Septuagesima

The pre-Lent preparation that Bugnini ripped out of the calendar . . .

I’m just thinking out loud. The other sui juris churches in communion with Rome maintain pre-Lenten preparations before Lent as do the Orthodox. Septuagesima has its origin with Pope St. Gregory the Great; the Ordinariate resurrected it as “Pre-Lent” in the Divine Worship missal since Shrovetide has been part of the English tradition for centuries.

Among Byzantines, abstinence of meat begins on “Meatfare” Sunday (Sexagesima) and cheese on the following “Cheesefare” Sunday (Quinquagesima).  The whole three weeks before Ash Wednesday were called Septuagesimatide in the Roman rite; the English called the three days of Quinquagesima, Shrove Monday and Shrove Tuesday “Shrovetide” before Ash Wednesday. Quinquagesima was also known as Dominica Carnevala, (“removal” of “meat”).  

I’m gonna take the high road here and give the reformers the benefit of the doubt. The concentrated effort of aggiornamento shaved off the “repetitious” and “odd” things that made it difficult for Protestants to want what we’ve got. It was also an opportunity to promote iconoclasm on a grand scale.

I was one of those Protestants that was drawn in by the Mass of Paul VI. However, I also knew in advance from my seminary days the bad apples of Vatican 2, the ones silenced by Pius XII but made peretti by John XXIII. I knew what I was getting into but I had no way to know was how deep the rot had “gangrened” the Bride of Christ.

And now taking the low road - diving deep into the post-Vatican 2 disaster - considering the motivations of the reformers (deformers rather), i.e.

• the 1965 “Pact of the Catacombs” (reaffirmed in 2013 upon the enthronement of Pope Francis, and most recently at the Synod on Synodality)

• the theologians of the Concilium journal

• that noble bunch at Saint Gallen, Switzerland

• the left reading and application of Lumen Gentium, Sacrosanctum Concilium, Nostrae Aetate and Gaudium et Spes

• the coup that de Lubac called the “Para-Council” — a purposeful re-making of the Church into a humanist, philanthropic organization, stripped of divine character en toto.

Partly why I compiled The St. John Ogilvie Prayerbook was for the typical Catholic whose patrimony was lost thanks to the Para-Council. The introduction to tradition via Celtic patrimony could serve as a wellspring of information with tools to combat the effects of modernism in one’s own life but also to aid the traditional Catholic (I like to think the “consistent” Catholic) to bloom where they’re planted; to attract with light rather than heat.

Septuagesima is one of those seasons we have lost outside of those devoted to the Mass of Pius V. Though ripped from the memory of Catholics alive now, it is a season of preparation (like Ember and Rogation days) to mortify the deeds of body in preparation for Easter.