I think it is going to happen! We will once again have Friday abstinence, not just during the holy season of lent, but year round!
I know that for me personally, having a year round law on abstinence will force me to choose not to eat meat. Right now my self discipline in this regard is very poor. In other words, I try not to eat meat on Fridays, but not very hard! But if it were the law and a law-motivating practice I'll do it.
You can hear Timothy Cardinal Dolan desiring to reestablish the Friday abstinence here:
The reason I believe that it will become the norm is that our National Council of Catholic Bishops are slowly but surely beginning to realize that we Catholics have lost our way, lost our identity and it has taken a short 50 years to occur.
Fr. C. J. McCloskey III, S.T.D. is a Church historian and Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, DC. From 1985-1990, he was a chaplain at Princeton University. He writes on his blog, "Truth and Charity" that On November 6, the citizens of the United States re-elected perhaps the most anti-Catholic president in its history to a second term.
Even sadder, according to exit polls a majority of Catholics voted in his favor, even after they theoretically had imbibed the bishops’ message, conveyed from the pulpit and in various other media, that no Catholic should vote for a candidate who favors abortion rights and single sex marriage and does not support religious liberty.
What is going on here? Clearly, to borrow a line from the film “Cool Hand Luke,” “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
How has this happened? First, immediately following the Council, my parent's generation were told everything would change and nothing was for sure as it concerned the Church--this was a 360 degree shift that undermined parents of that generation in terms of what they had tried to do to instill the Faith in their children. It pulled the rug out from underneath their authority at home to hand on the faith and what they had handed on they were now being told was out-dated and so pre-Vatican II and that everything was changing, not just discipline but belief! We cannot underestimate the deleterious effect this will have on the Church some 50 years later. So gone was the Latin Mass and Catholic piety and reverence. Gone was fast and abstinence. Gone were habits (and soon nuns of any kind). Gone was papal authority in the areas of faith and morals. Gone was the Baltimore Catechism substituted by coloring book Catholicism, feel good religion, I'm okay, you're okay. Gone was confession. Gone was the very real fear of hell or damnation. Gone was healthy Catholic Faith and traditions that led saints of old to die for the Faith. Would my generation of Kumbaya Catholics do the same? I somehow doubt it!
To be honest with you, I'm surprised that we have any form of Catholic identity today and that at least we have 20% of Catholics practicing their faith, albeit somewhat watered down and highly individualistic in terms of Catholic morality but highly communal in terms of feel-good, hand holding Protestant, fundamentalist euphoria as it concerns individual piety.
Our parish is being used as a pilot parish to implement a new concept in religious reawakening in our diocese. It is called "Strong Catholic Families: Strong Catholic Youth."
The bottom line, in line with what I just described, is that we Catholics rank the poorest in handing on our Faith to our youth. The Mormons are #1. It is based upon their Church encouraging them to hand the faith on at home in family practices and supported on Sundays by the institutional Church--but the bulk happens at home.
I hope it works. I hope that I don't hear parishioners asking for fragmentation of their children from the family even on Sunday by youth Masses that feature worship and praise music and life-teen Masses. I hope they attend Mass as a family on Sunday morning and attend the Mass that will have a tradition of music and tradition Catholic Mass reverence that will stay with the teenagers when they become adults and have their funeral Masses. It is sad to see my generation of Catholics, my age and older still nostalgic for the tripe that we called liturgical music and seeking it for their funerals now! But at least we are passing from the scene and none too soon! :)
What we baby-boomers did was to help the fragmentation of the Catholic family by providing folk Masses for the younger generation, our generation of the 1960's and 70's. Back then about 75 percent of us baby-boomer Catholics attended Mass every Sunday, but the vapid music we loved was only skin deep and fad-like and trendy and didn't serve most of us into adulthood. Today there is only about 20% of us babyboomers brought upon on Folk music tripe that still practice our Faith. We also encouraged Polka Masses, Mariachi Masses, Gospel Masses, quiet Masses, traditional Masses and so on and so on! And now we are encouraging Mega Church, Protestant piety worship and praise Masses and in the same genre as our Protestant non-denominationalists which has also seduced more traditional mainline Protestantism.
The Catholic families today that are consistently handing on the Faith in their home lives are our home schoolers. They are the ones who bring their children to our EF Mass! They don't want vapid, trendy Masses with guitars and worship and praise music that gives their children a superficial high when they listen to the music but does nothing to make them strong Catholic youth and later strong Catholic adults. We need to learn from them what they are doing, for I think their Faith lives at home is more similar to what Catholics in general were like in the 1950's where Catholic and family practice were much stronger.
We have to start to regain our strong Catholic identity and that will start with strong Catholic families who form strong Catholic youth, tomorrow's (the future's) aging Catholics. Hopefully this generation for their funerals in the future will be seeking the EF Requiem or at least Gregorian Chant, Dies Irae and the actual propers of the Funeral Mass rather than vapid, feel-good worship and praise tripe. I hope I'm not too strong here.
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