What an admirable week ... no fewer than three days when we sling a green chasuble over our exultant shoulders and say an old mass from the ancient sacramentaries. (I do hope nobody gives way to the temptation to avoid Green by using Votives ... Green means Tradition; Green means Continuity.)
But there is another reason why this particular week is so gloriously noteworthy: today's Old Rite Epistle, from S Paul's superb Letter to the Galatians, has the immense dignity of being a reading which is entirely omitted in the bastard lectionry cobbled together 'after the Council'.
"Throw me across the scissors, Mildred ... chop chop ..."
Yes; a lot of the old readings did get thrown out of the post-Conciliar Lectionary for Sundays (even with a three-year lectionary-scheme, room, apparently, could not be found for them). But, with a condescending sneer, some of them were given week-day outing in alternate years.
Galatians 3:16-21 appears in the corrupted rite neither on a weekday nor on a Sunday nor in a ritual Mass.
Ex-
-pur-
-gat-
-ed.
TOTALMENTE!
For years, we boring traddies have been alluding to the omission of a certain verse in I Corinthians 11. Quite right too. But have we done justice to the mangling of this week's Epistle from Galatians?
The mendacity-merchants criticise us for "denying Vatican II". According to them, truth-telling criticism of the post-Conciliar rite turns us into Vatican-II-deniers (as if these gentry could spot a lie even if it smacked them round the face).
So whereabouts ... aperte dicant ... in Vatican II are we given a Conciliar Warning never to read Galatians 3?
The Byzantine Divine Liturgy retains Galatians 3:15-22 as the Epistle on Wednesday of the 15th Week after Pentecost. Such rigidity!
ReplyDeleteYeah well, but this Epistle does trigger the "oh my, let's rather not read that or it will offend the Jews" trigger.
ReplyDeleteI mean of course not that actual, practicing Jews would be offended, but rather that this is the kind of thing about which "interreligiously sensitive", how d'you call 'em, people fear that it might offend.