What I do notice is that the "gesima" Sundays are also called The Third Sunday before Lent; The Second Sunday before Lent; and the Sunday before Lent. There wouldn't need to be much adjustment to our new Roman Missal in English, just rename those Sundays before Lent, Sundays before Lent, no matter what Sunday in Ordinary Time it is. The same with Ordinary Time, just name these the Sundays after Epiphany and the Sundays after Trinity Sunday, no need for a radical change to the Roman Missal we currently use. And all you have to do is say, celebrate the Roman Missal eastward facing--no big deal!
I haven't seen the entire calendar that the Holy Father has approved for the Anglican Ordinariate, but what he has approved is surely a sign of things to happen in the mainstream of the Latin Rite, my clairvoyance tells me.
1. Ordinary Time will no longer be referred to, being replaced by Sundays after Epiphany or Sundays after Trinity, thus ensuring the whole liturgical year is now explicitly anchored and referenced to the mysteries of salvation.
2. The three “-gesima” Sundays are restored.
3. Rogation days before Ascension, and the Ember days in the four seasons of the year are restored.
4. The Octave of Pentecost is restored, to be marked properly except for the readings which will be of the particular weekday.
5. Already the Ordinariate have announced its liturgy should be eastward facing
I would say that we'll see this very soon in the Latin Rite! When I don't know, but why in the name of everything that is holy should the Anglican Ordinariate have a better official Liturgy and Calendar than the mainstream Latin Rite. It simply doesn't make sense unless the Holy Father is using the Anglican Ordinariate as the "veiled test model" like auto makers test their new cars before release to the public. You see them out in public and people snap pictures of them and then these make their way into auto magazines. Is this the case for our reform of the reform Ordinary Form Mass and calendar. Well, yes, it doesn't take a rocket scientist or auto designer to figure this out! And for those of you who aren't clairvoyant, you don't have to be that either although you know that I am.
18 comments:
From your lips to God's ear!
I know Ordinary=Ordinal but marking the time ofter Epiphany and after Pentacost and the -gesima weeks reminding us of the approach of Lent are so much more liturgically rich.
Father,
I pray that your clairvoyance is correct (and the sooner the better)!
Now some of us will be tempted to be jealous of Anglican Ordinariate Catholics as well as those with regular access to the EF and/or the "TNO" ad orientem!
Please oh please oh please!
Again, if this is not mandated ex cathedra it won't mean anything. We now have some parishes saying the TLM and some not, some are changing the order of the Sacraments and some not, some use traditional Catholic chant and hymns and some do not. This is silly and even more divisive than all the post VAT II "pick and choose" liturgy. Why is the Pope just teasing us and not doing something definitive and uniform? Besides, until we have another Pope and see whether and how Benedict's initiatives are carried on, all this doesn't really mean anything long term. If the mod faction elects a Pope, forget it. It'll be back to St. Mary's Baptist Church Bar and Grill...
In today's relativistic and "have-it-your-way" culture, people have to be directed; they have to be told what to do and how to do it. Otherwise, you have clowns at Mass, "In the Garden" sung as a processional hymn, applause in Church, and Priests singing "When the Saints Go Marching In" from the ambo.
If the calendar is revised it will be mandated for the Ordinary Form similar to the revision of the English in the Ordinary Form--I think it's coming, when though, I don't know.
The Year of Faith would provide the perfect opportunity to restore a more traditional calendar- especially since it encourages more self examination, which tends to lead to a greater dependance on God and an increase in faith.
We can hope and pray!
"If the mod faction elects a Pope, forget it."
Be not afraid, Pin, the next pope will be still more traditional than Benedict XVI. The historical swing of the pendulum is inevitable (aided, of course, by Benedict's appointments to the College of Cardinals which will elect his successor). Indeed, my own guess is that the kind of mandates you urge must largely await the first pope who was not himself a participant in Vatican II.
This does not need to be done ex cathedra: the Pope has the authority over the entire Church to implement a new calendar if he wants to do so.
While this Anglican Ordinariate Calendar is certainly a good sign, I note that the 1962 calendar has been in wide use among many Roman Rite Catholics throughout the world for 50 years. Despite that wide acceptance, the Church is still using the changed calendar from 1970 - so I'm not sure that this new calendar really indicates any of the Holy Father's future intentions.
Also, this Anglican Calendar does not resolve many of the problems with the 1970 calendar - including the multi-year cycle, the transition of saints' feast days, and the Proper readings for Mass for each day of the year. It is certainly a step in the right direction, but many of the things it gets right are cosmetic and not substantive.
Marc, my clairvoyance tells me that when we have a unified rite for Holy Mass that will be more like the EF with OF sensibilities, I do not forsee a major change in the calendar nor any return to the 1962 lectionary which is quite impoverished compared to the revised lectionary. One of the specific calls of Sacrosanctum Concilium was that that the Mass make available a more lavish use of Scriptures. Having celebrated the 1962 Mass for 5 years, the one year lectionary for Sunday is fine, but simply not enough and the daily lectionary is abysmal!
I must wonder, not being able to recall directly, if the custom of preaching the Homily based upon the Readings/Gospel is something that came out of V2, or if it has always been thus? If it were not the case before V2, if Priests used the Homily as an opportunity to expound Doctrine and Instruct their flock, then I would say the limited lectionary woldn't have been an issue. I mean, reading the Bible is good, and important, but no more so than reading the catechism I would think, neither of which requires the Mass. If the Mass is the Mass, and Bible Reading Bible Reading, why should it matter if you hear less of the Bible during Mass? If the increased Lectionary forces priests to give Homilies tied to the readings more often, perhaps that can have a negative effect on the laity who are denied the weekly reminder of our Doctrine, and hence our Identity. I don't know about others, but I appreciate Homilies more that spent those 12-15 precious minutes telling me about something other than what I just heard in the Readings and Gospel. Mass is short enough as it is, why go over the same ground twice.
The homilies were sermons and disconnected from the readings. As I've stated before, authentic renewal of the Church is going to be based on the Documents of Vatican II and the teaching authority of the Magisterium which even in non-infallible statements, Catholic are obliged to give assent. The theology of dissent that I now hear from neo-conservatives is nothing more than the theology of dissent that liberal progressives started in the Church in 1968 with Humanae Vitae. No matter which side one is approaching dissent, it is untoward behavior for Catholics who are to place themselves under the authority of Holy Mother Church and her living Magisterium. In other words, people are living in a pipe dream if they think Vatican II will be eliminated as a Council of the Church just as those who think Vatican III will occur soon to confirmed their "spirit of Vatican II demands.
Obviously even informed opinions may differ, Fr. McDonald. I have followed the both the OF and EF Sunday lectionaries closely for much longer than your EF experience, and think the EF 1-year cycle of Sunday readings far superior.
The daily situation is admittedly not so clearcut. The daily EF lectionary served the Church well for over a millenium. The daily EF readings in Lent are more closely tuned and coordinated than are the OF readings. The 2-year OF cycle of serial readings was perhaps a well intentioned response to Sacrosanctum Concilium, but took a too didactic approach of forced march through swatches of Scripture, as opposed to careful selection and coordination of readings on spiritual grounds.
During temporal time the OF readings bypass the celebration of the saints that is the focus of the EF during this time--virtually every weekday being in EF practice a saints feastday, so in fact there is never ever never a default to the preceding Sunday's readings in lieu of specified daily readings--and never nowadays a daily requiem Mass except for specific reason. I think one really needs to follow both lectionaries closely and equally, every day through a number of annual cycles, in order to develop an adequate understanding and comparison of their different emphases. Each approach has something significant to recommend it, and failure to recognize this betrays a lack of sufficient familiarity with one or the other.
Be that as it may, I am not clairvoyant as you, but recognize historical inevitabilities. Starting where we are, it inevitable that the eventual unified calendar will combine the OF sanctoral cycle with the EF temporal cycle.
Wow!! Was that aimed at me Father? All I did was ask a question about how something used to be, and take a quess at why it might have been that way becasue the pieces of the puzzle seemed to fit. Didn't mean to come across as inspiring insurrection, or even imply I thought it might happen, or even wishing it to happen.
Sorry you took it that way.
Father, I strongly disagree with your analysis that the Tridentine Lectionary is abysmal or impoverished. I believe the readings better sanctify the year and the lack of proper daily readings re-emphasizes the Sunday Mass, creating more connection between the daily Mass and the Sunday Mass. This is good because most people cannot go to daily Mass, but they have already experienced it in the Sunday readings. That also makes the year more sanctified when during Lent there are proper readings for each day that follow a particular course. Moreover, the Sunday readings are traditional in that we know that saints for millenia have listened to these very readings on these particular days: There is a deeper connection to our Catholic identity. Finally, as Templar has pointed out, the Mass is not the time for Scripture study: the readings are the "offering" of the Catechumens in the Mass of the Catechumens (that's why they are to be read in the sacred language - Latin).
So, while I respect your opinion, I disagree. I'd rather partake of the Mass and the readings that fostered countless saints over a very long period of more than 1,500 years.
The Ordinary Form of the Mass is fostering saints too as well as its lectionary--keep that in mind!
Although it shows "richness" in breadth--though at the expense of depth--I think the length of the 3-year cycle of Sunday readings prevents the OF lectionary from having the lasting scriptural impact of the EF 1-year lectionary. Surely, few people can retain anything from one 3rd year to the next. Whereas I think many who hear the same EF readings on the same Sunday every single year must actually form lifelong scriptural associations. Like the transfiguration gospel in Matthew 17 which has been heard on the 2nd Sunday of Lent for a millenium and a half.
For instance, most traditional Catholics surely associate the last Sunday of the year with the great apocalyptic gospel Matthew 24:13-25. Which, as I recall, has never been heard even once at an OF Sunday Mass.
Indeed, many of the especially central or "hard" readings of the EF Sunday lectionary are distinguished by their complete absence from the OF Sunday lectionary. For instance, this past 3rd Lenten EF Sunday Epistle (Ephesians 5:1-9) and Gospel (Luke 11:14-28) have never been read at an OF Sunday Mass, being relegated in the OF lectionary to an every-other-year on a certain weekday in ordinary time. And these are by no means isolated examples.
I am convinced that this elimination or relegation of vital texts to weekday Masses--so that 99% percent of Catholics never hear them--is one of many factors in the loss of Catholic identity.
And seldom if ever does the OF lectionary exhibit the apt integration that is characteristic of the EF lectionary--as this past Saturday when the OT reading about the brothers Jacob and Esau is paralleled with the NT reading about the prodigal son and older brother.
Anyone who is intimately familiar with both lectionaries can multiply such examples endlessly. Whereas one who is well-informed can argue both sides, no one does himself any favor who blithely repeats shallow remarks about the "impoverishment" of a lectionary that so long served the Church and nourished so many saints.
The EF lectionary was developed over a period of many centuries, largely by monks who were immersed in the scriptures to an extent that few are in modern times. And certainly not by committees of designated "experts", such as constructed the OF lectionary with breath-taking hubris and haste, thereby ditching the slow and steady inspiration of the Holy Spirit during so many centuries.
Henry, that was a great post!
Right on, Henry!
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