28 August 2019

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.





4 comments:

Joshua said...

Goodness me, a priest saying Mass on a Monday!

For most of the clergy, it seems to be a dies non (scil. liturgicus)...

There really ought be a special Monday Proper Mass to attract someone, anyone to celebrate the Holy Mysteries that day...

Banshee said...

A lot of those confessor bishops had a darned good try at becoming martyrs. As the Irish often said, they lacked martyrs only because the pagans of Ireland were not as fond of killing as the rest of the world was. And sure enough, monks who left Ireland had a decent rate of martyrdom.

The other factor has been the unwillingness to call martyrs martyrs, and support their causes, when the martyrdom occurs in a Western country.

"Well, that wasn't really odium fidei; they just hated Catholics and Catholic doctrine."

"They were not killed by government action, so that doesn't count."

"They were killed by government action, but for totally secular hatred of religion."

"Nobody gave them the choice to live if they converted and have in. Well, okay, they did, but not explicitly."

"They didn't die for a leftist enough cause."

john g said...

Indeed, Fr. Calendars should also be more localised as a genuine way of connecting people to the Christianity of their region. When I was in Edinburgh, I was much more interested in S. Triduana of Restalrig (Scotland's S. Lucy) or S. David of Scotland, son of the glorious S. Margaret, than of S. Nobiluomo, founder of an order of five religious men in the Po Valley in the 18th century.

Protasius said...

A few years ago, there was a blog called Current Tridentine Ordo, which tried to do some cleaning of the calendar. It started from the breviary and calendar of S Pius V (and therefore uses Simple, Semidouble and Double feasts) and added some of the more recent saints with a more widespread cult (e.g. St Therese of Lisieux) while eliminating or reducing in rank many of the Counter-Reformation saints and founders of orders, which belonged in his opinion more appropriately to local calendars. This way there are more martyrs and fewer confessors, thus more ferial days such that one can use the beautiful ancient Roman psalter without repeating the Dominical psalms over and over as was the case before the breviary reform of S Piux X.