Category: Liturgical Year

YAY!!!

Let the earth rejoice, for today a Savior is born unto it.

This is good tidings of great joy.

Remember to go to Mass.

Happy HolidaysMERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

YAY!!!

Let the earth rejoice, for today a Savior is born unto it.

This is good tidings of great joy.

Remember to go to Mass.

Happy HolidaysMERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Down yonder, a reader says:

In 2002 I went to confession on Saturday, December 8. I casually asked
the priest what time Masses were being celebrated that day, keeping in
mind that I had not yet fulfilled my obligation for that feast and that
evening Masses were common on Holy Days of Obligation. He told me that
the Mass to be celebrated that evening was the vigil Mass for the
following Sunday and couldn’t be used to fulfill the Immaculate
Conception obligation. I remember thinking that his statement didn’t
sound quite right, but I would like to know for certain. (I did assist
at Mass later that evening at another parish and it was the Mass of the
Immaculate Conception.)

What the priest told you is wrong.

He is one of a great many priests who has absorbed the idea that the theme of a particular Mass (or the readings it uses) are some how relevant to the Mass’s ability to fulfill you holy day obligation.

THEY AIN’T.

Thing to do in such a situation would be to go to the evening Mass and then go to another Mass the next day (in an eastern rite parish if you don’t want to hear the same readings again).

From the NYTnoids:

Pope John Paul II defended Nativity scenes in public places after
several Italian schools changed Christmas ceremonies to avoid offending
Muslim pupils. "It is an element of our culture and of art, but above
all a sign of faith," the pope said at an annual ceremony at the
Vatican blessing figures of the baby Jesus to be used in crèches around
Italy. "Big or small, simple or elaborate, the Nativity scene
constitutes a familiar and, moreover, an expressive representation of
Christmas." Some teachers have said that they would not allow Nativity
pageants, to reflect growing multiculturalism in Italy, while one
school replaced the word "Jesus" with "virtue" in a Christmas carol and
another said it would substitute "Little Red Riding Hood" for its
Nativity play.

[Cowboy hat tip: Kerry Spot.]

YEAH!

Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput ROCKS!

According to CNA:

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver has urged his faithful to "scrub" the expression "Happy Holidays" from Catholic vocabulary.

"We
don’t celebrate a generic excuse for gift-giving," he wrote in his
latest column, published in the Denver Catholic Register. "We celebrate
the birth of Jesus Christ."

"For the vast majority of Americans,
Christmas has a distinctly religious, Christian identity rooted in
Scripture. Publicly ignoring this fact is not a form of ‘inclusion’ or
‘tolerance.’ On the contrary, it’s a deliberate act of intolerance and
exclusion against Christians," he wrote.

He
said lumping Christmas together with seasonal celebrations devalues and
marginalizes the sacred nature of Christmas, and reduces Christian
influence in society.

"No other religious community would be
subjected to this kind of treatment – and remember, American Christians
are in the majority," he said.

GET THE STORY.

READ THE ARCHBISHOP’S COLUMN.

YEAH!

Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput ROCKS!

According to CNA:

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver has urged his faithful to "scrub" the expression "Happy Holidays" from Catholic vocabulary.

"We

don’t celebrate a generic excuse for gift-giving," he wrote in his

latest column, published in the Denver Catholic Register. "We celebrate

the birth of Jesus Christ."

"For the vast majority of Americans,

Christmas has a distinctly religious, Christian identity rooted in

Scripture. Publicly ignoring this fact is not a form of ‘inclusion’ or

‘tolerance.’ On the contrary, it’s a deliberate act of intolerance and

exclusion against Christians," he wrote.

He

said lumping Christmas together with seasonal celebrations devalues and

marginalizes the sacred nature of Christmas, and reduces Christian

influence in society.

"No other religious community would be

subjected to this kind of treatment – and remember, American Christians

are in the majority," he said.

GET THE STORY.

READ THE ARCHBISHOP’S COLUMN.

Today is All Saints Day (hence last night was Halloween–All Hallows’ Eve, a “hallow” being a saint).

Normally this means that one must go to Mass, as All Saints Day is a holy day of obligation.

But when it falls on a Saturday or a Monday, it isn’t.

Since today is Monday, you are not required to go to Mass (though doing so is still a great thing).

HERE’S THE RELEVANT LEGISLATION.

Some folks have been taking issue with my analysis of the current state of U.S. law regarding Friday penance. Believe me, I understand the impulse. I don’t like seeing Friday penance gutted, either, and would be quite happy if Rome stepped in to change matters. I further understand the impulse of folks to stick to their guns who have been told (and told others) for years that some kind of penance is obligatory on Friday. However, a careful examination of the relevant legal documents and legislative history indicates that this is not the case.

I’d like to call attention to a few aspects of the legal foundation of the present situation. First, some folks have noted that canon 1253 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law does not appear to them to authorize bishops to do more than substitute one (or several) forms of penance in place of abstinence. Let’s look at the canon itself:

Can. 1253 The conference of bishops can determine more precisely the observance of fast and abstinence as well as substitute other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety, in whole or in part, for abstinence and fast.

One notes that there are two things that this canon says the conference ofbishops can do: (1) “determine more precisely the observance of fast and abstinence” and (2) “substitute other forms of penance . . . for abstinence and fast.” The distinction between these two is indicated by the use of the conjunction “as well as.”

As a careful reading of the 1966 bishops document shows, it did not substitute other forms of penance for Friday abstinence. What it did was “determine more precisely the observance of . . . abstinence” by determining that the observance of abstinence is legally obligatory only on certain Fridays of the year.

This, at least, is the clause that most naturally would be appealed to if the 1966 document came out after the 1983 Code, but it didn’t. To understand the legal basis for the conference’s action, one must look to the documents that were in force at the time.

The document that a person would first turn to is the 1917 Code of Canon Law. However, when one does so one discovers that canon 1253 has no parallel in the 1917 Code.

The controlling legal document, therefore, was Paul VI’s apostolic constitution Paenitemini, which had just been released earlier in the same year. The bishops’ 1966 doc was an attempt to determine the way Paenitemini would be implemented in the U.S.

Now here comes the part where things get confusing. The relevant norm from Paenitemini reads as follows:

VI. 1. In accordance with the conciliar decree “Christus Dominus” regarding the pastoral office of bishops, number 38,4, it is the task of episcopal conferences to:

A. Transfer for just cause the days of penitence, always taking into account the Lenten season;

B. Substitute abstinence and fast wholly or in part with other forms of penitence and especially works of charity and the exercises of piety.

2. By way of information, episcopal conferences should communicate to the Apostolic See what they have decided on the matter

Norm VI.1 grants the authority to conferences to transfer days of penitence or to substitute other forms of penitence for fast and abstinence. It does not grant them the authority to restrict the mandatory observance of abstinence to certain days of the year. This does not mean that they don’t have that authority, but it does mean that norm VI.1 doesn’t give it to them.

How can we tell if they have this authority? Well, we have to look to Rome.

Unfortunately, Italians don’t write law the way we Americans do. They are much less strict about the reading and writing of law than Anglo-Saxon legal tradition is. In general, they write laws as broad gestures regarding what they want to happen, but they allow for the existence of all kinds of unspoken, unwritten exceptions within those laws. These exceptions, it is understood, will come to light over the course of time as people try to apply the law. If they apply it in ways Rome doesn’t like, Rome will clarify and say “No, you can’t do that. We don’t want the law to be understood in that way.” If Rome has been made aware of the way the law is being applied and Rome doesn’t bark, though, its consent to the application of the law–even by acquiescence–is presumed. (At least until they change their minds and say otherwise.)

This is where norm VI.2 becomes important. It says that the U.S. bishops would have to communicate to Rome what they decided on the matter, and this they certainly did. After the 1966 document was written, it was sent over to Rome.

One will note that norm VI.2 only says that the conference is to notify Rome “by way of information”–i.e., so that it can keep track of what the bishops’ conferences are doing. It does not say that Rome must approve of the bishops’ complimentary norms on this matter before those norms take effect (a process normally referred to as obtaining Rome’s recognitio). The reveals a fairly permissive attitude on Rome’s part regarding what bishops’ conferences can do regarding penance in their countries. If Rome wanted to keep a tight reign on things, it would have required the conferences to obtain recognitio before letting their decisions go into effect. The fact that they only required the bishops to notify them “by way of information” is a signal that they’re pretty flexible on what they’ll let the bishops do.

This created a de facto situation where the bishops of a given country could write whatever norms they wanted on penance and these would have force of law in their territory unless they sent over the norms to Rome and Rome contradicted them.

So what happened when the U.S. bishops sent over their 1966 document?

Rome didn’t bark.

They may have even formally granted it recognitio (though this wasn’t required), but they certainly didn’t bark, as the complimentary norms currently on the bishops’ web site reveal (see below).

Given the way Paenitimini is written–and the absence of other law expressly granting the conference the authority to do what it did–Rome would have been entirely justified in saying, “Hey, wait a minute, guys! Y’all have exceeded your authority!” But they didn’t do that. They thus, at least by acquiescence, confirmed the U.S. bishops’ decision and allowed it to become law.

That it become law did is certainly the understanding of the bishops’ conference today. If you check the section of their web site giving the complimentary norms for canons 1252 and 1253, it expressly notes that:

The November 18, 1966 norms of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on penitential observance for the Liturgical Year continue in force since they are law and are not contrary to the [1983] code (canon 6).

That these norms are understood to involve only voluntary penance on most Fridays of the year is something the conference is also on record as indicating. In their 1983 document The Challenge of Peace, they wrote:

298. As a tangible sign of our need and desire to do penance we [the bishops], for the cause of peace, commit ourselves to fast and abstinence on each Friday of the year. We call upon our people voluntarily to do penance on Friday by eating less food and by abstaining from meat. This return to a traditional practice of penance, once well observed in the U.S. Church, should be accompanied by works of charity and service toward our neighbors. Every Friday should be a day significantly devoted to prayer, penance, and almsgiving for peace.

I haven’t vetted the authority of the 1983 document on peace. I suspect that under current law it has no authority at all, since pastoral letters now are subject to a very high standard to attain authority, and this letter probably didn’t meet that standard. However, even in the absence of this document having authority, it indicates the mindset of the bishops regarding the matter of doing penance on Fridays and indicates that this penance is voluntary.

This is something that a careful reading of the 1966 document also shows, but the 1983 document adds additional evidence for this understanding.

What are the alternatives to saying this?

1) Well, Rome could step in and clarify the situation. This would be the ideal solution, though thus far Rome hasn’t done so, which leaves us to figure things out for ourselves.

2) In that regard, one could disagreewith my analysis and say that the 1966 document is sufficiently ambiguous that it is doubtful whether the faithful are obligated to do anything on most Fridays of the year. However, in that case, canon 14 of the 1983 Code kicks in and tells us:

Laws, even invalidating and disqualifying ones, do not oblige when there is a doubt about the law.

Therefore, we’d be facing a doubt of law situation and so–until such time as Rome chooses to clarify–we still would not be obliged to do penance on most Fridays of the year.

3) One could say that the U.S. bishops exceded their authority in 1966 and Rome let them get away with it. Fine. But that’s Rome’s call to make and–this is the key point for practical purposes–Rome is still letting them get away with it.

4) One could say that I am flat wrong in my reading of the 1966 document and furthermore–so that canon 14 isn’t triggered–that the 1966 document is clear that the faithful are legally obligated to do some form of penance of their own choice on all Fridays of the year.

I think the last is by far the least promising alternative. Whatever one may think of the 1966 document, it’s clear that it’s muddled. I think that a careful reading of that will sort out the muddle and reveal that the bishops were restricting obligatory penance to only certain Fridays of the year. If you disagree and think that the document is irresolvably muddled, I understand that. But I don’t see how anyone giving the document a careful reading can conclude that the document clearly mandates that the faithful are legally obligated to do a penance of their own choosing each Friday of the year (on pain of sin, no less!).

Then there is the 1983 document, which further muddies the waters for one advocating a pro-obligation position.

Thus I don’t see how–however strong one’s desire may be to find an obligation in the law–one can responsibly conclude that on the matter of obligatory Friday penance the law is not at least doubtful, in which case the doubt of law canon kicks in and tells us that the faithful are not obliged.

A reader writes:

is it possible for Good Friday to fall on the Feast of the Annunciation?

Let’s see. The date of Easter varies every year between March 22 and April 25, and since Good Friday is two days earlier than Easter, that would put he range of Good Friday dates at March 20 to April 23. Since the Feast of the Annunciation is a fixed feast nine months before Christmas, it has a date of March 25, within the range of possible Good Friday dates.

However!

The General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar contains a holiday anti-collision system for just such events. As you can see from the Table of Liturgical Days, Good Friday as part of Triduum is a liturgical day of rank I:1, which is the highest there is, so it takes precedence over the solemnity of the Annunciation, which is a rank I:3 liturgical day.

Under the old calendar, "If this feast falls within Holy Week or Easter Week, its office [was] transferred to the Monday after the octave of Easter" (Catholic Encyclopedia). From what I can tell, if there were a conflict between the solemnity of the Annunciation and Good Friday (or the other days of Holy Week, which are rank I:2 days), the same would likely be the result today.