Bishops have no beef with St. Patrick’s Day cuisine
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh-area Catholics who are observing Lent can enjoy their corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day — without a side order of guilt.
Bishop David Zubik on Wednesday authorized a dispensation, or exception, to the usual prohibition on eating meat during Fridays in Lent. St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Friday this year.
But he encouraged the faithful to make up for it with some other “act of selfsacrifice.”
Later in the day, Greensburg Bishop Edward C. Malesic issued the same dispensation and asked that members of the diocese “select another day to abstain from eating meat or to make some offering on behalf of the poor, whether by prayer, fasting or almsgiving at another time during the Lenten season.”
The dispensation recognizes the popular celebration of the patron saint of Ireland — one whose feast day is celebrated by many Catholics, of Irish descent and otherwise. Since corned beef is a staple of St. Patrick’s Day cuisine, a conflict typically arises every few years when it lands on a Friday during Lent, when church discipline calls for Catholics to abstain from meat other than fish on those Fridays.
“While celebrations do not cease in Lent, they are certainly tempered by the penitential context of the season,” Bishop Zubik said in a letter. “... After much consideration, I have chosen to dispense Catholics in the Diocese of Pittsburgh from the obligation to abstain from meat on Friday, March 17. However, I do appeal to those who choose to eat meat that day to do another act of self-sacrifice in the spirit of the Season of Lent with the mind and heart of Saint Patrick.”
Many bishops around the country issue similar dispensations. The last two times St. Patrick’s Day fell on a Friday in Lent, in 2006 and 2000, then-Bishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh did not issue a dispensation, although nowCardinal Wuerl did issue one this year for the faithful in his current archdiocese of Washington, D.C.
Bishop Zubik said the meat prohibition is a discipline that Catholics are expected to undertake as part of a spiritual preparation during the six-week season of Lent, leading up to the central Christian holy days of Good Friday and Easter. “The whole notion of discipline is to become more like Christ,” Bishop Zubik said.
St. Patrick’s Day, in addition to its traditions of corned-beef and Celtic music, is often an occasion for heavy drinking.
While not mentioning that explicitly, Bishop Zubik’s letter urged those celebrating the holiday to do so in a way that “truly honors this good and humble saint.”