In the pre-1955 liturgical calendar, today (May 14) is the Octave Day of the Patrocinio de San José. For those priests who follow this calendar, the Solemnity of St. Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Patron of the Universal Church has been commemorated each day following the Third Wednesday after Easter feast day. Those who follow a later calendar celebrated St. Joseph the Worker on May 1, the same day as communists salute the generic “worker”, and pagans observe their festival of Beltane.
If one were to point to a single event that demonstrated the readiness for the revolution of Vatican Council II, the replacement of the Feast of the Patronage of St. Joseph would have to be considered.
A brief history of the Feasts:
According to Dom Gueranger in the Liturgical Year, Pope Pius IX established the Feast of the Patronage by an Apostolic Decree dated September 10, 1847. This devotion to St. Joseph, already permitted to the Carmelites and a number of dioceses throughout the world for more than a century, was thereafter to be kept throughout the Universal Church. Dom Gueranger wrote:
“The Church was on the eve of severe trials; and her glorious Pontiff, Pius IX, by a sacred instinct, was prompted to draw down on the flock entrusted to him the powerful protection of St. Joseph who assuredly has never had greater miseries and dangers to avert from the world, than those which threaten the present age.”
The feast held the rank of Double of the First Class. It also was a moveable feast – to be celebrated on the Third Sunday after Easter (later changed by Pope St. Pius X to the Third Wednesday after Easter, and who also added the Common Octave). St. Joseph was the only saint, except for the Blessed Virgin Mary, to be privileged with a feast day linked to Easter. And this exclusive honor seems only just, given St. Joseph’s intimate participation in the history of Redemption.
During the pontificate of Pius XII, the Solemnity of the Patronage was removed and replaced with the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker on the fixed date of May 1. From Wikipedia:
“In 1955, Pope Pius XII introduced in its place [i.e., the Solemnity of the Patronage] the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker on 1 May in the General Roman Calendar as an ecclesiastical counterpart to the International Workers’ Day on the same day. This reflects Saint Joseph’s status as patron of workers. Pius XII established the feast both to honor Saint Joseph, and to make people aware of the dignity of human work.”
Does the change of feast day matter?
St. Joseph’s exalted dignity derives from the singular role for which God the Father chose him from among all other men: to be the protector of the Blessed Virgin Mary and to exercise the rights and responsibilities of fatherhood over the Son of God made man. Working was a necessary part of his role as provider for the Holy Family but it was not a defining characteristic. All men are required, since the Fall of Adam, to work. The Litany of St. Joseph contains additional glorious titles under which the Church honors him, many of which apply solely to him. St. Joseph is so much more than a worker.
It was a logical extension to select the protector of the Holy Family to be the protector of the Universal Church. The dangers to the Church in 1955 were even greater than those of 1847, when the feast of the Patronage was established, and yet the new feast shifted attention away from St. Joseph’s paternal supervision and set it to compete with enemies of the Church using their date, their language and their premises. In fixing the date of the festal celebration, it took back a prerogative previously granted to St. Joseph. It removed the supernatural element of heavenly intervention and focused on the human element of the dignity of work and the worker. Could this change of feast day have sprung from the same ideological source that would lead, some few years later, to Vatican II extolling “the dignity of man”?
One could speculate that in removing the feast of St. Joseph’s Patronage, the safe-guarding St. Joseph had been providing was removed as well. Would Vatican Council II have even been able to take place if the Church had continued to invoke the protection of St. Joseph in all his attributes but especially that as Patron of the Universal Church?
One could also conjecture that praising St. Joseph solely as a worker down-played and obscured the aspect of Patriarchy. After all, the communists don’t distinguish between men and women in their idealization of the worker, and in fact, stress equality between the sexes. Is it just coincidental that the role of father has been disparaged and the nuclear family structure broken down in modern times?
Another point regarding May 1 bears mentioning. Before 1955, the first of May was already an important feast day in the Universal Church: that of the Apostles Philip and James, two of the original shepherds of the Church who shed their blood in defense of the Faith. Tradition holds May 1 as the anniversary of the translation of their bodies to Rome. Did not the honoring of these two Apostles on that day – and especially St. James, who was referred to in the Sacred Scriptures as Brother of the Lord (Gal. i., 19 and elsewhere) and recommended by our Savior to protect the Church in Jerusalem – provide a counter-balance to the communist/pagan observance of May 1st? Has putting St. Joseph the Worker in their stead slowed down the spread of communism, in all its guises, throughout the world?
What is certain is that the crisis of faith and morals in the Church has continued unabated since the alteration of the liturgy in 1955. We were warned by Our Lady; Pope Pius XII himself expressed his concern about it, and yet he allowed multiple changes to take place during his pontificate. We pray for the revolution in the Church to be quelled and her Sacred Traditions restored, including the special privileges granted to St. Joseph and other Saints that are reflected in the pre-1955 Tridentine liturgy and calendar.
SAINT JOSEPH, SPOUSE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY AND PATRON OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH, PRAY FOR US!
