Bishop Peter Elliot, who is, I suspect ... nobody ever tells me anything ... the man mainly concerned with liturgical questions concerning Ordinariates, may not have given much thought to the question of Local Calendars. This is because he is an Oz and down in Oz the Local Calendars have very few entries.
In England, on the other hand, the Calendars are crowded with Romans and Saxons and medievals and counter-Reformation martyrs; and accordingly they differ quite a lot from diocese to diocese. This week I keep S Edmund Rich (of Abingdon, a few miles to the South) on Tuesday; S Hugh of Lincoln (before the Diocese of Oxford was canonically erected in the reign of Good Queen Mary we were in the great sprawling diocese of Lincoln); and on Saturday, the other S Edmund, the King and Martyr*. But in an Ordinariate ... will people be keeping the Calendar of the Roman Catholic diocese in which they are situate; or will there be a special Ordinariate Calendar? Or both?
In practical terms - and to prevent some poor person from having to do a lot of complicated work at a time which is busy enough anyway - it would probably be neatest (at least temporarily) to put all the observances from all the Local Calendars into a single mainly optional list and leave it to local decision what got observed.
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*For the curious: in both the OF and EF masses here I use a calendar extracted from the calendars of the three RC dioceses parts of which are within the Diocese of Oxford; I based it on the canons of Local Relevance which respectively the Sacred Congregation of Rites used to employ for the EF and the Congregation for Divine Worship and etc. etc. operates now for the OF.
Oxford provides an example of why simply imposing the Calendars of a geographical RC diocese would be problematic. The boundary between the RC dioceses of Birmingham and Portsmouth runs through the middle of the Oxford conurbation. South of the Isis one would find oneself using a Calendar which included entries put on it with an eye to the Channnel Isles; North of the river, where the calendar of Birmingham is weighted towards the historical traditions of the far Northern see of Lichfield, one would be cut off from observances relevant to nearby Abingdon ... where my Head Server lives and where Pam and I are just off to do our shopping in the Waitrose.
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5 comments:
Father,
What you propose is much what is done in the Cistercian Ordo, which has to take into account the differences among congregations as well as different dioceses and episcopal conferences.
On a busy day, as many as three different options may be offered for the whole Order as well as another five or six that apply to specific houses or congregations. It's not ideal, but it is very workable.
Sadly, St. Edmund, who was one of our own, gets shunted off to the 20th in the present calendar to make room for St. Gertrude.
The current National Calendar for England gives a good groundwork. I suggest that like religious orders, the local calendar should be followed by the Ordinariate , with the addition in due course, and subject to the approbation of the Holy See, of any additional commemorations that are especially appropriate. The current national list runs as follows:
January
12 St AELRED OF RIEVAULX, abbot
19 St WULSTAN, bishop
February
14 St CYRIL, monk, and St METHODIUS, bishop, patrons of Europe
March
1 St DAVID, bishop, patron of Wales
17 St PATRICK, bishop, patron of Ireland
April
21 St ANSELM, bishop, doctor of the Church
23 St GEORGE, martyr, patron of England
24 St ADALBERT, bishop and martyr
St FIDELIS OF SIGMARINGEN, priest and martyr (St Adalbert is transferred from 23 April in the Universal Calendar)
29 St CATHERINE OF SIENA, virgin and doctor of the Church, patron of Europe
May
4 THE ENGLISH MARTYRS
[The English Men and Women martyred for the Catholic Faith 1535–1680 and beatified or canonised by the Holy See.]
19 St DUNSTAN, bishop
25 St BEDE THE VENERABLE, priest, doctor of the Church
27 St AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY, bishop
June
5 St BONIFACE, bishop, martyr
9 St COLUMBA, abbot
16 St RICHARD OF CHICHESTER, bishop
20 St ALBAN, martyr
22 St JOHN FISHER, bishop and St THOMAS MORE, martyrs
23 St ETHELDREDA (AUDREY), abbess
July
1 St OLIVER PLUNKET, bishop, martyr
11 St BENEDICT, abbot, patron of Europe
23 St BRIDGET, religious, patron of Europe
August
9 St TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS (EDITH STEIN),virgin, martyr, patron of Europe
26 Bl. DOMINIC OF THE MOTHER OF GOD BARBERI, priest
30 St MARGARET CLITHEROW, St ANNE LINE, and St MARGARET WARD, virgin, martyrs
31 St AIDAN, bishop, and SAINTS OF LINDISFARNE
September
3 St GREGORY THE GREAT, pope, doctor of the Church
4 St CUTHBERT, bishop
19 St THEODORE OF CANTERBURY, bishop
24 OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM
October
9 Bl. JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN, priest
10 St PAULINUS OF YORK, bishop
12 St WILFRID, bishop
13 St EDWARD THE CONFESSOR
26 St CHAD and St CEDD, bishops
November
3 St WINEFRIDE, virgin
7 St WILLIBRORD, bishop
16 St EDMUND OF ABINGDON, bishop
St MARGARET OF SCOTLAND
17 St HILDA, abbess
St HUGH OF LINCOLN, bishop
St ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY, religious
30 St ANDREW, apostle, patron of Scotland
December
29 St THOMAS BECKET, bishop, martyr
I rather suspect, mon Père, that the composition of the calendar will be left in your own capable hands. It would surely be better to have a calendar for the whole E&W ordinariate, and then people may, as elsewhere, celebrate other saints on appropriate days from the Martyrology as devotion or appropriateness suggests.
Thank you Pastor in Valle for a common sense solution. Adherence to rules too rigidly can be both irritating and fatal as well as somewhat unproductive.
In one of the (Anglican) parishes I served, my organist (a former Indian Army Brigadier), a Churchwarden (Major in the same and Tea Planter) and my predecessor (ex-British Army regular) all adhered (and would quote to me when they considered it appropriate) to the maxim "Rules are made for fools; they (the fools) don't last very long.
Although I am not sure what effect the advice had on me, one church secretary said of my time there they they were still running things the way I had taught them.
Curiously I was not aware of even daring to tell them how to organise what seemed to be their own business!
Surely we are not going to carry into the ordinariate some kind of rigidity - the pastoral demands of time and place will surely mould the emerging liturgical practice?
Sadly in the Channel Islands we get little or no local celebration.
Yet as we used to be part of Coutanches there is great scope.
If you try hard you can find the Book of Common Prayer translated into French by the order of Charles II (he stayed in Jersey for part of the English civil war) so that locals would be able to use a language they understood.
If you sail here you could get wrecked on the Paternosters, a group of rocks to the North of Jersey.
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