Does anyone have access to the calendar notice in the March-April, 2006 issue of Notitiae (475-476, page 96)? According to the newsletter of the USCCB's Committee on Divine Worship (September 2006, pages 34-35), this notice changed the age-old practice of transferring Annunciation and St Joseph to the Monday and Tuesday of the 2nd week of Easter when their usual dates are outranked by Holy Week and the octave of Easter. Instead, this year St Joseph will be anticipated 4 days early on March 15th while Annunciation will be transferred as in the past.
(Note that in Catholic calendar lingo, "transfer" means to move to a future date; "anticipate" means to move to a previous date.)
I'm interested in the text of the notice in Notitiae because I've written an emacs package that calculates each day's ordo. In the program, I've implemented the old rule that transfers both celebrations to the 2nd week of Easter, so my program is wrong for 2008.
To fix it, I'm hoping to learn whether this anticipation of St Joseph is a one-off change only for 2008 or something more permanent, and whatever reasoning supported the decision. Perhaps the article in Notitiae provides that information.
Below are the years (between 1800 and 2100 AD) in which St Joseph needs to move one way or another to make way for a celebration of higher rank. As you can see, there were no personal computers the last time this happened (1951); the next time we need to worry about it is 2035 :-). Nevertheless, I'd like to encode the correct rule in my program so it can be better used for historical and calendrical research.
Thanks!
16:15 | link | | |
Many of JS Bach's works were written for specific liturgical celebrations. Here's a rundown with dates for 2006-2010.
15:49 | link | | |
A rambling post for calendar geeks...
The other night Tom McGinnis kindly sent me a patch for cal-catholic, a program I wrote years ago in emacs lisp to calculate each day's liturgical information. For example, it says that today is "Wednesday of the Thirty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time". So this evening after I wrapped up a hairy thing for work (which makes me sound like one of those nature show guys) I took the rest of the night off and puttered around with calendar documentation.
Tom and I discussed the odd divergence of the Annunciation and St Joseph next year. In previous years when they fell during Holy Week and the octave of Easter, they would be transferred together to the Monday and Tuesday of the second week of Easter. That was the implemention I found in the 1951 Catholic Almanac, when St Joe fell on the Monday of Holy Week and the Annunciation a week later in the octave of Easter. IIRC we never found official documentation for the thing, so I coded that behavior based on past practice.
According to the September 2006 newletter of the USCCB's liturgy committee, that's what the US bishops were going to do next year when St Joe falls on the Wednesday of Holy Week and the Annunciation a week later. Then, apparently, someone read a past issue of Notitiae and found that some liturgy guy at the Vatican said that St Joe should be anticipated (moved back) to the Saturday before Palm Sunday while leaving Annunciation to be transferred (moved forward) to Monday of the second week of Easter. I dunno why - the bishops have only a partial translation in their newsletter and the article in Notitiae is probably in Italian or somesuch. If anyone can provide an original or a translation of the March-April, 2006 Notitiae piece (475-476, page 96), I'd be grateful.
ZOUNDS! Since I blog from emacs nowadays, I could incorporate cal-catholic into the blog somehow.
21:58 | link | | |
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.—Lord Peter Wimsey
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And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.—St John of Patmos
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