Q: Hope you are doing well. I’m having the seminarians in my class read your Ars Celebrandi. They are enjoying it and learning a lot.
Quick question: Is the Gloria still sung at weddings during Lent? Or, as weddings “should refrain from too much pomp and display,” as the Ordo states it, might the Gloria be omitted?
Your thoughts?
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A: Golly, thanks for inviting the seminarians to study my book.
Here’s a previous post: https://paulturner.org/wedding-in-lent/
But after reading the BCDW’s January newsletter, I admit having doubts about my cock-sure position on Saturday night wedding Masses in Lent.
The newsletter takes up two other considerations for this calendar year: The March 25 Saturday observance of Annunciation and the June 24 observance of John the Baptist. Both fall on Saturdays. The newsletter states that anticipatory Masses are not obligatory, so if a Saturday evening Mass is not the regularly scheduled parish Mass, then the Saturday liturgy may be observed.
To me, that means that the ritual Mass of weddings could be observed as well, even on a Saturday night in Lent, as long as the Saturday in question did not pull a high rank. And in that case, the Gloria WOULD be sung at the wedding because it is the ritual Mass, not the Lent Mass.
A colleague corroborated this point: “If the wedding Mass is at the time of a regularly-scheduled parish Mass, then in that case you’d need to do the Sunday of Lent Mass. But if it’s at another time (later in the evening, for example) you can proceed with the understanding that it’s still a Saturday of Lent.”
I see now that the treatment I gave this topic in my books _One Love_ and _Inseparable Love_ needs to be revised.
In my view, the Gloria does not fall within the description of “too much pomp and display.” It is a prescribed part of certain Masses.