What gives the Catholic Church the authority to require fasting and abstinence? Is it just power hungry, and overstepping its boundaries to bully us into walking lock-step with their commands? Many Catholics and non-Catholics alike may ponder this question. But before diving into an explanation, let’s lay some groundwork first.
Note: This post treats the Lenten practices of the western/Latin/Roman Catholic Church. The practices of the Eastern Catholic Churches typically vary in each rite and will not be discussed in this current post.
First, some definitions. Lenten “abstinence” generally means not eating meat on Ash Wednesday and on each Friday of Lent (for those at least 14 yrs old). Chiefly, Lenten “fast” means eating one full meal and two small meals (which if added together would not exceed the main meal in quantity) on Ash Wednesday and on Good Friday (for those between 18 and 60 years old).
Second, an intentionally provocative and hopefully scandalous admission: the notion of fasting and abstaining from meat for 40 days prior to Easter is NON-BIBLICAL. There is biblical precedence for the usefulness of these practices in general, but nowhere will you find Christ or the Apostles requiring the observance of Lent.
So now what? Does the fact that this practice is not in the Good Book close the book (pun intended) on the issue? Not in the least. Of course, the totality of God’s revelation as taught by Christ and as received by the Apostles from Christ & the Holy Spirit is not limited to the Bible alone – it is also contained in Sacred Tradition. Thus, the mere fact that a teaching is not contained in the Bible does not necessarily mean it is not true. However, that opens a whole other can of worms (the topic of “Sola Scriptura”), worthy of its own blog post (in the future, perhaps)…
Catholics are required to fast & abstain not because the Bible says so, but because the Church says so. We fast & abstain not because the practices are essential to salvation in and of themselves, but because it is essential to yield to the authority of the Church. And this is our main question – where does the Church get the authority to require this? Interestingly, from the Bible.
We find in Sacred Scriptures that the Church is given the power to “bind and loose.” There are a lot of really good apologetical books out there on this topic, but for our purposes here, James Akin provides an excellent concise explanation in his tract “All About Lent” at http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/LENT.HTM. Specifically, Christ says to Peter in Matthew 16:19, “And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.” And again similarly in Matthew 18:18.
In the Jewish culture of the time, the terms “binding” and “loosing” meant the power to “forbid” and “permit,” held by the Jewish religious leaders (again, see the link to Akin’s article above for great further reading). Jesus gave this same binding/loosing authority to Peter. The Church today, with the Pope as successor to Peter, continues in this authority (the topic of “apostolic succession” is yet another good candidate for its own future blog post). It is through this authority that the Church validly requires the faithful to observe the practices of fasting and abstinence during Lent.
In a future post, I will explore the concepts of “binding” and “loosing” more closely, in relation to Christ’s delegation of the keys of the kingdom to Peter per Matthew 16 above. For now, I pray this post at minimum illustrates to even the most doubtful of readers that the evidence of legitimate Church authority is worthy of consideration and further research.
ProCatholic 