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yaycatholic
Guest
Haha I knew that! Well, you pray the majority of the psalms (without the impreccatory verses and some whole psalms). It’s quite sad though that they’ve omitted these.
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OraLabora
Guest
Even that won’t cut it. The approved pre-Vatican II Roman Breviary is basically the breviary of St. Pius X (1910), with 150 psalms a week.
The way St. Benedict envisioned the Divine Office was 250 or so psalms per week (obviously with many repetitions). Vigils was 2 nocturnes of 6 psalms, with three readings (3 biblical and 3 patristic) after each nocturne during the week, and on Sundays, solemnities and feasts, 2 nocturnes of 6 psalms, each followed by 4 readings (4 each biblical and patristic), 1 nocturne of three OT canticles, followed by the proclamation of the Sunday Gospel, the Te Decet Laus, a homily or patristic reading, the Te Deum and the final collect. You’re looking at an Office lasting well over an hour and a half in monasteries. Lauds is 6 psalms and an OT canticle… Throw in Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, and it isn’t for the faint of heart. Then add Gregorian chant, and all the liturgical trimmings and you’ll begin to understand why monasteries morphed into needing two classes of monks, choir monks for the liturgy and lay brothers (who used Little Offices) to actually get any work done. You can still do that Office in both pre- and post-Vatican II versions (minus Prime in the latter, with its psalms distributed usually over the minor hours, or the Invitatory and Vigils). The psalm structure is spelled out in his Rule.
Monasteries have gone back to only one class of monk as St. Benedict intended, but in turn liturgies have been simplified: at our abbey, a new post-VII Office of 150 psalms a week; others use two-week cycles or even the 4-week LOTH adapted to the Benedictine calendar. Fortunately our abbey has retained Gregorian chant for all of Lauds and Vespers, and for the hymns of the other hours, plus the responsory and marian antiphon at Compline.
It’s true you miss psalms more often because of schedule conflicts with a 1-week Office but on the other hand if you do happen to miss an Office with the LOTH, it may be 4 weeks before you see that psalm again (not always though as some psalms do come up more than once).
Every Office is a compromise of sorts. I’m into aviation and just as every plane is designed with a specific and fairly narrow range of missions in mind (e.g. a 777 for long-haul, a 737 for short-to-medium haul), so too are breviaries. Some do a better job than others. For laity and busy secular clergy, the LOTH does a pretty good job, with the compromise of omitting the cursing psalms and verses.
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EphelDuath
Guest
But as we both pointed out last time we talked about this: St. Benedict had a little footnote in his Rule which essentially said, “Well, if you can’t even be bothered to follow my psalter schemata, at the very least pray all 150 psalms every week.” Pope St. Pius X’s reform was intended to, and does, fulfill that vision; whereas a four-week psalter, as introduced by Pope Paul VI, is a complete novelty in Catholic tradition. The only thing close to it is a brief point in history when the Ambrosian Office had a two-week psalter schemata.
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OraLabora
Guest
Well, that footnote was indeed that, a footnote. The practical reality is that the majority of Benedictine monasteries pre-Vatican II used the Breviary defined by St. Benedict or something very close to it. Which is what he intended, and he took the trouble to write 12 chapters to define what he intended whereas the footnote remains just that, a single sentence at the end of chapter 18. So that hardly can be stated that the footnote is what he “intended”.
It was a degree of latitude permitted somewhat reluctantly. What he really intended was his psalter schema. Pius X’s psalter does meet the 150 psalm requirement, but it is not what St. Benedict “intended”, and in fact was the precedent of writing a lighter breviary aimed at secular clergy which led to the LOTH we know today; in fact Pius X set many of the precedents for the LOTH, such as breaking up the Laudate psalms and dividing psalms in order to keep every hour a similar length (though St. Benedict did this to a certain extent as well if a psalm was very long such as Ps. 77).
A four-week psalter was indeed a novelty. On the other hand so too is the laity praying the Divine Office on a large scale, and that has largely been made possible by the LOTH.
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EphelDuath
Guest
Vatican II said that the Hours should be prayed publicly in choir in Latin, and who does that? The current LotH might be good for laypeople, but other than undoing the Clementine mutilation of the hymns, it’s been disastrous as an implementation of the public prayer of the Church. Honestly, there was nothing wrong with retaining the Pian Breviary for clergy and religious while implementing the LotH as a “little office” for laypeople and deacons, but that didn’t happen.
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OraLabora
Guest
Every single monastic community (Benedictine, Cistercian, Carthusian) and numerous other religious communities pray the Office in choir. My community, Solesmes in France, St. Wandrille in France and numerous others, also do so in Latin. With Gregorian chant.
Utter nonsense although in a way the LOTH already is a “little office” for laypeople and secular clergy.
Monastics still pray a much heavier office. Benedictines are mandated to use at least a 2-week psalter unless outside their monastery or involved in a heavy apostolate. Ours uses a 1-week psalter. Solesmes and St. Wandrille in France (and the Carthusians) still pray the schema St. Benedict defined.
Some communities of clerics, in particular the Communauté St. Martin in France, have seen a revival of the use of Latin and Gregorian chant for the LOTH. This has resulted in Les Heures Grégoriennes, an excellent and useful Gregorian chant antiphonary for all of the day hours of the LOTH, for all seasons, solemnities, feasts and memorials. It’s what I, and several other oblates that I know, use daily.
What did do damage was the long delay in finally getting some chant books ready for the LOTH. It took 40 years.
I see no real spiritual advantage to forcing secular priests to take on a monastic-like prayer load. Already in my diocese, priests can cover up to 4 parishes alone. Ask any of them if they’d rather pray the Pius X breviary…
Given that many people have now taken up the Divine Office due to the reforms, I would hardly call it a “disaster.” I don’t want to pray any little office. I want to pray the official prayer of the Church.
As I’ve said before, more than the revision of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours is the greatest gift that came out of the Second Vatican Council for which I will always be grateful.
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EphelDuath
Guest
So, the places/people that already did. Vatican II was meant to reinvigorate parishes to celebrate the Office in public Latin choir, as was a venerable tradition sadly crushed around the 18th century. The opposite happened: the few parishes that did celebrate the Hours stopped doing so. Now there’s only a handful of places in the world where one can go to have a communal sung celebration of the Hours.
I’m not particularly concerned with the monastic/religious celebration of the Hours. They’re always going to have their own way of doing it, that’s heavier than secular priests.
Of course it’s not an optimal situation for priests to cover four parishes at a time. I would think a bishop could grant them a dispensation in that case. But for hundreds of years, parish priests were praying an even longer Breviary than the reformed Pian one, and doing some of the hours publicly with music.
A little Office could be the official prayer of the Church. And yes, it is a great accomplishment that many laypeople are now praying the LotH. But Vatican II called for the Hours to be prayed in Latin, in public, in choir. This is so exceedingly rare that one would have to dig their head in the sand to think everything is OK.
The Council didn’t make the LotH. The Council just re-affirmed the way it should be prayed (which less people do now than before the Council), with a few minor adjustments. Sacrosanctum concilium called for Prime to be suppressed, for Matins and Compline to be adjusted in theme, and that the psalter schemata be “no longer to be distributed throughout one week” (they probably had a two-week schemata in mind).
The LotH was crafted by Pope S.D. Paul VI, and I can’t say I’m in complete agreement with all of the choices made therein. I can post all of my comments on it if you’re interested.
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agnes_therese
Guest
While that would certainly be close to heaven in my opinion, how do you propose to make it happen? Aside from religious, my secular Carmelite community, and our pastor and deacons, I know exactly one person who prays the Liturgy of the Hours. In English, as do I. Where and how do we find people who have the time and interest to (a) learn Latin (pronunciation, at the very least); (b) learn the LotH; and (c) get together regularly to pray it in choir?
I’m not being snarky, truly. I’d really like to know.
Nor can I. But I am truly grateful for the LotH, because I don’t see how I could really manage any of the previous versions. Even though I do try to make a stab at it every now and then.
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Luigi_Daniele
Guest
Not everyone in my OFS group prays it, and it is a requirement. I know of no one else than that group that prays it (with your same exceptions).While that would certainly be close to heaven in my opinion, how do you propose to make it happen? Aside from religious, my secular Carmelite community, and our pastor and deacons, I know exactly one person who prays the Liturgy of the Hours. In English, as do I. Where and how do we find people who have the time and interest to (a) learn Latin (pronunciation, at the very least); (b) learn the LotH; and (c) get together regularly to pray it in choir?
I’m not being snarky, truly. I’d really like to know.
Nor can I. But I am truly grateful for the LotH, because I don’t see how I could really manage any of the previous versions. Even though I do try to make a stab at it every now and then.
I do, BTW.
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EphelDuath
Guest
Nowadays most Catholics don’t know an inkling of Latin and they’re completely unfamiliar with all of the chant books that exist. So from a grassroots perspective (because I don’t work for the USCCB or the Holy See), I would advocate four things:
- Petition publishers to print the Latin version of the LotH (because as far as I know, only Midwest Theological Forum and Paxbooks print it in Latin; and in both of those places it’ll run you $400+ for the whole set)
- Give Latin lessons/encourage self-study of Latin to your parish so that everybody can at least get the gist of the LotH
- Make free resources out of the Liber usualis so that everybody can follow along with the choir
- Petition parishes to publicly celebrate the Hours (particularly Terce and Vespers)
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OraLabora
Guest
Praying the Hours in choir is mainly meant for those bound to choir. And that was the case pre-Vatican II. For example Jesuits have never been bound to choir and always recited the Breviary privately.
That hasn’t changed with the LOTH, which a casual reading of the General Instructions will show. Prayer in choir was meant mostly for cathedral chapters, monastics and religious communities. Public was more common pre-Vatican II, but usually for the most part, sung Sunday Vespers as well as on some feast days.
The LOTH was to reinvigorate the public prayer of the Office. Don’t confuse public with in choir. In my parish, Lauds is publicly prayed every week instead of Mass when there’s no priest available. The public has no obligation to pray the Office in choir, and the clergy in parishes have no obligation to provide it. And that has nothing to do with Vatican II.
It’s true that a lack of chant books for the LOTH has been a hindrance for 40 years and the Vatican was asleep at the switch on that one. Solesmes tried to present the Vatican with an antiphonary for several years but in the time of John Paul II I believe, it was rejected. The rule was that the antiphons had to come from the traditional repertory, but the new division of the psalms meant there were no traditional antiphons for the new sections. Classic catch-22 situation.
Fortunately under Benedict XVI that was overcome and traditional melodies and composition techniques were applied to new texts in a few places were needed, and the repertory was added to. It’s a shame it took 40 years but that’s not an issue inherent to the LOTH. Many communities simply picked antiphons from the Monastic repertory, and used the rubric in the General Instructions that it was OK to pray a divided psalm straight through under a single antiphon.
Now all the day hours are collected into Les Heures Grégoriennes, and in 2010 Solesmes released the first volume of the new official antiphonary for Vespers of Sundays of the year, feasts, and solemnities. It is now possible to reintroduce sung Vespers in parishes on those occasions, assuming parishes can find people trained in chant. FWIW our schola provides it in the archdiocese we’re based in, on at least one Sunday in Advent and Lent, and we also do Lauds on Holy Saturday. And if you’re creative enough and have the 1981 Psalterium Monasticum and the 1899 Liber Responsorialis (I have both) you can cobble together the chant for the Office of Readings.
There’s really no need to disparage the official public prayer of the Church when it isn’t that prayer itself that was the cause of loss of chant and latin, but the Vatican dragging its feet approving the music for it with classic bureaucratic paralysis. As a Benedictine oblate of a congregation in full communion with the Holy Father, and in obedience with the Church, I feel strongly that we shouldn’t be disparaging any official liturgy of the Church no matter how shoddy the execution can be in some places.
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Sirach2
Guest
I’m not too surprised that you are not in agreement with Pope Paul VI’s LOTH. Nevertheless, you are speaking wrongfully about the bolded part of paragraph 1 above. This is not at all what the Council called for. Please read the document.
CHAPTER IV, DIVINE OFFICE
100. Pastors of souls should see to it that the chief hours, especially Vespers, are celebrated in common in church on Sundays and the more solemn feasts. And the laity, too,** are encouraged to recite the divine office, either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually.**
- The competent superior has the power to grant the use of the vernacular in the celebration of the divine office, even in choir, to nuns and to members of institutes dedicated to acquiring perfection, both men who are not clerics and women. The version, however, must be one that is approved.
- Any cleric bound to the divine office fulfills his obligation if he prays the office in the vernacular together with a group of the faithful or with those mentioned in 52 above provided that the text of the translation is approved.
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OraLabora
Guest
I think it’s also important to emphasize that we must not demand of our clergy what the Church herself does not demand.
The Church has never obligated that the Divine Office be sung in choir except for those bound to choir. Diocesan clergy are not bound to choir. Religious are, and chapters of canons in cathedrals are. However the reality is that the general decline in vocations has meant that, at least in our area, there are no longer enough clergy to form a choir of canons in our cathedrals. This isn’t the fault of the liturgy used.
The fact is that the LOTH is made to be sung in choir-it’s rubrics clearly spell that out-by religious bound to choir.
The lack of chant books made that difficult but not impossible, but religious communities managed to dig back into monastic sources for Latin, and to compose their own melodies, for the vernacular.
The appearance of the LOTH didn’t suddenly mean that those bound to choir stopped singing it in choir. They never stopped. Some communities use their own versions of the LOTH, particularly the Benedictines, Cistercians and Carthusians, or their community’s calendar, but the chanting of the Office in choir never stopped with the LOTH. Those bound still do so.
It’s important, as Br. JR says, to not impose a demand on the clergy that the Church herself doesn’t impose, and singing the LOTH in choir is not something demanded of diocesan clergy, it is NOT part of their LOTH obligation. However public celebration is encouraged (but again not an obligation). And that most certainly does happen, even in our very liberal parish.
The Church has never obligated that the Divine Office be sung in choir except for those bound to choir. Diocesan clergy are not bound to choir. Religious are, and chapters of canons in cathedrals are. However the reality is that the general decline in vocations has meant that, at least in our area, there are no longer enough clergy to form a choir of canons in our cathedrals. This isn’t the fault of the liturgy used.
The fact is that the LOTH is made to be sung in choir-it’s rubrics clearly spell that out-by religious bound to choir.
The lack of chant books made that difficult but not impossible, but religious communities managed to dig back into monastic sources for Latin, and to compose their own melodies, for the vernacular.
The appearance of the LOTH didn’t suddenly mean that those bound to choir stopped singing it in choir. They never stopped. Some communities use their own versions of the LOTH, particularly the Benedictines, Cistercians and Carthusians, or their community’s calendar, but the chanting of the Office in choir never stopped with the LOTH. Those bound still do so.
It’s important, as Br. JR says, to not impose a demand on the clergy that the Church herself doesn’t impose, and singing the LOTH in choir is not something demanded of diocesan clergy, it is NOT part of their LOTH obligation. However public celebration is encouraged (but again not an obligation). And that most certainly does happen, even in our very liberal parish.
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Jon_Paul
Guest
That is not the purpose of the Divine Office, it’s not Lectio Divina.
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OraLabora
Guest
It is not the main purpose, but I maintain what I say. Rushing through any prayer without proper attention, no matter how correctly one follows the rubrics, is not giving proper respect to the Lord. The sense of stillness is a sense that I am fully attentive to my duty, and prepared to dialogue with Him, and that I am disposed to attach myself through my prayer to the Body of Christ and its members joyful, suffering or dying; that I can hear their joy or suffering through the psalms.
The Divine Office is also known by St. Benedict as the Work of God. For monastics, it’s their job. Like any job we should do it well as a pleasing offering to God.
Clearly it is not intended to simply be a mechanical process but a deeply spiritual one as well.
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agnes_therese
Guest
Are you saying we shouldn’t listen to what God is saying to us through it? That wouldn’t make any sense.
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Jon_Paul
Guest
No I am not saying that. I am saying that the Divine Office is not about contemplation or meditation, which I wrongly assumed OraLabora was talking about. The Divine Office requires mental attention but it’s a vocal prayer and the attentions should be appropriate for what is necessary to make good vocal prayer.
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OraLabora
Guest
It’s not just vocal prayer. True that’s the major part of it, but it is also listening to God through His word. Otherwise what would be the purpose of having biblical, patristic and hagiographic readings followed by long periods of silence to digest what one just heard (well at least in monasteries, where there is always a fairly lengthy silence after readings).
The Divine Office is, too, a large portion of the contemplative life, if not the main portion. It is not entirely contemplation, but there are contemplative moments built into it. If one is rushed, one also tends to omit those or speed through them and do disservice to the Work of God. In the life of cloistered contemplatives, the Divine Office does complement the other parts of the contemplative life like lectio; in particular the office of Vigils helps prepare the monk for lectio in solitude, which is most frequently done at that time of the day.
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agnes_therese
Guest
I cannot tell you how often I have been “spoken to” while praying the Office. Which is exactly why it does, as you say, require mental attention, as well as the periods of silence mentioned by OraLabora. Vocal and meditative prayer are not necessarily exclusive of each other. If you’ve never read St. Teresa of Jesus, I highly recommend her.
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