The Catholic Book Club discussion

3. In week 5 (Tuesday, March 26), Cardinal Pell discusses the importance of fasting and abstinence from meat on Fridays. At a dinner comparing various faith traditions Catholics came off second worst, beating only liberal Protestants, though I am not familiar with any Protestant tradition that makes fasting an important part of their spirituality. He also refers to the no longer common distinction of abstinence from meat on Fridays. Is such fasting and abstinence a part of your spiritual life? Should it receive increased emphasis in the Church?

In this respect, Spain was different from most other countries in the world. In the fifteenth century, while the Catholic Monarchs were preparing the conquest of the Muslim kingdom of Granada, which would put an end to the Spanish reconquest, they needed a lot of money, and the Church came to their help with the Bull of the Holy Crusade, which, against a monetary stipend, reduced the number of days of fasting and abstinence to more or less what we have now. Almost five centuries later, this difference was still in effect.

The Second Vatican Council put an end to this. What they did was, essentially, to extend the Spanish exemption to all countries, without the monetary stipend, adding that all Fridays in the year, outside Lent, we should be doing some sacrifice, without specifying what: giving alms, praying, abstaining from eating meat, or whatever.

So, for Spanish people, the change was to make abstinence and fasting slightly more hard than it had been before :)