Changes to the Temporal and Sanctoral Cycles
Catholic Feast days are days set aside to remember important people and events in the Catholic Faith. The calendar of saints has been changed throughout Church history to remove some saints in order that others may be celebrated too. While changes have usually occurred only slowly and organically, they changed radically in 1969 with the introduction of the Novus Ordo Mass.
The Catholic Calendar: Temporal and Sanctoral Cycles
There are two overlapping cycles of feast days in the Catholic Liturgical year and which feast we celebrate on any particular day depends on the ranking of the feast days from each cycle.
The Proper of Saints, called the Sanctoral Cycle, is the annual cycle of feasts not necessarily connected with the seasons. We commemorate and ask the intercession of those holy men and women who set a marvelous example that we should all strive to imitate. We also commemorate various events and mysteries of the faith in the Sanctoral Cycle (e.g., Our Lord’s Transfiguration, the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Assumption, etc.). The Sanctoral Cycle is often connected with a particular date (e.g., the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul is always on June 29th, and the Solemnity of Corpus Christi is always on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday).
There is also the Proper of Seasons, called the Temporal Cycle, which traces the earthly life of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It consists mainly of Sundays related to the various liturgical seasons. There are seven liturgical seasons contained in three cycles which correspond to the Church’s three most important feasts: Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.
The Christmas cycle begins with Advent, and goes through Christmas, Epiphany, the Baptism of the Lord and the Feast of the Presentation (Fourth Joyful Mystery). The Easter Cycle begins with Septuagesima, includes Lent, the Sacred Triduum, Easter and the Ascension. The third cycle, in which the Church focuses on the action of the Holy Ghost, begins with Pentecost and ends as the Church focuses on the End Times and Advent begins. It includes such important feasts as Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi, Sacred Heart, Precious Blood, the Assumption, Immaculate Heart of Mary, Triumph of the Cross, Christ the King, All Saints, and All Souls.
For that reason, when you go to Mass on Sundays you likely will not hear the readings for the saints but rather you will hear the propers taken from the Temporal Cycle.
The Changes to the Catholic Liturgical Year Before Vatican II
In addition to the significant changes and alterations to the Holy Week Liturgies in the 1955 Missal, there were also a few other noteworthy changes. With the advent of the 1955 Calendar, Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of “St. Joseph the Worker” on May 1 (moving the feast of “Saints Philip and James” from May 1, where it had been since the sixth century, to May 11). In doing this, he also suppressed the Patronage of St. Joseph that – since Pope Pius IX’s decree of September 10, 1847 – had been celebrated on the second Wednesday after the Octave of Easter. In 1954, Pius XII also instituted the Feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary on May 31; and to make room for it, he moved the Feast of St. Angela Merici to June 1.
The year 1955 saw some of the most significant changes to the Church’s liturgy since the Council of Trent. In Cum nostra hac aetate (March 23, 1955), Pius XII abolished 15 Octaves in addition to the Octave for the Dedication of a Church, and particular octaves for patrons of various religious orders, countries, and dioceses. He also abolished roughly half of all vigils, leading to the removal of the liturgical vigils of the Immaculate Conception, Epiphany, All Saints, and for all of the Apostles except Saints Peter and Paul. The total number of liturgical vigils was now reduced to seven. These vast changes affected both the Temporal and Sanctoral cycles.
Additional changes that occurred in 1960 under John XXIII include the removal of most saints who were on the calendar twice. For instance, the Feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross, the second feast of St. Agnes commemorating her apparition to her parents, and the Feast of St. John before the Latin Gate were all removed. These changes were incorporated in the 1962 Missal; however, a priest may still choose to offer a votive Mass for those saints on those traditional feast days.[1]
The Changes to the Catholic Liturgical Year after Vatican II
Even though many changes occurred before Vatican II, they pale in comparison to the changes made after it. With the introduction of the Novus Ordo, more than 300 saints were removed from the General Calendar, as the flagship article “The Sanctoral Killing Fields: On the Removal of Saints from the General Roman Calendar“ calculated. The results have greatly affected Catholic life. How many Catholics today are familiar with St. Telesphorus, the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, St. Anicetus, Ss. Cletus and Marcellinus, the Seven Holy Brothers, St. Thelca, St. Placid, St. Ursula, or even St. Barbara? These saints gave a powerful and memorable witness to our holy Faith. They provide powerful inspiration for us in these turbulent times and are models we should all strive to emulate. Yet, all these and more were removed from the liturgical calendar, leaving all parishes named after such saints orphaned with no patronal feast day remaining on the universal calendar.
While hundreds of changes occurred to the Sanctoral Cycle in 1969, there were still considerable changes to the Temporal Cycle with the introduction of the Novus Ordo Mass. These changes included the following:
- Removing Septuagesima entirely, thus continuing the use of the Alleluia until Ash Wednesday. This change made easing into Lenten penance much harder.
- Eliminating the requirement to veil statues and images during Passiontide.
- Replacing Time After Epiphany and Time After Pentecost with a strangely named “Ordinary Time” season that is split in half and is seemingly unrelated to the Liturgical Year. Such a change vastly split the “3 cycles with 7 seasons” Temporal Cycle that was around for centuries. (Note as well the theological weight of the numbers three and seven in our Faith.)
- Moving a number of temporal feast days, like the Feast of Christ the King (from the last Sunday of October to the final Sunday before Advent) and the Feast of the Holy Family (from the Sunday after January 6th to the Sunday in the Octave of Christmas).
The changes made after Vatican II also affected how we refer to feast days. In 1969, the ranking of feast days was changed to solemnities, feasts, memorials, and optional memorials. In the 1962 Missal, we have First, Second, Third, and Fourth Class feast days. But for centuries before the 1962 Missal, up until the changes made by Pope Pius XII in 1955, the ranks of feast days were, from least to most important: Simple, Semi-double, Lesser Double (also known as Double), Greater Double, Double of the Second Class, and lastly Double of the First Class.
Continued Erosion of the Catholic Liturgical Year In the 1990s
Changes continued in the years after Vatican II to erode the rhythm and rhyme of Catholic life even further. We see this for instance in the further elimination of Holy Days of Obligation, which had remained the same in the United States since 1917. On December 13, 1991, the United States Bishops issued a directive abrogating New Year’s Day (formerly known as the Feast of the Circumcision but changed in 1969 to the Feast of Mary, the Mother of God), the Assumption, and All Saints in years when the feast falls on a Saturday or a Monday. And on March 23, 1992, in another reduction, the Bishop of Honolulu obtained an indult from the Holy See and approval from the United States episcopal conference to reduce the Holy Days of Obligation to only Christmas Day and the Immaculate Conception.
With so many Holy Days reduced, and with priests largely not preaching on the necessity of attending Mass and of abstaining from servile works on the Holy Days, the faithful have lost the sense of the sacred. This is in addition to the vast changes in the Liturgy and to the laws of fasting that also occurred at this time. Simply put, the changes in the late 1960s and early 1970s destroyed all facets of Catholic life. And the Faith continues to wane as poorly catechized priests and teachers are failing to keep souls committed to the same Faith which our forefathers loved and died for.
Buy and Use a Traditional Catholic Calendar
Restoring Catholic life involves not only a return to the Tridentine Mass but also a return to traditional fasting, a return to regular days of abstinence, a return to more Holy Days of Obligation, and above all a desire to put God as the center of our lives. The errors of modernism and liberalism – which weaken the Faith and make God a hobby relegated only to Sunday mornings – are diametrically opposed to the True Catholic Faith. We would do well to live out in our lives the traditional Catholic liturgical calendar.
To that end, The Fatima Center publishes each year a Catholic calendar in line with the 1962 Temporal and Sanctoral cycles. In addition, The Fatima Center’s calendar includes numerous elements from the pre-1955 liturgical calendar, so as to more closely resemble the Catholic calendar with which Catholics would have been familiar with in 1917 when Our Lady of Fatima appeared. Make it a point to buy it each year.[2]
- The Fatima Center’s 2022 Calendar.
- The Fatima Center’s 2021 Calendar.
- The Fatima Center’s 2020 Calendar.
[1] Read “Honoring Saints Twice” for more information on these changes.
[2] For those who prefer a pre-1955 Catholic calendar, which includes only the feast days in place prior to the changes to Octaves and “duplicate” saints made in the years before Vatican II,
https://confraternitybooks.com/products/traditional-catholic-calendar is a good option