The Bishops of England and Wales have said that Catholics are permitted to eat meat on Boxing Day this year, despite the fact that it falls on a Friday when they are usually required to abstain.
A spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference for England and Wales said: “To consider St Stephen’s Day or Boxing Day as a day of abstinence would not be compatible with the festive and celebratory nature of the Christmas octave. It is a special day when, uppermost in our hearts and contextual of our celebrations is that instinctive sense of wonder at the Incarnation of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, the meaning of the love, joy and peace we all crave at Christmas.”
The spokesperson highlighted that Boxing Day falls within the octave of Christmas and therefore it is “contrary to the mentality of what an octave is to consider one of its days as penitential.”
They said:”An octave is an ongoing celebration of the two highest ranking solemnities of the Liturgical Year, themselves presented at numbers 1&2 of the first section of ‘The Table of Liturgical Days’. Given that all the other octaves were discontinued in the calendar of Paul VI, it is contrary to the mentality of what an octave is to consider one of its days as penitential. Recognising that fact, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which used to be a Mass celebrated in purple vestments, is now celebrated in white according to the context of the octave in question. Octaves are weeks of joy, not abstinence, even though the Easter Octave ranks unambiguously higher than that of Christmas.
“To consider St Stephen’s Day or Boxing Day as a day of abstinence would not be compatible with the festive and celebratory nature of the Christmas octave. It is a special day when, uppermost in our hearts and contextual of our celebrations is that instinctive sense of wonder at the Incarnation of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, the meaning of the love, joy and peace we all crave at Christmas.”
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