+8 Sunday Nineteenth after Pentecost. PLENARY INDULGENCE. The Maternity of the BVM, major double. Last Gospel and commemoration of the Sunday. Preface Et te in festivitate. White. At Vespers commemoration of the Sunday and Sts Dionysius and Companions.
9 Monday Sts Dionysius, Rusticus and Eleutherius Martyrs, semidouble. Second prayers A Cunctis; third prayers at priest's choice. Red.
10 Tuesday St Paulinus Confessor Bishop, double. Mass Statuit. White.
Beverley PLENARY INDULGENCE.
11 Wednesday St Francis Borgia Confessor, semidouble (from 10 October). Second prayers A Cunctis; third prayers at priest's choice. White.
12 Thursday St Wilfrid Confessor Bishop, double. Mass Sacerdotes with its propers. White.
Beverley PLENARY INDULGENCE confessor Bishop, Patron of the Pro-Cathedral, double of the first class with Octave. Mass Sacerdotes with its propers. Creed. White.
13 Friday PLENARY INDULGENCE King St Edward Confessor, second class double with Octave. White.
Beverley Creed.
Plenary Indulgence for the next week for benefactors of the Poor-School Committee
14 Saturday St Callistus Pope Martyr, double. Commemoration of the Octave. Red.
Beverley Commemoration of the Octaves of St
Wilfrid and St Edward. Creed. Red.
12 comments:
And two possible fictive "updated calendars":
1. In the "well, there is something problematic about the fixing of feasts to Sunday; the Rosary is fine, but maybe not every October Sunday" calendar:
8 Sunday St. Brigid, double, Com. of the Sunday.
11 Wednesday The Maternity of the BVM, major double.
The fixed-feast for St. Francis Borgia would be put elsewhere.,
2. The "newer feast update":
8. Sunday ... Vespers of the following, Com. of the feast (whichever was during the day, the Maternity of the BVM or St. Brigid), and of the Sunday.
9. Monday St. John Henry Newman, double of the II class (I should guess, as local patron of the return of the Anglicans to the Catholic Church). Commemoration of St. Dionys, Rusticus and Eleutherius Martyrs and probably also St. Giovanni Leonardi.
I thought about trying to introduce modern saints, but:
a. there are too many;
b. there are the new dioceses, each with their own patrons;
c. as you found with Newman, I would have to guess at the classification of feast for each new saint.
It is notable that while the numbers of Saints has increased dramatically since the reign of St John Paul II, the number of saints' feasts actually celebrated has declined: so this week there are only optional memorials except for the feast of St John Henry Newman.
I did not intend this as a criticism of your fascinating work (thank you by the way!)
Just adding a little of my own musing...
No offence taken.
It's an illustration of just how difficult it would be to row back if there was ever an opportunity to reform the changes to the EF made during the twentieth century.
I must confess that I rather like the idea of a feast of the Blessed Virgin on every Sunday in October as it does give the month a distinctive theme. I am far from convinced that the Catholics who experienced that arrangement felt deprived of 'green' Sundays.
Noting Ttony's 20:00 12/10 comment above for those of us with a certain liturgical preferences it is disconcerting to view a whole series of changes from Leo XIII in the last years of the nineteenth century passing through the twentieth century with every increasing magnitude all heading in the 'wrong' direction.
One correction for the newer feasts: St. John Henry would get the commemoration of St. Denys and companions, but not of St. Giovanni Leonardi, if the latter had a feast on the worldwide Church as it later came to be. If not, he would have no commemoration at all (except, of course, at both Vespers: the preceding Sunday and feast, or St. Francis Borgia).
The feast that is the feast of the worldwide Church apparently gets transferred to a free later date.
Dear Rubricarius,
interesting question in general, and all. I'll later give some of my own musings for that (not that they'd be important, but there you are).
... but before: the commemoration of St. John Henry at 2nd Vespers is of course in England St. Paulinus, not St. Francis Borgia (unless... but that later).
Well, yes, dear Rubricarius,
I also must confess something: The idea of one Marian feast each for the first four October Sundays is, to me, of course sympathetic... but ultimately in the category "sympathetic, but no". There, I said it.
Yes, it is for our Lady; yes, those aspects of her life deserve to be celebrated, even the Purity (a pity there is no feast for that now). But still... these, the latter three that is, should rather be of the usual "we celebrate a Sunday, with our Lady, through our Lady of course as in all our devotion, but not as feasts of our Lady". And here's why.
1. Is it because I think there should be more green Sundays than was the case in 1870?
I have to admit that I do - at least to some degree; and while I agree that "the Pope, when called to fix the liturgy, might get ideas and start to bustle around as the unexperienced pilot does in Michael Crichton's Airframe" might, at the time, quite possibly have led to the conclusion "in theory maybe, but it's not worth that danger", that ship at any rate has sailed.
Also, I think this is something I might think separately (and the whys, hows and inhowfars are a separate thing I cannot just deal here with in a parenthesis), but it is not the reason.
2. Anyway, those green Sundays had their own lessons at Matins, and the like. Hence, apparently even in that time care was taken that their office should be said at least once in seven years (four times in 28 years, to be more precise): not quite without exception, but about the exceptions, I think and I also think people at the time thought they should have a really good reason. (That, I think, is the real reason why St. Rose is on August 30th and not August 26th. Her actual natalis is on the 24th, the feast of St. Bartholomew, and the following day is St. Louis. But St. Zephyrinus, who has a mere simple, cannot really be the reason why the day is not taken for her; he could be commemorated. No: The reason is that August 26th is the only day the Fifth Sunday of August can actually take place, with the other two days already taken by doubles.)
Now, the First Sunday of October has one day left on September 28th, due to the fact that "First Sunday" for the temporal cycle and the Propers of the Saints means different things respectively. But with the four Marian Sundays, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Sunday of October are really never said. (October 29th, when a Sunday, is now of course the feast of Christ the King, but even then it was not the Fifth of October: it was the First of November.)
3. On the other hand though, the October Sundays have also much in common with our green Sundays of nowadays: The colour of course was white (or perhaps blue), but here, for once, we really did have the "all the years, the same thing" which the less informed trads (who are to some degree right in that there were always commemorations) think the iron principle of the glorious old days (of 1911-1969 that is), and which the liturgy reformers were so much fed up with that they gave us a three-year cycle, where there once was in effect a seven-year cycle for the Sunday churchgoer (well, 4 times in 28 years due to the bissextile adjustments, but that aside).
4. Actually, at most one of the Sundays would become green if all the doubles remained doubles. (I assume here the new feasts of St. Margaret Mary on the 17th, a feast of the Purity of our Lady fixed to the 16th and the for England the new feast of St. John Henry on the 9th - otherwise the year with the dominical letter b would see three green Sundays on the 9th, 16th and 23rd, at least if the latter is not the Feast of Our Lord under his title of The Most Holy Redeemer.) What the four Marian Sundays really do is create a post-1911 situation with respect to the celebration of Saints' feasts by the Sunday churchgoer, who are never going to hear a Mass in honor of St. Theresa of Avila - not even with her commemoration, because she was transferred. St. Hilarion, for the Sunday churchgoer, had it better; he would be commemorated. - St. Bridget, or, nowadays, St. Margaret Mary certainly would be popular too.
4. October is a Marian month, but it is not the Marian month; that is May. But you obviously cannot do this thing in May. What October is is the Rosary month. So, a sequence of 1. The Rosary, 2. the Maternity, 3. the Sorrows (freeing the Sunday in September for, once in seven years, a green Sunday, and one other time for the stigmata of St. Francis so that he can have at least that feast when he is always transferred by the Rosary), 4. the Queenship (which would be something similar to the Patronage) might make sense. But the Purity? It is more of a "oh yes, we also want to celebrate that aspect of our Lady's life" (and rightly so) and as we are apparently making a Marian month, let's put it here...
5. The general idea "it's a Sunday in October, let's put a Marian feast there" downplays the specific prerogative of the feast of the Rosary, which was on a Sunday because the battle it celebrates was on a Sunday (and also because the Rosary feast is so important for general devotion), and the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, which also was on a Sunday because the battle it celebrates was on a Sunday, and also the feast of our Lady of Sorrows which was on a Sunday because it was so important for the ordinary Churchgoer to get this idea.
the second 4 is 5, 5 is 6.
7. The feast of Christ the King is a later invention, but one very necessary and which noone would want to miss. Then, the Sunday immediately before that, Purity or Patronage according to pre-1911 English use, is Mission Sunday, where it would make sense to have the Votive Mass for the Propagation of the Faith in the Main Mass (in violet!), except of course on the feast of St. Luke. The 3rd, in my native Bavaria, is Church-Dedication - because people would feast so much so that the date had to be unified -, and I hear the English government ordered the same thing for the same reason with a different Sunday in October, albeit for the Anglican Church (the first, was it?). The Rosary feast in any case is a given[*], even though in my native Germany it is also usually the day of Harvest-Thanksgiving. And then we do a lot of Rosary praying in the Rosary month, hopefully.
So, as we see, October is very loaded, without loading it additionally.
And that's the reason why I think following the Rosary feast by additional Marian Sundays is ultimately something we should not do.
---
[*At the risk of appearing an unreliable fellow in devotion, but I would personally, with very little, priority, even think the Feast of the Rosary should give way not only, as it did, to first-class feasts, but even also by way of exception to the feast of St. Francis, and in such cases be held on the 7th. If the 4th is a Sunday, the Sunday in the Nativity Octave is September 13th, so the feast of the Name of Mary is on a Sunday according to the old rules, and the post-1911 date for the Maternity is a Sunday too. That ought to suffice, and so we could celebrate one of the greatest founders of orders and one of the most popular saints in the populace at least once in seven years, when we do that with so many other saints (always assume a general pre-1911 attitude).]
Nepomuk,
I would agree that the quality of individual Marian feasts formerly allocated to the Sundays of October is, shall we say, variable. I do not see why May should be particularly Marian either to be honest.
A fundamental problem is that the Roman rite cannot cope well with the multiplication of saints' feasts in the Calendar. The approach in 1568/70 was to have a radical pruning but then, as now after the Paul VI calendar, further canonisations etc start to fill up the free days. As we know following the Tridentine reform the matter was not helped with the multiplication of feasts of double rank which could be celebrated on 'green' Sundays. I will admit 18 psalm Mattins is a challenge but once one gets used to it after the first nocturn is over it speeds up.
The only solution is to have a minimal Universal Calendar which then has the relevant diocesan or religious saints added - in moderation!
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