SPLIT: Which Divine Office do you use?

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I use a mixture of the Morning & Evening Prayer for the UK (published by Collins), the ICEL Morning & Evening Prayer, Prime and Compline from the Officium Divinum (published by Angelus Press), and Prime & Compline from the Little Office (I have an old copy from 1958 published by the CTS). Depends where I am and what mood I’m in.
 
peregrinus_sg said:
Thanks OraLabora!

But I didn’t just want to make use of options, I also want to experience the richness of both forms. For compline in the extraordinary form, for example, the psalms for compline tonight are Psalm 33 and 60, not the Sunday psalms even if those are an option. Also the readings etc are different.

Ok, I’m a demanding person.😛
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That’s one of the areas where the 1960 (actually the 1910 Divine Office) takes a major split from tradition.

Until 1910, Compline’s psalms were 4, 90 and 133 in the Monastic rite, and 4, 30, 90 and 133 in the Roman, every day. It’s still 4, 90 and 133 in the monastic. It varies from day to day in the 4-week LOTH except that the option to use 4, 90 and 133 is permitted on a daily basis. Post-1910, those psalms are only used on Sundays.

For the minor hours the repetition of the Gradual Psalms also harks back to monastic tradition; they could be recited from memory when the monks work in the fields.

So in many ways I find the current 4-week LOTH more faithful to tradition and the Divine Office’s monastic roots than the short-lived Office of Pius X which was used for the 1960 Breviary. Yet it is faithful to monastic roots without being overbearing in weight as the true Monastic Office is (250 psalms recited per week).
 
OraLabora said:
What attracts folks to the 1960 Breviary?

As a Benedictine it holds very little attraction to me. It’s not traditional by any definition (it dates back to 1910 only), and is a very clear break from the monastic roots of the Divine Office. If I had the time I’d use the traditional Benedictine Divine Office (or at least the post V-II variant). In fact even the post V-II version of the Benedictine Office is far more traditional than the Breviarum Romanum, and has the advantage of still being in use in many places.
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I use a copy of Lauds, Vespers and Compline in English.

What attracts me to the 1960 breviary is the language. I would be happy to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, in fact I prayed Christian Prayer for years, but cannot handle the banal translation. The version of the office I use uses the Confraternity version of the Bible, not the NAB, and does not have the Liberal advertisements known as the Psalm prayers. I also prefer the EF of the Liturgical Calendar and the seasons which were eliminated. My only other alternative is the Monastic Diurnal which I do not have the time to do properly. There are a few other reasons but this is a pretty good summary.

I eagerly await the new version of the Liturgy of the Hours and hope ICEL does something similar to what it has done with the Roman Missal. But I do not expect to see this anytime in the near future. When it is available I will use it…
 
OraLabora said:
There really is a surprising degree of continuity between forms if you dig beneath the surface. To me the real beauty in bridging between forms is to use the built-in options that make for this continuity, as I’ve noted.
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I love doing this as well! Whenever my pastor celebrates Mass ad orientem, he recently started turning around and bowing to the waist toward the altar for the entire confetor. I say bring it on!
 
mattkubes said:
Even if you don’t plan on using it often, Breviarum Meum is available for free on the iPhone. And the HD version for iPad is only $0.99.

Parallel translations can be turned on in the settings pane too. It’s worth a look!
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I’ll have to look at that! I’d definitely want a translation to pray from. It looks like both versions are 0.99 now, but it still might be worth it.

Thank you!!!
 
As a lay woman I like Christian Prayer and the Little Office (a version for Carmelites) if I am away from the computer. Otherwise I avail myself of www.divineoffice.org for Morning and Evening Prayer. I love starting and completing my day with the prayers of the Church. I’d do Compline, but since I’m not alone in the evening hours, it really doesn’t work out for me.
 
CaptCrunch73 said:
I use a copy of Lauds, Vespers and Compline in English.

What attracts me to the 1960 breviary is the language. I would be happy to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, in fact I prayed Christian Prayer for years, but cannot handle the banal translation. The version of the office I use uses the Confraternity version of the Bible, not the NAB, and does not have the Liberal advertisements known as the Psalm prayers. I also prefer the EF of the Liturgical Calendar and the seasons which were eliminated. My only other alternative is the Monastic Diurnal which I do not have the time to do properly. There are a few other reasons but this is a pretty good summary.

I eagerly await the new version of the Liturgy of the Hours and hope ICEL does something similar to what it has done with the Roman Missal. But I do not expect to see this anytime in the near future. When it is available I will use it…
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👍 I’m awaiting the arrival in the mail of my 1965 copy of Lauds, Vespers and Compline.
 
CaptCrunch73 said:
I use a copy of Lauds, Vespers and Compline in English.

What attracts me to the 1960 breviary is the language. I would be happy to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, in fact I prayed Christian Prayer for years, but cannot handle the banal translation. The version of the office I use uses the Confraternity version of the Bible, not the NAB, and does not have the Liberal advertisements known as the Psalm prayers. I also prefer the EF of the Liturgical Calendar and the seasons which were eliminated. My only other alternative is the Monastic Diurnal which I do not have the time to do properly. There are a few other reasons but this is a pretty good summary.

I eagerly await the new version of the Liturgy of the Hours and hope ICEL does something similar to what it has done with the Roman Missal. But I do not expect to see this anytime in the near future. When it is available I will use it…
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A agree about not liking the ICEL translation.
 
At home I use KYOUKAI NO INORI (the Japanese breviary which only comes in one volume) for Morning, Evening and Night Prayer, and I just pray the Psalms for Office of Readings on the train, and the Psalms for Midday Prayer at a local park during lunch break. All in Japanese, but I try to squeeze in the English Psalms from the Revised Grail Psalter as well. Keeps me out of trouble… 🙂
 
OraLabora said:
Fortunately I don’t have that issue; I use Latin and French.
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Cool, I’m envious (in a good way 🙂 ) If I knew Latin this would be a non-issue, for me anyway.

Spend a little time on divineoffice.org and you many get a better understanding of the aversion to the 1970s version of the Liturgy of the Office. Which version of scripture is used in the Latin office?
 
CaptCrunch73 said:
Cool, I’m envious (in a good way 🙂 ) If I knew Latin this would be a non-issue, for me anyway.

Spend a little time on divineoffice.org and you many get a better understanding of the aversion to the 1970s version of the Liturgy of the Office. Which version of scripture is used in the Latin office?
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Oh, no need, I have Christian Prayer in my collection of Breviaries. I agree the language is a challenge.

The current Office uses the Neo-Vulgate for Latin.
 
I too don’t care for the dumbed down/watered down language in Christian Prayer, but I can’t afford to buy other translations nor the savvy to seek out more traditional renderings. I’m hoping the Divine Office will get a redo like the Liturgy of the Mass, and so return us to a fuller, more accurate version in the English. Having said all that, I’ll continue to use CP because it does my soul good to simply do it no matter how much I dislike the language. I imagine I’ll have some trouble adjusting to any updates, but I’d still like to risk it for the sake of clearer theology and more substantial wording.
 
Della said:
I’m hoping the Divine Office will get a redo like the Liturgy of the Mass, and so return us to a fuller, more accurate version in the English.
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It will, but it’s probably about 10 years down the road.
 
OraLabora said:
It will happen “soon” like the Roman Antiphonary.

That took 40 years…
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So, what you’re saying is that we’ll be on the 4th edition of the Roman Missal by the time we even get a 2nd edition of the Liturgy of the Hours. 😦

It shouldn’t actually take that long you’d think. All the proper prayers have been translation (because they’re from the Missal). I believe you’ve said that they finally did a full translation of the 2-year reading cycle for patristic readings (which is in all likelihood the largest portion to do), and the scripture reading they’ll just take from whichever Bible is in vogue (which’ll end up being the R-NAB), and the Psalms have already been done separately (2nd edition of the Grail Psalter, and hopefully they’d actually use the Grail versions of ps.95, the Benedictus, and the Magnificat, because the ICEL versions are not as good and feel way too much like, say, the old Gloria).

So that leaves antiphons (admittedly, a large number, although many in Ordinary Time are taken from the Psalms themselves, so they could just use them from the Psalms instead of coming up with a “new” translation), responsories, verses, and intercessions. The small things.
 
curlycool89 said:
So, what you’re saying is that we’ll be on the 4th edition of the Roman Missal by the time we even get a 2nd edition of the Liturgy of the Hours. 😦

It shouldn’t actually take that long you’d think. All the proper prayers have been translation (because they’re from the Missal). I believe you’ve said that they finally did a full translation of the 2-year reading cycle for patristic readings (which is in all likelihood the largest portion to do), and the scripture reading they’ll just take from whichever Bible is in vogue (which’ll end up being the R-NAB), and the Psalms have already been done separately (2nd edition of the Grail Psalter, and hopefully they’d actually use the Grail versions of ps.95, the Benedictus, and the Magnificat, because the ICEL versions are not as good and feel way too much like, say, the old Gloria).

So that leaves antiphons (admittedly, a large number, although many in Ordinary Time are taken from the Psalms themselves, so they could just use them from the Psalms instead of coming up with a “new” translation), responsories, verses, and intercessions. The small things.
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It’s the small things that often lead to big arguments. The antiphonary was held up for so long over a seemingly trivial point. Some antiphons were new and had no melody, and it was insisted that all antiphons for the LOTH had to be from the Editio Typica of the LOTH, and all antiphons set to music from the Ordo Cantus Officii. But the latter was impossible since the antiphons were new.

It was a classic Catch 22 situation. It took the current administration to break the impasse. In a very simple manner: it allowed Solesmes (charged with producing the antiphonary) to use antiphons not in the ordo (mainly from ancient repertories with a few. DW compositions based on ancient melodies) to be used, which will be added to the Ordo at the next revision.

It was obvious different antiphons or adapted melodies would be needed. Apparently that logic was lost on the Vatican for some 40 years.
 
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