Today I can publish the latest Position Paper, this time on Holy Days of Obligation.
In 2006 the Bishops of England and Wales moved three Holy Days to 'the nearest Sunday': Epiphany, Corpus Christi, and the Ascension. For reasons which remain obscure, they left All Saints, SS Peter and Paul, and the Immaculate Conception where they were. (The Nativity of Our Lord is always safe from these schemes thank heavens.) This has proved to be the single most unpopular thing the bishops have done in recent years, uniting clergy and laity alike, the debate being aroused afresh every time one of these three dates comes round. They are currently reconsidering the question, and it is much to be hoped that common sense will prevail. Moving feast days to Sunday, or more simply removing the obligation to attend Mass in the week, symbolises so well the withdrawal of the Church from public life, into a little corner: Mass-going, it seems to say, is something strictly for the time left free by one's secular obligations. With variations, this has happened in many other countries as well.
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| Corpus Christi being celebrated on the Feast of Corpus Christi, SS Gregory & Augustine's, Oxford, 2011 |
A side-issue which arose at the time was what happened with celebrations of the Traditional Latin Mass. The Latin Mass Society submitted a dubium to the PCED and receive the response (included as an appendix to this paper) that, essentially, we could carry on as usual. There is, of course, no provision in either the 1962 Ordo nor in the Breviary for the dates of major feast days suddenly becoming ferias. But it means that, with this Position Paper, we have to defend the practice found with the Extraordinary Form, and at the same time argue for a restoration of Holy Days across the board. Whatever seven or so of the ten canonical Holy Days are by custom observed as 'of obligation' in a country should be observed properly: on their proper days, with an obligation to attend Mass, and not moved to Sunday, either permanently or when they fall on Saturday or Monday.
Readers may be interested in Appendix C, which points out the negative legal consequences for Catholics if the obligation to attend Mass is abolished. In a nutshell, it is a lot harder to argue with an employer, a prison governor, or a school headmaster, that one should be allowed to attend Mass, if the Bishops are saying that to do so is not obligatory. I have more to say about this in my
LMS Chairman blog posting simultaneously with this.
This paper brings the series to a baker's dozen: 13. We have more papers in preparation, but I'm going to take December off, and publish the next one on January 15th.
This paper can be downloaded as a
pdf here. The full series can be seen here.
Comments can be sent to : positio AT fiuv.org
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FIUV Position Paper: Holy Days of Obligation
1.
Under the 1983 Code of Canon Law (Canon 1246) ten Holy
Days of Obligation are listed, in addition to Sundays.
The Code goes on to say that, with the approval of the Holy See, Conferences of
Bishops may ‘suppress some of the holy days of obligation’ (that is, remove the
obligation to attend Mass on those days), ‘or transfer them to a Sunday’. The
typical result is:
a.
Some of these feasts are celebrated without an
obligation to attend Mass.
b.
Epiphany, Ascension, and Corpus Christi are celebrated
on the nearest Sunday.
c.
The remaining Holy Days of Obligation are themselves
moved to Sundays, or
the obligation to attend Mass is removed,
when they fall on a Saturday or a Monday.
The main exceptions are those cases in which the
traditional dates of feasts are marked by public holidays: the Nativity of Our
Lord, most obviously, and certain other feasts in Catholic countries or
regions.
Notwithstanding this, the effect of each point (a) to (c) is to reduce the
number of non-Sundays in a typical year which require attendance at Mass.
2.
In celebrations of the Extraordinary Form the 1962
Calendar is used, but the days of obligatory attendance at Mass are set by each
Bishops’ Conference. The dates of the ten Holy Days are in fact the same in the
two calendars.
3.
On this topic, not only does the practice of the
Extraordinary Form differ from that of the Ordinary Form, but changes to Canon
Law have altered the legal framework within which the Extraordinary Form exists,
as they have in relation to the Eucharistic Fast.
Accordingly, in this paper we wish not merely to point out the value of the practice
of the Extraordinary Form, but also to suggest respectfully that the practice
of removing the obligation to attend Mass on so many of the canonical Holy Days
be discontinued for the whole Latin Rite.
The Significance of the Dates
4.
The first consideration in favour of celebrating the
feasts on their traditional dates, as is done in the Extraordinary Form, is
that these dates have great significance, historically, culturally, and above
all theologically. Most obviously, it is appropriate for the Ascension to be
celebrated forty days after Easter, since Scripture tells us that Our Lord
Ascended forty days after His Resurrection.
The liturgical calendar does not always follow exactly the sequence of events
in Scripture, but in this case the forty days—symbolic of a period of waiting
and preparation, and mirroring the forty days of Lent—have long been observed
as a joyful period after Easter. Moreover, Ascension can be viewed as the
beginning of a Novena of preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit at
Pentecost. The symbolic meaning of the period after, as well as before, the
feast of the Ascension is lost if the feast is moved to a Sunday. It is a
public holiday in France, being included in the Concordat of 1801.
5.
The celebration of Epiphany after ‘Twelfth Night’
following Christmas marks, in union with the Eastern Churches, the most ancient
day of the celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord, kept in Gaul long before
its adoption in Rome,
and the Twelve Days of Christmas are deeply embedded in European culture. It is
a public holiday in Spain, Poland, and parts of Austria and Germany.
6.
Corpus Christi was instituted following private
revelations to St Juliana of Liège;
the use of a Thursday recalls the events of Holy Thursday, to which the feast
is closely related. The feast was established on the first Thursday after
Trinity Sunday, first locally, and then universally by Pope Urban IV in 1264
and Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne in 1311;
the propers and Office of the feast were composed by St Thomas Aquinas.
This was in fact the first creation of a feast of the Universal Church by a
Pope.
The celebration of public processions on the day itself is a feature of a
number of countries where it is marked with a public holiday;
elsewhere these take place on the following Sunday.
7.
Similar considerations can be adduced for the other
Holy Days, whose obligatory celebration is subject to removal when they fall on
Monday or Saturday: see Appendix B.
8.
Looking at the calendar as a whole, the timing of great
feasts, whether they are fixed to the Easter cycle or to a particular date, can
quickly become embedded in the consciousness of the Faithful, and indeed in
mass-produced diaries, as landmarks of the year. As noted with the Feast of the
Ascension, the distance of time between feasts, as well as their order, is
important.
9.
The ecumenical dimension should also be noted, since the
traditional dates are shared in a great many cases by non-Catholic ecclesial
communities, such as the Anglican Communion and in Lutheran communities, and by
the Oriental Churches.
Calendrical disruption
10.
If, under Canon 1246, a feast is moved from one date to
another, it creates a disruption to the rhythm of liturgical life on both
dates. The original date either becomes a feria,
which seems inappropriate, or the feast is celebrated without the obligation to
attend Mass.
In the latter case the feast loses the honour which is its due, and which the
Church wishes to accord it, not only in terms of the obligation to attend Mass,
but in terms of the special efforts which would otherwise be made to celebrate
it with greater solemnity.
11.
On the new date, the Sunday, the original liturgy of
the day is displaced, and the sequence of Sundays is interrupted. It is worth
noting the long-term policy of trimming the number of feasts and Octaves which
would displace the Mass of a Sunday, particularly by Pope St Pius X and Pope Pius
XII, and indeed in the liturgical reforms following the Second Vatican Council.
The very ancient Sunday cycle of the Extraordinary Form
relates in a systematic and progressive way to the liturgical seasons, and the
greater appreciation of its richness was one of the Liturgical Movement’s most
notable achievements.
Moving feasts onto Sundays is, from this point of view, a retrograde step.
12.
In certain contexts the celebration of an important
feast on the nearest Sunday can be beneficial, when the Faithful may find it
difficult to attend Mass, or a more solemn celebration of Mass, or other
appropriate devotions such as Corpus Christi processions, on the traditional
day, but this is already possible at the discretion of the pastor under the
rules of the 1962 Calendar.
This allows practice to follow local needs precisely—a sparsely populated rural
parish may be in a different situation from a seminary, for example—and at the
same time serves to emphasise that the traditional date has not been abandoned.
Furthermore, where there is more than one Mass on a Sunday, all but one would
be Masses of the Sunday.
The Importance of the Obligation
13.
The duty to attend Mass on a Holy Day of Obligation is
not absolute, and those for whom attendance would involve grave inconvenience
are excused. Nevertheless, a formal obligation has important advantages.
14.
First, it gives parish priests and school chaplains the
opportunity to celebrate Mass in even only nominally Catholic schools. Since in
day schools, and even in many boarding schools, pupils spend Sundays with their
families, these celebrations are a precious opportunity for the school to
worship together. In the case of pupils coming from non-practising families, it
may be their only opportunity to experience the Church’s liturgy celebrated with
solemnity, or even at all.
15.
Secondly, in many places it will give Catholic employees,
students, and prisoners an important advantage in asking for special provision
to be made to enable them to attend Mass, since arguments based on official
religious obligations carry more weight than optional devotions: see Appendix C.
16.
Thirdly, the number of Holy Days of Obligation is today
so low in some places that there is a danger that the very notion of an
obligation to attend Mass on a weekday is being lost.
The attempt to make the obligation less onerous can paradoxically make the
remaining obligation seem both arbitrary and harder to remember, and so harder
to keep.
17.
Finally, the obligation to keep a feast does not undermine
the devotion with which a Catholic assists at Mass, but adds to it a conscious
act of obedience, emphasising one’s membership of and unity with the Church,
engaging in an act of worship alongside Catholics all over the diocese,
country, and indeed the world.
Conclusion
18.
The reduction of the number of days of obligation is
part of a widespread trend over many decades, of responding to falling Mass attendance
and other difficulties by trying to make the practice of the Faith easier.
While an understandable reaction, we believe this to be fundamentally
misguided. The Church does not command the respect, or stimulate the zeal, of
her children by asking less and less of them.
In the case of the Holy Days of obligation, the Church has imposed the
obligation to attend Mass on certain days to emphasise the importance of some truth
of the Faith, an event in life of Our Lord, or of some of her saints. When the obligation
is removed the Church’s exhortation to the Faithful to embrace the spiritual
significance of these things is inevitably proclaimed with less urgency.
19.
The example of St Peter’s in Rome is of no small
significance here, in maintaining the celebration of Holy Days on their
traditional dates. Whereas there is certainly room for variation among local
calendars, it is fitting within the Latin Rite that Catholics be able to
celebrate these great feasts in union with the Universal Pastor, the Holy Father
in St Peter’s.
Appendix A: Clarification from the PCED on
Holy Days and the 1962 Calendar
Following
the submission of a dubium by the Latin Mass Society, Monsignor Camille Perl,
Vice President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, replied as follows,
in a letter dated 20th October 2008, Protocol N. 107/97.
‘1. The
legitimate use of the liturgical books in use in 1962 includes the right to the
use of the calendar intrinsic to those liturgical books.
‘2. While
in accordance with Canon 1246 §2 of the Code of Canon Law the Episcopal
Conference can legitimately transfer Holydays of obligation with the
approbation of the Holy See, it is also legitimate to celebrate the Mass and
Office of those feasts on the days prescribed in the calendar of the liturgical
books in use in 1962 with the clear understanding that, in accordance with the
legitimate decision of the Episcopal Conference, there is no obligation to
attend Mass on those days.
‘3. Thus,
in accordance with nn. 356-361 of the Rubricae Generales Missalis Romani
of 1962, it is appropriate to celebrate the external solemnity of Holy Days on
the Sunday to which they have been transferred by the Episcopal Conference, as
has been customary in many other countries hitherto.’
Appendix B: Six Ancient Holy Days
