Fasting and Abstinence (“Fish on Fridays”)

In the United States, fasting and abstinence are two different things. Abstinence means no meat, and binds Catholics from age fourteen on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and all Fridays of Lent. Fasting means one full meal and two smaller ones that together do not equal a full meal, and binds those aged eighteen to fifty-nine on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday only. Every Friday of the year remains a day of penance in memory of the Passion; in the United States the bishops allow another penance to replace meatless Fridays outside Lent, which is where “fish on Fridays” comes from. The Catechism places these practices among the forms of interior penance that Scripture and the Fathers insist on.