No more squeezing Mass in at lunchtime, or dashing out in the evening when children are trying to revise for their exams. That’s one way to look at the ‘disappearance’ of Ascension Thursday and its reappearance on the seventh Sunday of Easter, and the change which means that the feast of Corpus Christi is now kept on the Sunday after Trinity Sunday. While some people welcome these developments with relief, others may be troubled, feeling that the Roman Catholic faith is somehow being watered down, or that we are out of step with the Church in other parts of the world. And then, to further complicate the matter, the feasts of SS Peter and Paul, the Assumption, and All Saints remain as before, often requiring us to attend Mass during the week for these feasts. Is that because they are more important? What is the thinking behind all this? My curiosity led me to do some investigation, starting with the statement from the Bishops’ Conference for England and Wales. This answered my question, and I also found one or two surprising items in it.
The first surprise I found was that the list of the holydays of the universal church (code of Canon law 1246) includes both the feast of the Immaculate Conception and the feast of St Joseph, as well as January 1st – the feast of Mary, mother of God, from which the obligation in England and Wales was removed in 1970. I cannot remember ever being aware of an obligation to attend Mass on March 19th, or December 8th, although parishioners brought up in Ireland have probably had a different experience. From this, it is clear that there have been local variations in place for some time.
What has prompted this most recent change? According to the statement from Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the change was requested by a number of Diocesan Councils of Priests ‘deeply concerned about the diminishing observance of these days’.
In particular, the thinking behind the transfer of the ‘feasts of the Lord’ to the Sunday is to allow a proper celebration of them as feasts. That is, there is time for music and a full homily, rather than the necessity of getting through the Mass as quickly as possible to allow people to get back to their place of work, or to respond to other demands on their time during the working week. It is certainly true that to restrict homilies on the Eucharist to a rushed weekday Mass on the feast of Corpus Christi, or to Holy Thursday, when it is rather overshadowed by the events of Good Friday seems to sell this central tenet of our faith rather short.
The bishops also remind us that the obligation for a holyday is not simply to attend Mass, but to keep the day as a whole special. Certainly this is easier to accomplish at the weekend, but so far there does not seem to have been any plan to arrange special celebrations for these feasts, or to distinguish them from ordinary Sundays.
What then of those feasts that have not been transferred to Sundays? The Birth of the Lord, Christmas Day, remains on December 25th, , and I can’t imagine that anyone would want this changed! The other feast days – SS Peter and Paul, the Assumption and All Saints – remain in their weekday slots. I suspect that attendance at Mass on these days will continue to dwindle. If, in the bishops’ view, they do not merit a ‘proper’ celebration, the laity may find themselves less motivated to make the sometimes considerable effort to get to Mass on those days. It may not be long before we find these feasts transferred to the nearest Sunday as well!
The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales have taken a bold step to try to ensure that Catholics in this country continue to follow the liturgical rhythm of the Church’s year. Whilst applauding this attempt, I have to say that I wonder how the laity would have responded if we had been asked for our views before the changes were made!
Tricia Steel