Abstinence from Meat

Our diocesan paper runs a column from CNS, a priest who gives advice and information in answer to question on all things Catholic.
He seems wrong almost as often as he is right, frequently offers opinion as fact, and often manages, inadvertently I am sure, to imply untruths by means of incomplete truths.
Today's question was about abstinence from meat.
A new priest in our area tells us that all Fridays are again days of abstinence. Another priest says it is a sin if we do not perform some act of penance on Fridays. I know the rules about fast and abstinence during Lent, and we should do some penance on all Fridays, but I've never heard the obligation expressed in terms to sin. Is there a change?
And the columnist's answer starts out with one of those partial truths: No, there is no change.
That much is correct, in that it is literally factual.
The norms have indeed not changed in several decades.
"All Fridays" are NOT "again "days of abstinence"
All Fridays are STILL days of abstinence.
Lest we be treated to a performance of the cantata, The Seven Last Words:

“Oh, Vatican Two Did Away With That”

…let’s look it up, shall we?
....................
Paenitemini, the Apostolic Constitution on Penance, February 17, 1966. (Paul VI)
CHAPTER III
I. 1. By divine law all the faithful are required to do penance….
II. 1. The time of Lent preserves its penitential character. The days of penitence to be observed under obligation through-out the Church are all Fridays and Ash Wednesday, that is to say the first days of “Grande Quaresima” (Great Lent), according to the diversity of the rite. Their substantial observance binds gravely.
2. Apart from the faculties referred to in VI and VIII [this, VIII, refers to law governing Eastern Rite] regarding the manner of fulfilling the precept of penitence on such days, abstinence is to be observed on every Friday which does not fall on a day of obligation, while abstinence and fast are to be observed on Ash Wednesday or, according to local practice, on the first day of ’Great Lent’ and on Good Friday.” …
VI. 1. In accordance with the conciliar decree "Christus Dominus" regarding the pastoral office of bishops, number 38,4, it is the task of episcopal conferences to:
A. Transfer for just cause the days of penitence, always taking into account the Lenten season;
B. Substitute abstinence and fast wholly or in part with other forms of penitence and especially works of charity and the exercises of piety.
2. By way of information, episcopal conferences should communicate to the Apostolic See what they have decided on the matter (See note at end.) [all emphasis mine]

And more recent work of a juridical nature? (not the Code of Canon Advice, mind you…)

Code of Canon Law (1983)
Canon 1250
All Fridays throughout the year and the time of Lent are penitential days and times throughout the universal Church.
Canon 1251
Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
and
Canon 1253
The Episcopal Conference can determine more particular ways in which fasting and abstinence are to be observed. In place of abstinence or fasting it can substitute, in whole or in part, other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety.

Hmmm… so what did our Episcopal conference say?

Pastoral Statement On Penance and Abstinence, November 18, 1966
The National Conference of Catholic Bishops (precursor to USCCB)
“… the Catholic bishops of the United States, far from downgrading the traditional penitential observance of Friday, and motivated precisely by the desire to give the spirit of penance greater vitality, especially on Fridays, the day that Jesus died, urge our Catholic people henceforth to be guided by the following norms:

1. Friday itself remains a special day of penitential observance throughout the year, a time when those who seek perfection will be mindful of their personal sins and the sins of mankind which they are called upon to help expiate in union with Christ Crucified;

2. Friday should be in each week something of what Lent is in the entire year. For this reason we urge all to prepare for that weekly Easter that comes with each Sunday by freely making of every Friday a day of self-denial and mortification in prayerful remembrance of the passion of Jesus Christ;

3. Among the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance which we especially commend to our people for the future observance of Friday, even though we hereby terminate the traditional law of abstinence as binding under pain of sin, as the sole prescribed means of observing Friday, we give first place to abstinence from flesh meat. We do so in the hope that the Catholic community will ordinarily continue to abstain from meat by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law. Our expectation is based on the following considerations;

a. We shall thus freely and out of love for Christ Crucified show our solidarity with the generations of believers to whom this practice frequently became, especially in times of persecution and of great poverty, no mean evidence of fidelity in Christ and his Church.

b. We shall thus also remind ourselves that as Christians, although immersed in the world and sharing its life, we must preserve a saving and necessary difference from the spirit of the world. Our deliberate, personal abstinence from meat, more especially because no longer required by law, will be an outward sign of inward spiritual values that we cherish.”

It may just be my reading comprehension problem, but what I derive from those three sources is that even though the US bishops, in accordance with a freedom given them by the supreme pontiff, declare that abstinence from meat is no longer the only way under pain of sin to fulfill the obligation to do penance on every Friday, the obligation to do penance in SOME way still exists. And we suggest and hope you voluntarily elect to do so by means of abstinence from meat.
And yeah, we hope you do it out of love, rather than merely out of a sense of obligation.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no obligation.
Whatever penance you set yourself, the obligation to do penance on Fridays remain.
I guess all the columnist really is saying is that in his opinion disobedience to laws or directives of the Church, in the sense of deliberately ignoring them, or denying the authority of the Church to make them is no sin... but then, after all, what is nowadays?