Lenten abstinence from beef (and other flesh meat) makes you holier for much the same reason it might make you wittier: It’s all about detachment from the things that tie you down to the purely material. The idea is to gain perspective through small inconveniences, such as giving up meat on Friday. This serves as a concrete acknowledgment that the individual aims to adapt to God’s preferences, even in humbling and seemingly unimportant matters like what to have for lunch.
Does God even care what we have for lunch? Well, of course — why else did He bother to create twenty kinds of edible mushroom, not to mention arugula, walnuts and gorgonzola with which to stuff them? The world, admits the faster, isn’t my oyster — it’s God’s oyster, though even in Lent He doesn’t object to us wading into a plate of the delicious little mollusks with glee and a glass of Pouilly-Fumé, as long as the spirit of moderation is observed (yes, I know, a big if).
In truth, Lenten rules are far from severe for Catholics in our era.
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