Holy Days of Obligation - What Obligation? What Holy Days?

As I understand it, the Vatican told the various Bishops’ Conferences that, while various Holy Days of Obligation could be moved to the nearest Sunday, or have the obligation to attend Mass on them suppressed “for pastoral reasons” (to be cynical, does that mean the “faithful” couldn’t be trusted to go to Mass on weekdays, since the bishops feared that even Sunday Mass-goers wouldn’t bother?), for some sort of largely symbolic reason – lest no Holy Days of Obligation remain, in which case it seems bizarre to have them mentioned in Canon Law at all – at least one solemnity of the Lord (i.e. Christmas) and one of Our Lady had to be retained as Holy Days of Obligation.

This thinking seems confused: if, out of fear for souls lest the lazy be damned for not going to a Mass on a weekday, all but two Holy Days of Obligation are either transferred or have the obligation suppressed, why then retain two? Even more confusingly, while the obligation to attend church on Good Friday was suppressed in the seventeenth century, it still remains far more well-attended than many a Sunday! Wouldn’t it be more rational to make Christmas and Good Friday the two remaining Holy Days of Obligation, since that is how what remains of popular piety regards them? After all, despite the importance of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, it is nowhere near as popular as those two days in terms of attendance at the Liturgy.

For the record, according to Canon Law (Can. 1246 §1) the following ten solemnities are the Holy Days of Obligation for the whole Roman Rite:

1. Christmas
2. Epiphany
3. Ascension
4. Corpus Christi
5. Mary Mother of God (the Octave Day of Christmas)
6. Immaculate Conception
7. Assumption
8. St Joseph
9. SS Peter and Paul
10. All Saints

In Australia, these three Holy Days, all solemnities of the Lord, have been transferred to the nearest Sunday, as provided for in Canon 1246 §2:

• Epiphany
• Ascension
• Corpus Christi

And the obligation to attend Mass has been suppressed for these five solemnities of Our Lady and the Saints, here in Australia (as also allowed for in Can. 1246 §2):

• Mary Mother of God (the Octave Day of Christmas)
• Immaculate Conception
• St Joseph
• SS Peter and Paul
• All Saints

Does not this send the dangerous message that devotion to the Saints is of little importance?

Here in Australia, therefore, Christmas and the Assumption as the only two Holy Days of Obligation remaining; just as, by a similar process of minimalization, not to say failure of nerve and dumbing-down, the days of fasting and abstinence also have been reduced to two: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (the minimum mandated by Canon Law – Can. 1251).

The bishops of England and Wales – not, as a body, known for their burning zeal in recent decades; so there is hope for us all – have restored the precept of abstaining from fleshmeat on all Fridays (excluding those falling on solemnities), which still is the norm throughout the Roman Church (Can. 1251), despite the perception in Australia, by those old enough to remember the former rule, that all that was abandoned as one of the “fruits” of Vatican II (the young, of course, have in many cases never even heard of it). It is wonderful to hear of bishops actually doing something for a change.

In recognizing the importance of reviving a custom that was once one of the universally known hallmarks of Catholic practice, the good bishops have imitated dear Fr Wells, a long-retired priest I remember from my university days, who told us at Mass one Sunday long ago that he had gone back to the discipline of meatless Fridays “Because I realized I was doing nothing instead”. It may be candidly admitted that few know, or care, that we are still meant to do some form of penance on Fridays – as usual, Paul VI’s efforts in that regard were singularly fruitless. Did he achieve anything?

If we are to start to rebuild, we need to restore disciplines – since the current drift into slackness and indifference simply indicates that Catholics have little commitment to anything, since they value the Faith so little. If we cared, if we actually believed, we would be willing to endure much. In the days of persecution, Catholics in England and Ireland stood firm in the face of adversity; these days, what firmness would be manifest? But I suppose if so few nominal Catholics even go to Sunday Mass, let alone bother with the occasional confession, let alone bother to get married before undertaking the marital act, let alone follow dear Paul VI's advice regarding that holy intimacy, well, no wonder even the bishops decided ditching a few more disciplines wouldn't matter.

In everything, we see the abandonment of the Catholic worldview, and a sort of play-acting in its place. We play children's games in the ruins.

Forgetting the Tradition, or, Why so Few at Mass of the Assumption?

If only I had retired to a Dormitionist cloister... instead of such, after an unpleasant day at work, I had the consolation of singing with the choir (directed from the organ) at the evening Mass for the Assumption. Singing the Ordinary of the Mass, the Psalm and Alleluia, together with sundry Marian hymns ("Immaculate Mary", "O Sanctissima", a setting of the Magnificat, "Jesus, my Lord, my God, my all", and "Hail Queen of heaven") certainly revived my drooping spirits, as did the combined devotion and good cheer of the choir and organist. But what a pity there were so few at Mass, on this, a Holy Day of Obligation – and in Australia, the only remaining such, apart from Christmas. Janet, the organist, remarked afterward that time was when the church would have been packed...

Here in Launceston, there are only three parishes. The north-western parish (my own) had Mass at 10 am (not practical for workers), and a second Mass at Beaconsfield, a country town to the north, at noon (garnering an excellent, albeit older, congregation of sixty – this Mass was also the occasion for celebrating the golden jubilee of the inestimable Sr Frances, stalwart of the locality). The default option for Launcestonians, however, is to attend Mass at the city church, that of the Apostles – hence my surprise there were so few present. Certainly the Carmelites (served by a roster of the three parishes' priests) would have had their daily Mass at 7:30 am, and given past experience they would have had a reasonable number present, but their chapel is small, and the hour early... As for the southern parish, I have no information to hand, but I seem to recall they (may) have an evening Mass (I haven't been there for decades, to be honest), at least for this solemnity. But again, I cannot imagine that that church was packed – having heard from a few, ahem, ex-parishioners thereof that they now go elsewhere.

The true vocations crisis in the Church is not a lack of candidates for the priesthood: it is a lack of committed Catholics (from whose ranks a small but sufficient percentage of men would naturally be drawn to Holy Orders). There is a reason why the number of church weddings, not to mention baptisms, declines yearly: it is called erosion of the faith, decline in commitment to living out the Faith, and general forgetfulness of what previous generations, often at great cost, nevertheless succeeded in passing on – until the last half-century or so. The tradition has failed: discontinuity and rupture has broken the links formerly passing down the Apostolic tradition in continuity from one generation to the next.

In this Year of Faith, what is too evident is a crisis and a lack of faith. "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" – Hosea iv, 6. I recall what St Thérèse of Lisieux noted: that if there were no love in the heart of the Church (and she felt her vocation to be to live as that loving heart), the apostles would forget to preach, the martyrs would not bother to die for Christ, the missionaries would not labour to spread the Gospel. Terrible to say, what she spoke of per impossibilem has in many places throughout the West – certainly in Australia – come to pass.

What is believed by too many nominal Catholics is rather a comfortable falsehood, according to which Scripture and Tradition have little value, nor does commitment to the harder moral precepts or duties such as Mass-going (which ought in any case actually be a joy if one realize what Mass is, but I digress); rather, a fairy-floss version of eviscerated Christianity is given lip-service, according to which bourgeois niceness and thinly disguised versions of the current secular virtues (the fashions of the moment) are all that is required, to which the more pious may add lounging about on bean-bags and playing at prayer, since sometime hopefully far distant in the future we all go to "some heaven light-years away" anyway (though one should not be too serious about such fables, unappealing as they are to the worldly), and in the meanwhile "celebrating the life" and dabbling in trendy forms of do-goodery is really all that is necessary. Indifferentism replaces Christianity, in point of fact.

Despite being personally buoyed up by Mass and Holy Communion – "My soul He doth restore again" – and in a special way by helping out with the choir – "Make a joyful noise to the Lord" – I felt nonetheless saddened that the blessings freely available were offered, in vain it may seem, to an all but empty church. Granted, I didn't leer over the choirloft to enumerate the worshippers, but from what I saw the pews at least in the front of the Church of the Apostles were largely vacant.

Our priest and deacon celebrated Mass with reverence and dignity, of course; but I could not help but compare the lack of any servers to what I know would have been the case at my own parish in Perth, W.A.: Fr Rowe would have had a Missa cantata at least, quite possibly with choir singing polyphony, and certainly with acolytes, candlebearers, a thurifer and M.C. for this, one of the most important feasts of the year, the consummation of Our Lady's life in triumph, the entrance of the Mother of our God into celestial bliss. Again, there was lacking the support of, not the clergy, but the men of the parish, those who serve at the altar (I ought note that most of Fr Rowe's servers are adults). I know, also, that Fr Rowe would have carefully exhorted his flock to attend Mass on this day, and there would have been a good compliance with his reminder – as it is, many travel across Perth to attend weekday Mass, let alone Sunday or festal services there.

Personally, I was uplifted; corporately, so to say, the commitment, even the understanding of the needfulness of attendance at Mass of the Assumption, was manifestly lacking, even compared to the numbers who still more or less regularly attend Sunday Mass (as a friend of mine put it, the Devotion of the Fifty-Two Sundays is rather neglected these days). We hold great hopes that our new Archbishop, committed as he is to re-evangelizing, will direct the Church here in Tasmania to rebuild, rather than manage an ineluctable decline – God grant it.

I feel sad and embarrassed to think that the several priests from overseas who serve in Tasmania at the moment must be shocked at the lukewarmness and apathy of the Catholics here – they must wonder why a small remnant of cossetted rich people need to summon priests from countries where the needs are greater, and where the faithful are actually faithful, so that churches are packed, not all but deserted.

Dare I suppose that readers had similarly dispiriting impressions of the attendance levels at Masses of the Assumption?

Victory... Our Faith

Unfortunately, in recent times the drift from God and from the spiritual and supernatural view of life has seriously weakened this country. It is true that a rise in church membership has been reported during the past few years, but in the light of other evidence, one is forced to question how significant such mere statistics may be. One looks in vain for any corresponding increase of religion's beneficial influence upon the nation's life. Indeed, the trend in public and private morality has been downward; there is an alarming disregard in practice for God's teaching and for God's law. 

Is there any need to instance the growing evils in family life, the lustful self-indulgence which leads from birth prevention and divorce, from broken homes to the broken lives of youthful delinquents? Need we adduce in evidence the appalling circulation of indecent literature, and the low moral level of so much of the public entertainment in these days?

...

At its best, our civilization was the fine flowering of the Christian Faith. Now that the West has fallen from its former greatness, let us recognize that it is because so many have fallen away from the Faith, or have denatured it by dilution and compromise. 

We have fallen down before idols of flesh and of gold. It is not the True Faith which has failed us; it is we who have failed the Faith. A weak and vacillating Christianity, a partial, truncated Christianity, paying lip service to God and to the Spirit, but devoted in practice to man and matter, can never triumph in the battle with total, determined materialism.

— extracts from the 1954 Annual Statement of the Bishops of the United States.

While looking for something else, I came across this long-forgotten pamphlet, entitled Victory... Our Faith... 'The Battle Is Joined'... Enemy is Atheistic Materialism. The American bishops of sixty years ago had not yet been emasculated and completely befuddled by nonsense (one wishes they had not wasted so much time abroad in the years then still to come); they recognized the profound danger to souls of what is diametrically opposed to our Holy Faith: "...atheistic materialism,... Godless humanism... is [if not denial, then ignorance] of God... and His law... an excessive preoccupation with creatures... [which] reveals itself as secularism in politics and government, as avarice in business and in the professions, and as paganism in the personal lives and relations of all too many men and women."

They reëcho the words of the Didache about the Two Ways, that most ancient form of Christian catechesis:

The way of matter and of the flesh is the way of death; the way of God and of the spirit is the way of life. If we would have life, we must renew and reaffirm our Faith in God and in His Christ; we must cling again to that Christian moral code... 

... In the sign of the Cross, Christ conquers the paganism which had enslaved mankind... Jesus Christ restored meaning and purpose and love to human life; He warmed and illumined our life where before it had been cold and dark. He rescued man from the wild wandering and the black despair of the atheistic materialism of that day. In this day of the new paganism, we Christians can again triumph in the sign of the same Cross of Christ. 

Christ is the Prophet and the Teacher, in Whose doctrines are the truths which inspire and satisfy... Christ is the Priest, the Mediator. His is the great Atonement. By His Sacrifice, we are redeemed from our sins. ... And Christ is King, the Lord... He is the Lawgiver, laying down the code of conduct that binds the consciences of men. He is the Judge, merciful and just, Who rewards the good and punishes the evil. He is the Ruler... From Him alone do earthly magistrates receive their power of governance. ... Worship and obedience, order and discipline... - these He exacts... but in return He gives... His Father's love and His Father's home, rich largess of grace and abiding peace of soul. ... 

This is why we repeat without ceasing that God and His Christ afford the answer to all our problems, and provide the solution to all our difficulties. Those who have never known the Christian religion, or who have not known it in its fulness as taught by the Catholic Church [even within the Church*], should turn to it now, and examine its credentials. It is the answer to their quest.

*If only we taught the Faith, not presented a weak, pathetic travesty of it that acts only as a vaccine against belief. If only the Church here were not so smug and unconcerned about its failures over the past two generations to pass on the Faith, pretending that all shall be well, while matters have reached the point at which the real teachings of the Church appear strange and even alien to ill-instructed Catholics. I must repeat those terrible words of self-accusation that the American bishops uttered sixty-odd years ago: 

It is not the True Faith which has failed us; it is we who have failed the Faith. A weak and vacillating Christianity, a partial, truncated Christianity, paying lip service to God and to the Spirit, but devoted in practice to man and matter [i.e. obsessed with prating of social justice, while knowing too little of either to avoid falling into simplistic, materialist traps], can never triumph in the battle with total, determined materialism.

Alas, this is all too accurate a picture of the Australian Church today, which is far further down that road of indifferentism and practical apostasy, fallen asleep without even realizing it, afflicted with sloth and accidie, that revulsion at holy things which is the special curse of those who grow bored and impatient with their religion. So often the Church here brings to mind that horrifying sentence of Our Lord passed on Laodicea, one of the complacent churches of Asia Minor back in the days of the writing of the Apocalypse: I would you were either hot or cold; but since you are so tepid and lukewarm – I will vomit you out of My mouth. (Rev. iii. 15-16) Lord, have mercy!

Domine, salva nos, perimus. 

Credo, Domine, adjuva incredulitatem meam.

Domine, adauge nobis fidem.

Lord, save us, we are perishing.

I believe, Lord, help my unbelief.

Lord, increase our faith.

Back from Hobart

All went well for our monthly Missa cantata: the liturgical proceedings took just over an hour, as usual, and I felt that I'm settling into the role of M.C. with somewhat more assurance (though I did have our poor priest read the Communion and Postcommunion of the 1st Sunday before I realized my error and redirected him!).

While our choir was depleted in numbers, as well as chanting the Ordinary and Proper, they also sang two most appropriate Advent pieces: the Rorate cæli at Offertory, and Veni, veni Emmanuel (all seven verses) at Communion.  As we processed out, I couldn't help but think it would have been nice to end with the Alma Redemptoris Mater, so I prayed it inwardly at least.

I still think numbers at our Mass are a bit low (roughly forty souls if not more), but given that the Mass occurs but once a month, and at a very late morning hour, that is only to be expected: if we had a weekly Mass at an earlier time (and a Low Mass before that, for such as prefer it), numbers would certainly increase markedly.  But that must wait for a new bishop more accepting of Summorum pontificum!  I hear that the new appointment should prove more Catholic and aware.

A later conversation about this turned to that vexed issue of why the Faith has been eroded.  A mystery indeed: why is it that people, even those allegedly Catholic, have next to no sense of sin or of their need for a Saviour?  Why has faith evaporated?  I wish I knew.

Feast of St Oliver Plunket: Domine, Adauge nobis fidem!

In the traditional calendar for Australia, the 11th of July is the 3rd class feast of St Oliver Plunket(t), Bishop and Martyr (1629-1681). An Irishman, he was brought up by his relative Dom Patrick Plunket, Abbot of St Mary's, Dublin, and went to Rome to study for the priesthood, where he excelled in his studies and exercised a fruitful and holy ministry in the service of Holy Church. In 1669 he was made Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, and likewise did great things back in his native land, then sore oppressed by the Protestant English. On trumped-up charges he was deported to London and barbarously executed at Tyburn on the 1st of July 1681, as a holy martyr, a victorious athlete of Christ, enduring all to witness to our Holy Faith. His Mass and Office is from the Common, apart from the third Lesson and the orations, as follows:

Deus, qui pro tuenda Catholica fide beatum Oliverium Martyrem tuum atque Pontificem, admirabili spiritus fortitudine imbuere dignatus es: concede nobis, ejus intercessione et exemplo, ut ipsius in fide constantiam imitemur, et in periculis patrocinia sentiamus. Per...

Clementissime Deus, munera hæc tua benedictione perfunde, et nos in fide confirma: quam beatus Oliverius Martyr et Pontifex tuus immani supplicii genere adseruit. Per... *

Spiritum, Domine, fortitudinis hæc nobis tribuat mensa caelestis: quae beati Oliverii Martyris tui atque Pontificis vitam pro Ecclesiæ honore jugiter aluit ad victoriam. Per... *

(* Note that the secret prayer is almost the same as that of that other Counter-reformation martyr for Catholic unity, St Josaphat, Bishop of Polotsk (d. 1623): Clementissime Deus, munera hæc tua benedictione perfunde, et nos in fide confirma: quam _sanctus_Josaphat_ Martyr et Pontifex tuus, _effuso_sanguine,_ asseruit. Per...; likewise, their postcommunion is identical (but for the substitution of sancti Josaphat for beati Oliverii.)

The central crisis of modern Catholicism is precisely a lack of faith, a lack of belief in or adherence to the truth and the truths of our Catholic Faith: that is why so many are so lukewarm, why Catholicism appears tired, boring, timorous and repellent, fit to be vomited forth (cf. Apoc. iii, 16). St Oliver Plunket ought, I believe, be invoked to obtain that necessary increase in faith, without which it is impossible to please God (cf. Heb. xi, 6): only by being strengthened in faith, God's supernatural gift of infused intellectual virtue, can we "run with patience to the fight set before us, looking towards the author and finisher of faith, Jesus" Christ our Lord, "having a great cloud of witnesses over us," the saints perfected in the kingdom of Christ in heaven (Heb. xii, 1-2).

Some Byzantine-style compositions of mine addressed to St Oliver Plunket:

The ravening evil of heretics thou didst trample down by thy Christlike passion, O high priest of God, thou true Martyr; as Shepherd of our Lord's flock attacked by wolves, Oliver, thou wert an angel of peace, preaching Truth against lies and unjust warmongers: as God's grace didst save thee, obtain from us from the Trinity great mercy.

Great Martyr Oliver, as thou didst triumph over the insane malice of thy devil-duped foes, confounding their false religion by thy constancy in torment, obtain from us from Christ-God that faith that shall overcome the world, and save our souls!

Domine, Adauge nobis fidem!