Or, for that matter, their kids. The proscribed Lenten fast is for ages 18 to 59; Rome has not yet heard that 60 is the new 40. You call it Lent; I call it Ramadan Light. We Catholics, you see, have devised all these loopholes for this time of ascesis and penance. We can’t eat meat on Friday, but, of course, “fish’’ is not “meat’’ no matter what the USDA food pyramid says, so the sale of McDonald’s filet-of-fish sandwiches remains brisk. Personally, I am skeptical of any exercise in self-control that permits a double-cheese pizza, but I’m cranky like that when deprived of bacon.
Furthermore, and this is something I only learned last year, the six weeks of Lent do not include the Sundays therein. Sunday being the day Christ rose from the dead, it’s a feast day, and therefore, not part of the Lenten observance. Imagine that. All these years, when I’ve given up chocolate or ice cream, all along I could have been stuffing myself with Hershey’s kisses each Sunday. (I will not be sharing this new knowledge with my kids, just like my mother did not tell me. I’m old school: You give up something, you give it up from Ash Wednesday through Easter.)
Last November, the church returned to a more traditional language in the Mass, discarding some of the changes the Second Vatican Council made to the ancient liturgy and causing mass stammering on Sunday mornings throughout Advent. Significantly, however, the Church did not return to the pre-Vatican II practices of Lent, which were considerably sterner before this loosening of the theological belt in the 1960s.
Fifty years ago, Catholics restricted their food intake (they called it a partial fast) every day during Lent, except for Fridays, Saturdays, and Ash Wednesday, when a full fast was observed. Rome must think today’s Catholics would not stand for that and would, if so compelled, defect to the Episcopal Church en masse.
