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What I particularly like about Morrow’s take is her gently-worded, yet pointed conclusions about church leaders “confidence” in both the impact of these changes and the desire of Catholics to be free of obligation and choose-their-own penitential practice. To get a sense of this, read the 1966 document.
The specifics? All of the previous fasting and abstaining was abolished as obligatory except for Fridays during Lent and Ash Wednesday. Previously, of course abstaining from meat had been obligatory on every Friday. Every day of Lent had been a fasting day (one regular meal, two collations, only one of the meals could contain meat). Ember Days and Vigils to certain feasts had also been days of fasting.
Fridays were still treated as a day of penitential practice, but as the document exhorts, individual Catholics were now free to fashion their own penance, in tune with their own individual spiritual growth.
