Abstinence

ABSTINENCE. - From the Latin abs-teneo "I keep away," a. entails abstaining from something either temporarily or entirely. From the dietary point of view, a. is the abstention from a certain kind of food or drink. For sexual a. v. CHASTITY; CONTINENCE.

I. IN NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS

Abstinence from certain foods is found in the practice of all primitive religions, insofar as it is connected with the sacred character of the animal or plant from which the individual or the group abstains, precisely by reason of that sacredness which is charged with a force that can produce harm in anyone who comes into contact with it without the proper precautions: the abstinence ceases when the animal is eaten in common by the group, which thereby receives an increase of strength and social cohesion. Sometimes the abstinence refers not to the whole of the thing considered sacred, but only to a part of it. Excepted from such abstinence are the elders of the group, because they too possess a sacredness that immunizes them.

In groups that have reached a higher degree of civilization and religious sensibility, abstinence tends to render the individual exempt from contact with foods considered impure, in order to place him in a condition of purity before the divinity.

During the Hellenistic era the liturgy of the mysteries, which intended to bring the initiates to inner purity in view of initiation, presents many cases of qualitative abstinence.

At Eleusis the initiates had to abstain from mullet, poultry, pomegranates, and beans (Porphyry, De abst., 4, 16); the Orphics and, in general, believers in metempsychosis abstained from meat; the Pythagoreans from beans; during the festivals of Cybele the abstinence from bread and wine tended precisely to this purification of the individual. The Neoplatonist Emperor Julian explains the prescription to abstain from the part of plants that is enclosed within the earth (roots, etc.), because this is the dark prison into which the soul has fallen, whereas it is lawful to eat what develops on the outside, because it symbolizes the ascent of the soul upward (Julian, Orat., V, 174a-177c). The fast of Cybele was called "castus Maris Deum" (castus, from "carere," to be deprived, to abstain). The Emperor Claudius never failed to practice it during the Metroac festivals of March, of which he was the founder.

The devotees of Isis too had to abstain from bread, from pork, and from onions (Plutarch, De Iside, 6, 7, 8), from meats and from wine (Apuleius, Metam., XI, 23); those of the Syrian goddess from fish.

The prohibition concerning the flesh of certain animals, which still remains in certain religions as though it were an impure food, must be considered as the survival of a belief by then outgrown in the sacredness of the animal.

Nicola Turchi

II. IN MORAL THEOLOGY AND IN CANON LAW

A) Legislation. The Catholic Church, which regards abstinence as a meritorious and reparative virtue, imposes it on the faithful, fixing its manner and time (3rd precept of the Church).

a) The law does not concern drinks, but only "the flesh and broth of flesh" (CIC, can. 1250).

There remain therefore forbidden: 1) the flesh (including blood, fat, liver, marrow, brain, intestines) and the broth obtained from it, of animals "that live and breathe on land and in the air" (Sum. Theol., 2nd-2nd, q. 147, a. 8); 2) meat and broth concentrates, because they contain forbidden flesh elements. There are instead permitted: 1) vegetables, eggs, milk and its derivatives, fish, cold-blooded land animals (mollusks, shrimp, crabs, turtles, frogs, oysters); 2) seasonings of any kind, even if they derive from the fat of animals (can. 1250), e.g. margarine, melted lard. "Nor are those to be troubled in their conscience who use substances, whatever they may be called, which, although they derive from flesh and have its nutritive power, have nevertheless lost the taste of flesh or broth" (E. Génicot-I, Salsmann, Theol. Mor., I, 16th ed., Brussels 1946, n. 442), e.g. gelatin, pepsin, peptones.

b) The time, in which abstinence must be practiced, is indicated by can. 1252, and includes: 1) all Fridays of the year, except when a feast of precept falls on them (an exception is the feast of St. Joseph, which, falling in the period of Lent, maintains the obligation of abstinence); 2) all Saturdays of Lent (except Holy Saturday beginning from noon); 3) Ash Wednesday; 4) the four Ember Days; 5) the four vigils: of Pentecost, of the Assumption of Mary, of All Saints, of Christmas.

c) Subject of the law is every Christian who has reached the use of reason; which juridically is reckoned from the completed seventh year (can. 88, § 3).

d) Dispensation. There may, however, be legitimate reasons that entail the cessation of the obligation of abstinence: 1) physical and moral impossibility (illness, state of weakness, certain kinds of work, serious inconvenience); 2) the decision of the Church for particular reasons (period of epidemics or persistent contagious diseases, painful situations of war, particular restrictions). Those who can dispense are: 1) the Pope for the whole Church; 2) bishops for their own diocese and parish priests in their parishes for individual persons or individual families; 3) superiors of exempt religious houses for individual subjects (including guests and servants who stay day and night in the house [can. 1245]).

e) The obligation deriving from the precept of the Church is in itself grave; however, in order for the transgression to be a mortal sin, gravity of matter is required.

B) Reasons for the law. - When it imposes abstinence from flesh, the Church follows neither the erroneous reasons from which several heretical sects (Manichaeans, Montanists, etc.) derived the same practice, which regarded flesh as a thing evil in itself and therefore absolutely not to be eaten (cf. the penalties decreed by the Apostolic Canons [Denz-U, n. 37] and the anathema inflicted by the 2nd Council of Toulouse of 447 [C. Kirch, Enchir. fontium hist. eccles. antiquae, n. 700]), nor the theories of those professing metempsychosis, trembling before the possibility of feeding on some relative or friend of theirs; and it does not do so either out of a duty of conformity to the Mosaic law, which forbade a certain number of foods (Lev. 11; Deut. 14), because that law ceased with the coming of Jesus Christ (cf. the synoptic episode of St. Peter [Acts 10, 10-16] and the decision of Jerusalem: Visum est Spiritui sancto et nobis [ibid. 15, 28-29]). It may also be said that, while appreciating them, the Church does not start from philosophical, pedagogical and medical considerations; instead she derives her precept from the doctrine of her founder. Jesus Christ said: "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me" (Mt. 16, 24). Now, interpreting these words, the Church insists on mortifications and penance and imposes a determined exercise of them on Christians with abstinence from flesh. This alone would already be a sufficient reason. But there are also others, recalled by St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 147, a. 1); this exercise, that is, of mortification favors prayer, is at once preservative and reparative; we have a splendid and constant example of it in the lives of the saints.

Celestino Testore

III. PASTORAL MEDICINE

Since the times of the Sts. Fathers, the precept of abstinence was attacked with various arguments of a historical, dogmatic, and practical-disciplinary nature, not least of a hygienic character, objecting to the presumed harms that a regime of abstinence, even if only partial and temporary, could have on health.

St. Jerome, responding to the attacks of the heretical monk Jovinian, does not disdain even hygienic and medical arguments, such as could be furnished to him by the scientific level of the time. He thus appeals to the dietary habits of the peoples of antiquity and of those contemporary with him, and reports testimonies of pagan philosophers and physicians whose word or whose example demonstrated how in every epoch abstinence, even complete, from meat foods was in accord with excellent conditions of physical and mental health, and with the soundest longevity.

The vegetarian regimen (v. VEGETARIANISM) was used in every epoch for religious or hygienic reasons, from the most rigorous fruitarians to ordinary vegetarians who add to their diet certain animal products: butter, eggs, milk. Persons of the first importance in the pagan world advocated or practiced it; thus Pythagoras, who died a centenarian, the Neoplatonist Porphyry, his biographer, who wrote a treatise on abstinence from meat, Epicurus, Seneca, Plutarch, Ovid. In the full Renaissance, the Paduan nobleman Alvise (Luigi) Cornaro, already advanced in years and by then burdened with ailments from a life unregulated in every respect, submitted to a strict vegetarianism, regaining his health and dying at ninety-nine years of age (1475-1560); to illustrate the foundations of his regimen he published the Discourses on the Sober Life, which had numerous editions.

In practice, the abstinence prescribed by the Catholic Church is identified, for the great mass of Christians, with the abolition of meat for limited periods of time; whereby the diet resolves itself principally into an impoverishment of the daily protein ration, particularly at the expense of animal proteins.

It is well known how alongside carbohydrates (starches and sugars), lipids (neutral fats and lipoids), mineral substances (ash and salts), and vitamins (v.), the proteins (albuminoid or protein substances) represent indispensable and irreplaceable elements of nutrition, as plastic substances destined to repair the wear of the flesh of our organism. One of the most debated problems of the modern physiology of nutrition has been that of the minimum protein ration necessary to cover man's daily requirement. Toward the end of the last century (1875) C. Voit, using statistical investigation of the food "quantum" of a numerous group of men at free will, calculated at 118 g. the protein requirement for an adult man of 67 kg. who performs for 8-10 hours of the day a moderately heavy labor (mason, carpenter). The American Atwater raised this protein quota to 125 g. Russell H. Chittenden, conducting (1903-1905) new research with experimental methods, considering the statistical method deceptive, since while it is true that the palate is the "dietetic conscience" of the individual, degenerate palates are very numerous, arrived at results less than half. Experimenting on individuals who voluntarily submitted to greatly reduced diets, in particular on the American O. Fletcher, author of the book The Art of Eating Little, he concluded that to cover the wear quota of organic proteins about 55 g. of proteins per day are sufficient.

At present physiologists agree that for an adult man the daily protein ration should be equal to about 1 g. of proteins per kilogram of body weight (about 70 g. daily); a quota to be raised to 1.5 g. per kilogram of body weight in individuals in the course of development. To complete the ration, in an adult about 500 g. of carbohydrates and 100 g. of lipids per day are considered necessary.

Now the question is asked whether abstention from meat foods, even complete and permanent as is practiced by certain religious orders (Carthusians, Carmelites, Minims, Camaldolese, Poor Clares, etc.), represents a harm to the health of the individual, in relation to insufficient compensation of the protein wear quota. This must be excluded in the surest manner, in relation to the most modern studies on the qualitative and quantitative composition of the various foods.

It is easy to realize (see table of foods) that the precious protein substances, far from being lacking, are largely contained even in vegetable foods (beans contain more of them than meat itself), whereby, even completely excluding meat from one's diet, one can easily utilize a quota of 80-85 g. daily of proteins, and about 2,500 calories, with only bread (250 g.), pasta (100 g.), one egg, cheese (100 g.), milk (250 g.), potatoes (200 g.), legumes (50 g.) with opportune additions of fats (50 g. between butter and oil), sugar (20 g.), fresh vegetables, fruit, lemon juice for the necessary vitamins.

From the qualitative point of view it is currently held that, of the totality of proteins introduced, one third should be represented by proteins of animal origin, because with them particular amino acids indispensable to development (histidine, leucine, lysine, methionine, tryptophan, etc.) can be assumed, which are absent in vegetable proteins and which the human organism is not capable of synthesizing by itself. Even however in the exclusion of meat, such amino acids can be largely introduced with those indirectly animal foods (milk, cheese, eggs) or with fish, foods, particularly the former, which are commonly consumed by ordinary vegetarians and by Catholics even in periods of the strictest abstinence.

It is held by many that a meat diet is necessary or at least very useful to intellectual workers, as being more stimulating and dynamogenic. We have already said how the strictest vegetarian was dear to pagans famous for their intelligence, who attributed to it the merit; thus Seneca the moralist, who affirms (Epistle 108) that after a year of vegetarian regimen his intellectual aptitudes had developed even more. Porphyry, a Neoplatonist, maintains (De abstinentia) that the vegetarian regimen is the most suited to sharpening the philosophical intelligence. Many Sts. Fathers of the Church, many great monks of the patristic era, with their vegetarian and abstinent regimen extending even to fasting, showed, with their powerful and acute intelligence, that meat is not absolutely necessary to the development and good use of the intelligence.

It must be said that a regimen if not completely at least tendentially vegetarian is the most advisable for so-called intellectuals, whose characteristic is the sedentary life that ordinarily unfolds in bad hygienic conditions, because it is poor in muscular exercise and in pure respiration in the open air. The capital vice of such a kind of life is in fact the tendency to endogenous and exogenous intoxication, to which must be added the misdeeds of substances introduced for stimulating and pleasurable purposes (coffee, alcohol, tobacco). Moreover, a meat diet is for the organism the strongest source of uric acid, whereby sufferers from lithiasis (calculosis), the gouty, and the arteriosclerotic, whether already afflicted or candidates for it, all the more if intellectuals and sedentary, must orient themselves toward the vegetarian. Another advantage is that it gives rise to very scant toxic putrefactive processes in the digestive tract and conversely to more abundant waste products which, by stimulating intestinal peristalsis, combat constipation, so frequent in those who work more with the mind than with the arms.

A number of experiments conducted with every scientific rigor by physiologists and students of nutrition have demonstrated that a diet even strictly vegetarian, besides increasing to the maximum the potential and the duration of physical work (proverbial is the strength of the porters of Salonica and Constantinople, who feed only on cereals, rice, and fruit, figs, with the complete exclusion of meat and wine), accords well with an excellent potential and a high output of the intelligence.

Finally, a particular advantage of a diet poor in or even entirely devoid of meat foods must be placed in full evidence: the lesser excitability and the easier control of the sexual function. The whole of Christian antiquity concordantly recommends abstinence from meat and wine for the purpose of making chastity easier. Origen (PG 13, 518), St. Athanasius (PG 28, 264-65), St. Jerome (PL 22, 892, 897, 1116: «Si vis perfectus esse bonum est vinum non bibere et carnem non manducare»), St. Bernard (PL 183, 1096-97: «...abstinebo a carnibus ne dum nimis nutriunt carnem, simul et carnis nutriunt vitia»), St. Thomas (2a-2a, q. 147, a. 8), and many others still concordantly extol the anaphrodisiac virtue of a sober and abstinent diet.

Modern studies on the physiology of material and energy metabolism and on nutrition have demonstrated, as has already been said, that a meat diet gathers within itself the characteristic of being, at equal volume, more energetic than a vegetarian one, of giving origin to a greater quantity of toxic waste products (urea, uric acid), of predisposing more easily to intestinal stasis through the scant volume of the non-assimilable residues (the cellulosic woody portion of vegetable foods). From this follows a greater ease of slipping into excess, whether protein or energy, of nutrition; a greater danger for the organism of remaining intoxicated through overloading of the renal function (unequal to the elimination of urea) or through the accumulation of purine waste products (uric acid) in the blood; a deficiency of the emunctory function of the intestine through the more easily occurring constipation. Such a set of harms represents a strongly negative element for the struggle that the individual must conduct against the assaults of the overpowering sexual function. In fact, if for the good equilibrium of the body's health a metabolic balance that does not close in deficit is necessary, every alimentary excess, whether qualitative or quantitative, sooner or later ends by bringing harm not only to the physical organism but also to that just relationship that must bind the energy of the body to the strength of the spirit. Such an excess is easier in the intellectual, who in relation to a sedentary life needs a number of daily calories far smaller than those of the manual laborer (2200-2400 calories as against 4000-5000) and who more easily feeds on meat and on abundantly seasoned foods. It is well known, moreover, how intestinal stasis (constipation) easily leads to congestion of the organs contained in the small pelvis, among which must be numbered the sexual apparatuses (prostate, seminal vesicles, ampullary portion of the deferent ducts; ovary, tubes, uterus).

Without doubt, alongside a hygienically healthy life in which motion, open air, a proper muscular activity, a well-balanced distribution of work and rest, of waking and sleep are regulated by soundly natural criteria; a simple diet, devoid of or very poor in stimulants, sober, sheltered from an energy overload (calories introduced) and a qualitative one (excess of proteins and purines) into which, as has already been said, one can more easily slip with a meat diet, particularly in intellectuals devoted to a sedentary life, such a diet represents an excellent aid in the struggle for the maintenance of chastity (v.).

Abstinence from meat, therefore, particularly from that of land animals, just as the Church imposes it on determined days or periods, is not at all harmful to man's health, but on the contrary a source of sure physical advantages («... in multis enim escia erit infirmitas... Propter crapulam multi obierunt; qui autem abstinens est adiciet vitam » - Eccl. 37, 32 -), and moral ones as an excellent aid in the struggle against the concupiscence of the flesh («... corporali ieiunio vitia comprimis, mentem elevas, virtutem largiris et praemia » - preface of Lent -).

Giuseppe de Nino