23 April 2019

S George?? UPDATED

Before the changes made just before the beginning of the twentieth century, S George, a Double of the First Class here in England, could today have taken advantage of the very human, pastoral, and compassionate rule that ubi ... est ... concursus populi ad celebrandum Festum quod transferri debet, possunt cantari duae Missae, una de die, alia de Festo.

[The Rubricae Generales, around this time, were modified so as to exclude the Monday and Tuesday of Easter Week from this generous approach! But, right down to the 1950s, it remained the law that this liberty could be taken on the Wednesday (etc.) of Easter Week.]

I remember, as a young priest more than half a century ago, explaining to people how S George could not possibly be observed in Easter Week because the Resurrection of the Lord was so important that S George had to be ignored until next Monday. How cocksure and infallible I was in those days*. As I observed recently in this blog, Mothering Sunday and S Valentine's day, abolished after the Council, have proved so resilient that, by gritting their teeth, they have survived into the bleak, cold, liturgical winds of the third millennium. Even PF organised a romantic love-in for desponsati on [the abolished] S Valentine's day!

The strength of these survivals in popular devotion demonstrates the power of inculturation and of actuosa participatio. And yet the liturgists who write learned treatises about Inculturation and Actuosa Participatio are the upholders of the post-Conciliar fads, modi, which eliminated prime examples of both.

Often, those to whom I condescendingly explained the impossibility of observing S George on S George's day were members of societies with his name, or Boy Scout Leaders. I now wonder how necessary it was to fight those battles. The Saints in the Christmas Octave were so well dug-in that even Bugnini and Co could not uproot them. Generations of usage allowed S Anastasia to retain a toehold in the Masses of Christmas Day itself. Byzantines remain capable of a wide variety of liturgical combinations.

So what am I saying? Not, I hope, that I now have yet another cocksure, infallible, template for remaking the Calendar or its rubrics. I simply desire to throw into the mix, for discussion, the following hypothesis. For over a century, liturgical experts have been laying down how the people of God ought not to worship. Very often, their prescriptions have contradicted the instincts and inherited, inculturated, customs of ordinary priests and ordinary congregations. The post-Conciliar mistakes were only the final stage in this process of academic, intellectualist, even perhaps Jansenist, liturgical arrogance.

If this has something of the truth in it, here comes the tricky question. In the pathless wilderness into which we experts have led the Church, is there any chance of finding a way to something of the richness and the populism of the worshipping culture which we started trashing a century ago?
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*Perhaps, to be a little fairer to myself, I should say that my error was too much respect and deference to what "the Church" had liturgically decided. I will do penance by not making the same mistake for another half century.


14 comments:

Oliver Nicholson said...

It's S. Anselm I feel sorry for this year !

Fr Ray Blake said...

Our Polish and Slavic community bring "Easter baskets" of food their forefathers would have abstained from during Lent to be blessed, and after blessing presumably eaten to end the Lent fast.
Presumably this is a memory of the pre-Pian Easter Vigil, and therefore a rejoicing over the Harrowing of Hell, rather than the rising from the tomb on the Third Day.

Fr PJM said...

Even in the Novus missal, there is a way to commemorate, which is perfectly licit, as the Benedictine, Fr Kirby, has pointed out: in the General Intercessions or "bidding prayers".

Claudio Salvucci said...

"If this has something of the truth in it, here comes the tricky question. In the pathless wilderness into which we experts have led the Church, is there any chance of finding a way to something of the richness and the populism of the worshipping culture which we started trashing a century ago?"

Yes I think so! It is already starting to happen in the home with mothers and fathers re-inculturating the traditional Christian year. The current generation of young parents is very interested in reviving Christian folklore. They are happy to let Father say Mass and provide the sacraments, and meanwhile Mom will start the pudding on Stir-up Sunday, fill the shoes on St. Nicholas, bake St. Lucy Bread, break out the wine at St. John's (...maybe that's more of a Dad thing). It is spreading rapidly from home to home thanks to the Internet, particularly via the "mommy blogs".

Since the chain of tradition was already broken, people are having to feel their way around a bit. And there's some common sense to their approach, if not direct liturgical knowledge. So you'll see questions online about whether we need to Friday fast during the Christmas Octave, for example. American parents are striving to reclaim our commercialized Halloween from the enemy--no easy task, but in the process created All Saints parties. I've even seen some interest in reviving the old English soul-cake tradition.

There is great hope in the Catholic family for a bottom-up liturgical revival, tried and tested by real family life and not some liturgist's pet ideas.

"For over a century, liturgical experts have been laying down how the people of God ought not to worship. Very often, their prescriptions have contradicted the instincts and inherited, inculturated, customs of ordinary priests and ordinary congregations. The post-Conciliar mistakes were only the final stage in this process of academic, intellectualist, even perhaps Jansenist, liturgical arrogance."

This is a brilliant summary Father, and I think instinctively felt by many. And here the scandals have done some good. They have exploded the spell of "liturgical experts" and have given us a populace that wants to anchor itself in tradition as much as possible.

Wealands Bell said...

I am much more positive about this idea than I had expected, despite having been weaned on Papa Montini. But there would still be some line-drawing, presumably? Surely Good Friday or Holy Saturday could not also accommodate St George? Ash Wednesday might be more capacious, but still. @WealandsBell, Abingdon

BrionyB said...

It occurs to me that this practice of transferring the feast day comes from the same mindset that insists we can't have Marian hymns at Mass (or only, grudgingly, for the recessional on particular days) as people would become confused.

E sapelion said...

For a saint who is so widely venerated the shabby treatment in the current Roman Ordo seems astonishing. Even the Metropolitan Cathedral of St George has to give precedence to Catherine of Siena.

Richard Down said...

I was asked to ring for a quarter peal at the village church today to celebrate St. George's Day. I was thinking of trying to explain....... but thought better of it.
I visited Buckfast Abbey for Vespers & Benediction on Palm Sunday - on approaching the Abbey Church I was greeted by a large notice advertising a special lunch in the cafe on 23rd April to celebrate St George's day. So, perhaps I was right.............

Zephyrinus said...

The answer is simple. Stop all The Navel Gazing and return to The Catholic Traditional Liturgy.

Let those, who want to play guitars and wave at everybody in Church, do so. It IS A LICIT MASS, of course.

Let those who want to attend and Assist at The Divine Mass, Pre-1911, of course, do so, It IS A LICIT MASS (stand by for screaming Banshees). Bugnini and cronies, naturally, will insist that they, AND ONLY THEY, are correct and everybody else is wrong.

Will The Good Lord consult a Constitutional Divine Tome, at The Pearly Gates, before announcing whether we go DOWN or UP ?

I doubt it.

What was once Holy, will remain Holy.

Stop The Navel Gazing.

Return to Proper Liturgy and Adore God.

Simple, really.

And restore The Vigils and Proper Liturgical Feasts.

Let The Modernists retain theirs. We will retain ours.

Stop The Navel Gazing and Adore God.

Simple, really.

By The Way. What's the latest, reference the immolation of The Sisters of The Immaculate. Are they now released from their prison ? Do advise, please.

Rubricarius said...

Esteemed Fr. H.,

I must beg to differ with your reading of R.G. VI. and understand the rubric states '...Palm Sunday and the whole of Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost Sundays and the two days following...' Why, otherwise, would the Monday and Tuesday within the Octave of Easter rank lower than those in the Pentecost Octave?

So I believe if St. George's feast occurred today then a Mass could be celebrated of it but not on Monday or Tuesday.

Fr John Hunwicke said...

Dear Rubricarius

Twentieth century Missals clearly prescribe what you say. But Missals from the previous century ostensibly do not. So when the words cum sequenti biduo were added, why were they added? Will it be your view that it had been found that an ambiguity existed in the previous formulation which the change was designed to eliminate?

My own instinct would be to investigate why different provisions were made for the Easter and Pentecost Octaves.

And to see the changes made as the beginning of a sad tightening up.

Fr PJM said...

Was it allowed to add a second set of prayers to commemorate St George? This is part of the genius of the old missal, I think: you do celebrate Easter Wednesday, but you add icing on the cake, with commemorations, and prayers for the gift of tears, etc.

Rubricarius said...

Esteemed Fr. H.,

I first consulted a Missal that was at hand which was printed in 1895 and that has '...Dominica Resurrectionis, et Dominica Pentecostes, cum duobus diebus sequentibus,..' Having done some quick online searching these words do not appear in MR1570, MR1604, or MR1634. They do appear in an edition from 1637 and then consistently in editions through the rest of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Checking my oldest edition of Gavantus-Merati (1740) my understanding was confirmed. Gavantus adds that the Mass of the transferred feast is celebrated after None.

When did 'cum sequenti biduo make an appearance I wonder, MR1920 as a hypothesis? Additional 'not allowed' days appear too but disturbing - to me at least - to see the Monday and Tuesday of Pentecost referred to as ferias!

Certainly agree with you that rubrics were generally made more explicit to remove ambiguity.

Fr John Hunwicke said...

I have a Dessain Missal dated MCMIII with a Concordat cum Originali of the SRC dated 13 Feb 1900 and an Omnibus his visuris of Cardinal Goossens dated 2 March 1900, which has the cum sequenti biduo addition.

It's a matter of judgment, but given the careful layout of the Latin in this passage with commas separating the sections, I incline to my suppposition that the original formulation did indeed permit these "Popular Demand" Masses on the Monday and Tuesday of Easter Week. But that a feeling was growing by 1900 among 'experts' that this was a bit naughty. So they brought Easter into line with Pentecost.

I would adduce in my support that this Dessain Missal also adds Passion Sunday, Low Sunday, and Trinity Sunday to the list of 'protected' days.

This Missal is "Leonis XIII auctoritate recognitum". Should we credit Leo XIII, rather than S Pius X, with beginning the inexorable drift ...