I’m am not sure why this causes problems since Summorum Pontificum allows celebration of the Mass “following the typical edition of the Roman Missal promulgated by Bl. John XXIII in 1962” and all the orders and congregations had Proper calendars approved at that date, .
You raise a valid question that most lay people are not privy to. In fact, you’re first person whom I have met on CAF who has raised this question in a genuine manner. Here is the problem. It is not canonical. It has to do with the rule of the religious orders. Notice that I’m talkng about religious orders. Priestly societies, religious congregations, apostolic societies are not religious orders. They do not have a canonically binding rule. They have statutes that they can change and adapt by simply voting on them.
Religioius orders cannot change the rules written by their founders. Those rules are set in stone. They have been promulgated by the pope at the time. According to canon law, all religious who belong to an order, must follow the rule of their order. In the rules of every religious order their is a specific chapter on the liturgical life of the order. In that chapter the founders dictate that the brotherhood (even if they have priests) must maintain a unified liturgical life. When the liturgical calendars were revised, the orders adapted themselves to that calendar. Everything was fine, because there was one liturgical calendar.
Now, with SP, we have the current liturgical calendar and the old liturgical calendar. This is whee the split comes in. The rule of the order takes precedence over SP. This is why in SP the Holy Father specifically mentions that religious priests must follow the ordinary norms with the cosent of their major superiors. The ordinary norm is a canonical term that means, the holy rule. The holy rule says that the brothers in a community will have a unity in their liturgical life.
In order to maintain this unity and at the same time provide the EF and the OF for the faithful, they have to operate out of one calendar, that would be whichever calendar their order uses. Currently, all the religious orders in the Church use the OF calendar, because there is no religious order that is exclusively an EF order. The EF communities are not religious orders.
The religious orders are all OF. These are the Benedictines, Franciscans, Carmelites, Augustinians, Dominicans, Carthusians, Trinitarians, Brigitines, Jesuits and Premonstaterians. They are the only existing religious orders in the Church. They follow one of the following founders: Benedict, Augustine, Francis, Albert, Bruno or Basil.
Under obedience to their rule, they have to preserve their liturgical unity with their religious family. That’s why they need to have both the EF and the OF on the same calendar, if they are to provide liturgical services in both forms. Therefore, the major superiors of religious men have asked for a revision of the calendar. After taking it to a vote, none of the religious orders voted to go with the EF. All voted to go with the OF and accepted to celebrate the EF upon request, as long as their superiors and their fellow religious approve. We have to go through this process. Church law does not allow us to do anything without the consent of our superiors and our fellow religious. It does not allow us to bypass the holy rule. Nor do we want to bypass the holy rule. What’s the use of being a religious, if you are not going to follow the rule, except when it is convenient for the laity. You may as well remain a lay person. To preserve community life, we need to have one calendar for the entire community so that on any given day, when you celebrate either the EF or the OF, pray either the new breviary or the old breviary, you are praying with your brothers.
I can provide one example from my own religious family. Our Franciscan calendar is not the same as it was in 1962. If we begin to follow the old Franciscan calendar and the new one at the same time, then we are not praying together. It has to be either or. To make matters easier, it is better if we just merge everything into a third or new calendar. This was not a problem that was forseen when the calendar was changed. No one ever expected to go back to the old calendar. Therefore, we could adopt the new calendar and still be faithful to the holy rule by preserving a unified liturgical life.
Since the TLM is the extraordinary form, the Church cannot mandate any religious order to embrace it exclusively and abandon the new calendar and the ordinary form. The word extraordinary was used on purpose. It was meant to relieve religious of the obligation to celebrate it exclusively. The Holy Father does not want to see religious orders split from the inside. He understands that liturgy is the center of the life of a religious community. Canon law and the holy rules all demand that religious pray together the hours of the office. This means that every Dominican house around the world is praying the exact same hours, with the exact same calendar. The same goes for every other religious order. We are globally connected through the liturgy of the hours and the holy mass.
We can change the form, because that does not change the holy day or the essence. We can’t change the calendar. That throws off the harmony of the religious order. That’s why we are called “orders”. Our lives revolve around everything being exactly the same around the world. Every Franciscans is praying the same thing. Every Benedictine is too and so forth. Each is praying according to the orders of his founder. Hence the word, religious order.
Does that help? It’s complicated for those of us who live in large international communities.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
