Sacrificing beyond Lent

Lent is now nearly a week behind us, but the Catholic Church teaches that the practice of fasting and/or abstaining does not end. According to No. 1250 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, the church sees all Fridays as a penitential day. According to EWTN.com:

On the Fridays outside of Lent the U.S. bishops conference obtained the permission of the Holy See for Catholics in the U.S. to substitute a penitential, or even a charitable, practice of their own choosing. Since this was not stated as binding under pain of sin, not to do so on a single occasion would not in itself be sinful. However, since penance is a divine command, the general refusal to do penance is certainly gravely sinful. For most people the easiest way to consistently fulfill this command is the traditional one, to abstain from meat on all Fridays of the year which are not liturgical solemnities. When solemnities, such as the Annunciation, Assumption, All Saints etc. fall on a Friday, we neither abstain or fast.

I have heard several times during discussions in my profession as a Catholic journalist that the common practice today of many Catholics (and non-Catholics) reducing church authority to just one of many opinions to consider can be traced back to this decision to make optional meatless Fridays throughout the year. They argue that it bolstered the thought of, "If the church could bend on that, then they can and will probably bend on other things, so I will just do what I think is right." This decision, one person argued, plays a direct role into why so many Catholics contracept today. Now I'm not sure how one can prove this, but there may be something in that. At the least, it makes me want to look more into the effects of this "Friday" decision. Does anyone know of any research done or columns written on this? When exactly was this rule relaxed in the U.S.? Is this the document (from 1966)? For some reason, I thought this happened earlier.

Do you or anyone you know regularly practices this? I'd like to hear some stories. This will make me re-evaluate how I spend my Fridays and work to include a penitential or charitable act. It is also important to be reminded that when the church calls for fasting and abstinence, it does so for men and women between the ages of 14 and 59 who also are not prohibited by medical conditions.