Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The title of this essay comes from a 2021 Christmas movie, the kind that run in places like the Hallmark Channel. But I think it better fits the American bishops’ approach to holy days of obligation.
Regular readers know that I have criticized detachment of holy days from their historical context (e.g., Ascension Thursday becoming Ascension-next-Sunday) or the “pastoral” don’t-make-people-go-too-much-to-church-so-Saturday-and-Monday-holy days-sometimes-don’t-count rule (especially ludicrous when it comes to January 1, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God).
Well, the latest installment of episcopal follies just exploded over this year’s status of Immaculate Conception. According to universal church calendar rules, when December 8 falls on a Sunday, Immaculate Conception is automatically transferred to Monday, December 9 because Advent Sundays outrank feasts but solemnities have to be observed. The U.S. bishops basically said, “OK, but the transfer of the feast means the obligation to attend Mass is abrogated.”
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
Sign up to get Crisis articles delivered to your inbox daily
That approach would tally nicely with their “Saturdays-or-Mondays-time-out” rule, except that I remember reading somewhere that there should be at least two holy days on a national liturgical calendar: Christmas and a Marian feast. Since Immaculate Conception is also our national patronal feast, December 8 was never subject to the “Saturday-or-Monday-get-out-of-church-free” rule.
The “pastoral” types in our episcopal class tried to wedge an exception in this year by saying the transferal of the feast did not also transfer the obligation. That’s been the bishops’ tack for years, last applied in 2019 and not recurring until 2030. This year, though, Bishop Thomas Paprocki decided to ask the Vatican whether that interpretation was right and was told, “no.”
With roughly a month out, bishops are scrambling, producing the ecclesiastical mishmash at which the USCCB excels. December 9 is now no longer a holy day this year in the Archdiocese of Chicago, by decree of Blase Cupich, for the “spiritual good” of Windy City Catholics; but it is presumably a holy day in the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois (since its bishop asked the question). I guess it’s a far greater hardship for Chicago Catholics, with churches in close urban proximity to each other, to get themselves to Mass than, say, Catholics in more central, rural Illinois where Springfield lies.
Frankly, this makes about as much sense as ecclesiastical provinces deciding on the day of Ascension: when Newark observed it on Thursday but Wilmington on Sunday, I wondered what one should do if he was on the Delaware Memorial Bridge, since America has some bishops with affectations of celebrating Mass “on borders.”
This whole incoherence has roots in two major factors. Some liturgists who make mountains out of molehills were upset about when evening anticipated Masses are celebrated or which Evening Prayer I should be said when a solemnity and a Sunday abut. Honestly, that “problem” was a non-problem because the liturgical calendar establishes precedence. The answer was never in doubt.
But it also served as a convenient excuse to cover up a debate among the bishops back in the 1980s between those who thought today’s Catholics should continue accommodating modernity and secularization versus those who had enough of the sellout to a contemporary world closed off to the sacred. As I understand it, there were bishops who wanted to eliminate Ascension, Assumption, All Saints, and Mary, Mother of God entirely, while others wanted things left alone. The former also contended too many Catholics didn’t attend Mass on those days so, like new Lambs of God, they would “take away the sins of the world” by removing the Mass obligation. As “comity” is a far more important “value” to the episcopal class, the current Saturday-Monday-take-the-day-off rule was cobbled together, and we have hobbled along with it for 32 years.
Rome probably went along with this system because in many places in Europe where Catholicism was also part of the national culture holy days are also civil holidays, so there is a certain European mentality that deems it a hardship to go to church if you don’t otherwise get the day off, something that was never the case in the United States.
Yes, Cardinal Cupich has “dispensed” Chicago Catholics from Mass in the pastoral name of their “spiritual good.” For all the lectures we get about “sitting in the chair of Moses” the truth is all of this is possible only because of the exaltation of canon law—in which the vast majority of American bishops have their higher degrees—over theology, (i.e., power over wisdom). This whole farrago makes no sense theologically but is held together by “pastoral” excuses and—to rephrase Byron White—“raw canonical power.”
And, yes, don’t doubt this all also fits the “synodal” agenda quite well: the push for “decentralization” and empowering episcopal conferences is a useful tool for creating a “multi-speed” Church where “reforms” that would not (yet) be adopted by the Church Universal can be introduced locally, like toxins, into the ecclesiastical bloodstream. Consider the imbecility of extending liturgy-by-geography to morality-by-geography: in Germany, a Catholic and a divorcee who live together can “accompany” each other to the communion rail, while in next-door Poland, they are adulterers. At Easter, we speak of Moses’ passing through the Red Sea as a kind of baptism washing away sin. Who knew the Oder River had similar absolving effects?
No doubt, December 9, 2024, will be a hash work of practice across American dioceses. And the next January 1—unlike last—will be a holy day because there’s no “Wednesday-is-waived” rule…even though, whatever day of the week it falls on, January 1 is a day off for practically all Americans. And I’m surprised that no “pastoral” types have decided to dispense holy days on Fridays (maybe they can substitute abstinence for Mass attendance) since, of all weekdays, Friday night as a time to go to church for a holy day probably suffers lowest participation. I can’t imagine All Saints’ Day 2024—which fell on a Friday—had robust attendance numbers.As the bishops gather at their annual Plenary Assembly on November 11 in Baltimore, would it be too much to ask: Can we abandon this whole rickety structure and go back to holy days on their proper days (and maybe add January 6 to the mix)?
Bravo, bravissimo, Dr. G. Your solution to the problem is the only logical one. Restore some sense of continuity with the previous thousand years of practice. And let’s have some real catechesis perhaps for the same three years as the Eucharistic revival. But add confession times in all the parishes within dioceses that tighten up the rules, so that those who get their backs up and intentionally “miss Mass” at least have more chances to get it right with God and the Church.
Once again Catholic publications are the only ones remiss in identifying great art that enrich written texts. Works of Sacred Art are considered sacramentals. The Immaculate Conception painted by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was completed as an altarpiece in 1767 years before Pope Pius IX declared it a dogma of the Church in 1854. Along with this Tiepolo the Immaculate Conception by Diego Velázquez from 1618 kept the popular devotion alive.