A Few Reminders on Fast and Abstinence During Lent

As Lent fast approaches, I’ve seen some pushback on X from Anglicans on “why do we do the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday as Anglicans?” It’s a fair question, and the culprits in the Anglican-Episcopal world are the “more Catholic than the Pope” people, the Anglo-Catholics. In the middle of their preparation for the impositions and their exhortations to “figure out what you’re going to give up during Lent” it’s worth stopping to consider a few things. As someone who has done both the Old High Church and Roman Catholicism, I think I can bring a different perspective to this whole discussion.

I don’t remember going to an imposition of ashes during my years at Bethesda, although I may have gone to one during my prep school years at St. Andrew’s. I didn’t do many as a Roman Catholic, and there’s a good reason for that: Ash Wednesday isn’t a Holy Day of Obligation for Roman Catholics in the U.S.! (Neither is Good Friday.) I was faithful to the days of obligation (and that was back in the day when you went to them during the week, and not this “move to Sunday” rubbish) but Ash Wednesday wasn’t one of them.

Turning to the issue of fast and abstinence, the regulations for those haven’t changed either, as this from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops attests:

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.

The fast was put more simply back in the day: skip one meal. As a student at Texas A&M, unencumbered by my Baptistic mother, I fasted the entire day when I could.

With the abstinence, being an engineering student at Texas A&M had one bonus for Texas Catholics: there was a McDonald’s across the street from the Zachry Engineering Centre, which allowed the convenient weekly Lenten consumption of the Filet-o-Fish sandwich. We now know that this was the whole point of that menu item.

For those exhorting us to “up our game” on Lent–Anglo-Catholic, Trad or exvangelical liturgical enthusiast–the simple requirements of post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism may come as a shock. But the truth is that Roman Catholicism instituted the imposition of ashes and all of the Lenten practices that followed, and it has–for better or worse–adapted those to life today. That should give pause to the “more Catholic than the Pope” people of all kinds, and perhaps should turn the rest of us away from trying to keep up with the Joneses and do something that will draw us closer to God between now and the time we celebrate His Resurrection.