Strategy point #4 caught my attention and raised a red flag: "Abstinence from meat and fasting on Fridays are encouraged for the intention of the protection of Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty, recognizing the importance of spiritual and bodily sacrifice in the life of the Church."
While there can be no question as to the importance of these intentions and of the essential nature of engaging in mortification as a means of self-giving/sacrifice, applying these intentions as specified in this strategy point puts this particular form of Friday penance and the purpose traditionally associated with it at risk of going the way of Ember Days, an essential practice which has fallen into obscurity and neglect.
A few years ago, the blog _Rorate Caeli_ offered the article _The Glow of the Ember Days_, in which Michael P. Foley makes an observation pertinent to the topic of this post. Mr. Foley writes this about a directive by the Sacred Congregation of Divine Worship’s 1969 General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar regarding the practice of Ember Days. "... the SCDW allowed the Ember Days to take on an indeterminate number of meanings that have nothing to do with nature, such as 'peace, the unity of the Church, the spread of the faith'...the 1969 directive has no safeguards to keep newly assigned meanings from displacing the Embertides’ more fundamental purpose."
I would submit Mr. Foley's observation as a word of warning regarding the addition of new meanings to traditional practices, and I would add these questions regarding the "fundamental purpose" of the Traditional Catholic penance of abstinence from meat on Friday: 1) What could be more essential to rebuilding the culture than doing a common form of penance honoring the day on which our Lord suffered, died, and was buried, and 2) Why risk displacing this essential fundamental purpose of Friday penance?
If it is relief from the oppression of recently passed laws that the bishops seek, if it is rebuilding a fallen culture in this country at which the bishops take aim, the road must go through a revitalized Catholic identity and not through inventing new applications for practices already rich in tradition. Revitalizing Catholic identity can only happen by allowing for and promoting Catholic heritage in the form of practice and worship, not by obscurring it or derailing it with re-creations and innovations, no matter how good the intentions might be.
