Expert: Fr. Michael - 9/12/2004

Question
is true that we must still obstain from eating meat on fridays?  

Answer
Explicit mention is made of the practice of abstaining from fleshmeat on Fridays in a document from the end of the first century A.D., the “Didache of the Apostles,” as well as by St. Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian in the third century.  The perpetual tradition of the Church is clear beyond possibility of mistake on this matter.

The Friday abstinence was the universal custom from the very
beginning, as Friday was dedicated to the memory of the Passion of Our Lord, as a day on which we should make a special effort to practice penance.  It is in recognition of the fact that Christ suffered and died, and gave up his human flesh and life for our sins on a Friday that Catholics do not eat fleshmeat on Fridays.

       By our abstinence on Friday, we recall, and participate in some small way, in the great sacrifice of Our Lord for us on that Good Friday. Moreover, by abstaining from fleshmeat, we give up what is, on the whole, the most
pleasant as well as the most nourishing food, and so make satisfaction for the temporal punishment due to sin even when its guilt has been forgiven.

The abstinence from fleshmeat is an ecclesiastical law with
associations to Divine Positive Law, as expressed, for example, in St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (9:25) and Second Epistle to the Corinthians (6:5).  It has long obliged under pain of mortal sin, since Pope Nicholas I in the ninth century.  Pope Innocent III at the beginning of the 13th century confirmed this teaching, and Pope Alexander VII anathematized those who would minimize the character of a breach as only venially sinful.

Traditional Catholics know full well that they have a grave obligation of maintaining this immemorial practice since the Apostles.  They can and should confess a knowing and wilful breach as a mortal sin.