Explanation needed

[Anhelyna]

Why do some Dioceses move the Feast of the Ascension - which is after all 40 days after the Resurrection of Christ - to the Sunday after this ?

 

[St_Barnabus]

It's just my guess, but it could be so that more people would celebrate this feast day. Typically a good numbeer of folks will miss this mass if it is during the week, due to work, or various other reasons.

 

[Anhelyna]

Hmmmmm

 

[anjelica]

Yes, we have jysy had it this evening, and it was very 'nothing'. Very dsappointing

 

[Anhelyna]

Thankfully we don't do this. We accept that it may be impossible for folk to get to Liturgy - but after all Ascension is 40 days post Pascha not 43 !!

Pentecost is a Sunday - thankfully

 

[narnia59]

I believe this was a request primarily from bishops who serve many rural communities and in states where Catholic churches are not that plentiful. This is prime planting season. Some of these people may live more than an hour away from their parish, so they could lose a half a day or more to attend Mass. When your livelihood depends on getting a crop in at the right time (which is often difficult due to spring rains), the bishops recognized that a day of obligation at this time of year was a great hardship for these people and made the request to move the feast.

If you think about our other holy days of obligation they are in August (before harvest season) and then all after harvest and before planting season. Therefore they did not present the same problem to these communities.

 

[narnia59]

Thankfully we don't do this. We accept that it may be impossible for folk to get to Liturgy - but after all Ascension is 40 days post Pascha not 43 !!

Pentecost is a Sunday - thankfully

I miss celebrating the Ascension on Thursday too as I did when I was young. But I guess the bishops who made the request thought it was more important for people to be able to celebrate the feast than not attend.

 

[Fish and Bread]

I am a strong proponent of leaving Ascension Thursday on a Thursday. I think it is more important as a feast than some existing holy days of obligation, so if we are going to have holy days of obligation, the Ascension should be one of them and something else should be dropped. I started a similar thread in the Liberal Catholic sub-forum a week or two ago here on CF. Thanks for bringing it up here on the main forum.

Although, I will say in general that I don't like the idea of having feasts that must be attended on pain of sin. Rather, I think we should change of holy days of obligation in general to mandatory parish mass days, where two masses must be celebrated at minimum, once in the morning and once in the evening, to give people a chance to attend important feast days on their calendar days, and where they are highlighted on the calendar, without any sort of threat of it being considered a sin if you don't want to go. Same with Sunday masses.

I love the idea of feast days and particularly important feast days where there are more ornate and better attended masses at better times instead of just a quick daily mass absurdly early in the morning, without the concept of obligation.

A lot of people go to Ash Wednesday masses and it's not an obligation.

I'm digressing a bit, though. *If* they are doing Holy Days of Obligation, this should be one, and it should be on a Thursday, as it is more venerable and important than some existing days of obligation in the US.

 

[Gwendolyn]

It's just my guess, but it could be so that more people would celebrate this feast day. Typically a good numbeer of folks will miss this mass if it is during the week, due to work, or various other reasons.

This is why dioceses in Canada have moved the celebration.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Yes, we have just had it this evening, and it was very 'nothing'. Very dsappointing

It's nice to see you back in CF; the new themes and stuff are a bit hard to adjust to but I guess it will all come together eventually.

God bless.

 

[AXO]

It primarily depends on the rite and country, as it depends on the episcopal conference; here, in Toledo, in the Hispano-Mozarabic (Mozarabic Chapel, Primate Cathedral and parishes such as Sts. Justa and Rufina) and extraordinary Roman (Church of the Saviour) we celebrate it on May 14, as usual. In the ordinary Roman rite, the Spanish Episcopal Conference decided, in 1977, to move it to the Sunday following May 14, due to civil reasons. The feast of the Apostle St. Matthias is celebrated on that day instead.

 

[wondrousgnat]

I was confused. I had an envelope for May 14 but there were no masses other than the 7:30 AM one. I thought it was a holy day of obligation.

 

[MoreCoffee]

14th May was not a holy day of obligation in Australia. The solemnity was transferred to Sunday.