From a reader:
The A word was uttered today at the local (n.o.) Mass this morning.
Is the A only buried by traditional Catholics on Septuagesima Sunday?
(Or can I answer my own question – there is no more Septuagesima in the New Order?)
You have answered your own question.
Tragically, there is no pre-Lent in the newer calendar.
So, in the older use we do not use that Hebrew A word until it once again is ready to rise at the Resurrection.
In the meantime, to prevent yourselves from hearing the A Word, I suggest stuffing the ends of your necktie into your ears and humming loudly during Mass, just to annoy … or amuse… the crying babies whom oblivious parents have parked near you. You can, alternatively, mutter "not listening not listening not listening do dee do dee do not listening not listening" with your fingers in your ears.
You can read the A Word, however… so keep reading WDTPRS’s archives.
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Alleluia!
At the Latin Mass conference this weekend, Fr Milich told us that at his parish, Mission San Juan Bautista, after EF Mass they would bury a cloth embroidered with ‘Alleluia’ and dig it up at Easter. I had never heard of this custom and I regret that these traditions are not practiced throughout the entire Church anymore.
I’m curious… is there an official reason why the Season of Septuagesima was abolished in the Ordinary Form?
Fr. Carl Gismondi FSSP, pastor of St. Anne’s Sicard Street in San Diego, made an obvious point about Septuagesima season, but one that is easy to overlook: NOW is the time, during Septuagesima, to begin and plan and resolve and decide, so as to be ready to start when Lent DOES arrive in three weeks, otherwise – human nature and schedules being what they are – it will be half done by the time one finishes making preparations. So true.
If I may, I will make a couple of singerly analogies, being a professional musician (and preparing to sing the bass soli in Haydn’s “Creation” tonight with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra – that’s for street cred): Firstly, don’t wait until the beat before your voice is needed to take your breath; prepare a little ahead of time to sing when you’re needed. And also, if one begins to utter a note RIGHT ON the downbeat, one is always late because the process of moving the air and engaging the voca chords takes time. It’s not instantanaeous. So “Breathe before you have to sing”, and “start your utterance just before you want it to sound.” The downbeat of Lent is coming!
Oh Liam…
Father, is it also customary to begin Lenten preparations by self-denial, sacrifice, penance, fasting, etc.? And are the faithful required to abstain from meat on the Fridays during Septuagisma before Lent?
This was Pope Paul VI’s motu proprio on the reform of the general Roman Calendar:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/motu_proprio/documents/hf_p-vi_motu-proprio_19690214_mysterii-paschalis_en.html
This MP doesn’t address the abolition of pre-Lent specifically, but indirectly it has to do with the reconsideration of the liturgical celebration of the season of Lent. Lent is a period of preparation for Easter (and, in a special way, for candidates for reception into the Church at the Easter Vigil) – a period of preparation in the Roman rite that began with the Triduum, then Holy Week, then a couple of weeks of Passiontide, et cet. Pre-Lent – a preparation for a preparation for a preparation, in a sense – was seen as unduly masking the character of Lent.
Pre-Lent also had the practical effect in prior ages of acting as a counter-point to Carnival. Carnival, though, is a kind of echo of its former self in our age – there are a few places where it survives with vigor but in more places it is a caricature of its former self. But in much of the Catholic world, Carnival is not much of a living cultural reality.
I don’t lament the elimination of pre-Lent in the OF.
“NOW is the time, during Septuagesima, to begin and plan and resolve and decide, so as to be ready to start when Lent DOES arrive in three weeks…”
Well said!
Liam,
Thanks for the explanation mate. However, I would not buy such Bugnini-esque explanation. It typifies an extreme of western rationalism as applied to the liturgy – as if to say: ‘Look! It’s only necessary to say things once – repetition has no place in the liturgy or liturgical cycle!”
Yet the Sacred Liturgy is ALL about sacred repetitions. The Pope – as Cardinal Ratzinger said as much, I recall, in his interview in ‘The Ratzinger Report’ way back in the 1980s. People need liturgical precepts to be repeated in their busy lives – and not on a blink -and-you’ll-miss-it basis – which is what has happened in the fabricated and impoverished textual world of the Novus Ordo. Just take the hatchet job done on the offertory prayers, for example – where one strains even to perceive, fully, the impending oblation and sacrifice.
The rhythmn of repetitions is deeply embedded in the human psyche as is evidenced by the urge of children to ask for a favourite story to be repeated, endlessly! So to is the need for our fallen natures to be prodded and endlessly reminded so as to reinforce the themes of the liturgical cycle and within the liturgy itself. The Consilium obviously refused to acknowledge this need – and the dreadful impoverishment is self-evident.
Bring back Septuagesima!
Tony
It’s hardly extreme rationalism – Lent is already laden with repetition that was spared – we didnt’, after all, try to restore it to one or three weeks. And one can produce a matching reductio ad absurdam in the other direction, too.
If we Catholics were fasting and mortifying more during Lent, we’d have a lot more Carnival before.
Since the Hebrew A word if not sung before the Gospel is to be omitted, it would seem that in those parishes where they are wont to be traditional they could omit it. Any thoughts on that?
“Since the Hebrew A word if not sung before the Gospel is to be omitted, it would seem that in those parishes where they are wont to be traditional they could omit it. Any thoughts on that?”
I don’t believe that the rubrics allow for that. Remember, “say the black, do the red!”
I like the idea of a “pre-Lenten season” to focus our attention on the coming Lent, but Septuagesima seems like Lent without the penance! In the Ordinary Form I would like to see some sort of “reformed” Septuagesima.
In the ancient Church 70 days of fasting were kept, and the tradition of 40 days grew up alongside it, which the Septuagesima season is a remnant of. Roman Catholics are not obliged by law to fast extra during Septuagesima, and even if they were under the old Code, it would be abolished by that mess known as the 1983 code of Canon Law which we are all sadly under until a future Pope makes some useful changes to it.
Moreover, the 1983 Code of Canon Law only requires fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. That’s it. Abstinence on the other hand is required every Friday from meat of the whole year, unless your Bishop’s conference has made a change as it has in America where one has the option to make a sacrifice in its place.
But it is a form of reductionism. The tradition had been in place for 1000 plus years and handed down by the Church. There was no proportionate reason to mess with it which is why it needs to be restored. It is true that we do not know all the reasons that the season of Septuagesima was passed down, and why it takes on the lenten character (violet vestments, no Alleluia, etc.), but a golden rule of thumb is if you don’t know why the Tradition is there, don’t mess with it. Furthermore the Eastern Church has pre-lenten preparations in the way of meat fare Sunday (meat is given up, equivalent to septuagesima), Cheese Fare Sunday (when cheese and dairy is given up, equivalent to sexagesima), and finally pure monday (two days before Ash Wednesday, except where the Julian Calendar is still observed, that is when the fasting begins), where incidentally they are required to abstain from all these things. Dom Gueranger laments in his magnum opus on the liturgical year that even the Turks show more virtue in fasting than the true Church, which is a scandal, and that was in 1840 when Catholics still fasted!
Moreover, Gueranger writes concerning Septuagesima:
The removal of the pre-lenten period is nothing other than the spirit of modernism let loose on the liturgy by the devil. The Church hands things down for a reason, and what was done by Paul VI and those he put in authority is equivalent to looking at the engine of a car, and presuming that all the wiring and hoses are too elaborate and re-working them to their taste, then wonder when the car does not run as well as before. If the ordinary form is to maintain so little tradition then let it be kept far away from me. I haven’t gone in 3 years, and if its adherents are so gleeful about the destruction of tradition I wouldn’t go if the Pope asked me to.
“The removal of the pre-lenten period is nothing other than the spirit of modernism let loose on the liturgy by the devil.” Athanasius
You know, this sort of hyperbole frosts me just a tad. Argue for the value of the pre-Lent period if you wish–there are good arguments, yes. But save the heavy artillary of hyperbolic modernist name-calling and invocation of the Devil for things that are truly diabolical. The length of the period of pre-Easter fasting has varied widely throughout the Church’s history. If the Church had abolished Lent entirely, you’d have a point. But she didn’t. People can keep the 40 days with the old fasting rules–nothing to stop them. They can observe their own pre-Lent if they wish even while following liturgically the new calendar. They can simply follow the EF calendar and have a traditional liturgical pre-Lent.
You’d convince a lot more people if instead of railing at the diabolicalness of the decision to eliminate pre-Lent you exhorted people to fast from the heart whether they do so for 40 or 70 days.
Uncle Screwtape probably is smiling at Catholics denouncing each other as modernist and diabolical over this issue.
So Catholics can’t be mad over the destruction of their tradition?
The fact of the matter that the changes to the calendar, especially a bi-millennial tradition such as the Pre-lenten season, are part in parcel of the changing of law, of doctrinal expression, of ortho-praxis and belief from the cult of God to the cult of man. It is just one piece of the whole puzzle. If it was a mere thing in itself, as if the Church had changed nothing but decided to drop septuagesima you’d have a point. But it is part of a much bigger animus delendi against the faith handed down from the Apostles.
John:
Well sung! I sing tenor (not professional, though) and am amazed how every aspect of creation has something to tell us about God and ourselves. Break a leg if you haven’t already!
I had to stop myself from saying the A word after the Gloria Patri in my Benedictine Diurnal several times already.
Sadly I have not quite memorized the replacement yet.
“The Church hands things down for a reason”
Yes she does. She also changes things for a reason. I stand with Houghton. One might disagree vigorously or not understand the reason, but to label it the work of the Devil, that’s an interesting ecclesiology
Tradition is greater than the Pope who is its mere servant. Christ the true head handed down Sacred Tradition to the Apostles, to be handed down by his visible head. If a Pope down the road decides not to hand something on, that doesn\’t mean that this is all of the sudden good. I\’ll side with bi-millennial tradition over the whims of a weak papacy that have emptied pews and obscured the faith any day.
“The pope is the servant of tradition”
Personally, I would be hesitant to presume that I can offer a more authentic interpretation of the tradition than the Pope.
So would I when the Pope is speaking ex Cathedra, the fathers and doctors do it for us. But if the decision is not ex cathedra, and there is a proportionate reason, I will look to the tradition rather than the Pope. It is not about what traditionalits, or even what I believe is good, it is what the Fathers and Doctors handed down to us. The greatest fallacy of our age is the error that the ordinary magisterium is infallable. Vatican I gave us very clearly the conditions under which the Pope is infallible, if both the ordinary and extraordinary magisterium were infallible, then why would Vatican I spend the time to lay out the distinction? On the other hand that doesn’t mean we throw out the ordinary magisterium either, unless there is a proportionate reason to do so (i.e. the Pope teaches error or makes changes against the tradition which are not beneficial to the Church).
Otherwise one falls into the error that everything the Pope does is good, and you get a situation where contradictions arise. The fathers of the Church universally held Communicatio in Sacris to be a mortal sin, so did the medievals, the doctors of the Church and the Saints, yet you have John Paul II doing it not once, not twice, but at numerous ecumenical initiatives. Who are you going to follow, the Fathers or one Pope at variance with the tradition? I’m going to follow the Tradition, thank you. One Pope’s behavior is not sufficient to overturn what the Church has always and everywhere believed, or else we would all need to become sodomites because Pope John XII was bisexual. Afterall, who are you to determine your morals are better than the Pope? You know that you have a proportionate reason in the tradition to reject his behavior. That the Pope is the principle of unity and the vehicle for handing on tradition doesn’t mean that every Pope will do right either in his personal morals, his public morals, or in his job handing down the tradition entrusted to us by the Apostles. Sedevacantists commit the same error except that they take it in the other direction and commit the sin of private judgment by making determinations which belong properly to the internal forum (e.g. that a given Pope is a heretic, something they can’t know and don’t have the authority to determine).
Come now, Paul VI himself said the smoke of satan had entered the Church, and one of his ministers, as reported at this very website, confirmed Pope Paul VI was talking about the liturgy. Dietrich von Hildebrand, who was declared a “modern day doctor of the Church” by Pope Pius XII, said that “Truly if a devil from one of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters was entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy, he not have done it better”. (Devastated Vineyard pg 71). The proposition is more than reasonable. Again, if it were just this one issue, we might rightly call it a mistake, but when we consider the destruction of the Septuagesima season, a bi-millennial tradition, in the context of the overall destruction of liturgical tradition, the characterization is justified.
NB: let me make one more clarification.
I say the characterization is justified. I do not say you must believe it or else. If you think the NO is great then fine, keep it far away from me, to use the Rabbi’s blessing for the Czar in Fiddler on the Roof.
Um, a mandatory Lent has been basically abolished in the Western rite. We have two days of fasting and Friday abstince. Face it, compared to the eastern rites, and all ecclesial history, that’s really wimpy!
Our denuded Lent has all the challenge of a one hour from time of communion Eucharistic fast.
Magisterial positivists continue to make excuses for our trashed discipline. Unbelievable!
I am stuck by Fr. Z’s approach to things he does not like or with which he does not agree (liturgical changes, previous popes, current bishops, non-Gregorian chant, etc.):
“humming loudly during Mass, just to annoy … or amuse… the crying babies whom oblivious parents have parked near you. You can, alternatively, mutter “not listening not listening not listening do dee do dee do not listening not listening” with your fingers in your ears.”
Sounds like the kind of man who would disrupt a mass (NO, of course) to make a point. Oh wait, that was ACT-UP. [Perhaps you need a sense of humor?]
I once went to an ordination on the Saturday following Ash Wednesday. It was all Violet except the ordinand’s chosen hymn: Let all mortal flesh keep silent (now you know it was OF ordination). More than one priest visibly and audibly choked in the 4th verse, or thereabouts, when A words tumble out.
Breier, my point exactly. Lament the loss of pre-Lent, explain to those who don’t know why it has value, positively exhort people to make the most of the 40 days of mandatory Lent in the new calendar, point out how the minimal requirements are well, extremely minimalist, remind people that just because the bar has been set very low that does not mean that they cannot use the old fasting and abstinence rules even while following the new calendar
but avoid the hyperbolic name-calling and allusions to the Devil.
Jesus’ words ought to haunt us (and they had OT precedents, e.g., Ps. 50 (51): God desires true penitence in our hearts. Keeping extreme penances mechanically or merely externally or even pharisaically is worse than keeping less extensive practices from the heart.
External precepts about what one must do minimally in order to excite the heart to true repentance are VERY IMPORTANT. I cherish the traditional calendar, which I think is superior to the new calendar in almost every way. I think the one-year Lectionary is superior to the three-year Lectionary because it represents a more modest awareness of what people are capable of truly assimilating. One can throw too much at people with the result that nothing sticks and I think that may have happened with the new lectionary. I’d like to see mandatory abstinence on Friday’s reintroduced–here’s a case where the lowering of the bar with the claim that people are going to do other forms of penance in place of abstinence was misguided. The old Friday-abstinence was just the right mix of clear outward symbol that could become a common denominator for Catholics in an effective way. Does that mean that it never became pharisaical for some? No. We’ll always have to guard against that temptation, which, I imagine, is why our Lord warned us so sharpl about it.
But I’d like to see the old calendar enriched with new saints. And regarding a mandatory pre-Lent, well, I think there are arguments both ways. Preparation for the coming of Lent is good. Does it have to be 3 whole weeks? Well, maybe, maybe not. Is the bar now set too low? Yes. But does that mean that the entire set of fasting and abstinence requirements in the old calendar and the exact form of pre-lent in the old calendar are the only way to go? No. It’s this kind of fossilizing mentality that I find almost as troubling as the Bugnini wrecking crew’s results.
So, Athanasius and others can make their arguments in favor of pre-Lent with vigor and I’m happy even if not as strongly convinced as they are, only moderately convinced.
But I do wish the loose use of “Modernist” and “diabolical” would cease. Self-righteousness tempts us all (that includes me) and Jesus warned about it in unmistakeable terms.
Athanasius wrote: “I say the characterization is justified. I do not say you must believe it or else. If you think the NO is great then fine, keep it far away from me, . . ”
Did anyone say the NO is fine? You see this is the kind of exaggeration, along with Breier’s “magisterial positivists” that renders your valid concerns incredible, lacking in credibility.
I most assuredly do not believe the NO is fine. I prefer the Extraordinary Form. But I do not call everyone who disagrees with me a modernist or tool of the Devil.
And what is a “magisterial positivist”? Is Brier saying that anyone who does not favor a return to the older mandatory pre-Lent and to the older fasting and abstinence regimen for the 40 days does so because he simply rubber-stamps whatever the “magisterium” says?
But am I not obligated, as a faithful Catholic to give genuine assent to the Magisterium? Has the Magisterium itself become the enemy? Are not liturgical and calendrical forms for the most part part of discipline and thus reformable rather than irreformable? Don’t you need to see the as reformable if you are going to call for a return to older forms and argue that the pope erred in approving the Bugnini reforms?
I surely do not rubberstamp or approve of the post-conciliar changes in the liturgy. Like I said, I prefer the old Mass but I want to see it as a living, breathing organism, not as a museum piece. And I think that this is what Benedict wants.
I am not a magisterial positivist, not a positivist about anything. I do humbly accept the Magisterium’s teachings in matters of faith and morals.
Do we really need to be hurling anathemas like this at each other?
Houghton,
I wasn’t referringt o you. With regard to the magisterial positivist remark, I was referring to the attitude that any discipline or prudential decision must be correct, or more traditional, or better, simply because the Pope has presently enacted it.
Hence Origen’s remarks that:
“Personally, I would be hesitant to presume that I can offer a more authentic interpretation of the tradition than the Pope.”
I doesn’t take a Pope to see that our current minimalist Lenten discipline, whatever its supposed merits, is deciedly out of line with at least 1700 years of Latin Rite tradition!
Houghton,
I don’t think Athansius was hurling an anathema, more a cri de coeur. The devastation of the Lord’s vineyard after the Council, particularly in regard to discipline and orthopraxis, is difficult to comprehend in its entirety. Septuagesima is perhaps a microcosm of the larger loss. While we must be hopeful for the future, we must also, lest this happen again, never forget.
1. Alleluia dulce carmen,
Vox perennis gaudii,
Alleluia laus suavis
Est choris coelestibus,
Quam canunt Dei manentes
In domo per saecula.
2. Alleluia laeta mater
Concivis Jerusalem:
Alleluia vox tuorum
Civium gaudentium:
Exsules nos flere cogunt
Babylonis flumina.
3. Alleluia non meremur
In perenne psallere;
Alleluia vo reatus
Cogit intermittere;
Tempus instat quo peracta
Lugeamus crimina.
4. Unde laudando precamur
Te beata Trinitas,
Ut tuum nobis videre
Pascha des in aethere,
Quo tibi laeti canamus
Alleluia perpetim.
I was not addressing any particular person who has made a comment here when describing the changes as diabolic in nature (I don’t know what else we call a liturgy created by a Freemason). I was rather referring to the systematic discarding of tradition.
Liam @#6 said this particular reform is fine with him. For which I say good, just keep it away from me!
Neither did I.
Maybe part of our discussion is lost in translation. I never hurled anathemas at anyone except the Concilium.
but avoid the hyperbolic name-calling and allusions to the Devil.
“The Smoke of Satan has entered the Church.” [Cardinal Villot] “Your Holiness, there is a certain Houghton here to see you.” [Paul VI] “What about?” [Crd. Villot] “He thinks you should stop making illusions to the devil.”
I don’t see it as hyperbolic when talking about the liturgical reform.
I’m not opposed to the introduction of new saints, so long as the prayers are written in the traditional style. However, we will perhaps find even less agreement as I find the fasting and abstinence requirements of the ’17 Code not stringent enough. Tradition should not be changed unless there is a proportionate reason. Although I don’t care for Pius XII’s Holy Week reform moving the vigil service and Mass to the evening makes sense, and there is a strong reason for it namely the vigil prayers themselves presume it to be night time, and the ancient custom of the Holy Week liturgy suggests the Easter vigil should be at night (not that one can never have a vigil during the day, as East and West has that in its tradition). Thus there was a good reason.
Moreover, adding scriptures for saints days so they would have proper readings as opposed to various Mass settings, or removing saints from devotion of the Universal Church to local calendars all make a certain amount of sense to me, and there are proportionate reasons for such additions. That’s the point, I can’t see any reason for abolishing the pre-lenten preparations which go back to the Fathers, and the form of which in the 1962 Missal would be recognizable to Latin Rite saints going back 1000+ years.
I already answered this, when I said above:
Vatican I gave us very clearly the conditions under which the Pope is infallible, if both the ordinary and extraordinary magisterium were infallible, then why would Vatican I spend the time to lay out the distinction? On the other hand that doesn’t mean we throw out the ordinary magisterium either, unless there is a proportionate reason to do so (i.e. the Pope teaches error or makes changes against the tradition which are not beneficial to the Church)
Examples are such as John XXII’s false teaching on delayed judgment of particular souls, which came through the ordinary magisterium, or Honorius’ permitting an essentially monothylyte creed to be taught, or resistance of Bishops to the absurd policy of the Second Council of Constantinople. A good modern example would be John Paul II’s condemnation of the death penalty which is clearly at variance with the tradition, even the teaching of several Popes. Pope Benedict himself said Catholics are not obliged to accept that, because there is a proportionate reason to dissent from it in the tradition. Moreover his teaching on mutual submission does not exist in the tradition, it is his novelty, and a future pope may condemn his teaching on both counts. Given the lack of precedence from Tradition we can demur from that.
Liturgy differs in as much as we are talking about the use of Papal authority. So we still have to be obedient, but that doesn’t mean we can’t call it into question. We rightly recognize that the Pope has the authority to make the change, we just demur on whether or not it was good.
Who was it again that called the N.O.M.a “fabricated liturgy”?