Calendars

Recently, I rejoiced on a rare Monday actually to be able to say the 'green' Mass of the Sunday. And then, on the Tuesday, I said a Mass of a local Beatus, Dominic of the Mother of God (who received S J H Newman into the Church) ... with a commemoration of S Joseph Calasanctius, the Saint on the Universal Calendar.

I would like to say those grand old Roman Masses, with their superb collects, more often. As far as the Divine Office is concerned, I think it is deplorable that, in the Novus Ordo, even on the surviving ferias one is not allowed to use the Sunday Collect (only allowed at the Office of Readings; elsewhere collects relating to the time-of-day are provided).

There is a perennial tendency for calendars to get cluttered; this is accentuated by the unnecessary Novus Ordo prohibition of what we used to call 'commemorations'. And day after day, we repeat the hymn Iste Confessor as we celebrate the endless succession of  'confessors', especially 'confessor bishops' who founded orders or congregations.

The older strata of the Roman Calendar have very many more Martyrs. As, indeed, it seems to me the Byzantine Calendar does. Perhaps this is because for centuries the Western Church was dominated by confessor bishops and founders while the Ottoman Empire offered to God New Martyrs.

I don't think that either the 1962 calendar, or that of the Liturgia Horarum, have quite got things right. As an interim remedy, perhaps the Novus Ordo Calendar should admit commemorations; perhaps the twentieth century martys canonised by S John Paul II should be among those allowed onto the 1962 Calendar ... and more saints should be made optional.