The new calendar is one of the subtler corrosives the post-conciliar Vatican poured on the faith of an unsuspecting Catholic populace. From introducing confusion as to the existence of well respected saints to obliterating octaves to the chaos of weird concentric asymmetrical lectionary cycles, the new calendar’s pandemonium makes one pine for the days of semi-doubles.
Worse still is how the new calendar jackhammers a fissure between Novus Ordo-attending Catholics and those who make their spiritual home in the Church’s liturgical traditions.
Take an upcoming feast day: the Circumcision of Our Lord, also called the Octave Day of the Nativity – or, as the date is popularly known according to the Novus calendar, the Feast of Mary, Mother of God. Pope Paul VI, arguably in a fit of archaeologism, snipped the Circumcision and transferred the Blessed Mother’s feast to January 1 from October 11, where it had been celebrated universally since 1931 and locally since much earlier. Post-Paul VI, January 1 is a holy day of obligation. But since Catholics who abide by the traditional calendar don’t celebrate the Feast of the Maternity on that day, they’ll hear a Mass setting that doesn’t line up with the obligation day…whose setting, or at least its parallel in the traditional calendar, they will hear ten months later. (Things not lining up became a theme post-1968.) Yet they’re not obligated to assist on October 11, meaning they may never hear the prayers meant to correspond with the obligation day’s Mass.