15 February 2024

Appendix PRO ALIQUIBUS LOCIS (1)

 This is a heading that many readers will seen at the head of sections at the end of Missals and Breviaries. You will certainly have seen it in Latin editions iuxta typicam; and it occurs in the more up-market bilingual editions*. Sometimes the heading is abbreviated to PAL.

If you look carefully, you will see that these sections are fascicles bound into liturgical books which, would have been complete without them. In other words, the great pre-Conciliar liturgical publishers had to decide, guided by their markets, what to include before the binders were set to work.

BTW, I am NOT writing about National or Diocesan propers or those of Religious Orders. These also do come separately from the presses  and decisions do have to be made by the binder about inclusion or non-inclusion, but the PAL is a different matter. It will probably be bound into books intended to be bought and used by clergy all over the World.

PAL is a a fascinating witness to continuity and discontinuity in the period brfore Vatican II. Liturgy, in those days, was not set in stone. It evolved ... non stop ... but did so in an organic way. Its evolution concerned mainly the Calendar. Dioceses, and Nations, asked to be granted indults to observe particular festivals. Often, somebody had got the idea from someone else. Indults for the same propers might end up being granted ... for example ... to all the lands subject to the King's most Catholic Majesty.

Eventually, it seemed rational for Rome to gather a large number of such propers together, and to make them available to those who sought indults.

Come to think of it, this step must, in itself, have given impulse to the culture it expressed. I wonder if anybody has ever made a study of this.

Examples, explanations, to follow, because tomorrow, First Friday in Lent, shows the sort of thing that went on.

* The 1949 Missal in Latin and English produced by Burns Oates and Washbourne incorporates the PAL  Masses into the body of the work, marking them with a red dagger.


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