Painful conscience on the LOTH...

[jovan66102]

I would recommend obedience to the Church.  Praying the LOTH exactly as written will be of great spiritual benefit.

 

Just out of curiosity, have you ever prayed it for an extended period of time? I have and I cannot imagine committing to a lifetime of praying McOffice.

[aquinas138]

I would recommend obedience to the Church.  Praying the LOTH exactly as written will be of great spiritual benefit.

 

Just leave out the psalm-prayers.  They're [usually] terrible.

I certainly do whenever I happen to use the LOTH.  Though the way the US editions of the LOTH are printed suggest they are mandatory, they certainly are optional.  Additionally, they are also printed in the incorrect place - they are supposed to be said after the antiphon if they are used.  The Latin originals are not printed in the Liturgia Horarum, and I suspect they may disappear whenever the new LOTH is produced.

To the original poster, I could not counsel you to join a group whose liturgy causes you anguish.  However, if your vocation is truly with such a group, I think you will find spiritual satisfaction in living it.  Obviously you have to be open about this with your spiritual director.

As for incorporating the missing psalms, you could add a devotional "hour" to your day one day a week and say them.  The psalter schema of the Bridgettine Office does not contain all 150 psalms, even though their Rule binds them to the weekly recitation of the integral psalter.  Thus they developed officia parva, one for each day of the week, that use up the psalms missing from the main office.  Thursday and Saturday are called "Psalmi residui," Thursday offered "pro peccatoribus," and Saturday "in subsidium justorum."

[Laetare]

Thank you for all your replies and help, friends...

Some seem to think this "McOffice" is truly terrible and should never be used (since it was either a huge mistake or a masonic conspiracy), but others say obedience comes first.

I primarily like this community for its (Catholic) evangelical spirit, its love of the poor, and its very integral community. They love one another in a perfect way. The only love they lack for one another is that they don't offer the TLM for their own brothers' and sisters' edification!

Much to pray about...

[Treeman]

I would recommend obedience to the Church.  Praying the LOTH exactly as written will be of great spiritual benefit.

 

Just out of curiosity, have you ever prayed it for an extended period of time? I have and I cannot imagine committing to a lifetime of praying McOffice.

Yes I try to pray it everyday.  At first I didn't like the wording or the Psalm prayers but I decided the problem was me not the text.

[agnes therese]

I would recommend obedience to the Church.  Praying the LOTH exactly as written will be of great spiritual benefit.

 

Just out of curiosity, have you ever prayed it for an extended period of time? I have and I cannot imagine committing to a lifetime of praying McOffice.

Yes I try to pray it everyday.  At first I didn't like the wording or the Psalm prayers but I decided the problem was me not the text.

I've been told the psalm prayers are not in the Latin edition -- maybe someday I'll learn Latin and find out for myself -- and are optional in the English.  I hope that's true, because I often skip them.

[aquinas138]

I've been told the psalm prayers are not in the Latin edition -- maybe someday I'll learn Latin and find out for myself -- and are optional in the English.  I hope that's true, because I often skip them.

Both are true.  The Latin versions are supposed to be in the 5th volume of the Liturgia Horarum which contains supplementary material, which of course still has not been produced, much less translated into English.  The prayers were published in some journal, but have not appeared in a Latin typical edition of the LH.  I have always omitted them when I have used the LOTH.

[newyorkcatholic]

Thank you for all your replies and help, friends...

Some seem to think this "McOffice" is truly terrible and should never be used (since it was either a huge mistake or a masonic conspiracy), but others say obedience comes first.

I primarily like this community for its (Catholic) evangelical spirit, its love of the poor, and its very integral community. They love one another in a perfect way. The only love they lack for one another is that they don't offer the TLM for their own brothers' and sisters' edification!

Much to pray about...

Well the LOTH is "terrible" in the sense that it mangled the true traditional Office, but's validly promulgated and isn't intrinsically evil.  So if you join a community that uses it, then use it, and accept it.  That's obedience.

Why would you ever join such a community knowing that other ones exist that use the Roman Breviary, I don't understand, but I don't need to understand, this is not my vocation we're talking about.

You can always add the imprecatory psalms on any other day.  Someone suggested Friday penance, you could also add them at the former times (e.g. after Saturday Nones).

[moneil]

You should be more concerned about the thought of a 4 week psalter than the omission of Psalms.     

While in my limited scholarship of liturgical history I am leaning toward the opinion that Abp. Annibale Bugnini perhaps made a bigger mess of the Breviary than he did of the Mass, there is something to be said for a four week cycle, at least as an option (and there is some prescedent for it in Church history).  I find that a better arrangement than the use of a diurnal (popular with several here), which compleatly eliminates ALL the Matins psalms (34 in total according to the Pius X schema; even more according to the Monastic and Tridentine schemas).  At least with the four week cycle only three psalms are missing.  As a footnote: there are I believe a few psalms that are only said during Advent and Lent, and one would have to intentionally include the Gradual Psalms in Daytime Prayer to have those.

Least I'm misunderstood, I am in no way disparaging those who faithfuly recite the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary (and God bless them for that), yet that only has 28 psalms in its entirety, leaving 122 NEVER recited.  Ironically one would recite more of the Psalter by following the weekday and Sunday Novus Ordo Lectionary (which restored the use of full psalms to the Mass).

Just my thought  ;

I appreciate the delima of the OP; I will say that I started out with Christian Prayer (the LOTH with an abridged Matins or Office of Readings) and found it a source of spiritual sucor, and in spite of its limitations and "defects", preferable to not reciting any office at all.  If this is a particulary important discernment on your part you perhaps should search for a traditional community, despite the distance involved.  I would assume that part of the monastic day is given to private prayer and spiritual prayer in the cell?  Could not the traditional office be recited then?

[karyn_anne]

This is the first time I have heard of such extensive changes to the psalms in the LOTH. My priest mentioned that they took out certain things in one psalm that is said on Wednesday or Thursday Vespers in the 1962 Breviary as it speaks of crushing the children of the devil, but I didn't know that more changes were done  :(

What a tragedy.

I would never ever touch the LOTH (and we use a horrible English translation here in my area anyway) but its true that you will be bound under obedience to pray it if you join a community that does. And this includes a formal third order...

Have you asked or asked repeatedly for the obligation of the LOTH to be changed to that of the Little Office of Our Lady or else the Roman Breviary?

[newyorkcatholic]

You should be more concerned about the thought of a 4 week psalter than the omission of Psalms.     

While in my limited scholarship of liturgical history I am leaning toward the opinion that Abp. Annibale Bugnini perhaps made a bigger mess of the Breviary than he did of the Mass, there is something to be said for a four week cycle, at least as an option (and there is some prescedent for it in Church history).  I find that a better arrangement than the use of a diurnal (popular with several here), which compleatly eliminates ALL the Matins psalms (34 in total according to the Pius X schema; even more according to the Monastic and Tridentine schemas).  At least with the four week cycle only three psalms are missing.  As a footnote: there are I believe a few psalms that are only said during Advent and Lent, and one would have to intentionally include the Gradual Psalms in Daytime Prayer to have those.

Least I'm misunderstood, I am in no way disparaging those who faithfuly recite the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary (and God bless them for that), yet that only has 28 psalms in its entirety, leaving 122 NEVER recited.  Ironically one would recite more of the Psalter by following the weekday and Sunday Novus Ordo Lectionary (which restored the use of full psalms to the Mass).

Just my thought  ;

I appreciate the delima of the OP; I will say that I started out with Christian Prayer (the LOTH with an abridged Matins or Office of Readings) and found it a source of spiritual sucor, and in spite of its limitations and "defects", preferable to not reciting any office at all.  If this is a particulary important discernment on your part you perhaps should search for a traditional community, despite the distance involved.  I would assume that part of the monastic day is given to private prayer and spiritual prayer in the cell?  Could not the traditional office be recited then?

Aren't you conflating those traditionally bound to the full office with laypeople and those in third orders and apostolic orders?

For the former, saying all the Psalms each week seems to be traditionally very important.  But for the latter group, a diurnal or the Little Office is wonderful and manageable.

If a Benedictine monk is praying full office with all Psalms each week, he's doing his basic prayer.  If a layman adds the Little Office to his daily rosary, or picks up the dirunal, he is probably (knowing nothing about the spiritual state of this particular layman) doing a wonderful extra work that takes serious committment especially if he has a job or is a student, has a family, other obligations, and so on.

To bring it back on topic: if Laetare joins a true monastic order, it would make sense for him to avoid ones that use the Little Office or the dirunal only as well as the LOTH.

But laypeople here on fisheaters do nothing wrong, and do something good, when they use the diurnal or the Little Office.  Apples and Oranges.