Noted in a posting from Joe Kimball on Minnpost: The pope has moved St. Patrick’s Day to March 15th because March 17th comes during Holy Week.
I’m not Catholic but I assume that it is within the pope’s realm of authority to move holy days, but I wonder why one would move a holy day out of a holy week. But what authority does the pope have on when non-Catholics celebrate anything. [For that matter, the pope’s lack of real authority on Catholics is made evident every day as dissidents assault his teaching on birth control, abortion, war and peace, capital punishment, and other things.]
The authorities in charge of our local parade have deferred to His Holiness. The parade will occur on the Ides of March. [Somehow the idea of some kind of cross-promotion here has to be come up, but I don’t have any real ideas yet. Brutus wasn't Irish, but maybe we can do something.]
But won’t the real celebrators just find this an excuse to make the whole thing a three-day spree?
And if Monday the 17th is in Holy Week, so is Wednesday the 19th. So do we move
Posts
4 comments:
>" I wonder why one would move a holy day out of a holy week."
St Patrick's Day is not a Holy Day, but it is a feast day for the popular saint. The feast will be celebrated outside of Holy Week due to the somber, penitential nature of Holy Week. Catholics also do not hold large lavish weddings during the Lenten season either and for the same reasoning.
>"But what authority does the pope have on when non-Catholics celebrate anything."
The Pope has authority over all baptised Western Christians regardless of whether that authority is recognized (Matthew 16:16-19, Isaiah 22:22). But I would ask the question: Why are non-Catholics following the Catholic liturgical calendar and celebrating a Catholic saint in the first place? Is that not bizarre?
>"the pope’s lack of real authority on Catholics is made evident every day as dissidents assault his teaching on birth control,"
Right... and the the police lack real authority as made evident every day as dissidents speed, run redlights, rob banks, etc. You may have confused authority with obediance.
As you seem unfamiliar with Holy Week, you might consider attending the services on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings. You are most welcome to attend.We merely ask that you be respectful and refrain from communion.
God bless...
+Timothy
Thank you. Timothy, for noting that holy days and feast days are lnot the same. I had never made the distinction.
I really don’t want to use this forum to go into detailed discussion of theology or religion, not that I am against either, but I doubt if many of the dozen or two who look here would be all that interested and long before I dropped out of one of the theological seminaries of our region, I had figured out that some people have questions are certain that there are no answers [or that nobody else could possibly have them] and others have answers, but wonder why anybody has questions.
So I will just add a few observations.
March 17 is always during Lent.
I also have wondered why Protestants and other people of other [or no] faiths celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and often have celebrated in ways that do not seem particularly religious or even somber. When I grew up a Protestant in a Catholic neighborhood in another state, a neighborhood in which the Irish were not the prevailing ethnicity, St. Patrick’s Day was just a day when some kids wore green to school. On St. Joseph’s Day many of them and some others wore red.
A long time ago I reached the conclusion many [if not most] people who celebrate [understanding that I am not using “celebrate” in the religious sense here] St. Patrick’s Day do not do so for Catholic or other religious reasons. That is why I have wondered why the people who run the parade and other festivities have found it necessary to follow the pope and other bishops on this. And as I noted in the original post, I suspect that there will be those who will celebrate through the whole weekend into Monday, Palm Sunday to the contrary nothwithstanding.
I am sure that you are right. I have indeed slurred the line between obedience and authority, although I wonder how one can really be considered to have authority if nobody obeys. In my tradition we don’t even have bishops, so the idea of either obedience to or the authority of somebody else’s bishop is a bit strange to me.
Thank you for the invitation to attend services, but I am familiar with Holy Week and have attended Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter services since childhood, sometimes all in the same year.
Ray Sammons
Note to all readers: There are several links to communities of faith [none of which I am affiliated with since I attend services outside the city] on the links section of this blog. Most of the Christian ones can tell you when and where to attend Holy Week or other services, although the Eastern Orthodox churches may not use the same calendar.
It is not directly relevant to either the post or the comments, but I learned this morning that a suburban church has move Mardi Gras to Monday the 4th to avoid conflict with precinct caucuses. The church member that told me this also said that she understood that other congregations were moving Mardi Gras/ Shrove Tuesday events for the same reason.
Should it then be Lundi Gras or Shrove Monday?
RS
Well, a couple of years ago some big protestant megachurches, including Eagle Brook, cancelled Sunday services because Sunday was Christmas.
Figure that one out.
Tim
Beaver Lake
not Timothy who already posted
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