CHAPTER II: ON CAUSES EXCUSING FROM FASTING

The causes excusing from fasting are commonly reduced chiefly to three, namely 1° to inability, whether physical or moral; 2° to piety or charity; 3° to dispensation, as has been said concerning other precepts. (k) p. 475.

573. You will resolve. - 1° Poor persons begging from door to door are excused from fasting, and all others who neither have, nor can provide for themselves, the means from which they may procure an adequate meal.⁴

2° The sick, the infirm, convalescents, and the weak are excused, for example those who labor under tertian or quartan fever, or who are recovering from it; moreover those who, unless they are refreshed twice, suffer notable headache or dizziness from emptiness of stomach. Likewise pregnant and nursing women, and these also from the law of abstinence, if they either have a weak offspring or are weak.¹ (o) p. 475.

3° Those are excused who exercise very laborious works, such as plowing, digging, cutting stones, carrying heavy burdens, and other things of this kind. Hence also blacksmiths, woodworkers, masons, tanners, shoemakers, bakers, oven-men, cooks preparing banquets for many, farmers, potters, weavers, wool-workers, fullers, drivers, sailors, and rowers are excused, provided the greater part of the day is spent in labors of this kind.²

4° Servants and maidservants or others of this kind are excused when they are occupied with so many and such great labors that fasting cannot be joined with these without great difficulty or inconvenience; likewise those making a journey on foot for a notable time with great weariness.³

5° But barbers, tailors, painters, scribes, servants attending on foot, printers who do not turn the press but only arrange the types, and those applying themselves to other similar things, are not excused of themselves and ordinarily.⁴ The same is to be resolved when the press is turned by a machine, not by movements of the arms.

6° To this refer also the Responses concerning fasting to questions 2 and 3, p. L, from which you will conclude: a) a wife, children of a family, and servants in the stated case are excused from sin when eating flesh-meat, provided nevertheless that this eating is not demanded in contempt of religion, or, if it is so demanded, that those eating signify that they reverence religion and do what they do from necessity. But servants of this kind are bound to leave such service if, without their grave damage, they can have another in which they can observe the laws of the Church. b) A girl who on forbidden days eats flesh-meat, fearing lest her non-Catholic father become violently enraged when he perceives that she has passed over to the Catholic Church, is guilty neither of denied Faith nor of violated fasting; "yet," adds Kenrick,⁵ "she will not be excused on account of ridicule or some slight molestation." I would add 1) that the same is to be resolved concerning a wife and a son, if she with respect to her husband, he with respect to his father, is situated in the same circumstances; yet I would not concede the same to a husband with respect to his wife, for he will more easily be able to contemn her angers; 2) that this can be conceded to a son with more difficulty than to a daughter; for he, especially if he has grown up and particularly in this region, generally needs the help of parents less; 3) that it is to be conceded to none of these longer than until that time up to which it is licit or possible for him to hide his conversion to the Catholic Faith.

7° Where labor excuses of itself, in doubt the presumption stands for exemption from fasting; on the contrary, where labor excuses not of itself, but by accident, namely on account of some circumstance of weakness of the person or gravity of labor, in doubt the presumption stands for the obligation of fasting.¹

8° Kenrick observes² that in this region fasting foods, by which someone eating once per day is sufficiently refreshed, are not easily obtained, and that those things which are born from American soil alone do not contain very much juice and nourishment, and therefore our people are more easily excused from fasting. I would add also this reason: on fast-days Americans are deprived of flesh-meat, which even workers themselves are accustomed to eat for breakfast; this deprivation renders fasting more difficult for them.

574. Questions. - Quaer. 1° Are young men more hot in strength bound to fast before the twenty-first year of age has been completed?

Resp. In the negative, because the law, as it is received and determined by approved custom, obligates only those who have completed the twenty-first year; for in this attention is paid only to that which commonly happens. Yet young men are to be persuaded that, according to the measure of their age, they should sometimes fast, so that more easily, when the time of obligation has arrived, they may be able to observe the law of fasting.³

575. • Quaer. 2° Are those who have begun their sixtieth year excused from fasting?

Resp. 1° They are certainly excused if they are weak in strength, as is clear. Indeed they are excused also, according to the common sentence, in doubt about the soundness of their strength; because then the presumption stands for their weakness.⁴

Resp. 2° If they are strong in strength, it is disputed. The first sentence denies that they are exempted from the law of fasting, because those who in that age have strong powers are not reputed as old men. - Laymann, Antoine, Collet, etc. "This sentence indeed is probable," says St. Alphonsus,¹ "but the opposite sentence is not less probable, which Sanchez, Roncaglia, the Salmanticenses, ... hold. The reason is both because universal custom so bears, as the Doctors more commonly testify; and because otherwise it would be a matter liable to many scruples, to examine whether some sexagenarian is or is not sufficiently robust for sustaining a fast. But the stronger reason is that old men of this kind, both on account of weakness of powers and on account of defect of heat, cannot take sufficient nourishment all at once, and they need more frequent food; and, although some in such an age seem robust, nevertheless their robustness is easily illusory and inconstant, since it cannot be denied that in old men of this kind the powers fail and slip into destruction. ... Hence the common saying: Old age itself is a disease." - The holy Doctor, speaking of the question whether women in their fiftieth year are excused from fasting by reason of age alone, responds: "The sentence" (affirming) "I do not dare to disapprove, but neither do I dare to call it probable."² It is said: by reason of age alone; for certainly women in their fiftieth year are excused when infirmity or some weakness concurs.

576. • Quaer. 3° Are smiths, artisans, etc., excused from fasting, if they are so robust that they can fast quite easily?

Resp. In the affirmative, probably, because custom generally exempts all who exercise arts of this kind; but laws do not regard that which happens rarely and by accident, but that which happens commonly and of itself. Yet Concina, Bonacina, etc., also probably deny. - "Here the second sentence," says St. Alphonsus,³ "speaking speculatively, seems more probable, but in practice scarcely one will be found who is not gravely relaxed from labor of this kind."

Quaer. 4° Are craftsmen excused from fasting on those days on which they abstain from labor?

Resp. In the affirmative, if they interrupt labors only for one or another day, by reason of repairing weariness and of preserving strength for sustaining future labors. - So commonly.

Quaer. 5° Are rich artisans, who could cease from labor on days of fasting, excused?

Resp. In the affirmative, more probably. The reason is that it is of interest to the Republic lest workers, on account of fasting, interrupt exercising the arts which are incumbent on them from their office. This also seems clear from the declaration of Eugene IV apud St. Alphonsus.¹ Nor is it the mind of the Church that the faithful be impeded from ordinary occupations. - So commonly.

577. • Quaer. 6° Do those sin who, without just cause, assume an unaccustomed labor incompatible with fasting?

Resp. In the affirmative, of itself, even if they do not act in fraud of the law; for the law which commands fasting consequently commands that causes adverse to satisfaction of the same not be placed without reason. - So commonly. Cf. n. 139.

I said without reason: because when a just cause intervenes it is licit to undertake labor incompatible with fasting, although that labor is unaccustomed, for example for perceiving a very great gain, etc. But the reason of mere enjoyment alone never suffices, unless another honest cause is added.²

Quaer. 7° What journey undertaken on foot from a just cause exempts from fasting?

Resp. They commonly say that a journey of nearly five leagues is required and suffices, that is, fifteen miles; but if either the road were very difficult, or the weather inclement, or the traveler weak and unaccustomed to a journey, he could be excused by a journey of two leagues,³ or even shorter. - Hence letter-carriers and others are excused who run around a city through the whole day for the sake of business. Likewise, probably, servants who continually serve through the day, going around for buying, accompanying, carrying letters, and similar things.

578. • Quaer. 8° Whether and when one making a journey by horse, carriage, or railroad is excused?

Resp. It depends on the circumstances, and thus a journey of one day could excuse someone who had to make it with great labor, or was weak in strength, or if the weather was rainy and the road rough and laborious.⁴ Kenrick⁵ generally excuses those who are carried by public coaches through the whole day and almost the whole night, even on a railroad.

579. • Quaer. 9° Whether or how preachers, teachers of sciences, confessors, students, advocates, judges, physicians, etc., are excused?

Resp. 1° Preachers who have a sermon daily or almost daily are commonly excused from fasting by reason of piety and duty. With stronger right also missionaries, who are exercised with graver fatigue in missions. Generally speaking, preachers are not excused who preach only three or four times in the week; but in this one must stand by the judgment of prudent men.¹

Resp. 2° Teachers of sciences are excused if they need great study and labor for preparing lectures; but not those who only deliver from writing lessons already earlier arranged and often repeated. ... But Palaus and others apud Croix say that teachers of grammar who teach for four hours are not bound to fast more than three days in the week.²

Resp. 3° Confessors are not excused of themselves, but only when they undergo extraordinary labor, for example when for several successive days they must hear Confessions, as is accustomed to happen in Missions, or when they are so weak in strength that they cannot satisfy the frequency of penitents without grave inconvenience.³

Resp. 4° Concerning students St. Alphonsus defines nothing.⁴ I think that those who devote themselves to necessary studies (of which kind are those which are enjoined by a teacher) are excused, if either they need great study and labor, as was said in Resp. 2° concerning teachers of sciences, or if, by reason of weakness, they need moderate and frequent refreshments for sustaining labor.

Resp. 5° Advocates, judges, physicians, and the like are excused, who because of the study to which they must devote themselves for satisfying clients, rendering judgment, and aiding the sick, could observe fasting with very great difficulty; for these, although they do not need more abundant food (since the labor is of the mind), nevertheless need more frequent food, so that the consumption of spirits may be repaired in them.⁵

But observe that those who are enumerated in this number are universally excused only by accident, that is, in the sense declared above at n. 573 under 7°.

Note. - The fast on the day before the consecration of a church is of strict obligation for the Bishop consecrating, and only for those who ask that a church be consecrated for them. S. R. C. in Mechl. 19 July 1780. Therefore for the clergy assigned to the church, but not for the people. N. R. Th. T. 12. p. 594. n. 62.