Liturgy of the Hours for Laymen Before Vatican 2?

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I have always heard the allowance of laypeople to pray the Liturgy of the Hours was one thing of note done at the Council. Why werent laypeople allowed to pray it before v2?
 
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Maximilian75 said:
I have always heard the allowance of laypeople to pray the Liturgy of the Hours was one thing of note done at the Council. Why werent laypeople allowed to pray it before v2?
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I don’t think it’s that the laity wasn’t allowed. But the general attitude was that the Divine Office was for priests and religious, and that was the emphasis changed by Vatican II. Also, it was longer and more complicated, which made it harder for a layperson – with the demands of job & family – to have time to pray it. As a result of Vatican II, the Office was made more accessible to the laity.
 
A lot of old prayerbooks have some parts of the Divine Office for the faithful to recite and some churches recited Vespers publicly on Sundays to let the faithful take part in it, so laymen were allowed and at times encouraged to say it.
 
I am not sure of the reason for your sarcasam… my religion class uses the Divine Office daily as a prayer for the opening of class, and I have multiple third order consecrated religious at my parish who pray it as well…
 
Maximilian75 said:
I am not sure of the reason for your sarcasam… my religion class uses the Divine Office daily as a prayer for the opening of class,
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Which hour do you pray? Matins? Lauds?
Maximilian75 said:
and I have multiple third order consecrated religious at my parish who pray it as well…
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Consecrated religious aren’t lay people. They are religious with an obligation to pray the office.
 
We use Shorter Christian Prayer and the morning periods pray morning prayer, and the afternoon periods Evening prayer.

And I was not aware of this. That is then a null point on my part.
 
Maximilian75 said:
We use Shorter Christian Prayer and the morning periods pray morning prayer, and the afternoon periods Evening prayer.
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That is a very good thing. I am happy to hear that. My experience has been that the Divine Office is neglected by the laity and sometimes even bu the clergy.
 
Members of Lay/Third Orders routinely say it,
but several parishes of my acquanitance, where these are in the care of Religious Orders, say the Divine Office/ Liturgy of the Hours in the Church before Mass with the congregation present and joining with them…so most certainlu, more than the few you mention 🙂

Kind wishes, T
 
R_H_Benson said:
People always say that, but where is the evidence?
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I don’t have statistics but evidence…well…Laudate has been downloaded 1,000,000 times from the Google Play Store. iBreviary has been downloaded 500,000 times and Universalis has been downloaded 10,000 times. There must be at least one or two laypeople included in those numbers.

There are podcasts so you can listen to the prayers and if you check parish websites you can find places to join others in praying morning or evening prayer.

And, of course, there’s no way to see the individuals or families praying privately in their homes.

I don’t understand why you want to argue about this. Do you have some objection to a wider use of the Liturgy of the Hours by laypeople?
 
Some parishes have public recitations of some of the office, but rarely all the chief offices. Our cathedral has Lauds every weekday morning…and solemn vespers on Sunday evening.
 
The focus on the “liturgy of the hours” for the lay is another indication of a sort of “clericalizing” of the lay that has been going on for too many years.

The flood of deacons, EMHC’s, “hospitality ministers”, etc. etc. are other signs of this.

Take even the dissenting news magazine called the National Catholic Reporter…as vehemently anti-institutional Church as it is…nearly all of its angry articles center of clericial matters.

They are every bit as clerical at NCR as a group of Latin Mass only parents hoping all their children become priests or sisters.
 
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You make that “clericalization” (aka people getting involved with and taking pride in their parishes) sound as if its a bad thing…
 
Http://divineoffice.org is but one of many websites that laymen use to pray the LOTH.

I would comfortably wager there are at least 100,000 Catholic laymen who pray it regularly… in the US alone.
 
What?

That’s based on the incorrect premise that the Liturgy of the Hours is a clerical prayer. Vatican II was absolutely clear: it’s the prayer of the whole people of God, according to their state: ordained, religious, and lay. The Church’s mind is that while it BINDS clerics and religious to the Office, it warmly recommends it to the laity, be it in common among themselves or individually.

The Office has never been exclusive to the clerics and religious. It only came to that because of the exclusive use of Latin and its length. Its simplification and official approval in the vernacular is a great gift to the laity because it becomes their prayer too. Or rather, once again.

Laity praying the Office are exercising their common priesthood as as baptized Christians, while priests exercise their office as ordained ministers and pray in the name of the Church. Either way, it is a participation in the liturgical prayer of the Church.
 
Don’t confuse the point.

Clericlizing what is lay is the mistake.

We have clerics and we have lay. The lay have their vocation…and their path to holiness. Priests have theirs.

The lay can work around the parish without wearing robes and being called ministers.
 
That’s literally one of the most asinine things I’ve ever read on here.
 
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