This is Church law before it is a devotion. Paul VI restored and set out the discipline of penance for the whole Church in the apostolic constitution Paenitemini in 1966, and the Code of Canon Law makes all Fridays of the year, and the season of Lent, days of penance. In the United States the bishops' Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence, also of 1966, keeps abstinence from meat obligatory on the Fridays of Lent while allowing another form of penance to be substituted on the Fridays outside Lent — a permission that presumes some penance is in fact done, not that Friday becomes an ordinary day.

Decide in advance what your Friday penance will be, so that the day does not pass unmarked. Abstinence from meat is the traditional form and remains obligatory on the Fridays of Lent for those aged fourteen and older; outside Lent, in the United States, you may keep it or substitute another penance — a fast from something you would otherwise enjoy, a work of mercy, extra time in prayer or the Stations of the Cross. Do not treat a costly seafood dinner as abstinence in any meaningful sense. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday remain days of both fast and abstinence.

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