Day of Obligation Rant

Sometimes one gets weary of rational arguments and the only thing for which energy can be mustered is a good old fashioned rant.

It drives me nuts that we wave a day of obligation simply because it falls on a Monday.  As if the solemnity of the solemnity is any less solemn because it is within a day of Sunday.  If the Feast of All Saints were on a Tuesday, then the church deems it worth obliging everyone to attend Mass; but being on a Monday ... not so much.  God forbid people should attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass two days in a row.  And we wonder why the Protestant world thinks we are legalistic.  It is as if the magnitude of the feast had nothing to do with it, but simply its placement within the week.  Sometimes we require attendance, sometime we don't ... arbitrary rules that simply need followed.

It drives me more nuts when parishes, in light of the lifted obligation, only offer a Mass at their normal daily Mass time, which for the most part is inconvenient for families to attend together.  If a parish only offers, say, a 9:00 Mass, and one or more parents work, then the family cannot attend Mass on the Feast of All Saints together without scouring the area for another more convenient time.  It drives me nuts that a Catholic school would not take their students to Mass on this day: it is still a solemnity despite the lifted obligation.  This is the very definition of minimalist obligationism that undercuts a life of Catholic virtue.

While we're at it, it drives me nuts that a parish puts more effort, planning, and promotion into the Feast of All Souls.  Of course, don't get me wrong ... the emphasis on All Souls is not the problem, for this is a great and wonderful feast in and of itself ... but surely the Feast of All Saints, which in other years is a day of obligations, deserves the same attention and respect.

And while we're at it, it drives me nuts that "liturgy committees" put hours of planning into non-liturgical events for the All Souls Liturgy, such as having parishioners process with lighted candles to place on the altar in memory of lost loved ones (this can be a appropriate ceremony for outside of Mass, but is out of place within the Mass; Fr. Zuhlsdorf addressed this question here), yet fail to investigate options for the liturgy that are actually part of the liturgy and its long and beautiful historical tradition: black vestments, unbleached beeswax candles, the catafalque, the Dies Irae and other Gregorian Propers, and this list goes on.

It all drives me nuts.

And while we're quoting Fr. Zuhlsdorf ... "Thus endeth the rant."