Something new

This is my first actual post on this new blog, and I wanted to give a little background information. For about a year now, I've been working on a project: I've been compiling a parallel Latin/English Diurnal for the 1962 Roman Breviary. Let me take a moment and explain a little bit about what this means.
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The Roman Breviary is something used by Catholics to pray the Divine Office. This is a psalm-based prayer dating back to the very early days of the Church. In fact, psalm-based prayer predates Christianity, as it was used in Judaism for centuries before the time of Christ.

I'm going to make a separate post of an article done by the Right Reverend Abbot Fernand Cabrol, OSB (of blessed memory), giving more information about the Divine Office, but here is a short description:

The Divine Office has traditionally been divided into two major sections: Daytime, and Nighttime. The daytime office takes as its origin the verse: "Seven times a day I have given praise to thee" (Ps. 118:164). A Diurnal is used for these day hours: Laudes, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. The night office is Matins, which is traditionally broken into three nocturns. During the course of a week, all 150 psalms are prayed during these hours.

My goal is this: I'm compiling a parallel Latin/English Diurnal, according to the 1962 Divine Office. The psalms and other scripture come from the Clementine Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome, and the Bishop Challenor version of the English Douay-Rheims Bible. The Latin prayers and other texts come from the 1962 Breviary, with their English translations coming primarily from a similar work published in 1921. This work was entitled the Day Hours of the Church, and was compiled by the Benedictine Nuns of the Stanbrook Abbey. (It is nearly impossible to even find a copy of this fine work these days, but I found one and have scanned it, and it is also available on my website.)

This seems to be a good place to stop for the moment. May our Lord's will be done in this project, and in all that we do. May all the glory and honor be His.

Minor change, a little on timeline.

I have updated the color PDF, available by link at the top of the page. It is now current with the print version.

I also fixed an error in the Marian Antiphons at the end of Compline. Somehow the headers for the four antiphons had been duplicated, and the old rubrics were right above the new parallel rubrics. I've now fixed it in both editions.

My apologies to anyone who ordered a copy today. If you ordered one, you won't be missing anything; you'll just have to put up with the duplicated headings and rubrics.

Also, those who download the PDF will notice that the Proper of Saints runs out in about a week. I will be working on the propers, starting where I left off in February. I'll plan on uploading a new revision every time I get a month of Propers completed. I'm hoping to have the rest of February done in fairly short order; not sure exactly how long, but hopefully in the next week or so.

New Print Edition

I have finally completed my reformatting work, and have uploaded a CURRENT print copy! To do this I've made a few changes, the most significant of which is an increase in the book dimensions. It is now 5.5" x 8.5", a new size for Lulu. It is also printed on their less expensive paper (and slightly thinner!), which is why the price has gone down.

The caveat with this paper is that Lulu only prints on it in the USA, which means that if you're in another part of the world the shipping costs will probably be astronomical! I'm going to be uploading another version printed on Lulu's standard paper, which will probably be more cost effective for those in Europe etc.

There are numerous changes from the last print edition, too many to mention. Most of these have been in the PDF version for a while, but here are a few new ones:

added a table of movable feasts.
revised the Latin hyphenation algorithm (again).
revised the psalm/canticle format and layout.
revised the hymn layout.
revised the layout of the common of saints
many more page references.

Some things I'm working on (but not there yet):
English section headings (I have mixed feelings about this, but I think it's necessary for ease of use)
lots more rubrics, especially in the ordinary (probably more parallel Latin/English rubrics, too)

I'm also hoping to post a "choir" size edition soon, using the 8.5" x 11" format. What I'm hoping to do is to keep the English text about the same size, and then increase the Latin text as large as I can, given the form factor. We'll have to see how it works. To give credit where credit is due, I got the idea from the head of a Religious Community who has recently been looking for a way to make or obtain a "choir" size breviary.

I'm also debating about trying a "reverse-Baronius" style edition. This would involve normal size Latin text, with very small English text. I was thinking the other day that it might be beneficial, especially for "weaning" myself from the crutch of looking over at the English text too much as I pray. The smaller print would be there if I needed it, but I'd have to work at it more. Just a thought.

Some of the changes I've made recently would also make it easy to do a Latin-only Diurnal (or I suppose English only). There's still some more work I have to do before this is viable, but this is something I'm working towards.

New print edition soon, and promise of more frequent updates

As many of you are no doubt aware, it has been a VERY long time since I've updated the print editions. Actually, updates in general have been slow in coming, and for this I apologize. I think this bears a little discussion.

The reason that the print editions have been somewhat stagnant is that Lulu has a page limitation in their books. For paperbacks, it's 740. I hit that just after finishing the Proper of Seasons. Now it's over 1000.

So what am I trying to do? Well, I'm going to bump up the overall size (probably the 5.5x8.5), and play around with the fonts a little. I'm hoping to have something up soon...

Now about my slow pace regarding updates...Something occurred to me yesterday. There are a few things which interest me greatly, some of which have blogs or websites. I find myself going to these blogs/sites frequently, and am always a little disappointed when there's no new updates.

My revelation was that I made a decision about 14 months ago to start this project, and then another decision came about a year ago: to share it with others. One might say that I have a certain sense of obligation to those who care about this project, and I've been neglecting that lately.

So this is my "mea culpa." Now for my resolution: I'm going to make a concerted effort to make a post here at least once a week. Even if it's just to say, "I haven't made much headway this week, but I'm still alive."

Latest updates...slow going

It has been several months since my last update, and for that I apologize. I've had a number of things come up which have slowed work. I'll explain a little more in detail later.

BUT! I have made significant progress. First, the revisions to the Common of Saints are complete. There still may be a few things to do, but I'm confident that it will be much easier to use now, especially for III class feasts.

I can't recall if this was done in my last edition, but I've got most of the bugs worked out of the latin hyphenation. It's probably not even close to perfect, but it should be a LOT better. It's also working well enough now to fully justify the text, so I personally think that looks much better.

I've made some significant changes to the way the hymns appear. The first line of each strophe now begins with a slightly enlarged red letter, helping to denote the break a little better. I've also changed the font size, so they aren't quite so tiny any more.

Speaking of font size, I've bumped the whole thing up just a bit. It's not a huge jump, and it still probably won't be big enough for some; but it's now about the same size of most of my old breviaries.

Now on to the Proper of Saints. Work has gone slowly, mainly because of some of the feasts I've encountered. The most tedious was the feast of Christ the King, which is a relatively new feast. As such, there are no public-domain English translations of the hymns for that feast. I have endeavoured to do my own translations. They are not perfect, and there are some strophes I intend to change at some point...but it's better than nothing. This alone took considerable time.

Okay, so the bottom line is that the Proper of Saints is now complete from mid August until the beginning of February, and also a large part of July. So all in all, I think that I've completed just under 8 months.

Right now I'm working on another major project: The hymns for the Feast of the Assumption were changed in 1950, and so I've got two more hymns to translate! I have just about finished the "rough" literal translations, and then I'll need to do the poetic translations which incorporate rhyme and meter. This of course takes time. So...the next update may be a while!