Another good reason for observing Friday abstinence, the following was seen in The Times newspaper this week:
Catholics’ climate sin
Almost 200,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year would be avoided if all 4.15 million Roman Catholics in England and Wales observed the tradition of forgoing meat on Fridays, calculations by Cambridge scientists suggest. They called on the Pope to help to revive the practice, which is thought to date back to at last the ninth century, but which declined after a 1985 statement by bishops gave worshippers permission to “perform some alternative work of penance”.
THE TIMES 1st November 2022
In fact the 1985 Statement was reversed in May 2011 when at their Plenary meeting the Bishops of England and Wales approved a resolution re-establishing the ‘Friday Abstinence from Meat’. Father, now Bishop Marcus Stock the, then General Secretary of the Bishops’ Conference prepared a paper entitled ‘Catholic Witness - Friday Penance’ which clarifies the position, but does yet touch on the environmental issues as one to-day might.