“One of the weaknesses of the postconciliar liturgical reform can doubtless be traced to the armchair strategy of academics, drawing up things on paper which, in fact, would presuppose years of organic growth. The most blatant example of this is the reform of the Calendar: those responsible simply did not realize how much the various annual feasts had influenced Christian people's relation to time […] they ignored a fundamental law of religious life.” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith, 81-82 (published by Ignatius Press).
The Reformed Novus Ordo Calendar is extremely cautious about respecting the principle of the consecration of time – for this reason, there has been great emphasis on celebrating the Liturgy of the Hours at the “canonical hours,” i.e. praying Morning Prayer in the morning and Evening Prayer in the evening. It was this zeal to sanctify the day which lead the Church to explicitly forbid the ancient practice of celebrating Morning Prayer immediately after the Christmas midnight Mass (though it is perfectly acceptable to pray Night Prayer after midnight on any day of the year).
Indeed, this great concern of the now-a-days Church is particularly manifest at Christmas. For example, while Canon Law allows a priest to celebrate three Masses on Christmas day (CIC 951.1), the General Instruction of the Roman Missal clarifies that this permission is given “provided that the Masses are celebrated at their proper times of day” (GIRM 204) – three Masses on Christmas, but they must be at midnight, at dawn, and during the day (we are left to wonder what happens if the papal midnight Mass begins at 10pm).
However, with all this focus on the sanctification of time, the reformed plan of the Novus Ordo calendar simply butchers the season of Christmas – and follows this by the destruction of Epiphanytide.
The original article on the New Theological Movement refers to an article by Msgr. Charles Pope of the Archdiocese of Washington. The article, posted (interestingly enough) on the official blog of the Archdiocese of Washington, is On Time Warps and Missing Feasts: Puzzling over the Confusion in the Christmas Cycle.
