Can I eat meat today?

If you’re facing a dilemma today, you’re not alone.

If you don’t normally abstain from meat on  Friday because you live somewhere where the local Episcopal Conference has replaced the traditional Friday observance with other penances, then this post doesn’t really matter.

However, if you live somewhere or are a member of a community that or have personally taken on the traditional observance of no meat Fridays, then today could be confusing.

Canon 1451 states, “Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.”

Often 1451 is quoted with that quote ending after the first comma. So, what does this mean?

Well, it could mean different things based on which calendar you follow.

If you follow the old calendar, Friday in the week of Easter is treated as a 1st Class feast day.

The modern calendar treats every day of the Easter Octave as a Solemnity. 

If you do any amount of digging on this topic, you’ll find that there still isn’t any definitive standpoint by many experts and scholars. One must be left to their own conscience and faith. If you adhere to the new calendar and consider today to be a solemnity within the Easter Octave, you might be inclined to forgo abstinence from meat today. If you adhere to the old calendar, there’s no question, today is a normal Friday. 

Personally, while I often attend TLM and pay attention to the old calendar though the great publication Benedictus and the FSSP calendar online, I am ultimately enrolled in a mainstream Novus Ordo parish. That being said, while I would believe I would be just fine in having a hamburger or steak this evening, I won’t be. I decided early on in the day to maintain my typical Friday fasting and will continue with the abstinence when it come time to break the fast this evening. 

At the end of the day, I’m a layman and no expert on anything, these are simply my thoughts. https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1I0aUaVHR8FEqfuwp76ly6CYGZHrGDa96

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