Today is St. Patrick’s Day–and it’s a Friday during Lent. So the big question on everybody’s mind is: "Do we get to eat meat today?"
The answer is: It depends.
What it depends on is whether or not your bishop has dispensed everybody from the requirement of abstaining from meat.
St. Patrick’s Day is not a solemnity in the U.S. (though it is actually a holy day of obligation in Ireland, I recenlty learned–understandably since he was the single most important guy in the conversion of the Irish to the faith) and so it does not automatically override the abstinence requirement the way that solemnities do.
This means that your bishop has a choice of either doing nothing and letting the abstinence requirement stand or of dispensing folks so they can have corned beef with their cabbage (or whatever).
I know that the bishop of San Diego did dispense the requirement, and I’ve been told that the folks in New York City are similarly dispensed.
(BTW, for folks in other countries, y’all ought not to assume from this blog that you’re necessarily obligated to abstain. That’s U.S. practice on Fridays of Lent, but it’s not the practice everywhere. I recently got a new commentary on the Code of Canon Law that had an appendix with the particular legislation for other English-speaking countries, and I was startled to see how much variation there is on this point in other parts of the world. More on that another time.)
If you know what your bishop has done, you might want to share it in the combox so others won’t have to call the chancery and ask.
