https://archive.org/details/TheLifeOfSaintClare/page/n155/mode/2up
via p. 30 of Thomas of Celano's "The Life of St. Clare" (Feast day is August 12th traditionally):
> Moreover, so great was the rigor of her abstinence in fasting that she would scarcely have lived in the body on the meager fare she took unless another power kept her up. For while she was well, fasting upon bread and water during the greater Lent and the Lent of St. Martin, the Bishop, she tasted wine only on Sundays if she had any. And that you who hear it may wonder at what you cannot imitate, she took no food whatever on three days of the week during these Lents, to wit on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thus the days of her meager fare and the days of her strict mortification followed one another in such wise that the vigil of perfect fasting was, as it were, made up for by the feast of bread and water.
"St. Martin's Lent" was a voluntary fast of 40 days leading up to Christmas, starting on "St. Martin's day" (November 11th).
The "Greater Lent" referred to, was the traditional Catholic 40 days of fasting leading up to Easter.
The orthodox church along with eastern Catholics have retained this fast of 40 days which they refer to as the "Great Lent" (and which is stricter than the common traditional Catholic Lenten fast).
The Vatican 2 church has practically abolished the Lenten fast, reducing it from the weekdays and Saturday (excluding Sundays) of Lent down to only Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
I was going to argue this is a sign of Vatican 2 being an abandonment of Catholicism, and still think it to be such a thing, however in researching for this post I found there were some things to note:
From roughly the time of Christ until the 5th century, there were some variations and a lack of standardization about how Lent was observed, with Pope St. Gregory the Great standardizing things more around ~600 AD; see "Lent" in Catholic encyclopedia: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09152a.htm
From the 5th century until the 19th century, it seems the Lenten fast looked a bit more like the fast of "Great Lent" (no meat, but fish was allowed? Essentially a pescetarian fast?).
In the 9th century, a smaller meal or snack was introduced called a "collation", due to the needs of laboring monks (and then laity).
In the end of the 19th century, meat became allowed at one meal, and in the beginning of the 20th century a second collation was allowed.
In the 1940s, Pope Pius XII controversially allowed bishops to dispense with the fast entirely except for Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Presumably the pretext was that those working hard labor might need strength to work and so bishops should have the discretion to allow them greater liberty in eating so they might have the energy to work. However, I believe this was already understood as a principle that "impossibility excuses from obligation" ("ad impossibilia nemo tenetur") and so hard laborers might relax or abandon a fast out of necessity for work, so there was no need to make this kind of gesture. Thus, while many sedevacantists view Pius XII as the last true pope in recent history, a lot of us have also noted that he seems to have either been deceived or have been a "occult modernist heretic" (secretly was anti-Catholic), as he also controversially tampered with the traditional "Holy Week" rubrics. His actions there seemed suspicious, and especially in stumbling upon this "testing of the waters of abolishing the Lenten fast", my suspicions about him are increased even more.
In 1966, "pope" Paul VI in the Apostolic Constitution "Paenitemini" abolished the traditional Catholic Lenten fast of over a millennium, making only Ash Wednesday and Good Friday days of obligatory fast. Catholics also abstained from meat on all Fridays during the year to honor Christ who died on Friday, a practice which can be possibly traced to the 1st century writing and which was formally declared by Pope Nicolas I in the 9th century. "Paenitemini" abolished this practice of abstinence, allowing bishops to substitute in some other form of penance on Fridays if they wanted to. In the same year "Paenitemini" was issued, U.S. "Catholic" bishops reduced the practice of abstinence of meat to only the Fridays of Lent (from all Fridays of the year).
Thus while Catholics had promoted abstinence from meat on all Fridays of the year and observed a Lenten fast on all days except Sundays, for over a millennium, in 1966 this was basically abolished, and in practice it doesn't seem like many are encouraged to follow the previous standard, let alone to imitate saints like Clare of Assisi in further observing more voluntary fasts.
So in my mind, I guess I see as appropriate possibly either for the sake of argument 1) keeping the previous norms or 2) they could have possibly abolished them but with an attitude of strong encouragement to voluntarily keep up previous traditions as well as voluntarily do even more. They instead opted for 3) of abolishing the traditions and not really encouraging people to put forth the same previous efforts or to exceed previous efforts, which plainly looked like they were attempting to "destroy" or "bury" Catholic tradition, belief, and practice.
I thus tend to conclude that "in spirit", while things are still being sorted out, that this development seems to be against Catholicism and not Catholic (and believe Catholics ought to continue to follow the previous norms and to hold to the sedevacantist position in response to them).
