you could try actually reading the source yourself.

and who the hell am I supposed to trust about the Catholics if not a freaking archbishop?

In the US, the USCCB (that is, the bishop’s conference for the United States) has ruled that Catholics should abstain from meat every Friday outside of Lent but may substitute that for some other suitable form of penance. What that penance is isn’t exactly delineated. here’s an archdiocese saying the same thing . I’m not catholic, so if you want to argue what Catholics are and are not allowed to do, please take it up with the archbishops and archdiocese.