An Ideal Office
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,471
    Does anyone have a copy of the 1961, or any earlier, or any combined English/Latin edition, which has the words Divine Office (in English or Latin) on the outside? Or on the title page?
    Before VII I never heard the book referred to other than as the breviary. The action was often referred to as saying the Office but also as reading my Breviary, the combination 'Divine Office' was one I never heard until the revised version was published. Of course in the USA words may have been different, two nations divided by a common language
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    My book of the "The Day Hours" First ed. 1914, 5th ed. 1935, my edition has a inscription dated 21st December 1939. Has the 'Divine Office' used repeatedly in the introduction...

    Of course their is this,
    https://archive.org/details/theromanbreviary01unknuoft/page/n5
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,471
    tomjaw - thanks for that link to the Marquess of Bute's work. Please take the following comments as a gentle twit, I could be more biting about the 1974.
    I (or rather Google) find six occurences of "Divine Office" in that text.
    The first in Ch XXI of the Pie (Page xl) tells us that there is always an antiphon for the recitation of a psalm at the Divine Office, and gives one and a half pages of guidance on how to find it. As BCP says, it is "often more trouble to find out what is to be said than to say it once found".
    The second is an optional(!) prayer for absolution from having got it wrong, for 'all persons after saying the DivineOffice'.
    The third and fourth are options(!) for omitting something, open to 'persons bound to the recitation of the Divine Office'.
    The fifth is omitted from the translation because the option(!) never occurs in England, 'for persons bound ...'.
    The sixth is a complex of rules for Votive Masses, which are, or are not, 'obligatory on persons bound ...'. If not obligatory some are optional(!)

    So five are references to persons having options, not to the books. And the other is a general principle of Roman liturgical use of Psalms.

    However I will concede that (although I cannot check against the latest version of Canon Law because the vatican website links are more than half broken) it looks as though the former 'obligation to the Divine Office' is now an 'obligation to the Liturgy of the Hours' in the English translation (Can. 276 §2 3° ; Can. 1174).
  • Andris Amolins
    Posts: 154
    Permit me, too, to join the daydreamers. Taking as the starting point the Roman Breviary as of year 1962, I will try to list the desirable changes in descending order of urgency:
    1. Make the Sunday Office great again by restoring the 9 lessons at Matins.
    2. Give back the I Vespers to the Feasts of 2nd class.
    3. Restore the original (pre-1911) Antiphons to the weekly Psalter so far possible.
    4. Restore the Pian (1911-1939) Office.
    5. Restore the pre-1911 Office (except, perhaps, that semidouble feasts have the occurent Scripture in the 1st Nocturn, Preces of the Prime be trimmed down, and the rank of Sunday elevated just below doubles of 2nd class).
    6. Use the pre-Urban VIII hymns.
    In order of feasibility the ordering could be 1>2>4>6>3>5. Interestingly, the yearly liturgical calendar published by the (former) Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei contains instructions how to say the 1962 Office using earlier (post-1911, of course) editions of Breviary. Apparently it is known that many use those earlier prints that are more widespread.
    Thanked by 2tomjaw Vilyanor
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