'Utraquism'

Fr Hunwicke has an interesting post on what he calls utraquism—nothing to do with eucharistic theology, but rather trying to hold together in one parish the usage of both the ordinary and extraordinary forms of the liturgy. He's right: it isn't easy. I celebrate the Divine Office in the extraordinary form, and offer Mass in that form once a week, on a Saturday. The other rites I celebrate are according to the ordinary form. Because of calendar changes, this means that if I observe the calendar proper to each form, I will celebrate some saints twice and others not at all. And I would often find myself celebrating the office of one saint and saying the Mass of another. I have reached an uneasy compromise, which I hope is one the Church would not frown upon. Copying the practice I noted at Fontgombault Abbey, I simply observe the new calendar, even when celebrating the traditional Mass or Breviary, taking texts from the commons on the feasts of saints canonized since 1962, or from the 2002 missal, supplying offertory antiphons from the common. For the breviary, I have put together a sort of sanctoral that follows the new calendar but uses traditional forms. If I could not find a genuine liturgical text for any particular saint (and I've come up with an awful lot), then the commons come in useful again. The only real lack is third readings for Matins of third class feasts (=memoria) for the celebrations of newer saints. In this case I have supplied the second reading from the Office of Readings in the Liturgia Horarum, comforting myself that, since it is longer than an average third lesson, this might be held to suffice.

Seasons like Septuagesima I observe in the office but not at Mass. And I have to keep feasts like Corpus Christi and Ascension on their original day, or I would really be in trouble. Here and there one has to fudge: I really cannot work out what to do on the Second Sunday after Christmas, though the last Sunday of October can be patched back together again using older breviaries.

No doubt some of you would find my practice rather unconventional, but really it is not easy to harmonize one's liturgical life, and the blessings of using the more traditional breviary are considerable. Having been granted their use by Summorum Pontificum, I'm not really prepared to forgo them.