While the faith of the Church remains the same in all ages, from time to time she introduces changes in her discipline. By her discipline is meant the laws and regulations which she prescribes for her own government and for the direction of Christian life. Her disciplinary laws and precepts comprise, among other matters, Divine worship, the administering and receiving of the Sacraments, the duties of fasting and abstinence. The collection of these disciplinary regulations is called the Canon Law. Owing to the changes which time brings about in the ways of life, habits, customs and conditions of the faithful, the Church, for the welfare of her children, introduces changes in her discipline to adapt it the better to the changed conditions. The Holy See has recently issued a complete Code of Canon Law in which is laid down some modifications of former discipline especially with regard to the laws of fasting and abstinence.
12. Is it not superstitious to abstain from certain kinds of food?
It is superstitious, if we abstain from certain food as if it were evil and unclean in itself, as some heretics asserted; 1 but it is not so by any means if we do it in the spirit of obedience and penance, as the Catholic Church prescribes. 2
1 St. Paul combated this heresy (1 Tim. iv. 1-4); and also the Catholic Church has at all times combated and condemned it. 2 God Himself forbade certain meats to the Jews (Levit. xi. 2, etc.), and the Apostles to the first Christians (Acts xv. 29). St. John the Baptist ate nothing but locusts and wild honey (Mark i. 6). Eleazar and the seven Machabean brothers, with their mother, chose to suffer the most painful death, rather than transgress the law of God by eating swine's flesh (2 Mach. vi. and vii.).
13. But does not our Saviour clearly say: 'Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man'?
Yes; but the disobedience which proceeds from the heart defiles him (Matt. xv. 11, 18), as it is proved by the fall of our first parents.
Let, however, no one believe that the breaking of the fast is only then a grievous sin when it proceeds from a contempt of
