Why did the Church Fasting rules change so much? Jimmy Akin and host Cy Kellett tackle this question in light of the industrial revolution.
Transcript:
Cy: Why did the Church go from severe fasting to weekly fasting to weekly abstinence? And now in the U.S., some other penance can substitute for abstinence. There are currently only two days a year of actual fasting and abstinence that are required in the U.S. Is this a good or bad progression, spiritually speaking?
Jimmy: Okay, so we got two questions here, but first, I need to make a minor factual correction. Shalon says that now in the U.S., some other penance can substitute for abstinence, meaning on Fridays outside of Lent. During Lent, you still have to abstain on Fridays. Abstain from meat. That’s actually not quite accurate. If you go back—and this is something all kinds of folks get wrong—the idea that if you don’t want to abstain, you gotta substitute some other penance. That is not what the Church’s legal documents actually say. Most people never go back and look up these documents, and most of the ones who do don’t read them carefully. But I have.
If you go back and look at the implemented legislation that the U.S. bishops authorized in the 1960s, they don’t say that you need to substitute another penance for abstinence if you don’t want to abstain from meat. What they say is, we hereby terminate the requirement to abstain from meat on Fridays outside of Lent, and we recommend that you either abstain or do something else. But they don’t require that you do something else. So it’s not the case that other penances can substitute for the requirement of abstinence. In the United States, on Fridays outside of Lent, there just is no requirement to do a specific form of penance. You’re advised to do so, you’re encouraged to do so, but it’s not required.
So having said that, let’s look at the first question. Why did the Church go from more severe fasting to less, notably, less severe fasting? Well, basically, the fundamental reason is the Church adapts its practices to the conditions of the time. And so conditions have changed over the last 2000 years, and bishops have ramped up and ramped down various practical requirements of how we practice the faith. This is one of them.
Now, if you’re looking for a specific circumstance that has changed in society that would lead the bishops to decrease the amount of fasting that people need to do, I don’t have an official source on this, but what I would say is it was industrialization. What you find is, if you look in the Middle Ages, when they had the more severe fasting requirements, it was during a period where people had a fairly relaxed approach to work by modern standards. In fact, in some places, almost half the year would be holy days. And so they didn’t have the kind of intense work schedules that we do now.
But then, beginning in the 1700s, this industrialization started, and we got factories. People started moving off the farm where they couldn’t just take a day off, and they had to show up for work every day in the factory and work hard in those factories— you know, the dark satanic mills that they talk about in England. You had to keep your strength up while you were working. You’re using heavy factory equipment. You know, you’re running band saws and metal presses and all kinds of things like that. You got to be careful. You got to keep your strength up. You got to keep your alertness up. And that makes it harder for a lot of folks to fast, especially people who are not used to fasting.
You know, most people here in the West historically would eat three times a day. Now, because of some recent very bad health advice that some people have gotten, they encourage a grazing strategy where you’re eating like six or seven little meals a day. That’s terrible advice. But historically, people would eat three times a day. You’d break your fast in the morning, which is where we get the word breakfast. You’d have a meal around noon, and you’d have another meal in the evening.
And if you’re used to eating three times a day, then your body will adapt to eating three times a day. If you suddenly stop, then your body says, wait a minute, something’s going on here. Food’s not available. We better slow down our metabolism and ramp up the hunger at the same time to encourage him to go find food. So that would cause problems for people in factories to keep up their alertness and strength.
And so you started finding more and more exceptions written into the Church’s moral and pastoral theology handbooks and canon law books and things like that, where it would say, well, you need to fast on Friday. But if you work in a job that would be dangerous if you did that, or you need to keep your strength up, then you can have some food. More and more exceptions got written in, and eventually they just said, let’s just diminish the requirement. Because people today work job schedules where they can’t just say, oh, today’s a fasting day, so we’re really going to kind of kick back and not spend a lot of energy.
So I think that’s the primary factor—industrialization—for why the requirements got less. Now, that actually wouldn’t bug me because I fast every day except Sundays and holy days of obligation. I have one meal a day, so it doesn’t bug me to be fasting during the day. But if you’re used to eating three times a day, it will bug you. So I think that’s the basic reason.
Shalon then asks, is this a good or a bad progression, spiritually speaking? I think that that’s something people can have different opinions on. There’s no magic level of fasting that all Christians are obliged to observe. Fasting is meant to—and like abstinence—is meant to help us grow closer to God. And so if more fasting would help us grow closer to God, then that would be a good thing to do. If less fasting would help more people grow closer to God, then that would be a good thing to do.
You know, you can imagine how in the age of industrialization, with all these folks working in factories, if they suddenly said, oh, we got to do a bunch more fasting now, well, that’s going to cause a bunch of people a bunch of problems and could alienate them from the Church and thus from God. So I think that what you think of the current level of fasting, which I acknowledge is pretty darn minimal, is something that people can have different opinions on.
Cy: Shalon, thank you very much. That brings us exactly to the break, so we’ll take a very quick break. Back with more Ask Me Anything with Jimmy Akin on Catholic Answers Live.