My letter in this week's Catholic Herald

I have had a letter published in this week's Catholic Herald - the only letter, in fact, that I have ever submitted to the magazine, so that's nice!

The subject is Fr Raymond de Souza's article in last week's issue about Cardinal Sarah's proposal for "liturgical reconciliation":

SIR – Fr Raymond de Souza raises the question of the lectionary in his article on “liturgical reconciliation” (Comment, July 21). He declares that the OF lectionary is an improvement because it “includes far more Scripture than the EF one”. However, bigger is not always better, and if this is the only—or even primary—justification for declaring the OF lectionary an ‘enrichment’, that is not good enough. A qualitative, rather than quantitative, analysis of the two lectionaries is required. 

Is it really, for example, an ‘enrichment’ that Ephesians 4:25-28, verses read every year in the EF (19th Sunday after Pentecost), and containing the well-known advice “do not let the sun go down on your anger” (v. 26), are nowhere to be found in the entire OF lectionary? Or that the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), read in the OF on the 33rd Sunday per annum in Year A, has an optional short form that omits any mention of the men with two and one talents, thereby completely gutting the parable?

Moreover, the “wide consensus that the OF lectionary is superior” is, in my own experience, not anywhere as common as Fr de Souza supposes. In the nine years since I converted to Catholicism, I have come across an increasing number of clergy and laypeople who are decidedly unsure about the supposed benefits of key aspects of the OF lectionary, such as the three-year Sunday cycle of readings. 

There is obviously a lot more that could be said on this subject - but the Herald do ask that letters are kept below 250 words!

It should be noted that Fr de Souza's original article (and his follow-up) spawned a lot of commentary online - Gregory diPippo at NLM; Joseph Shaw of the LMS (and also this); Fr Timothy Finigan on his blog (who was also kind enough to recommend the Index Lectionum); and Fr John Zuhlsdorf at WDTPRS, to name a few. I hope to be able to make my small contribution to the ongoing discussion about "mutual enrichment"/"liturgical reconciliation" very soon over at New Liturgical Movement.