Sunday Mass Readings

Sunday Mass Readings By Thomas O'Loughin Published by CTS

My review of this booklet can be summarised in two reflections.  Firstly I found this fascinating.  Secondly, I have rarely been so out of sympathy with a CTS publication on so many levels.

To start with the positives: Professor O'Loughin (Historical Theology, Nottingham University) clearly describes the thinking behind the current (1969) Lectionary and its structure.

First of all he makes the case for having a Lectionary at all: to ensure the whole Gospel is proclaimed and thus to avoid the risk of us merely choosing our favourite readings, or avoiding the difficult bits, and to have some sense of uniformity across the whole Church.

He makes clear the twin desires to have a sequential reading of the Gospels over successive Sundays and also to have appropriate readings for the great seasons (Advent, Lent) and Feasts of the year.  That leads to the three year cycle, with St Matthew's Gospel being read in year 1, St Mark's in year 2 and St Luke's in year three.  St John's Gospel is read in part in Advent and Lent, and in part in year 2, interspersed with St Mark's.

He also explains how the first readings are chosen to relate to some aspect of the Gospel, and that the psalm is chosen either in relation to the first reading or in relation to the Gospel.

He then deals with the trickier issue of the Second Reading.  This, he says, 'stands on its own and is connected with neither the first reading nor the gospel' (his emphasis and [lack of] capitalisation).  This is clearly something of a problem to him, but he makes the best of it, explaining how we couldn't really omit such a reading, nor sensibly place it anywhere else, even though it breaks the link between the first reading and the Gospel.

He then looks at how the Lectionary treats the Gospels, breaking them up into Units, comprising some narrative and some discourse sections on various themes.  Thus in year A, St Matthew's Gospel is seen as consisting of 7 Units, and these are then divided into 34 readings, of which 15 are narrative, 16 are discourse and the remaining 3 are, mysteriously, neither. (Poor old St Mark, uniquely, finds the Units in his Gospel are then broken into Stages, too!)

He takes us through the detail of this, for each of the three years of the cycle, with useful tables showing how the Gospel and first readings relate.  Then there is a slightly more apologetic chapter outlining the sequence of second readings through the three year cycle, and a Conclusion, summarising his main points.

As I said, I found this fascinating.

And as I also said, I found myself entirely out of sympathy with this booklet.

There are four reasons for that.  One is that I am not a fan of the new Lectionary itself.  The second is that I found claims made in the book which are misleading or simply not true. The third is that the booklet is poorly written and often lapses into a cant jargon which I detest.  The fourth is that it is  poorly edited, so that there are sentences which simply do not make sense.

So to give some substance to my complaints...

The New Lectionary, it seems to me, is part of a bigger project, the post Vatican 2 'Reform' of the Liturgy, which I think was flawed in many ways.   Specifically, the new Lectionary seems to me to treat the Mass as something 'in which we should be interested.'  I have a different view: that ideally we shouldn't notice the Liturgy as such, because we are focussed on God.  Just as I think a priest should disappear, as it were, not impose his personality on the congregation, so that we can see God through him and his actions, so I think liturgy should disappear, so we encounter God through it.

That is not to say that we should not study Scripture; simply that the Mass is not really the place for that. That is what Lectio Divina, conferences, meditations and retreats are for.  That is clearly a personal view, but I think reflects at least one strand of Catholic tradition, and one that has been totally disallowed by modern liturgists.

The whole schema of Units (and even Stages) about which Prof O'Loughin enthuses reminds me of the rather limited view of education which modern educationalists have imposed on our schools, in much the same way as Father starting Mass with 'Good Morning everyone' reminds me of school assemblies.  It's all rather infantile...

On my second point, the main thrust of Prof O'Loughin's argument is that the new Lectionary gives us all of the Gospels, without selecting out those bits we may not be in sympathy with.  But a casual glance at his tables shows that in fact it is a selection that we get: the Gospel readings are not strictly sequential - there are gaps, and many verses are omitted from both first and second readings.  Someone with more time on their hands than me might usefully go through those to see if there is a theme...  Moreover, he asserts: 'On any Sunday the same readings will be heard in every Catholic community around the world.'  That is simply not accurate.  In the first place, any community that uses the Extraordinary Form will have a different set of readings.  Moreover, even with in the Ordinary Form, there are differences of calendar (translation of feasts to Sundays in some areas, but not others, for example).  I may be being pedantic there, but it seemed to me that this set the tone for the book (it occurs on the first page), as aspirational and idealistic rather than strictly accurate.

To illustrate my third complaint, beyond noting that the title Saint is never used of the evangelists nor St Paul (nor anyone else), and the Gospel is firmly in lower case throughout, I will simply quote a few passages: either you will agree with me or you won't.

So on certain days in the year when key moments in the Christ-event are to be celebrated, the readings are the same each and every year.
Jesus himself used them [the psalms] as prayers, and we continue to sing them as Church's song of praise.
As with schematic divisions of the gospels it is neater to look at in the abstract, than in terms of actual lections chosen.
These books are our gospels, and because the remembering Christ is at the core of our gathering, hence the reading from a gospel is at the heart of our readings.

And then, my fourth complaint, there are the textual and typographical errors that betray poor editing:

On page 16 we read: 'but it is good to remember that four views from different angles are always between than just one or a blur of all four.'
On page 17 we have 'preaches and inaugurated,' where both tenses should coincide.
The headers for the Lectionary Units are inconsistently incorrect (pp. 25, 26) and the word unit is used when it should be stage on p.26 making it hard to follow the analysis.
On page 33 we fine 'whereas the Luke's texts.'
On page 37 we find 'have a change' where it should be 'have a chance.'

So buy the booklet, by all means (it's only £1.95) and you may get some valuable insights into the thinking behind the current Lectionary.  But don't say I didn't warn you: caveat lector!