Is Officium Divinum liturgical for laymen?

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Hey all! So currently, I am praying a portion of the Liturgy of the Hours with the ultimate goal of one day being able to pray a portion of the Extraordinary Form Divine Office in Latin (once I improve my Latin vocabulary, that is). Now, after Vatican II, it has been understood that the LotH is the prayer of the Church, including the laity. Therefore, it can be said that whenever a layperson faithfully recites even a portion of the LotH, they are participating in this worldwide liturgy. In other words, it becomes liturgical.

I assumed that, if a layperson faithfully recites the EF Divine Office in Latin, it is also liturgical. However, a friend today disagreed with me, stating that it is only permitted for priests and deacons to liturgically recite the Divine Office in Latin. In other words, he was saying that if I were to do so, it would only be a private devotion rather than the prayer of the Church, at which point I should just pray the psalms in English. I can see where he is coming from, as Summorum Pontificum says:
  1. Art. 9 § 3 of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum gives clerics the faculty to use the Breviarium Romanum in effect in 1962, which is to be prayed entirely and in the Latin language.
Now, it only mentions clerics, and not laypeople. So my question would be: would the divine office still be the unified, liturgical prayer of the Church if I, as a layperson, were to pray it in Latin? As it seems that I do not have the true faculty to pray it.

As a side note, the main reason I wish to pray the Divine Office is my enrollment in the scapular, in which I made a promise to pray part of the Office, a little office, or a rosary daily. While the scapular is an optional devotion, I am taking this promise I made seriously, and I think it would be preferred to pray the Office liturgically rather than as a private devotion. Your thoughts on this are also welcome!
 
I may just do that! I am still more than welcoming of any thoughts/answers from the community here until then.
 
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So I spoke to one of my priests. He said that I could certainly pray it, but it would not be liturgical. Of course, priests could be wrong from time to time, and I always like getting multiple opinions. Anyone have any thoughts on this? I could see it both ways; on one hand, VII encouraged the laypeople to pray the Office. Sacrosanctum concilium states:

And the laity, too, are encouraged to recite the divine office, either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually.

It would seem to reason from this that any duly approved office also belongs to the laity, however, there is that clause I mentioned before that could contradict this claim. I am really torn; I like the older office more, and could truly see myself building up to saying it in Latin with time, but yet it would be nice to actually participate in the public prayer of the Church liturgically.
 
You could just say the LOTH in Latin. It will be more manageable.

AFAIK the current Divine Office for the secular Church is the LOTH.

I pray, as a layman, the Monastic Office. It’s in our oblate constitution as an option, alongside the LOTH.

But I don’t think it’s appropriate unless you are an oblate, a monastic, or somehow linked to a monastery, for example living nearby, and attending a goodly part of the Office with the community. For continuity it would make sense to continue to use it privately.

I have my reservations about the 1910/1962 Divine Office in general so that may colour my thinking.

Again my advice from elsewhere, the liturgy isn’t “all about me”. I don’t mean to sound haughty about that. It is something I learned at great spiritual expense when faced with similar dilemmas. It ended up making the Office a source of spiritual tension and greatly affected my ability to pray it effectively.

I remember on too many occasions sitting in my oratory with two breviaries in hand unsure of which to use. It was not what liturgical prayer is all about.

I still swing between the Monastic and LOTH but am more serene about it. If I’m too busy, it’s the LOTH, otherwise the monastic, and I try to be thankful to have the option, and that the LOTH still allows me to sanctify the day.

Sanctifying the day through liturgical prayer should be the aim. The 1962 Office would seem to be a bit of a grey area for laity, but the LOTH is not. Personally I think that the Motu Proprio addresses those bound to the Office, it doesn’t make un-liturgical to participate, after all the laity have participated in Sunday Vespers fairly often in pre-Council days and cat still do so in places like FSSP parishes.

But, that said, why make this a source of internal discord? The LOTH is relatively easy, can be said in Latin, and can allow a greater opportunity to truly meditate the psalms.
 
The largest thing for me is the calendar. I truly do appreciate all of your opinions, and I may pray the OF LOTH on days when I go to mass in the OF, or on days that I am just too busy. To be quite honest, the biggest thing for me is not the language; it is the calendar and the sense of unity between the Divine Office and the mass, which, if I recall correctly, are often seen as one big liturgy of which mass is the high point. I thought about what you said concerning “fighting upstream against the mind of the Church” in my previous forum post, and figured that if I really wish to follow the EF calendar that much, I should stop fighting and just try the EF breviary. I will only be praying Vespers and Compline to begin with, and may eventually move up to Lauds.

In terms of meditating on the psalms, my goal is to eventually be able to have a good gist of what they are saying in Latin with less recourse to the parallel English. Indeed, there are some portions of some psalms where this is already the case for myself (I should add that I have sporadically prayed parts of the EF breviary before, and began trying to say it in Latin at one point, so I do have some experience).

I also do enjoy the more psalms per hour in the EF. After truly taking a step back to analyze my schedule, I have found that I have more time at this point in my life than I thought I had, and so taking that extra time to pray some extra psalms is doable for me.

I may actually write to the CDF one day to get more clarification on whether or not the Divine Office prayed by the laity is joined to the prayer of the Church. Despite what my friend and my priest told me, I am honestly thinking it is. But even if it is not, I think I am going to give praying portions of the EF Divine Office a shot, and in case it is not considered liturgical, will pray a rosary to satisfy my scapular promise, which the priest who enrolled me gave me the option to do in lieu of the Divine Office.
 
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I understand that the calendar is an issue, but as we discussed on another thread, if the day is otherwise not interdicted, you can pray any saint from the Martyrology, which necessarily the saints of the EF are on, even if not in the modern calendar.

Or you can take the approach of my abbey that they use on optional memorials: the saint is not celebrated at all in the Divine Office, only at the Mass. I personally don’t find any incongruity in that. The saint remains honoured, at the summit of the Liturgy.
 
That is fair, but still, there are just a few changes that throw things off for me. Namely, the seasonal differences (Septuagesima, for an example, the ember days, etc.). Also, when assembling the calendar that I could follow in the Divine Office, I noticed there was still a wide array of things that wouldn’t sync; especially on the more important feast days. The reformers of the calendar truly did move a lot around.

I really do not have anything against the LOTH. But I figure since I have some extra time to commit, why not try the EF office, for now at least?
 
FWIW, “officium” is sometimes translated as “duty” which IMO gives a slightly more seriousness to the prayers.
 
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