When was the ban on meat lifted?

Relinquishing the pleasure of meat on certain days belongs to the Catholic practice of abstinence. In fundamental terms, abstinence, in Catholic terminology, means the temporary relinquishing or permanent relinquishing, given a certain life choice, of fulfilling vital needs that are experienced and lived through the senses. The motive for this lies in a subjective values system where gratifying these needs takes second place to other values that are otherwise cast into the shadows. Humanity’s experience speaks in favour of abstinence: No one, man or woman, is how they ought to be so that life will be good. One cannot experience all the possibilities open to us. Choosing abstinence in its practical forms calls for intelligence and difference of opinion.

Church law calls for abstinence from eating meat. According to the current instruction, abstinence is to be practised on all Fridays of the year, unless they fall on a feast day. Abstaining from meat together with the commandment to fast applies to Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. All Catholics from the age of 14 are required to follow this. Children also should be led into a sensible understanding of penance. Previous other commandments for the entire Church were repealed by the Paenitemini of 12.2.1966. The bishops’ conferences are empowered to instruct other forms of penance or to modify the general rule regarding the abstinence commandment in view of different local customs. In 1986/87 the German, Berlin and Austrian bishops’ conferences described the fulfilment of the abstinence commandment in the following terms: abstaining from eating meat (meaningful as a symbol put into practise particularly in families and communities), cutting back on consumption in general, abstaining from luxury foodstuffs, and engaging in works of charity and piety (for example, weekday Mass, reading the Bible).