Category: Liturgy

Extraordinary Form Holydays of Obligation?

ExtraordinaryformA reader writes:

I usually attend the extraordinary form of the mass. But I couldn't make mass this Friday, when the epiphany was celebrated in the extraordinary form. Now if I go to the extraordinary form on Sunday, I will, in some way, be going to mass according to the requirements of the holydays in the u.s. as per the epiphany, but I won't actually attend an epiphany mass since the extraordinary mass will not be the epiphany mass. Is there any definitive say from the church on how to handle this? It seems to me that the spirit of the law would be that I should try to get to an epiphany mass, but that by the letter of the law I am really only obliged to attend mass on the day appointed — just like if I went to an eastern rite mass on the holy day. Am I correct?

You are certainly correct regarding the fact that you are not obligated to attend the Ordinary Form of Mass this Sunday in order to hear an Epiphany-themed Mass.

The way the law is written, the obligation is to go to Mass on a particular day (or the evening before), not to hear a particular set of readings or liturgical prayers. The law expressly guarantees the faithful's right to fulfill this obligation by attending Mass in any Catholic rite, even if that rite is not celebrating the same saint or event.

Now, on certain days like Christmas, every Catholic rite lines up with a common celebration, but when it comes to other holydays of obligation, they may differ dramatically in what they are celebrating.

In the United States (1) January 6th was abolished as a holyday of obligation and (2) the liturgical celebration of Epiphany transferred to the Sunday between January 2 and January 8 in the Ordinary Rite. (See here.)

The first part of that applies to all Latin Rite Catholics in the United States, whether they normally attend the Ordinary or the Extraordinary Form.

No legal obligation has been created for Extraordinary Form attendees to do anything special on the Sunday between January 2 and January 8, whether they attended the Extraordinary Form on January 6th or not.

This is equally true of other holydays of obligation that have been abolished or transferred in the United States. There are no special "Extraordinary Form holydays of obligation." There is one set of holydays obligation that bind all Latin Rite Catholics in the United States.

They could change that in the future, but that's the way the law is written now.

So you do need to go to Mass this Sunday, but because it's a Sunday. You are not obligated to go to an Ordinary Form Mass in order to hear an Epiphany-themed service. You are free to go to an Extraordinary Form Mass or a Mass in a non-Latin Catholic rite.

As to whether the spirit of the law suggests going to an Epiphany-themed Mass since you missed the Extraordinary Form celebration on January 6th, I think it depends on what you mean by "the spirit of the law."

Sometimes this phrase is meant to imply that you would be doing some thing wrong (even if allowed according to the wording of the law) by violating the law's intent.

If this is what is meant then I don't think you are violating the spirit of the law. If the Church wanted to impose such a requirement it would not allow you to fulfill your obligation to attend on holydays by going to other Catholic rites that may not be celebrating the same thing.

John Paul II knew full well when he approved the relevant canon–canon 1248

The TWENTY-PLUS Days of Christmas???

5PARTRIDGE-IN-A-PEAR-TREE

As many are aware, it’s still Christmas. The Christmas season only begins on Christmas.

But when does it end?

If you go by the famous phrase “the twelve days of Christmas”—immortalized in the well-known song (which really *is not* a crypto-catechism after all; sorry.)—then you might guess they end on January 5, the eve of Epiphany, counting Christmas Day as the first day. Or if, according to some versions, you count the day *after* Christmas Day as the first day then the twelfth turns out to be January 6, the traditional day of Epiphany.

Ahhh. . . . Things were so uncomplicated in former centuries. Twelve days. Two options. Easy!

But as the Church’s liturgical cycle get modified over the years, things become a little more complicated.

You know, like how Lent *originally* started out as a 40 days celebration, but if you look up its technical definition in the Church’s official documents today, it turns out that the number “40” is only approximate, and it’s really more than 40 days? (Extra penance, folks!)

Well, it turns out the same thing is true of the Christmas season. Here is the current, official definition of its length, taken from the brand, spanking new translation of the Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the Calendar:

33. Christmas TIme runs from First Vespers (Evening Prayer I) of the Nativity of the Lord up to and including the Sunday after Epiphany or after January 6.

Let’s start with the obvious: The Nativity of the Lord is December 25—Christmas Day. First Vespers are said in the evening, so the First Vespers of the Nativity of the Lord are said in the evening of December 25 (*not* Dec. 24). Right?

Wrong. They’re actually said in the evening of the previous day, December 24, so no easy, day-begins-at-midnight scenario for the length of Christmas Time. It starts the evening of the 24th.

Now, what about the end, which includes “the Sunday after Epiphany or after January 6”?

This is a little confusing, but the norms offer some help by noting:

37. The Epiphany of the Lord is celebrated on January 6 unless, where it is not celebrated as a Holyday of Obligation, it has been assigned to the Sunday occurring between January 2 and 8. . . .

38. The Sunday falling after January 6 is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.

So, just to keep things simple, let’s assume that in a particular location Epiphany is celebrated as a Holyday of Obligation. The traditional reckoning of the twelve days of Christmas would have brought us up to either January 5 or January 6, but the Universal Norms extend Christmas Time beyond that “up to and including” the next Sunday, which is the Baptism of the Lord.

That Sunday can fall from January 7 to January 13, which would mean the total length of Christmas Time on this scheme would be more than 12 days. If the Baptism of the Lord falls on January 7 then Christmas would be 14 days plus an evening long (remember: it starts on the evening of December 24), and if the Baptism of the Lord falls on January 13 then it would be a whopping 20 days plus an evening!

As Keanu Reeves would say: “Whoa! Dude!”

So how long is Christmas here in the U.S. this year?

We’re in one of those countries where Epiphany is not commemorated as a Holyday of Obligation apart from the Sunday it has been transferred to. It’s been transferred to the first Sunday after January 1, which means it can fall between January 2 and January 8. That creates a new issue for when the Baptism of the Lord is celebrated.

According to the U.S. edition of the new Roman Missal:

When the Solemnity of the Epiphany is transferred to the Sunday that occurs on January 7 or 8, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is celebrated on the following Monday.

That’s what’s happening this year. The Sunday after January 1 is January 8, which is when we’ll be celebrating Epiphany. That means the Baptism of the Lord will be celebrated the next day, Monday, January 9.

You can confirm by looking at the USCCB liturgical calendar here. Notice that the green of ordinary time resumes on January 10.

This means that this year Christmas Time in the United States lasts 16 days plus an evening.

So . . . this year we get an extra four-plus days of celebrating compared to what they had in some times and places—where Christmas is 20 days and an evening long—we get an extra eight-plus days.

Ain’t progress wonderful?

What do you think?

Should We Chuck Christ out of Christmas?

Christmas-card

I’d like to thank a Register reader who recently alerted me to a recent USA Today column by Amy Sullivan, who—according to her blurb—“is a contributing writer at Time and author of The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap.”

If the Democrats are closing the “God gap,” it isn’t because of the level of thinking displayed in her column, which is titled:

Let’s put ‘Christ’-mas in its place

Titles are often chosen by editors rather than authors, so this may not be her fault. But right now we’re only bouncing on the end of the diving board, and we’re about to plunge into the 12-foot end of the pool.

If it’s December, then it must be time to choose sides in the Christmas wars. One camp worries that the celebration of Christ’s birth has become too commercial and frantic. Its goal is a simple Christmas season, stripped of consumption and flashing lights and endless holiday parties. The other camp thinks the problem is that our December festivities are practically religiously neutral. They want shoppers to encounter more nativity scenes and fewer “happy holidays” banners.

I am at a loss to explain her perception of these two “sides.” The people who think Christmas is “too commercial” are usually the very same people who think that the “religiously neutral,” “happy holidays” issue is a big part of the problem (i.e., the commercialization leads to a de-emphasis on the religious nature of the holiday in order to sell more).

By seeing this one camp as two camps, the author is already off to a schizophrenic start. She’s imagining a single side riven against itself, when in fact she’s talking about the same side.

That doesn’t stop her from feeling torn herself, though.

Every year I’m torn. I like baking Christmas cookies. I enjoy the chance to dress up in party clothes and raise a glass with friends and colleagues. I like the excuse to give gifts to those whose lives are intertwined with mine. But as a Christian who wants to focus on the spiritual rhythms of Advent and truly commemorate God’s gift of his son to the world, I find that the Christmas season gets in the way.

We can agree that the pre-celebration of Christmas tends to step on the proper celebration of Advent.

So instead of engaging in a battle to reclaim Christmas, I propose an alternative. Let’s take Christ out of Christmas.

JAW. HITS. FLOOR.

Cutting bait . . . on Christmas? Why on earth would you do that???

The battle for the soul of Christmas ended a long time ago, and cultural forces won. That’s clear when Christmas trees fill homes and apartments in Japan, a country where 2% of the population is Christian.

This makes no sense at all.

What does the ordinary home in non-Christian Japan have to do with the “soul of Christmas” and its potential improvement in countries with a Christian heritage?

Couldn’t one view the celebration of Christmas even by non-Christians a “preparation for the gospel” (as the early Christian writer Eusebius of Caesarea would put it)—a preparation that Christians can build on, inviting non-Christians to a deeper consideration of the ultimate reason that they are celebrating?

Sullivan’s horizons are far more limited. She spends a good bit of her column pinching from what she describes as a “wonderful book, ‘Christmas: A Candid History,’ [by] Methodist minister and religious studies professor Bruce David Forbes.”

I downloaded this book, and it ain’t so wonderful. It does contain some interesting points from history, but it’s written from a faith-lite viewpoint that sharply limits its value.

Proceeding from this flawed staring point, Sullivan goes on to suggest the familiar canard about early Christians basing Christmas on pagan holidays—something for which there is no evidence (and, in fact, which there is evidence against).

At least in his book Forbes stresses how much of his theory is sheer speculation. Sullivan makes no such disclaimers.

She claims that a purely religious celebration of Christmas never existed and that it was always mixed with pagan partying. This cannot be substantiated from the historical record.

She then says:

That reality has frustrated religious communities for centuries. After the Reformation, the Puritans were appalled by the excess and non-biblical practices associated with Christmas, and launched an actual war on Christmas that culminated in the English Parliament’s 1652 decision to outlaw Christmas. In the American colonies, Puritan influence resulted in subdued observances. In fact, with few exceptions, the U.S. Congress met on Christmas Day every year until the mid-19th century.

Okay, let me get this straight. Sullivan is arguing that the battle for the soul of Christmas is irretrievably lost, and in the same breath she’s admitting that it survived a withering attack between the 1600s and the 1800s and has since become such a widespread celebration that it’s even normal in Japan?

If anything, that sounds to me like the idea of Christmas is extraordinarily resilient, and the overcommercialization of it is a recent historical phenomenon that might be no more longlasting than the Puritan attempt to suppress it was. Who knows what Christmas will be like in the year 2525—if man is still alive, if woman can survive?

When Christmas had its comeback en route to becoming the blowout holiday season we now know, it wasn’t because of religious leaders. Instead, cultural factors such as the publication in 1823 of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, the development of the Santa Claus figure, and the nascent social valuing of family togetherness formed our modern conception of Christmas.

So . . . maybe what we need is a new poem to rival ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas?

If one set of cultural factors has harmed the celebration of Christmas then maybe we need to work at re-evangelizing the culture, including the creation of new artistic works that better convey the Christian faith.

That’s part of that whole New Evangelization thing, right?

I’m not hearing anything that would warrant Christians abandoning Christmas. What exactly is Sullivan proposing?

[I]t’s time to stop pretending that Christmas the cultural winter celebration is about the birth of Christ. Let’s just make it official and separate the two holidays that have been intertwined for most of the past two millenniums. It’s surprisingly easy to divide up the various Christmas assets left over from such a split.

First, there’s the name. Because Christmas the cultural season is so dominant, I propose that it retain the moniker, to be officially rendered X-mas. Everyone pronounces the holiday as “Chris-muss” anyway, which sounds like we’re honoring some dude named Chris, not the son of God. And despite campaigns by social conservatives to eliminate the greeting “happy holidays,” when a store clerk wishes me a “Merry Christmas,” she generally isn’t saying that she hopes I enjoy my religious observance of Christ’s birth.

As for the religious holiday, I’m calling it Jesus Day. When I was young, my family celebrated Christmas very literally as Jesus’ birthday. My Baptist grandmother baked a birthday cake for baby Jesus, along with more traditional cookies and pies. And at church, which we attended on Christmas Day, all the kids and children’s choir alumni gathered at the front of the sanctuary to belt out the tune “Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus.”

Hmmm. Interesting suggestion, Ms. Sullivan. One practiced within your very own lifetime—on Christmas Day yet. Maybe you’d like to devote a little more thought to that one before saying we should chuck Christ out of Christmas?

I would enjoy the goodwill and merriment of X-mas without reservation if I no longer felt it was co-opting and eclipsing my religious holiday.

I would feel all kinds of reservation and be totally weirded out. What kind of Twilight Zone holiday is this?

Lighting the Advent candles and reading daily devotions would provide a quiet respite during X-mas season.

So Advent would be celebrated at the same time as the de-Christed “X-mas”?

And on Christmas morning, instead of collapsing in an exhausted and mildly resentful heap, I could begin the real celebration with a full heart.

As a society, we need a designated time of year to celebrate with one another. We need the outlet of X-mas to give us a burst of festive energy to get through the winter. And we need fudge and Santa cookies, darn it. So let’s take Christ out of Christmas and make our culturewide secular celebration official. Just give me Jesus Day when it’s all over.

The proposal is thus to take Christmas, kick Christ out of it, rename it X-mas, and then rename St. Stephen’s Day as Jesus Day?

I’m sorry, Ms. Sullivan, but I think there are better ways to work out a “mildly resentful [holiday] heap” problem. I suggest an attitude adjustment.

Certainly there are better ways than surrendering a huge piece of Christian heritage and replacing it with something with the unbearably kitschy name “Jesus Day.”

Frankly, this plan zero chance of success, but it’s embarrassing and offensive that you would even make the suggestion.

I wonder what your Baptist grandmother would think.

Incidentally, this Friday I’m devoting an installment of the Jimmy Akin Secret Information Club to the top myths about Christmas—including the idea it’s a pagan celebration disguised as a Christian one. If you haven’t yet joined the club but do so before Friday (by going to www.SecretInfoClub.com), you’ll be sure to get this installment in your email inbox.

In the meantime, what do you think of Ms. Sullivan’s proposal?

Should we chuck Christ out of Christmas?

The Four Liturgists of the Apocalypse

Horsmen4The Register recently asked me to do a post on what I saw at Mass this Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday using the new translation of the Roman Missal.

Happy to oblige! So here’s what happened . . .

I arrived at Mass a few minutes early and took my seat in the pew. The particular parish I was attending had not done a lot of prep work for the new translation.

In fact, I saw that the Roman Missal they had was still in its shiny, new shrinkwrap.

And behold, there were seven seals upon its shrinkwrap.

I heard the cantor proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the Missal and break its seals?”

And no one in the parish was able to open the Missal or to look into it, and I wept much that no one was able to open the Missal, for I was really looking forward to the new translation.

Then the pastor said, “Weep not. This will only take a moment.”

And when the pastor opened one of the seven seals, I heard one of the four living choir members say, as with a voice of thunder, “Come!”

And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and its rider was a liturgist; and a crown was given to her, and she went out conquering and to conquer.

When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living choir member say, “Come!”

And out came another horse, bright red; its liturgist was permitted to take peace from the parish, so that people should form factions and grumble against one another; and she was given a great sword.

When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living choir member say, “Come!”

And I saw, and behold, a black horse, and its liturgist had a set of political talking points in her hand; and I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living choir members saying, “A dearth of jobs in the economy; but do not harm the taxes or the new medical care program!”

When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living choir member say, “Come!”

And I saw, and behold, a green horse, and its rider’s name was Envy, and Bitterness followed her.

When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of the parishioners who had been slain for complaining about liturgical abuses and for the witness they had borne.

They cried out with a loud voice, “How long must we suffer this squishy, 1970s translation?”

Then they were each given a white choir robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow parishioners and their brethren and sistren should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.

When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as when the California eucalyptus tree sheds its sap all over your car, which you have parked under it in the parking lot, because that was the only space there was.

And when the pastor opened the seventh seal, there was silence in the parish for about half an hour, and no one was able to speak a word.

For it turned out that the liturgists were right! The new translation was entirely “unproclaimable”!

And then the world ended.

-ish.

Okay, actually it didn’t.

Here’s what really happened . . .

At the beginning of Mass the pastor said, in a very kind and gentle tone of voice:

“Today we begin using a new translation of the Roman Missal. We’re going to go slow and easy. There’s no brownie points for getting everything correct, and there’s no demerits for getting a few things wrong. We’re staying pretty much with the same Eucharistic Prayers and the same responses at all the Masses until we get used to them all.”

And then we did the Penitential Rite and nobody keeled over from a heart attack.

When the homily came, the pastor preached about the readings and about how Advent is a time of waiting for God, in contrast to the constant demands for immediate gratification that echo through our society, particularly with the commercialism that affects the pre-Christmas season.

He didn’t mention the new translation at all.

When we said the Profession of Faith, many people were going by memory and started to say the old version, but the pastor stepped close to the microphone and proclaimed the new version in a firm and confident tone, and people started looking at their pew card and reading the new one.

People also tended to reflexively say, “And also with you,” when the priest said, “The Lord be with you,” but the reflex will get retuned in short order.

All in all, the whole thing happened very smoothly. People made a few mistakes out of habit, but no big deal.

I also saw a lot of people looking at their pew cards in a way that suggested they were really interested in them.

So interested, in fact, that they might take them home with them. I was tempted to do that myself.

It was no surprise, then, that the only other mention that was made of the new translation was right at the end of Mass, when the pastor was doing the announcements and politely asked people not to take the pew cards home with them but to leave them in the pew because the people at other Masses would be needing to use them.

And that was it!

No fuss, no muss (whatever muss is). The world didn’t end. People did not begin a wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was went fine.

I was totally jazzed.

But how about you? What do you think? How did Mass go in your parish?

What Do You Think of This Liturgical Song?

350px-Evensong_in_York_MinsterLast Sunday, through unforeseen circumstances, I arrived at Mass just a couple of moments late and came in during the first reading. As I made my way to the pew, I recognized the reading as the familiar celebration of the ideal wife from Proverbs 31.

Cool! I’ve always liked that passage. It’s got a lot of neat and insightful stuff in it.

Then, after the responsorial Psalm there was the reading from 1 Thessalonians about the end of the world, and finally the Gospel reading from Matthew 25’s parable of the talents. (Which, believe it or not, is where we actually get the English word talent, referring to an ability or aptitude. That usage comes from this parable, where the talents are used in their original, literal significance of an ancient measurement of weight, often used with precious metals, as in the parable. The idea of a master distributing talents of precious metals to his servants was rightly understood as a symbol of God distributing abilities to us, and so the main use of the English word “talent” came to refer to ability rather than treasure.)

During the general intercessions (or “universal prayer” we we’ll begin calling it in a couple of weeks) there was an intercession that went something like this:

For all the women who work hard to support their husbands and children, may their works praise them at the city gates.

“Hmmm,” I thought. “A little awkwardly phrased. We don’t have city gates these days, and a lot of people in the congregation are likely not to grasp the reference, even though it’s from Proverbs 31, since the priest didn’t explain it in his homily.” (The city gates were a public meeting place in ancient Israel, and a location where legal disputes were frequently settled.)

There’s also a tendency in some parishes, whenever women are mentioned in the readings, to draw a lot of attention to this fact—seemingly out of a desire to compensate for the “male-dominated” or “patriarchal” tone perceived in the rest of them. Notice all the attention that gets drawn to the reading where Jesus talks with the woman at the well—a reading that is sometimes done (contrary to liturgical law) in a dramatized fashion, with a lady from the parish taking the part of the woman at the well.

Still, it’s entirely legitimate to incorporate elements from the readings into the general intercessions as a way of tying the prayer of the faithful to the word of God. This may have been a little clumsy in that regard, but it’s a laudable impulse.

Then we got to the Offertory, and for an Offertory hymn (or “Offertory chant,” as the new documents call it) the cantor started singing a song I’d never heard before.

The opening verse—which was also the refrain—went like this:

Women of the Church . . . how rich is your legacy.
Women of the Church . . . how great is your faith.
Women of the Church . . . well-springs of integrity.
Lead us in the ways of peace.

Of course, there’s nothing like hearing a song for yourself, so here you go . . .

 

“Um,” I thought. “Shouldn’t we be worshipping God right now? This is Mass. This is the Offertory. The gifts are being prepared for use in the Eucharist. Shouldn’t our focus be on God at this particular moment? The focus shouldn’t be on praising members of the human community, with God not even mentioned in the refrain, which is the main part of this song.”

It’s true that in the verses that come between the refrains, Jesus does get mentioned, which takes the edge off a bit, but the focus is still on praising and celebrating women—not God.

Mind you, I think women should be praised and celebrated.

My problem isn’t with the fact that it’s persons of the female gender who are the focus here. I would have just as big a problem if the word “women” was replaced by “men” and the song were interpreted either as a paen to persons of the male gender or as a paen to human beings in general.

The point is: We’re at Mass and our focus should be on God. We should be singing his praises, not our own.

Admittedly, this song doesn’t have the Orwellian subversiveness of “Sing a New Church into Being,” which implies a fundamental rejection of the Church as it has been historically constituted (as well as the creation of a new one in a manner reminiscent of God speaking the world into being, though here it’s human beings doing the speaking/singing).

But it still strikes me as out of place at Mass. Not only does it inappropriately sing the praises of humans in a context where we should be singing the praises of God, it also can be perceived as an undue politicization of the Mass that intrudes gender politics where they don’t belong.

Certainly in a contemporary Catholic context where issues like women’s ordination and “inclusive” language have been hotly debated, a song like this inherently raises the question of whether it is being used in the service of a particular agenda.

It thus isn’t conducive to worship—meaning, of course, the worship of God.

I know I myself was totally popped out of the experience of worshipping God at the Offertory, and I found my mind consumed by questions about the appropriateness of this song.

I suspect others were as well.

What do you think?