This year, of course, the two commemorations coincide; the nearest Sunday to November 11 is November 11!
According to the LMS ORDO, there is provision on Remembrance Sunday, in England and Wales, for one Requiem to be said or sung.
Rubricarius once tried to find the provision for this in Roman legislative texts. He drew a blank.
I possess a Brentwood Diocesan Calendar of 1958; and a (punctiliously accurate) Anglo-Papalist ORDO of 1969. Neither of these has any hint of any such observance.
The Saint Lawrence Press ORDO annually records such a permission on November 11, for Armistice Day, citing the SCR, 28 May 1931. But nothing for Remembrance Sunday.
I set aside the possibility that the Remembrance Sunday tradition is a confusion of the November 11 provision, or of Benedict XV's arrangements for November 2.
My suspicion is that the provision may have been a legislative initiative of the CBCEW. But when??
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By decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, 23rd June 1961, it is permitted in Australia to celebrate a Requiem Mass on ANZAC Day, the 25th of April, otherwise kept as the feast of St Mark Evangelist. The national calendar for the Ordinary Form goes further, and moves St Mark to the 26th! Here in Australia, while we still keep a minute's silence at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, ANZAC Day - anniversary of the landings of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli in 1915 - is the more important day of commemoration, being a public holiday always marked by solemn civic services, parades, and so forth.
A kind correspondent did solve the mystery. The permission to have one Requiem, providing, IIRC, there was a Mass of the Sunday celebrated in the church, was part of the five-yearly faculties granted to the Bishops of E&W.
Whether such things are still granted...
At my local SSPX chapel, a sung requiem was offered on Sunday. The priest said that this had become the custom in England after WWI, starting in military centres and spreading to virtually every parish in the country, even though it violates the norms. I must say it was very moving, even if it did cause me some confusion--I arrived a couple minutes late and couldn't figure out why they weren't doing the 5th Sunday after Epiphany.
Perhaps because this was the 100th anniversary, even my Novus Ordo parish was decked out in poppies and flags. You'da thunk you'd walked into a C of E.
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