Penance Apostolic Constitution of Pope Paul VI

Lumen Christi Press 1976.

APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION
PAENITEMINI
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
PAUL VI
ON FAST AND ABSTINENCE

In this Apostolic Constitution, Paenitemini, revising the Church's laws on fast and abstinence, the Holy Father points out how we should strive after the spirit of penance rather than just to be bound to the letter of the law. The Pope urges all Catholics to practice mortification and penance voluntarily. The revision once again echoes the spirit of Vatican II. 

The Catholic Bishops of the U.S. issued a statement with the new regulations on penitential observance which became effective on the first Sunday of Advent 1966. We have included the following statement.

The bishops call for "a new birth of loving faith and more profound penitential conversion." The new regulations, while abolishing obligatory abstinence from meat on Fridays, except in Lent, place emphasis on voluntary self-denial and show the unchanging need for "acts of penance in pledge of our inward penitence and conversion."