No reason one can't print off the imprecatory psalms on some nice laminated cards and sell them online. Or just copy/paste them into a reminder on your phone for every Wednesday morning at 7am.
But yes, the fact that generations of religious are praying an incomplete Psalter is scandalous.
(BTW, if you look at the wording for why the impre…
No reason one can't print off the imprecatory psalms on some nice laminated cards and sell them online. Or just copy/paste them into a reminder on your phone for every Wednesday morning at 7am.
But yes, the fact that generations of religious are praying an incomplete Psalter is scandalous.
(BTW, if you look at the wording for why the imprecatory psalms were dropped, it's identical to the rationale for dropping the teaching on limbo: "modern man blah blah blah..."
One side of my mouth: I've considered trying to figure out where in the four-week cycle the imprecatory psalms were removed from. There are some suspiciously random psalm repetitions: Psalm 90 I think? Monday week 4 and somewhere else? It's been a while since I've prayed the new Office so my memory is vague.
Other side of my mouth: I wonder if it's just legitimately harder to pray the imprecatory psalms with the new organization of "no more than three psalms in an Hour". You could bury them pretty easily in the old rite, particularly before the redistribution of the psalms in the early 1900s. Matins is very long, so an imprecatory psalm can be balanced out in a way which is impossible when every psalm has a spotlight shone on it.
The imprecatory psalms were removed from all over the place. The 1962 and earlier breviary was on a 1-week cycle. Using the Douay numbering, and looking for imprecatory verses, 53 and 118 are in Sunday Prime, 113 at Sunday vespers, 5 in Monday lauds, 30 at Monday sext, 134 in Tuesday Prime, 39 at Tuesday terce, 11 at Tuesday compline, 58 at Wednesday none, etc. (I don't have a copy with Matins)
I wouldn't say they were buried. Most of the hours only have 3 psalms even in the 1962.
Oh, I'm keenly aware that the whole arrangement is different. My headcanon is that there may have been a draft four-week psalm arrangement prepared that included a complete psalter, and that the verses and psalms which were removed may have been redacted at a later stage in the project. There are some things which seem to corroborate this idea, such as a few suspiciously short psalm divisions in one of the gutted psalms, and the repetition of another psalm. But I haven't had the energy to try and see if the puzzle pieces actually fit.
Regarding burying the imprecatory psalms, in the 1900s Office they are relegated to the little hours generally, but no, that's not really burial. I was referring to the pre-1900s arrangement where all the minor hours either repeated Douay-118 or the psalms immediately after that, and Compline was the same every day as well. Therefore the only Hours with varying psalms had many psalms, and almost no psalms were broken into divisions. So the imprecatory psalms would have been one (or two, maybe) of 12 Matins psalms, or one of five varying Lauds psalms, or maybe one of five varying Vespers psalms. But in the new Office that isn't an option: some of the imprecatory psalms would have to fill the whole Hour, as with Saturday None in the 1962 arrangement for example.
But verifying any of these suspicions would involve a lot of really detailed and annoying analysis, and it would have to start by combing through the new Office to identify the gaps, and that would make me mad. :) So I haven't done it.
I'll admit that having the entirety of 1962 Saturday None consist of a very imprecatory psalm and nothing else is a little stark. And I wonder if that's part of what led to their excision in the modern Office. This is not to imply that I think that was a good choice; I suspect that the Author of the Psalms likely felt more than a little snubbed by it.
I think I like this headcanon, but wouldn't you need to see the draft to determine whether cut-and-paste is the culprit? Hard to distinguish between that and the arrangers simply having no sense of propriety and fittingness.
I've never prayed None regularly, but I tend to like imprecatory psalms, as long as I'm paying enough attention to not be startled. There's a tendency to suppress strong negative emotions (or let them go willy-nilly) rather than properly ordering them, and I think praying the imprecatories is a remedy for that. Not sure I'd keep that reaction if I saw it every week though.
On further analysis, there's way more room than I thought to fit the imprecatory psalms. It turns out that something like 22 psalms are entirely doubled on different days in the cycle. This includes a few psalms which have good traditional reasons to be repeated regularly, specifically repeating Psalm 51 for Friday penance, Psalm 118/117 every Sunday, and Psalm 110/109 every Sunday; but aside from that it seems to be a mishmash of psalms. (NAB/Grail) 8, 24, 34, 44, 45, 50, 55, 57, 67, 76, 80, 90, 92, 100, 117, 132, 136, 145, and 150 are repeated somewhat less obviously (some more obviously than others). In addition, there are some fragments of Psalm 119 scattered throughout the non-Daytime Prayer Offices. I intended to finish this project by trying to find where the imprecatory psalms were excised from, but there are too many options. There would be more than enough room to reinsert the imprecatory psalms and the "privileged" psalms 105, 106, and 78, with that amount of repetition, in any number of ways.
I agree that the imprecatory psalms (and verses) are a good help against suppressing strong emotions, and regular prayer of those psalms is as helpful as regular prayer of the joyful psalms one might not always feel. Learning to pray them on a schedule rather than as needed is challenging when coming from the new breviary, but it's beneficial, even if they do get a spotlight sometimes. (And I really do appreciate the very pastorally laid out, efficient, one-week Office of the early 1900s. Realizing that they had to make a few compromises to do it, it's much MUCH more approachable for a busy layman than the earlier Office ever would have been.)
No reason one can't print off the imprecatory psalms on some nice laminated cards and sell them online. Or just copy/paste them into a reminder on your phone for every Wednesday morning at 7am.
But yes, the fact that generations of religious are praying an incomplete Psalter is scandalous.
(BTW, if you look at the wording for why the imprecatory psalms were dropped, it's identical to the rationale for dropping the teaching on limbo: "modern man blah blah blah..."
One side of my mouth: I've considered trying to figure out where in the four-week cycle the imprecatory psalms were removed from. There are some suspiciously random psalm repetitions: Psalm 90 I think? Monday week 4 and somewhere else? It's been a while since I've prayed the new Office so my memory is vague.
Other side of my mouth: I wonder if it's just legitimately harder to pray the imprecatory psalms with the new organization of "no more than three psalms in an Hour". You could bury them pretty easily in the old rite, particularly before the redistribution of the psalms in the early 1900s. Matins is very long, so an imprecatory psalm can be balanced out in a way which is impossible when every psalm has a spotlight shone on it.
The imprecatory psalms were removed from all over the place. The 1962 and earlier breviary was on a 1-week cycle. Using the Douay numbering, and looking for imprecatory verses, 53 and 118 are in Sunday Prime, 113 at Sunday vespers, 5 in Monday lauds, 30 at Monday sext, 134 in Tuesday Prime, 39 at Tuesday terce, 11 at Tuesday compline, 58 at Wednesday none, etc. (I don't have a copy with Matins)
I wouldn't say they were buried. Most of the hours only have 3 psalms even in the 1962.
Oh, I'm keenly aware that the whole arrangement is different. My headcanon is that there may have been a draft four-week psalm arrangement prepared that included a complete psalter, and that the verses and psalms which were removed may have been redacted at a later stage in the project. There are some things which seem to corroborate this idea, such as a few suspiciously short psalm divisions in one of the gutted psalms, and the repetition of another psalm. But I haven't had the energy to try and see if the puzzle pieces actually fit.
Regarding burying the imprecatory psalms, in the 1900s Office they are relegated to the little hours generally, but no, that's not really burial. I was referring to the pre-1900s arrangement where all the minor hours either repeated Douay-118 or the psalms immediately after that, and Compline was the same every day as well. Therefore the only Hours with varying psalms had many psalms, and almost no psalms were broken into divisions. So the imprecatory psalms would have been one (or two, maybe) of 12 Matins psalms, or one of five varying Lauds psalms, or maybe one of five varying Vespers psalms. But in the new Office that isn't an option: some of the imprecatory psalms would have to fill the whole Hour, as with Saturday None in the 1962 arrangement for example.
But verifying any of these suspicions would involve a lot of really detailed and annoying analysis, and it would have to start by combing through the new Office to identify the gaps, and that would make me mad. :) So I haven't done it.
I'll admit that having the entirety of 1962 Saturday None consist of a very imprecatory psalm and nothing else is a little stark. And I wonder if that's part of what led to their excision in the modern Office. This is not to imply that I think that was a good choice; I suspect that the Author of the Psalms likely felt more than a little snubbed by it.
I think I like this headcanon, but wouldn't you need to see the draft to determine whether cut-and-paste is the culprit? Hard to distinguish between that and the arrangers simply having no sense of propriety and fittingness.
I've never prayed None regularly, but I tend to like imprecatory psalms, as long as I'm paying enough attention to not be startled. There's a tendency to suppress strong negative emotions (or let them go willy-nilly) rather than properly ordering them, and I think praying the imprecatories is a remedy for that. Not sure I'd keep that reaction if I saw it every week though.
On further analysis, there's way more room than I thought to fit the imprecatory psalms. It turns out that something like 22 psalms are entirely doubled on different days in the cycle. This includes a few psalms which have good traditional reasons to be repeated regularly, specifically repeating Psalm 51 for Friday penance, Psalm 118/117 every Sunday, and Psalm 110/109 every Sunday; but aside from that it seems to be a mishmash of psalms. (NAB/Grail) 8, 24, 34, 44, 45, 50, 55, 57, 67, 76, 80, 90, 92, 100, 117, 132, 136, 145, and 150 are repeated somewhat less obviously (some more obviously than others). In addition, there are some fragments of Psalm 119 scattered throughout the non-Daytime Prayer Offices. I intended to finish this project by trying to find where the imprecatory psalms were excised from, but there are too many options. There would be more than enough room to reinsert the imprecatory psalms and the "privileged" psalms 105, 106, and 78, with that amount of repetition, in any number of ways.
I agree that the imprecatory psalms (and verses) are a good help against suppressing strong emotions, and regular prayer of those psalms is as helpful as regular prayer of the joyful psalms one might not always feel. Learning to pray them on a schedule rather than as needed is challenging when coming from the new breviary, but it's beneficial, even if they do get a spotlight sometimes. (And I really do appreciate the very pastorally laid out, efficient, one-week Office of the early 1900s. Realizing that they had to make a few compromises to do it, it's much MUCH more approachable for a busy layman than the earlier Office ever would have been.)