Putting The Genie Back In The Bottle...?

It has been interesting to read the responses to the excellent FIUV position paper on the restoration of the three-hour Eucharistic fast, summarised on Rorate Caeli.

As pointed out by Joseph Shaw, many people only read other blog posts on the paper (such as the one by Australia Incognita), and then made all sorts of objections to the three-hour fast which had already been dealt with in the original paper.

Quite a few of the comments on Fr. Ray Blake's post seem to suggest that, since the rules have been relaxed, it would be impossible to reimpose them.

I disagree.

For many years, I observed Friday abstinence as a voluntary penance. Nevertheless, I frequently found myself in situations where I was tempted to ignore it; it would be pointed out that "One can always do the abstinence on another day, or do something else instead." Once the Bishops of England & Wales reintroduced Friday abstinence as part of Church law, it actually became much easier to observe the rule. To put it simply, my friends and colleagues accept that, as a Catholic, I do not eat meat on Fridays. In the "real world" it has become acceptable - it's not just a personal idiosyncrasy, it's Church Law.

True, not everyone will observe the rule. However, this should not be an argument for not having the rule at all.  After all, the majority of people are quite happy with the idea that there are observant, devout Jews who keep the Sabbath and Jewish dietary laws very strictly, and there are other Jews who do not. It is also understood that there are devout Muslims who will not drink alcohol and who pray five times a day... and there are Muslims who aren't so devout. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that there will be some Catholics who choose to ignore the laws of the Church on Friday abstinence - especially as plenty of Catholics currently ignore Church teaching on moral matters. This does not mean that one should not have these teachings. As the Holy Father has pointed out, Truth is not subject to a majority vote.

I seriously believe that reintroducing the three-hour fast would have many advantages.

Firstly, it would help people to prepare for the reception of Holy Communion in an active way - one would have to decide that one was going to receive, and to make the effort to avoid food. Three hours isn't an onerous time to go without food, and one can even survive without water for that time - we are constantly producing water through the process of respiration. Since the three hours is counted from the time one actually receives Communion, the time without food would be closer to two hours before Mass. Even in the morning, this isn't a huge difficulty.

Secondly, it would make it easier for those who could not receive Communion. The obvious assumption to make would be that a person had not kept the fast, and so was not going to communicate. At the moment, with practically everyone going to Communion as a matter of course, there is huge pressure on those who are not in a state of grace to go up anyway.

Thirdly, I think it would encourage those of the Faithful who do currently try to do more than the bare minimum to prepare for the reception of Communion. They will no longer have to fear being considered odd for observing a fast, it will just become accepted as what practising Catholics do.

So, is bringing back the old rule attempting to put the genie back into the bottle? I do not think so. But waiting for everyone to agree that it's a good idea isn't going to help anyone.