Although I fully and humbly submit to our Holy Mother, the Church. I think the changes to the calender were criminal. There is no reason many, MANY of these feast days and seasons were removed.
FKC
Respectfully, I disagree. The simplification of the calendar made things like the Divine Office much more within the grasp of the laity.
Moreover, in the old calendar there were so many feasts and classes of feasts, plus votive offices, etc., that ordinary days were so few that the concept of “feast” to me loses its meaning. IMHO regular days give a regularity to life that I find most comforting, and in so doing they actually highlight the feast in a way that makes it more special, rather than just another day one had to sort out complicated rubrics.
“Criminal”, btw, is a bit over the top. Many devoted and orthodox priests and religious would agree with me. It was part of the reason why monastics ended up divided into choir monks and lay brothers to do the physical work, because the work of choir had become so intense and complex; creating two classes of monk was completely foreign to the idea of St. Benedict when he wrote his Rule. All were to be of equal standing in the monastery, and the priest-monks were not to have any special status other than that which they held at the altar.
Returning to simpler liturgical practices has permitted monasteries to return to their original charism. The abbey I’m associated with, for instance, abolished lay brothers and incorporated them as fully professed brothers, with a full and equal voice in chapter.
I suspect that those in the Vatican who simplified the calendar were very much in tune with this situation, and did not simply pull a simplified calendar out of the air for their pleasure.
