Very graciously, the Angelus Press has sent me a review copy of their ORDO for users of the 1961/2 liturgical books. I am very grateful; it is very interesting; and I shall write about it soon. But ...
... upon opening it, I immediately found an erratum slip. As an ORDO compiler myself, I instinctively felt a great tidal wave of sympathy. This is the ultimate, the appalling nightmare. As soon as the print run is finished, one discovers that one has got the date of Easter wrong or inserted the readings for year for Year A rather than Year B, vel sim.. But, when I looked at things more closely, I began to wonder why they feel that their original text is wrong. This is what the slip says:
On July 2nd the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (2nd class) is celebrated. The Feast of the Most Precious Blood will not be celebrated in 2011.
Now I instinctively think I feel that the Visitation should be celebrated that day. It is a much older feast than the Precious Blood. It was probably Urban VI who instituted it to beseech God for Christian Unity. There are Byzanine analogues. Whereas the Precious Blood is distinctly rather more parvenu.
But shouldn't a First Class Feast of Christ trump a Second Class Feast of the Theotokos?
Perhaps a reason lies in the fact that July 2 in 2011 immediately follows the Feast of the Sacred Heart. You could see the logic of suppressing the second celebration. But ... what happened? Did PCED issue a decree .... ???? Do SSPX follow PCED rulings? (Which Good Friday Prayer for the Jews do they use?)
The reason that the Precious Blood is not celebrated this year has nothing to do with the Visitation. The Precious Blood is actually celebrated on July 1st. This year however, the Sacred Heart occurs on July 1st, which has precedence (no. 3 in the table of precedence vs. no. 11 for the Precious Blood). I assume that the compilers originally transferred the Precious Blood to July 2nd (which would also have been wrong, since the trnaslation must always be to a day free of 1st or 2nd class celebrations, RG 96). However, RG 95 stipulates:
ReplyDelete"Si vero duo festa eiusdem Divinae Personae aut duo festa eiusdem Sancti vel Beati simul occurrunt, fit de festo, quod in tabella praecedentiae superiorem obtinet locum et aliud omittitur."
Since both the Sacred Heart and the Precious Blood are DNJC, the rubric applies, and the lower feast of the Precious Blood is omitted.
Fascinating! Makes sense when it's explained.
ReplyDeleteAs Dr Cranmer put it ... so hard and intricate a matter, that many times, there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.
BUT, now we have compters to work out what it to be read perhaps we can bring back the Pie.
The Chants for the proper of the Precious Blood are an absolute fright not to mention their verbosity! Their absence this year will not be missed by catholic musicians.
ReplyDeleteIn the old rite the feast of the Precious Blood gets moved to Monday, 4th July.
ReplyDeleteIf the feast has been concurrent with the Sacred Heart (e.g. the 1st July had been Saturday) then the principles Gregor mentions actually apply and the Sacred Heart would have had integral second Vespers without commemoration of the following feast being considered an indentical mystery.
As far as I am aware the SSPX follow a range of practices and one could find the old collect with perfidis Judaeis sine genuflection; perfidis Judaeis with genuflection - the most common practice - and then without perfidious and with a genuflection. I do not believe any SSPX priest uses Benedict XVI's creation.
Rubricarius is talking, of course, about the rubrics prior to the 1960 code of rubrics and, I believe, prior to Cum nostra hac aetate, thus what he means by old rite is not what is referred to by Summorum Pontificum.
ReplyDeleteGregor,
ReplyDeleteQuite.
The Old Rite is certainly not the same as the 'Extraordinary Form' of the New Rite.