I've been looking more closely at the Church's tradition of fasting, and have run into a question that's more than a little hypothetical. The 1662 Prayer Book orders that all Fridays in the year are to be kept as fast days, except for Christmas Day. Does this mean that a Friday fast is still observed even if some other holy day should fall upon a Friday (like St. Barnabas last week for example)? I just want to get a clearer sense of the intent of the directions there before I go on to apply those principles to my own church and Prayer Book's version.
It was left undefined. At one time standard (pre-Reformation) Western fasting rules were basically the same as what is still practiced among the Eastern Orthodox. The Church of England wanted to keep the discipline without the rigidity. As it happened, the old adage that “what is not obligatory is simply ignored” applied here as well.
Have you checked Nelson’s Feasts and Fasts of the Church of England? Also Buchanan’s Nature and Design of Holy Days Explained (1705) https://jamesgray2.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/dsc_00145.jpg (I wish it were on Google books but maybe you’ll have better luck)
The definition of fasting was no longer defined, but fasting days were still listed: http://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/info/tables/rules.html I've not found any answers in the sources Stalwart suggested, so far, but I did a high church ordo calendar indicate a fasting day on a Friday even when it was a major holy day, so that might answer my question - at least regarding the simplest interpretation of the 1662 rubrics. One of the challenges here is that every province and book and society seems to have its own take on this
Yeah, fish Fridays are still normative for Anglicans, so that's something I embrace as well. As for the OP, I would suppose that the feast falling on a Friday would take precedence. I think it's one of the commonplaces of corporal discipline that the feast takes priority over the fast, when the two are in competition (except during the Great Lent, and around Christmas? Someone should correct me). I wish I could have some amazing traditional manuals on fasting to recommend. I saw a whole bunch of them years ago, written centuries ago; but it's been a while and the titles escape me. We really don't know our own tradition as well as others know theirs.
It's really a confusing situation when one takes into account the rank of the feast days. The Rules to Order the Service in 1662 establish that Holy Days have greater and lesser ranks. Most of them can be transferred but a few cannot (St. Stephen, Epiphany, All Saints). Then we have the instruction which permits a patronal festival to be ranked as a greater Holy Day. Then the table of feasts and fasts comes much later in the book. We all know of low church parishes which eschew any feasts that bear the name of a saint or some relationship to the Blessed Virgin. And anyone who has gone to a clergy retreat has observed that fasting is not strictly observed in many quarters. The Romans don't even take fasting seriously anymore. I can see the vestiges of a time when these things were done every time I drive by an old Lutheran/Roman/Episcopal church which is still running an 8:30 or 9 AM service (there's one Roman church locally that holds Mass at 6:45 AM). I'm sure many of the people have long since accepted that as a custom for the area not realizing that this was originally done to make the pre-Eucharist fast less arduous. What's left is the custom of piling in to the local diner of choice en masse to eat brunch after church.
As far as I know, there is no transferrance of feast days in the 1662 Book, apart from Holy Week & Easter week. I thought that was primarily a "novus ordo" phenomenon?
Cambridge Standard Text, pg. xiii: 1) contains some complex rules for transferring feasts in Lent 2) . . . it shall be permissible to transfer a greater Holy Day falling on a Sunday to the following Tuesday, except that St. Stephen's Day, Epiphany, and All Saints' Day may not be so transferred. 3) . . . A lesser Holy Day shall lapse when a greater Holy Day is transferred to the date appointed for it
The most common custom was that the body and blood of Christ would be the first nourishment consumed on a Mass day. The Copts, as with everything, make this more strict by encouraging the faithful to consume no food or drink after midnight the evening before a Mass. Water has often been excepted from the drink restriction. And of course nursing women and younger children are not expected to fast. The Romans had relaxed the suggestion to 3 hours before a Mass and more recently the USCCB stated that 1 hour would be sufficient.
I think this was largely a result of the rise of Vigil Masses. In many American locales the best attended Mass at a parish is the Saturday Vigil at something like 5:30 PM. In more rural areas where the priests have a circuit some parish is bound to get an undesirable time like 4 PM before the traveling priest finally manages to get there.
It seems to me if you are going to follow the 1662 BCP on this its rules are quite clear. All Fridays are days of fast unless Christmas Day falls on a Friday and it is not. It does, however, seem to me to be rather counterintuitive to fast on a feast day. I think we can agree we have moved on from a rigid adherence to the prescriptions of the 1662 BCP. I therefore think that if a feast day falls on a Friday then there should be no fast. I fast on Fridays and do so by what I understand fast to mean. That is, a reduction in the quantity of food. I would understand refrain from eating certain foods to be abstinence. However, I would be the first to agree that neither of these terms have precise meanings cast in stone. What I have never done since I had the choice is to eat fish on Friday as if that were mandatory. When I was at home fish was almost de rigueur on Fridays. I believe people ate fish on Fridays because it was a way to get around the rules. Meat used to be prohibited but the Church did not class fish as meat. Therefore, you could eat fish on Fridays. Whether you use the term fast or abstinence and whatever meaning you ascribe to those words, eating fish on Fridays has always seemed to me to be against the spirit of fasting/abstinence. I understand it to mean giving something up, not substituting it. I find the basis for what you are doing to be most admirable. In my experience fasting/abstinence is not something I see many Anglicans practising these days except as Lent approaches and everyone starts asking what you are giving up. I do not think many get through the entire 40 days before they return to what they gave up.
I am glad to see someone pointing this out. For example, in Eastern Orthodoxy, although “meat” and “fish” are different fasting categories, it is very rare for a fast day to proscribe one but allow the other. In all but a very few cases, they are permitted or prohibited together. And I think that intuition is sound.