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Can you please tell me if it is right for a Catholic to go out wining and dining with a group of friends and work colleagues on a Friday evening during Lent?
I don't think so but my Catholic friend thinks it's OK. This problem arises every year and I thought I would seek clarification.
Thank you and best wishes,
Diane
{
Is it OK to go out and wine and dine with friends and work colleagues on Friday's during Lent? }
Mike replied:
Hi Diane,
Thanks for the question.
While there is no prohibition by the Church to go out and wine and dine with friends and work colleagues on Friday's during Lent,
to me, it is a bit inappropriate and sends the wrong message to the (non-Catholic Christian and non-Christian) world about our Catholic attitude toward Lent.
These times are particularly appropriate for spiritual exercises, penitential liturgies, pilgrimages as signs of penance, voluntary self-denial such as fasting and almsgiving, and fraternal sharing (charitable and missionary works).
The Holy Spirit prepares for the reception of Christ.
.
1095 For this reason the Church, especially during Advent and Lent and above all at the Easter Vigil, re-reads and re-lives the great events of salvation history in the today of her liturgy. But this also demands that catechesis help the faithful to open themselves to this spiritual understanding of the economy of salvation as the Church's liturgy reveals it and enables us to live it.
Personally, this is one area that I think Catholics in the pew have gone ultra soft on.
What does the Church require during Lent?
To abstain from meat on all Fridays of Lent and on Ash Wednesday, and
to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
That's it! That's only an 8-day, required minimum, out of the 40 days of Lent!
That's only 20% of the Lenten season!
During the liturgical year, outside of Lent, we are also obliged to perform some type of penance every Friday of the year. We can abstain from meat, but we don't have to; it's an option.
Seeing there are 52 weeks in a year, this means out of 365 days (one year), the Church asks us to do penance: 53 days a year.
45 Fridays outside of Lent, plus
7 Fridays of Lent, plus
1 (Ash Wednesday)
equals 53 days out of a 365-day year. That's 14.5% of the year!
Again, though it doesn't witness to the faith we believe in, there's nothing stopping you and your friends from going out on a Friday of Lent to get-together, but we are obliged to follow the binding discipline of the Church and to abstain from eating meat on those Fridays of Lent.
That said,
Sundays of Lent do not count as one of the forty days of Lent.
Fish is healthier for you any way; that's what my doctor says : )
Hope this answers your question.
Mike
Eric replied:
Hi, Diane —
This is a prudential matter.
Are you necessarily sinning if you do this?
No, but as my colleague points out, Fridays, especially during Lent, are days of penance and prayer and ought to be lived as such if we are serious about our faith, In addition, it may be that having a raucous time partying hard, may not be consonant with that.
On the other hand, if it's an elegant dinner with business colleagues that you are expected to participate in, that's another matter. Of course, meat is verboten.
If it's the only night you have for a date with your spouse, then maybe you can bring something spiritual to reflect on and share some brief prayer time together.
It all depends on your conscience.
If whatever it is leads you towards Christ, or is at least neutral, then it may be OK.
If it leads you away from Christ, or away from the spirit of Lent (which is not so much don't have fun as, taking an inventory of our sins and faults and addressing them), then maybe not.
There are no hard and fast rules.
Eric
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