t heard, but it’s the Kingdom of God, not the republic. A kingdom real kingdom has a king who commands absolute obedience in His kingdom through his representatives. AgingPapist? Must be one of the “Spirit of Vatican 2 crowd.

Pray, what´s WRONG in reading papal encyclicas? Many of them are very good reading and substantial food for thought. Maybe you should try them, once in a while and resist the temptation of indulging yourself on Küng and suchlike drivel. 

AgingPapist you have a spirit of rebellion influencing you. God placed authority in His Church which is exercised by the Bishops. As Jesus said of the Scribes and the Pharisees, “they sit in Moses’ seat”. Humble yourself man and gladly take up this penance proscribed by the Bishops to us and to themselves.

I have no wish to be disrespect or unkind about your “modernist drivel” remark, but it is facile to make such an assertion without clarification of what this means. It is a political and economic fact that modernism and secularism are now established ways of life. It is clear that some bloggers wish to return to an epoch of authoritarianism and papal obedience. However laudable these aspirations may be, it is most unlikely, improbable or maybe impossible that the era prior to John XXIII will ever return.
I am old enough to remember the reign of Pius XII and I feel nostalgia and pathos for that that period. However, there has been world social change and the Catholic Church has not changed with it. People do not wish to go hungry and reside in a pigsty in this world in the hope of eternal happiness in the next, while the bishop lives in a palace.
But sadly, concomitant attitudes in that era were unjust, cruel and tyrannical with anachronistic, unrealistic, authoritarianism such as papal infallibility. Those days will never return, because of what you call “modernist drivel” (reason and rationality). Human intellect and dignity will never again allow a group of celibate misogynistic old men who are hidden away in a medieval palace to dictate the fate of the people of the world.
unrealistic, authoritarianism such as papal infallibility. Those days will never return, because of what you call “modernist drivel” (reason and rationality). Human intellect and dignity will never again allow a group of celibate misogynistic old men who are hidden away in a medieval palace to dictate the fate of the people of the world.
Lastly, you refer to the opinions and attitudes of other bloggers as ‘drivel’, yet you wish for your views to be respected, that seems like a paradox. I mentioned before that those catholic bloggers who claim to be most devout are also the most obnoxious, uncharitable and unkind with caustic rhetorical abuse. 

Sarcasm, they say, is the lowest form of wit; and this isn’t even very clever sarcasm. 

 ”To thine own self be true”, eh? — the watchword of Polonius, the biggest silly old fool in all of Shakespeare. 

But it’s not what Aging Papist says, it’s the way that he says it. Disagree with him, and you’re brain dead. 

To the stake with you. 

“ A new COMMANDMENT I give to you, that you should love one another even as I love you.”
The commandment says ‘should’ not ‘must’ which serves to solidify my position that we all have consciences and Christ wants us to use them to come to him. Force and coercion are absent from his teachings but this declaration is just that, as it was 50 years ago and before that. If you read what I said in reply to Joel Pinheiro above and the verses I’ve quoted you might better understand where I’m coming from. You, as with the bishops, might have nothing to offer as penance except not eating meat on Fridays but adding this burden to Catholics who are jobless, hungry and even homeless is preposterous. In any event meat is well nigh one of the cheapest foodstuffs going these days and I shall continue to provide same for the hungry and encourage them to eat it whether its a Friday or not…. and I shall too. If this “disobedience” earns me the fire of hell, so be it. But according to Matthew 25, 31- 46, I don’t think so. 

The essential point here is whether the Bishops are trying to reinstate the previous ruling under what, as others have asked, the sanction of mortal sin, i.e. an eternal damnation that with present ideas of the universe, could last for the equivalent of trillions of years.  If that is the case, it is absurd and will merely expose a group of men, generally seen by the world as the comfortable and complacent protectors of child abusers, to rightful ridicule. 

I’m a convert myself. I think AgingPapist goes too far. I think the encyclicals would be an EXCELLENT bedtime reading program! And what’s more, their emphasis has not been, for some decades now, on obedience in pre-Vatican II terms. The Popes now are, like truly wise masters, much more willing to propose than impose. And lay Catholics, as a result, will be much stronger in their Faith, which will grow beyond the bounds of mere obedience and following of rules.

I do think there is something wrong about the way the Church handled the question of authority for some centuries now (nothing that compromised Her sacred mission and the essence of Her teaching and practice, surely). And Vatican II was a huge step in the right direction, despite the abuses done in its name. When ancient and medieval thinkers used terms like law, precept and obedience, they meant something much different from our current legalistic notions of submitting one’s will and shutting off one’s reason to an authority or to the letter of the law. Perhaps the problem came with William Ockham and nominalism; perhaps it was something already there from the beginning of the Roman Church, so bound up with Roman Law.

Who knows… Anyway, enough rambling. I hope the bishops of England take this new rule as an opportunity to instruct and help the faithful grow in the faith, and not as one more little imposition that must be followed under pain of Hell.

But do you think the bishops would object to a poor man eating meat if that is the only thing he can afford???

This rule is to be followed within each person’s capabilities. If you have health problems, or is too weak, too old, too young, too poor, or live too far from the sea to buy fresh fish, then don’t follow it with a clear conscience. No-one would condemn you for that.

Now, those who have ample capabilities of following the new rule, why not follow it? Why make disobedience rather than obedience the default attitude? 

Obedience deserves explication – We deserve the wisdom and guardianship to grow in understand why – hence what once we did out of obedience we cannot possibly consider doing anything but – due to love!

That’s where the early 20th century Church went wrong – we forgot the apologetics – we never explained the why – hence when the council came we couldn’t defend the sacred praxis..because we just complied out of duty and a comforing ritualised group familiarity…

we forgot the why – hence when we had walked down their road of the council  with a false sense of security claiming we knew everything and convinced we had answers for everything – when the scoundrel turned on us and confronted us with the ‘why?’ – we became dumbstruck and incredulous..- we had no answer for them….

Dr Oddie’s right about obedience – but obedience to a responsible authority who knows the obedient need the why explained to them…unyil the growth in understanding becomes overwhelmed with a love for the thing itself….

On the contrary Mr Oddie, it appears that you cannot distinguish between sarcasm and irony which for, “a leading English Catholic writer,” as either you describe yourself or at least allow yourself to be so described, seems to say little for current Catholic literature.

Five eights of the world population scarcely have enough food to eat and the chief concern of the Catholic church seems to be whether to choose between a tuna fish or roast beef sandwich on a Friday. Imagine it being a sin to eat a roast beef sandwich on a Friday. It is little wonder that the bishops have lost so much deference and credibility. Human beings have evolved with free will, with the ability and freedom to choose what is right, for them. There is nothing wrong with a person agreeing to abide by the rules or policies of the church and to be guided by the bishop and the Pope, and the established catholic church dogma, if they wish to do so.I place emphasis on “if they wish to do so”, because no human being of intellect or dignity would willingly allow themselves to be subservient or submissive to another. However if some Catholics choose to be deferential and obsequious to the Majesty of the church and be obedient in all things, that is a good thing and denotes self discipline, which I applaud.Fifty years ago, British civil servants wore morning suits and bowler hats, and heads of state wore castor hats on official and ceremonial occasions. Now they do not, because social attitudes and values have changed. Last Sunday at mass, the priest wore a plain while chasuble without any decoration whatsoever, it could have been a white bed sheet. So with the church, I anticipate that over the next fifty years, all ceremonial attire such as mitres and golden vestments will also disappear. Catholic 365 wrote, the church is not a republic, I will not argue, but I suggest that the concept of Novus Ordo Seclorum (Latin for “New Order of the Ages”) that appears on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, first designed in 1782, be explored further in the context of the future of the Roman Catholic Church.If any blogger is tempted to retort to my premise with insults, sarcasm and abuse please study the premise first, and then reply with a cogent response.

Do you think this man really doesn’t understand what drivel this is? Probably not: oh how deeply depressing. 

Well said.   J

So, the carefully thought out response from our ”leading English Catholic writer,” is to claim my view that,  “absolute obedience finishes in misery” is “drivel.” Oh dear, how “deeply depressing” indeed that he does not even try to prove the opposite but then to misquote the immortal Mandy, “He couldn’t, could he?”

 To restore the Friday abstinence (NOT fast,and NOT necessarily fish) is a good move. To restore the proper Holidays of Obligation would be better still. Best of all would be to get rid of the Sign of Peace – or,at the very least,to confine it to a minority of Masses.

Could someone please explain why the message appears duplicated and disjointed when that is not the message that was posted. Is this some sort of technique to devalue the message or to discourage the the blogger from sending further messages? 

 So as someone who doesn’t like fish that much, I am left with the choice of fasting or abandoning any social life on a Friday night, the only night of the week I drink. Not only that but I rarely eat red meat more than once a fortnight, I mostly eat chicken, they haven’t thought this through with the reality of peoples lives. It was suggested that vegatartians give up carrots when I first heard this..seriously?