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Friday, September 22, 2017
More on Holy Days...
...and with some interesting information on the importance of the number 40. Read here
Isn't it a bit rich of the Bishops to now write 'everyone knows that the 12th day of Christmas is January 6th?' They were the ones who moved the Feast day in the first place. They did not care then that everyone knew it was really January 6th. And I have read that it won't be on January 6th if it falls on a Saturday or Monday either. So they still don't think we are capable of attending Mass two days running. They do have a low opinion of us.
I'm afraid all this "moveable feasts" laying about has done real damage. Of course feast days are a man-made thing, and it shouldn't be a challenge to any mature Catholics' faith to know that December 25th may not be the correct day for Christmas, or that Easter and Passover are not out of synchronisation. But the idea that you can just take an old and well established date and play with it, for a short term benefit, means that you don't really have faith in your calendar.
However the bishops aren't totally to blame. The other factor was that people just weren't turning up to feast days, whilst being otherwise solid catholics who would attend every Sunday. Something had to be done. But moving the day, whilst it seemed the obvious thing to do, was the wrong thing - the feasts should maybe have been degraded to optional (like Ash Wednesday, which is always well-attended), or, my own preferred solution, they should have been upgraded with more celebration made of them - children getting the day of school and activities to build up to the holiday. As a child I always used to say "Feast day? Where's my dinner?" I thought it was a joke - that "feast" had two meanings. In fact it was a legitimate complaint.
2 comments:
Isn't it a bit rich of the Bishops to now write 'everyone knows that the 12th day of Christmas is January 6th?' They were the ones who moved the Feast day in the first place. They did not care then that everyone knew it was really January 6th. And I have read that it won't be on January 6th if it falls on a Saturday or Monday either. So they still don't think we are capable of attending Mass two days running. They do have a low opinion of us.
I'm afraid all this "moveable feasts" laying about has done real damage. Of course feast days are a man-made thing, and it shouldn't be a challenge to any mature Catholics' faith to know that December 25th may not be the correct day for Christmas, or that Easter and Passover are not out of synchronisation. But the idea that you can just take an old and well established date and play with it, for a short term benefit, means that you don't really have faith in your calendar.
However the bishops aren't totally to blame. The other factor was that people just weren't turning up to feast days, whilst being otherwise solid catholics who would attend every Sunday. Something had to be done. But moving the day, whilst it seemed the obvious thing to do, was the wrong thing - the feasts should maybe have been degraded to optional (like Ash Wednesday, which is always well-attended), or, my own preferred solution, they should have been upgraded with more celebration made of them - children getting the day of school and activities to build up to the holiday. As a child I always used to say "Feast day? Where's my dinner?" I thought it was a joke - that "feast" had two meanings. In fact it was a legitimate complaint.
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