1963 vs 1953: To go forward or back?

Apologies for being slow in getting to this final part of my series on the 1953 vs 1963 breviaries, but here it is.  In the last several posts I've pointed out some of the differences between the 1953 and 1963 breviaries, and their relative merits.

So should we go forward, as most of the traditional monasteries are doing, and make judicious amendments to the rubrics and calendar (as would presumably have occurred in the natural course of events, had Vatican II's license to 'experiment' not intervened), or should we, as some are vigorously advocating, revert back to the 1953, or some earlier version of the breviary?

A monastic Office

The first point to make is that when it comes to the Benedictine Office, this is, in the end, a decision for monasteries to make, not laypeople.

While the monastic office is used by many Catholic laypeople, it is, strictly speaking, the form of liturgy approved for the use of member monasteries of the Benedictine Confederation.

Its use by priest oblates was approved in 1948, and, following the publication of successive editions of the Monastic Diurnal from the 1950s onwards, many monasteries now encourage or permit its use by their oblates.

But the 'default' form of the Office for laypeople is the Roman Office, not the Benedictine, so I think a strong case can be made for saying that lay users of the monastic office, whether oblates or not, should accept it as it is set out in the official books, or as modified by the particular monastery to which they are affiliated.

That said, the widespread promotion of the monastic office in recent years by monasteries, in the form of the Monastic Diurnal, podcasts of the Office and more, has introduced many to the Benedictine Office, and so it is inevitable that those who say it will have opinions.

And perhaps it is not altogether inconsistent with the spirit of the Rule for us, as visitors or junior members of the monastic family to offer them, without any particular expectation for how they will be necessarily be accepted.

Monastic considerations vs the secular

A second key point to note is that, in my view at least, the underlying logic of the Roman and Benedictine Offices are fundamentally different.

While it is true that from Trent onwards, the Benedictine Office has largely (been forced to) follow the Roman, this is an aberration, not the norm.

While the two forms of the Office has long interacted and influenced each other, for most of monastic history the two forms have not followed the same rubrics or calendar.

In particular, the Rule has always served as an important reference point for the Benedictine Office, and that has generally been interpreted to mean prioritising the ferial psalm cursus set out in the Rule over the (probably Roman in origin) festal psalms; and the Scriptural cycle over the lives of saints (other than those particular to a monastery or congregation, or location) and other feasts.  

Of course, the extent to which fidelity to the Rule should take precedence over developments in the liturgy and Romanising encroachments has been hotly debated at regular intervals, but the general principle remains.

The deregulation of the liturgy

The third issue concerns the status of the 1963 breviary, and this is something on which I have changed my position.

My previous view was that as the 1963 breviary (based on the1960 calendar and rubrics) is nominally still the normative book for member monasteries of the Benedictine Confederation, we should follow its prescriptions fairly strictly, out of obedience.

In essence, the permission to develop one's own form of the Office granted to monasteries after Vatican II, as made clear by the monastic Thesaurus, was contingent on adoption of the new sanctoral calendar (hence the odd combination, in the traditional Solesmes monasteries, of the 1977 sanctoral calendar and the 1960 temporal).

The use of the liturgy, after all, is regulated by the Church for good reasons, and for Benedictines in particular, obedience is an important virtue!

However, in the last few years quite a few things have changed, and I now think its reasonable to take the view that monasteries using the 1963 breviary as their starting point have the same freedom to make changes to the rubrics that monasteries using the Novus Ordo calendar do.  

My reasoning is as follows.  

First, in the normal course of events, the Benedictine Confederation would surely have made further revisions to fix some of the obvious problems with the 1960 calendar and rubrics.  But because control of the monastic liturgy had effectively been deregulated, leaving control over it to individual monasteries in the expectation that the 1960 books would cease to be used, that never happened.

When the Thesaurus governing the Office for monasteries was published in 1977, after all, the assumption was that monasteries would adopt the new calendar, since the 1960 calendar had been de facto suppressed.  

However, a series of permissions, most particularly the decree Summorum Pontificum (2007) effectively restored the status of the 1960 calendar.  

Accordingly, I think a good case can be made (particularly in the light of later decisions) that monasteries using the 1960 calendar have the same right to design or amend their own Office rubrics (such as restoring 1 Vespers for Class II feasts) as monasteries following the novus ordo calendar in combination with the monastic feasts set out in the Thesaurus (and since supplemented).

Secondly, and perhaps more fundamentally, Cum Sanctissima (2020) effectively unlocked the freeze on the calendar, providing a mechanism for incorporating both newer feasts into the calendar, as well as reviving older ones, at least as Class III feasts, thus granting a lot more flexibility to those starting from the 1960 calendar.

Thirdly, a series of official Ordos for the Extraordinary Form have indicated that there is some room to go further when it comes to reviving older feasts, since one mentioned at least the possibility of marking  the Octave of Corpus Christi where appropriate to local conditions.  And if one can revive one octave, why not others?

All of these decisions provide, I think, a basis for modifying the 1960 calendar and rubrics in ways that can address many of the concerns raised by the 'restore the 54 movement', given the canonical principle that permissions should be interpreted broadly, and the normal principles that allow for some liturgical development.

The case for going forward from 1960

But the key question remains, does the 1960 Office provide a reasonable basis for going forward, or are its changes so radical as to warrant being jettisoned altogether?

I have to say that I don't like the approach of saying we dislike those involved in the reform process, and are suspicious of their motives, and so should therefore reject everything that changed.  

Instead, we should assess the changes made on their merits, in the light of experience in using them.

And my own view remains that there are many good things in the 1960 reforms that are worth retaining, and nothing so bad that it cannot be rectified by judicial modifications of the calendar and rubrics.

In particular:

• I really much prefer singing the antiphons in full both before and after the psalms, rather than just the incipit (opening words) as was done previously for most hours except on major feasts;
• I like the fact that the original structure of Prime as set out in the Rule was restored, with Chapter separated out;
• I support the pruning that occurred of prayers before the hours, preces, suffrages and so forth noting that there is nothing stopping one from using these outside the hours; and
• I think the attempt to reduce the number of grades of feasts was a move in the right direction, even if the current rules around the four main categories of feasts and days need further changes.

But I'm willing to hear to hear the counter-arguments!

The sanctoral calendar

When it comes to the calendar, I also support the reduction of many feasts to two Nocturns over three, as it is far more consistent with the intent of the Rule. 

First, the number of three nocturn feasts added to the calendar was surely driven by the Roman Office's incentive to avoid the ferial Office in favour of the shorter festal one; for Benedictines though, the incentive is reversed, with the three Nocturn Office being much much longer than the ferial office.

My view, for what it is worth, is that the extra time needed to say the festal Office would be better used to sing more of Matins in chant (rather than recto tono as most monasteries currently do) and ideally to revive the practice of chanting the responsories. 

Secondly, three nocturn feasts, at least under the current rubrics, generally means abandoning the ferial psalm cursus in favour of the Commons or specific festal psalms - but the ferial psalm cursus is the element of the Office that is most distinctively Benedictine, spelt out in the Rule.  

For similar reasons, while the culling of octaves went a long way too far, I don't support their wholesale revival - while marking some feasts on their octave day, or through some texts or commemoration might be appropriate in some cases, pushing out the ancient Matins Scriptural cycle in favour of saints lives, papal or patristic commentaries on particular feasts for large chunks of the year seems to me to distort the original focus of the hour.

What changes would one make to 1963 if it was up to you?

Most of the traditional monasteries have already made a number of changes to the 1963 breviary, for practical or other reasons, including:

• saying 1 Vespers of Class II feasts and the Office of Our Lady on Saturday;
• ignoring the cuts and changes to division points in the psalms and canticles; and 
• restoring selected feasts.

My own view, for what it is worth, is there are a couple of small further rubrical steps worth considering.

I think the remaining distinction between Class I and II feasts, namely the transfer/commemoration rules, make no sense and should be abolished so that the rules for Class I feasts also apply to Class II feasts - it is ridiculous to reduce important feasts to a commemoration if they clash on a Sunday, or sometimes to omit them altogether. It may be that monasteries would still want to make some differentiations between these feasts in terms of the ceremonial they use, but that is easily managed.

And if it really is necessary to have two classes of more solemn feasts, maybe the way to do it would be to retain the ferial psalter (in conjunction with the antiphons of the Common or feast) for the first two Nocturns?

Secondly, where a Class III feast would otherwise have no Vespers at all (because it occurs on a Saturday or before a Class I or II feast, where 1 Vespers of the Sunday or feast has precedence) it should have 1 Vespers and/or be commemorated.

Thirdly, the differentiation between Class III feasts with their own antiphons (where the festal psalms are said at Lauds and Vespers) and Class III feasts without their own antiphons (where the ferial psalms and antiphons are used at Lauds and Vespers, but antiphons of the Commons at Prime to None) seems to me an oddity.  Why not use antiphons of the feast (either specific to the feast or from the Common) at all the day hours, but in conjunction with the ferial psalms?

There are other small things that can be done - the seasonal hymn doxologies should be restored, and the alternative chapter for Prime for example.  But these are easily done without needing a wholesale reversion to an earlier from of the Office.

Forward march!

In conclusion, I hope you have enjoyed this series, and found something of interest in it - and I'm happy to hear other perspectives on the points I've made.