Two Epiphany queries

(1) An acute reader, Timothy Graham, asks about the differences between the Sarum and the Tridentine propria for the days after the Epiphany. I give an edited version of the account in that immensely useful 1930s Anglican manual Liturgy and Worship.

A dislocation appears at Epiphany I between the ancient rites and the Tridentine and the Prayer Book rites on the one hand; and Sarum and the other medieval rites on the other.

At first, the Epiphany had no Octave, and the services for the 'Sundays After' resumed their ordinary course on the first Sunday after January 6. When the Octave was first instituted, it was treated as one continuous feast which included the Sunday which happened to fall within it. Thus the propria for the following Sundays needed each to be moved one week later so as to get them out of the way of this newly-inserted Octave. S Pius V and Archbishop Cranmer, well-known close buddies, reverted to the earlier, pre-medieval arrangements (in spite of the fact that the Tridentine Rite keeps the Octave). Thus, in the Tridentine Rite, as in the Anglican Prayer Books, the service given for Epiphany I is the original service for Epiphany I before the Octave introduced its complications.

(2) This is the time of year when right-thinking people feel the need to agitate for the restoration of the Epiphany to January 6 in those countries where liturgical decay is so far advanced that it has been 'transferred' to a Sunday. The instincts here are admirable. BUT ... think carefully ... the present arrangement encourages people to attend Extraordinary Form Masses in order to get a genuine Epiphany on January 6 ... including people who otherwise have no burning desire to attend the Extraordinary Form. Because the EF is the only place you can get a proper Epiphany (unless you have a Greek church handy). The same holds for the Ascension and Corpus Christi. Thus the present situation provides a highly useful tool for Tridentinist proselytism. I think a ballot of Tridentine-favouring folk would reveal that large numbers of them have come to realise the advantages in the current, albeit thoroughly corrupt, set-up. Perhaps they should write to the Episcopal Conference and thank it for its felix culpa.

In my view, the Ordinariate should urgently seek the same liberty as the EF to observe the Epiphany on January 6 (and the Ascension and Corpus Christi on the Thursdays); thus Catholics generally would be the more encouraged to attend and to get to know our splendid Liturgy and would have increased facilities to celebrate properly the Epiphany, especially in parched desert areas where the EF is still not very easily accessed.