Article I: On Excusing Cause, or Impotence

966. Excusing causes do not remove the obligation of the law, but impede its application in a particular case. They are reduced to impotence, which, in the present matter, can arise from necessity or great utility, from impossibility, or from piety.

In the law of fasting and abstinence there is not found physical impotence, but moral impotence, namely a sufficiently great extrinsic inconvenience accidentally connected with the observance of the law. For an intrinsic difficulty is not enough to excuse, since the law was established precisely for bearing some difficulty and for afflicting the body. This moral impotence is absolute and strict, if the law cannot be observed without sin; it is relative and broad, if from the observance there arises some great harm or inconvenience, whether material or spiritual.

And because the same arduousness is not found in abstinence and in fasting, the same inconvenience does not excuse from both.

967. From abstinence are excused:

1. The poor, if they receive meats in alms and do not have other foods with which they can be sufficiently nourished.

2. The sick, convalescents, those who have a weak stomach, women nursing infants, and others who cannot be sufficiently nourished by fasting foods. Pregnant women also, if they are weak, or if they have a great appetite for meats, can take a morsel of them.

3. Those who engage in very arduous labor, by which appetite for fasting foods is taken away, such as those who work in foundries, glassworks, ironworks, mines, or locomotives.

4. Wives, children, and servants, if they cannot obtain other foods. Yet servants must seek another master if they can do this without great inconvenience.

5. Travelers, soldiers, and guests, and others of this sort, when without grave inconvenience they cannot obtain other foods. Also if, by error, forbidden foods have been prepared, for example, for weddings, it is licit to eat them if they cannot be sent back without grave inconvenience.

968. From fasting are excused those to whom it would cause a grave and extrinsic inconvenience. Such are:

1. By reason of age, those who have not completed the twenty-first year, and those who have reached the sixtieth.

2. By reason of infirmity, the sick, convalescents, weak persons, nervous persons, pregnant women, women nursing infants; also those who cannot take sufficient food at one time, or who would suffer notable headache, dizziness, or deprivation of sleep.

3. By reason of indigence, the poor who do not have a sufficient meal, or who have only bread, legumes, and foods of little nourishment.

4. By reason of labor. Per se, only honest bodily labor morally and ordinarily incompatible with fasting excuses: such as the labors already mentioned concerning abstinence, and also those of blacksmiths, woodworkers, masons, stonecutters, tanners, shoemakers, bakers, oven workers, cooks who prepare many dishes, farmers, potters, weavers, wool-workers, fullers, porters, couriers, drivers, sailors while sailing, if they spend the greater part of the day in such labors; likewise servants who are occupied in many very arduous works. All these are excused by custom, even if they are robust and could fast.

Other bodily labors, and also intellectual labors, do not per se and always excuse, as is clear from the proposition condemned by Alexander VII:¹ but they do excuse accidentally, when from a special circumstance fasting becomes very difficult. Then dispensation can be obtained.

¹ Proposition 30 condemned by Alexander VII: "All officials who labor bodily in the republic are excused from the obligation of fasting, nor must they certify whether the labor is compatible with fasting."

5. By reason of a journey, if it is long and arduous, and causes notable fatigue, and there is a reasonable cause for undertaking it. For it is not enough to travel in any manner whatever, as is clear from the proposition condemned by Alexander VII.² Hence a journey on foot of four or five leagues excuses; a shorter one also, if the road or weather is difficult. But a journey by horse or carriage does not excuse, unless it lasts several days or causes great fatigue; still less a journey by railway.

² Proposition 31 condemned by Alexander VII: "All those are absolutely excused from fasting who travel by riding, however they travel, even if the journey is not necessary, and even if the journey is of one day."

6. By reason of a greater good, or piety, if a more excellent work or one more pleasing to God cannot morally be performed with fasting, nor deferred to another time: such as works of mercy or religion, preaching, hearing confessions, caring for the sick, or similar works.

969. Observations. - 1. If the excusing cause is evident, one can omit the precept. If it is doubtful, one should consult the pastor, or the confessor, or the physician, provided he is not lax; and if these are lacking, a prudent and good man. If doubt still remains, dispensation is to be obtained, according to can. 15.

2. Not every annoyance excuses from the precept, but only a grave and extrinsic one. Some weakness, headache, and difficulty are inherent in fasting itself.

3. It is illicit voluntarily to place a proximate impediment which makes fasting impossible. Hence one cannot assume extraordinary labor, or undertake an arduous journey, even from devotion, unless there is a proportionate cause, for example, extraordinary profit. Yet once the impediment has been placed, fasting does not oblige; but the sin was in placing the impediment.³

³ Noldin, Th. M. II, n. 686.

4. One is not excused from abstinence because only foods which are worse or dearer are available, unless they are so bad that they do not constitute a fitting meal, or so dear that the use of them would cause notable detriment.⁴

⁴ Ibid., n. 678.