I have published before a series of blogposts illustrating what the week in church would have looked like to the Catholic in the pew if the liturgical changes of the twentieth century hadn't happened.
I'm going to do it again (better and more realistically, I intend to try to do it again) for 2023 but with a change: this year's Ordo will have all of the instructions in Latin for priests and will cover not just Mass but the Office as well. A separate translation in English will be what we might imagine the Sacristan in a modest parish would have needed: odd additional commemorations in Lauds and Vespers weren't his business, while making sure the priest and the altar were dressed in the right colours were.
I intend to be a bit less profuse with the obiter dicta: my views on what matters and what doesn't aren't everybody's (and aren't necessarily accurate anyway) but I will choose every now and then to draw attention to the pulse of the year: to the Sanctoral taking precedence over the Dominical (so green will be a pretty rare colour to the Catholic who attends Mass on Sundays and Holydays); to the priority that diocesan celebrations have (we will see on occasion a Mass that can only be celebrated in one place in the entire Universe), a cast of mind in which the local has an importance mainly absent today; and to a system rooted in 1800 years of slow, organic, change.
Please feel free to ask questions via the combox or via Twitter (@themunimentroom)
I will post this week's Ordo in a moment, and will try to post on Saturdays henceforth.
1 comment:
Thank you, this really is interesting.
Post a Comment