Wed, 28 Nov 2007
Calendars ahoy
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.
posted by Bill White at 21:58 | permalink | email me | | |
