...this week in style, at a party for all who work on The Portal, the on-line magazine of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. We'll be celebrating it on the correct day, January 6th, although we'll all have had an Epiphany Mass last Sunday.
Why won't our Bishops allow all of us in Britain to have the great feasts of the Church on the right day each year?? There's absolutely no reason to mess up our calendar by banning us from having the Epiphany feast on January 6th. It's time this messy experiment came to an end. Moving feasts at random to "the nearest Sunday" just confuses and irritates us - and robs us of the fun and pleasure of a midweek feast and the chance to do some gentle and cheery evangelisation.
Impossible to get to a weekday Mass? Throughout my adult life in the 1970s and 80s, and 90s, working as a junior reporter on newspapers or a researcher in Parliament, or living in Berlin or in an Army base in Yorkshire, I managed to get to Mass on a weekday. It's even easier now, with internet links and mobile phones to check Mass times or liaise with friends. My mother made it to weekday Masses in wartime Britain under threat of bombs. People have done it for centuries. PLEASE CAN WE HAVE OUR FEAST-DAYS BACK???
I don't really blame the bishops. People weren't turning up to non-Sunday masses. It wasn't honest to just pretend that everyone was a faithful Catholic whilst half the congregation was obviously skipping mass.
ReplyDeleteBut the response was wrong. People were skipping because "feast" had been allowed to decline to a holiday, to a holy day of obligation. I remember thinking sceptically as a child "so it's the feast of such and such, where's the food?". An obligation is just a chore. It doesn't have to be that way. I'm having friends round for the 6th for the last day of Christmas.
HERE HERE!! Couldn't agree more.
ReplyDeletemaryclare
I couldn't agree more - it is daft. And it's the same in the US. Here in Venice, Florida, Epiphany Cathedral celebrated yesterday too. You'd think that if anyone could count to 12, they could. Ironically the Bishop pointed out to the congregation that the 6th was the actual Epiphany. New Year's Day is an H of O here and if people could stagger into Mass then, they could perfectly well do it on the 6th! And on another point, when I lived in London I remember Ash Wednesday Masses being packed and it's not even a Holyday!
ReplyDeleteVery well said, Joanna, and, heaven knows, it needed saying.
ReplyDeleteSo stupid. And they said they`d consulted - who???
ReplyDeleteWe`re so merged with the world that we`re almost indistinguishable now.
I agree! Where is the petition? I want to sign it!
ReplyDeleteCatholic Schools did not help. In my schooldays and even after I started teaching'
ReplyDeleteall Catholic schools were closed on Holydays of Obligation-- a powerful witness
lost to secularisation. In my school's case blamed on having to conform to the
priorities of dinner canteens and buses. Everyone was expected to attend Mass in their parish. Nowadays Mass is spoonfed to them in school and is dropped along with
the uniform when they leave.
If you go the Ordinariate church, tomorrow, you will find one at 7 PM.
ReplyDelete