Basically just another account showing how fundamentally stupid and broken the US system is, and how dumb and bad the people running things are.
Christianity has single-handedly demoted fish from animals to vegetables in the eyes of tens of millions of Americans. It’s really incredible.
miracle of transubstantiation
This bread? Meat. This fish? Not meat.
Imagine going through the grueling and presumably humiliating process of becoming a SCOTUS law clerk and finding out that the judges are indistinguishable from your dumbest Facebook uncle. There’s a guaranteed cushy job on the other end, but whatever idealism you had left would get shoved into a garbage bag and tossed off a bridge. No wonder lawyers are so jaded.
Time to bring up a case where they have to argue how many angels can dance on the head of a pin
Fun fact: He kind of is wrong.
From the current U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Fast and Abstinence page:
Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are obligatory days of fasting and abstinence for Catholics. In addition, Fridays during Lent are obligatory days of abstinence.
For members of the Latin Catholic Church, the norms on fasting are obligatory from age 18 until age 59. When fasting, a person is permitted to eat one full meal, as well as two smaller meals that together are not equal to a full meal. The norms concerning abstinence from meat are binding upon members of the Latin Catholic Church from age 14 onwards.
Gee, that’s confusing. Why would they specify that it applies to everyone 14 and older, but also that it applies to people between 18 and 59 only? Is it that everyone is prevented from eating meat, but 18-59 must eat only one full meal and two smaller meals? I don’t know many Catholics who actually abide by that.
In accordance with canon 1253 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, the USCCB has also allowed that some other form of penance for the traditional abstinence on all of the Fridays of the year, except for those Fridays in Lent, fulfills the obligation of penance.
Wait a sec, abstinence on all of the Fridays of the year, except for those Fridays in Lent? So it’s actually supposed to be every Friday? I had this argument out with a priest in during my “Jewish Agnostic debate sis trapped in a Catholic school” phase. He did some digging and uh, yeah. The rules have shifted, but the meaning and intent is that you’re not allowed to have sex on Fridays (Not just during Lent!) and that fasting (including no meat) applies on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Of course nobody actually really did all of that, so they just let it keep slipping til the 20th century, when people began to just assume it meant that they were supposed to abstain from meat during Lent. The church basically just gave up in 1983 and said that bishops can just go ahead and figure out whatever they want “fasts” and “abstinence” to be and mean whatever they want.
So, Scalia was just straight up wrong about this til he was nearly 50, and then the Catholic Church just gave up.
There’s two separate practices: Abstinence, and fasting, with some different rules. Abstaining means no sex as you said, and you don’t eat meat, with the exception of fish and mollusks (can’t remember if other types of seafood are allowed because I don’t eat seafood in general), and abstinence. From 14-17 you’re only required to do abstinence, even on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Abstinence is required on those days and every Friday of Lent. Fasting is only required on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. I guess it’s kinda funny to imagine a couple marrying on a Friday and not being able to consummate.
And I think the confusion you’re talking about might be because the rules are very different in different countries (though I’m not sure about it varying by diocese as you suggest, it’s fairly consistent throughout countries). For example, where I live, there’s never been that rule to abstain on every Friday of the year, and I think it’s also like that in most places in Latin America. I’m pretty sure that Catholics in the US used to all abstain on Fridays even after 1983. I know that a lot of Tradcaths still do it, but they’re such a small minority (but very prevalent online ofc).
I’m sure you already knew a lot of that but the point is that afaik in Latin America we haven’t had as many inconsistencies with that because we keep abstinence and fasting to Lent only. Also, I hadn’t heard of fasting in Holy Saturday, that sounds like something regional as well.
Yeah, most things aren’t decided on the diocese level, and are instead decided at the national level.
I guess it’s not super inconsistent within the living memory of the average hexbearian, but it’s definitely inconsistent over the last thousand, or even 200 years.
That’s true. I’ve never asked around or even googled to see how much it’s changed in the last centuries where I live.
One of the things I remember from when I was much younger was when I thought that Thanksgiving was a holy day of obligation where I lived because I saw some reminders from some American centric people saying to go to Mass. I think my dad called a priest and the priest was like
wtf do you mean why would we celebrate that.
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Jessica Simpson moment
“You’re telling me the Pope has been wrong for centuries?”
