Friday, December 11, 2009

Dude, Where's my very own Mass? St. Damasus wuz robbed

Somewhere between the 20s and 1948 "the powers that be" stripped St. Damasus of his very own Mass. Right now, St. Damasus has the plain vanilla "Si diligis me...." Mass. Not even any special Commemorations.

Someone had had it in for him. His Mass was more his own than any hybrid. The introit, Epistle and Gospel back then for his Mass was the same Introit, Epistle and Gospel for the "Sacredotis tui" mass for Confessor Bishops. (And the pope is, of course, also a bishop.)

The Alleluia was similar, but not quite the same as that Mass.

HOWEVER, the Collect, Gradule, Offertory, Secret, Communion and Post communion propers were "his own."

the Credo was said, and the Preface used was that of the preface of the Octave of the Immaculate Conception, which would have been the Preface for the Virgin, Mary.

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I remember, last year running across a few historical quirks like this. I suspect, from my comparison of my 20s hand missal to the 48 and '62 missals, a lot of number of set Masses got conflated and or truncated.

I'll update this post a little later after work today. For each month of the year, I'm planning to put up a spread sheet of such changes.

Whatever prompted the powers that be to dink with this?

I will update this post a little later to give you the old propers to give St. Damasus his due!

1 comment:

  1. 1942 was the date of the deed. The SRC issued a decree that simply erased many such Mass texts (and texts in the Office) and replaced them with the pedestrian Si diligis me set.

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