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Moreover, since the priest in radio is an important part of re­
ligious broadcasting, and since he is always a public figure in every
community, he will be called upon to talk over the air from timeto
time, whether he makes radio a prime interest in his life or whether
he doesn’t.
For the above reasons, I feel that there is a desperate need for
more courses in radio in Catholic colleges and seminaries. It will
be m these courses that the elements of script writing, delivery,
and so on could be taught, so that priests could take their places
in the radio field as successful speakers, writers, and produces
and directors, and in turn guide many of the laity into the same
field.
Always ready to assist priests in the radio field is the Radio
Bureau of the National Council of Catholic Men—to discuss script
problems, production problems, and whatever else is connected
with radio programs. The services of the Council extend to the
production of recordings for use on local programs, and an everwidening set of services so far as scripts, talks, music, and continuity
are concerned.
And now, in very definite conclusion, may I ask the readffsto
say a prayer for the writer of these articles. Radio is a strange
and wonderful field. I have often said that it is a school of humility,
and that is true ; but like all schools of humility, its lessons are hard
to leam. That is why I need your prayers.

William C. Smith
ft·. WÿWil I-■ ■

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The National Council oj Catholic Men
Washington, D. C.

Devotion to Our Lord and to His Mother
It is a common sentiment of our nature to honor every good mother
for the sake of her son: it is, then, against our regenerate nature to
refuse honor to that best Mother of the best Son. And so it cotas
that His ministers are her ministers; that fidelity to the gospel ffl
Christ is fidelity to devotion for Mary.
—Fr. Xavier Donald Macleod, in Devotion to the Blessed Virgin ifctrj «
North America (New York, 1866), p. 11.

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Two recent and well-written articles have focused the attention of
American priests upon the widespread current interest in that part
of sacred theology which deals with the development of dogma.
The articles, the report on "Current Theology” produced by Dr.
Philip Donnelly, S.J. for Theological Studies in 19471 and
"Opinions Concerning Doctrinal Development,” written by Dr.
Charles E. Sheedy, C.S.C., and published in last month’s issue of
The American Ecclesiastical Review,2 cast valuable light upon some
of the more influential opinions now under discussion in European,
and particularly in French, theological circles. Both writings were
highly commendable. Together they will inevitably aid in bringing
about a more intense study of the nature and the characteristics of
Catholic dogma among the priests in our own country.
Any study in this field is valuable only to the extent that it is
objective, explaining the function of the Church in presenting new
dogmatic formulae and statements, rather than attempting to
explain that function away. In carrying out its universal and
unique commission to teach divine public revelation, the Church
must obviously avail itself, from time to time, of a terminology
or mode of expression which it has not previously employed. It
would not be a living and effectively infallible teacher of God’s
message were it to act otherwise. The true study of doctrinal
development considers this definite activity of Our Lord’s true
Church, and tries, ultimately, to describe and to explain it. Any
theory about new dogmatic phraseology, on the other hand, which
fails to take cognizance of the Church’s work, or which attempts
to explain the new formulae in terms of an imagined accretion of
objective content in the body of dogma is definitely unscientific
and runs counter to the Catholic faith.
In other words, the man who wishes to make an accurate study of
the development of dogma must take cognizance of the fact that, as
a doctrinal institution, the primary concern of the Catholic Church
is to teach adequately and infallibly the divinely revealed message
which it has received as such from the lips of the apostles. The
1 Cf. Theological Studies, Sept, and Dec., 1947.
«Cipp. 19-32.

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Church’s power to teach infallibly on such matters as theological
conclusions, dogmatic facts, the canonization of Saints, and the
approval of religious orders stems from and centers around this
primary objective of its teaching mission. The Church is empow­
ered to pronounce inerrantly on these other subjects precisely and
only because such activity must be included in the function of a
living and effective infallible teacher of the revealed message itself.
The Church, within which Our Lord lives and acts as the supreme
Teacher of divine truth, must be able, not only to state this truth
accurately and effectively to the men of all times and all places,
but it must also be able unfailingly to recognize, in teaching pre­
sented under different cultural forms, both its own doctrine and
tenets opposed to that doctrine.

In teaching the apostolic deposit of divine revelation infallibly
over the course of the centuries, the Catholic Church has never
denied in itself and has never excluded from this body of teaching
any individual truth or group of truths received from the apostles
as part of the body of God’s message. Furthermore, the Church
has never proposed as a part of that message any assertions which
were not really contained in the apostolic deposit. Finally, it has
never misinterpreted either any individual truth contained in scrip
ture or tradition or the body of divine public revelation as a whole
And, on the positive side, the Church has actually taught, at every
time since its inception, the entire deposit of God’s teaching en­
trusted to its care.
Now the body of Catholic dogma is that deposit of truth which
the Church finds in Sacred Scripture and in divine apostolic
tradition, and which, by its solemn judgment or in its ordinary and
universal teaching activity, it presents as having been revealed by
God to be believed by all men with the assent of divine faith. Since
the Catholic Church has been divinely commissioned and empow­
ered to teach God's revealed message infallibly and adequately t6
all men, it is evident that, at any time during the course of the
Church’s long history, the body of Catholic dogma has always beea
and will ever be objectively identical with the original deposit of
revelation as the Church originally received it from the lips of
apostles themselves. What the Church sets forth as God’s revealed
teaching is always exactly and substantially what the apostles told
the Church to hold and teach as the divine message.

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Just as obviously, however, the form and the language in which
that teaching is expressed has developed over the course of the
centuries. The doctrine the Church teaches is exactly the same
as the doctrine the apostles gave the Church, but a great many of
the words and the forms in which the Church asserts this body of
truth are and manifestly must be quite distinct from those employed
by the apostles themselves. The Church would not be an adequate
and effective infallible teaching agency otherwise. Teaching neces­
sarily involves a process of setting forth a body of truth in the
language and in terms of the mentality of those who are to learn
this truth. It implies labor in the direction of clarity and accuracy.
It demands effort to prevent ambiguity and misunderstanding, and
to answer the questions which occur to particular sets of learners.
Unless the teacher of any body of doctrine is able to answer queries
about the content of his message, his efforts are valueless.
The Catholic Church has fulfilled all of these requirements for
successful teaching. And, in thus presenting divine public reve­
lation to men, the Church has necessarily and continually made use
of new dogmatic formulae and new doctrinal definitions. The new
dogmatic formulae are, in the last analysis, merely ways in which
the Church has presented to new ages and new cultures the same
set of truths which it had previously taught in an older phraseology
to other men. The new definitions are the final and thus com­
pletely satisfactory resolutions of questions which more recent
generations have asked about the meaning and the content of the
Church’s divine message. Both procedures have been and, until
the end of time will ever be, absolutely requisite for the Church
in pursuance of its doctrinal commission. Neither adds any shred
or aspect of doctrine to the original apostolic deposit entrusted to
the Church from the beginning. Yet both can and should be
reckoned as constituting an advance in the teaching of this same
divine message.
Thus the new dogmatic formula in which the first oecumenical
council declared that the Son of God is consubstantial (όμοσύσως)
with the Father prevented any excuse for an erroneous teaching
on this point based on an ambiguity on the part of the orthodox
presentation. The definition of the Roman Pontiff’s infallibility
by the most recent oecumenical council answered, once and for all,
a question about the content of divine revelation. In both instances

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the Catholic Church asserted truths which had always been a part
of its own doctrinal heritage. Moreover, in both cases, the Church
advanced the cause of truth.
It has been the fashion among some recent writers to explain
the dogmatic development within the Catholic Church in terms oi
certain analogies. Some have likened it to the process by which an
oak tree develops out of an acorn. Others have attempted to
clarify the issue by comparing it to the process in which white light
is broken up into the various colors of the spectrum when it is
passed through a prism. Lately an attempt has been made to
explain it by a comparison with the process through which i
formless mass of precious metal is minted into small coins.
The first comparison is definitely misleading. An oak tree con­
tains an abundance of material not included in the acorn, while the
dogma of the Catholic Church contains all and only the divine
public revelation which was communicated to the Church prior
to the death of the last apostle. The second comparison is innocu­
ous enough, although it has only a very limited effectiveness in
elucidating the development of dogma. The third comparison is
harmful, implying a fundamental misunderstanding about the na­
ture of the original revealed deposit entrusted to the Church.
The only completely acceptable and valuable approach to an
explanation of the development of Catholic dogma is to be found,
however, not in an appeal to some completely extrinsic factor, but
in terms of the teaching process itself. There are new dogmatic
formulae and new dogmatic definitions, and these are exact state­
ments of the original apostolic deposit of revealed divine truth
because and only because the Church is a living and infallible
society within which Our Lord resides and acts as the Supreme
Teacher. Primarily the dogmatic message as it stands is to be
compared with the original deposit as received from the lips of the
apostles, not as a tree is compared with its seed, but as a message
accurately and adequately taught by a living teaching agency is to
be compared with that message as it was originally imparted to
the teacher.
In the light of this basic truth about the nature of Catholic dogma,
certain tendencies in recent theorizing about this subject must be
evaluated. These tendencies seem to stem from a desire on ths
part of some Catholic writers to assert the vitally effective truths tf

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our faith in a medium more acceptable to modem minds than that
of scholasticism. Unfortunately, however, they all-too-frequently
lead towards a misconception of Catholic doctrine as such.
In the first place there is an observable modem tendency to
understress or even to deny the fact that the original deposit of
revealed truth communicated to the Church by the apostles was
and is a body of intellectual teaching. We are sometimes solicited
to imagine that the original revealed deposit did not consist in a
set of explicitly revealed propositions at all, but rather in the
Godhead or in the Person of Christ. In other words, we are told
to believe that what the apostles delivered to the Church at the
beginning was a thing which could be described, rather than a
definite teaching about that reality.
This tendency can lead to a serious misunderstanding of the
Catholic message itself. Like any other specious and therefore
formidable miscalculation, it is based upon a manifest truth, a truth
it twists into a false meaning. It is a fact that the object of divine
Catholic faith is in one sense God Himself, the divine Reality. But,
at the same time, this object is definitely and truly a series of
intellectual propositions or judgments. There is no shadow of
opposition between these two truths. From the time of St Thomas
Aquinas an explicit statement of these two aspects of divine Catholic
faith has been part of the traditional heritage of scholastic theology,
It is an integral part of Catholic truth that the original apostolic
deposit of revelation given to the true Church of Jesus Christ
consisted both in the Person of Our Lord and in a body of
intellectual teaching, a series of judgments expressed in statements
or propositions. The vision of the Divine Persons in a manner
independent of and superior to the human process of knowledge by
means of ideas and judgments belongs to the status of the Church
triumphant rather than to that of the Church militant If the
deposit of revelation given to the Church by the apostles had con-

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sisted in Our Lord Himself to the exclusion of a body of teaching,
then obviously the subsequent dogmatic statements of the Church
would be merely expressions of its experience of Christ.
On the other hand, it is quite incorrect to infer or to imply that
the traditional Catholic theologians as a class, or, for that matter,
any real Catholic theologian whatsoever, could be judged guilty of
teaching that the original deposit of apostolic revelation consisted

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in a body of propositions with no reference to God or to His Christ
The truth is that the apostles handed over to the Church a definite
body of teaching about God. This body of teaching about God is,
in this world, the only basic means by which men may acquire an
awareness of the supernatural truth about God in this world. It
is the one body of teaching which, by the help of God’s grace, men
have accepted with the firm and supernatural assent of divine
Catholic faith.
Another aspect of this same highly objectionable tendency in
modem writing manifests itself in a denial of the fact that the
implicit content of the original deposit of revelation can be ascer­
tained by way of theological reasoning. Not infrequently in these
times we encounter a hint or a statement to the effect that the
choice of new dogmatic formulae and the content of new dogmatic
definitions has resulted from some sort of religious instinct within
the Church, or even from the indwelling of the Holy Ghost within
this society, to the exclusion of any properly logical evidence that
the more recent propositions have been really though implicitly
contained in the original apostolic deposit from the very beginning.
The men who follow this trend are not slow to stigmatize the
methods of their opponents as "theologistic” or “inteHectualistsc”
The truth of the matter is, however, that the Church does not
make dogmatic pronouncements apart from logically satisfactory

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evidence that the truth it asserts as divinely revealed actually forms |
a part of that body of revealed teaching which it received from the |
apostles and which it is commissioned and empowered infallibly |
to teach until the end of time. It remains perfectly true that the |
evidence upon which the Church acts may well be something which |
has escaped the notice of a good number of its own theologians, t
and even of the best among its theologians. Such a case occurred f
when the dogma of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception was defined j
by Pope Pius IX. Nevertheless, the evidence was in existence j
and was examined by the Holy Father before he issued his |
definition.
;
When he began his preparation for the definition of the Im- |
maculate Conception, Pope Pius IX made it completely clear that g
he relied upon the assistance of divine grace to enlighten his mind 4
on the project he was about to undertake. In an encyclical letter |
dated Feb. 2, 1849, the great pontiff begged the bishops of the |

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129

Catholic world to have the faithful entrusted to their care pray
publicly for him.3 Yet Pope Pius IX certainly did not consider
that this divine help in any way exempted him from examining the
properly theological evidence about this doctrine. In this same
encyclical he announced the appointment of a pontifical commission
to study this evidence and to report to him.
The commission appointed at that time by Pope Pius IX applied
itself first of all to a consideration of the characteristics in function
of which a truth or a proposition is said to be definable as Catholic
dogma. It indicated no less than nine principles which must be
employed in evaluating a proposition as definable.4 The first four
among these principles dealt with the type of evidence not absolutely
necessary in order that a proposition should properly be judged as
definable.
(1) The fact that, in the past, there have been conflicting
teachings on this subject within the Catholic Church, or the fact
that all have not hitherto agreed on this teaching, does not render
a doctrine incapable of definition.
(2) The fact that even authoritative writers can be quoted in
opposition to a teaching does not render that teaching incapable of
being defined.
(3) In order that a doctrine be definable, it is not necessary
that there should be explicit, or even implicit, testimony to this
doctrine in Sacred Scripture, since it is certain and manifest that
the scope of revelation is wider than that of Scripture.
(4) In order .to show that the doctrine to be defined belongs to
Tradition, it is not necessary to adduce a series of Fathers and
of other witnesses reaching back to apostolic times.
All of these negative principles imply the commission's conviction
that, in order that a doctrine should be considered as definable, there
must be real evidence that this teaching is actually to be found in
the apostolic deposit of divine public revelation. The commission
3 Ci. Cardinal Gousset, La croyance générale et constante de l’église
touchant fImmaculée Conception de la Bienheureuse Vierge Marie (Paris,
1855), pp. 22 ff.
4 For a more complete examination of this report, see the article “The
Requisites for an Infallible Pontifical Definition according to the Commission
of Pope Pius IX,” in The American Ecclesiastical Review, CXV, 5 (Nov.
1940), 376 ff.

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manifested not the slightest trace of willingness to content itself
with a conviction about the definability of a doctrine based upon
some corporate religious sense within the Church or upon any other I
so-called “non-intellectual” factor. This concern of the commission i
shows itself even more clearly in the positive principles it delineatei
(1) In order that a statement may be considered as definable,
there must be a certain number of solemn testimonies direcdy
pertinent to it.
(2) A proposition is capable of being defined if there can be
found one or more revealed principles containing it.
(3) A proposition is capable of being defined if it shows a
necessary connection with dogmas. In other words, a proposition
ought to be accepted as revealed when, from the denial of this
proposition, there follows by logical and immediate necessity the
denial of one or more revealed principles.
(4) A proposition may be defined as Catholic dogma if it is
preached as a part of divine public revelation in the concordant
teaching of the actual episcopate.
(5) A proposition is capable of definition when it is shown to
be a part of divine public revelation by the practice of the Church.
In calling for a theological examination of the question he con­
sidered defining and for a study of the conditions that rendered a
truth capable of definition, Pope Pius IX stated clearly that he was
following the precedent established by his predecessors on tie
pontifical throne. It was clearly his idea that it would be impossible
to define a doctrine as a Catholic dogma of faith in the absence of
definite theological evidence that this doctrine was contained in tie
original apostolic deposit of divine public revelation. The report
of his commission manifests this same certainty. Clearly the report
of the commission is not in any sense an infallible document of tie
Catholic Church. It is, nevertheless, an authentic and highly im­
portant statement, especially in the light of its intimate connecto
with the ultimate definition of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception.
It indicated the sort of procedure the Church actually employed.
This procedure turns out to be something tremendously remote
from the kind of thing conjured up by those writers who have
protested against “theologism” in the accurate and traditional
descriptions of definable doctrinal propositions.
According to what the commission found to be the norms

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actually used by the Church in discerning propositions which are
capable of being defined as dogmas, the ecclesia docens has always
looked to see that there was solid theological evidence that a
doctrine was contained in the original deposit of revelation before
defining it. Once this doctrine has been proposed as a dogma of
the Church by the Holy Father himself or by the ecclesia docens
under his leadership, it is something to be accepted as true on the
authority of God revealing it, rather than by reason of the
theological demonstration which showed it to be a part of the
original apostolic deposit. Nevertheless, prior to the definition
itself, it was the manifest duty of the Church authorities to
investigate the theological evidence pertinent to the doctrine to be
defined. The charism of infallibility, protecting the Holy Father
and the ecclesia docens as a whole from misinterpreting the divine
message, in no way dispensed the divinely authorized teachers
within the Church from this investigation of theological evidence.
This could not be true unless there is actually available sufficient
theological evidence in favor of every truth defined as dogma by
the Catholic Church throughout the course of the centuries.
Incidentally, the report of the commission appointed by Pope
Pius IX gives little support to those writers who would draw a real
distinction between formal implicit revelation and virtual revelation,
These writers are under the impression that a doctrine is formally
but implicitly revealed when it is really contained in the original
deposit of divine revelation, although not thus contained in the
phraseology or the manner in which it has subsequently been presented by the Church. A thing is said to be virtually revealed
when it can be shown to belong to the revealed message by means
of a genuine demonstration based on principles contained in the
revealed message itself. The writers who hold that there is a real
distinction between these two concepts hold that the virtually
revealed proposition is arrived at by means of a true process of
reasoning, a passage from one truth to another, while the process by
which one establishes the authenticity of a statement formally and
implicitly revealed is not a genuine reasoning process at all, since
there is no real passage from one truth to another.
The commission gave no sanction to such a distinction. A truth
was considered as definable when one or more revealed principles
containing it can be found or when, from a denial of the proposition

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under consideration, there followed with logical necessity the denial
of one or more revealed principles. From this point of view at
least, the commission found nothing to prevent the definition as a
Catholic dogma of any proposition which assumes the stature of a
genuine theological conclusion.
This traditional and genuine concept of doctrinal development in
the Catholic Church is far from denying a real distinction between
faith and theology. The point of the matter is, however, that the
real distinction between these two entities is not based on the order
of reality with which they deal, but rather upon the manner in
which they deal with it. Divine Catholic faith is the acceptance of
Catholic dogma, an absolutely certain assent based upon the
authority of God revealing. The Church which proposes and
formulates the dogmatic message acts as the instrument of Our
Lord, residing within it and governing its doctrinal activity. The
individual theologian acts as the servant of the Church in explaining
and teaching this same message, expounding the doctrines and
showing how they are contained in the original revealed deposit
Theology presents its message in the form of conclusions, of
propositions set forth as acceptable by reason of their demonstration
from principles of divine faith. In point of fact, most of the con­
clusions presented in the average manual of theology and demon­
strated and explained in the light of their position in the original
deposit of faith are actually dogmas of the Church. It is precisely
the demonstrative and discursive presentation of these truths which
is proper to theology as such. Dogma differs from theology, not
because it deals with a different realm or variety of truth, W
because it is a body of truth authoritatively presented by the
apostolic college and by the head of that college, acting as the
instruments· of Christ within the Church, presented in such a way
that its acceptability does not depend upon the value of any demon·
stration but only upon God’s own authority.
Another tendency manifest in some recent writings on Catholic
dogma is that which classifies the original deposit of faith with
other great ideas, which have developed and have vitally affected
mankind. Thus we are led to believe that there is a similarity
; between the development of the ideas of democracy, of nationalism·
and of communism and the development of Catholic dogma within
the true Church of Jesus Christ. However respectable the origin^

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source of this theory may be, the doctrine itself is quite incom­
patible with the truth about Christian revelation.
The “ideas” to which the authors who favor this tendency allude
were concepts which at first designated certain vague and formless
things that proved eminently desirable to great portions of the
human family. A great many individuals attempted to clarify these
originally vague concepts and, in the course of time, a number of
explanations were forthcoming. Some of these explanations turned
out to be inconsistent with the original notions. Others proved to
be acceptable expressions of these much-discussed concepts. In
every case, however, the men who were attracted by certain
originally vague ideals were solely occupied with the task of ex­
plaining to themselves and to others the details which belonged to
the objects they desired.
The Christian message, however, was never a vague or formless
concept at all. It was not at first nor at any time merely the object
of an inchoate and wordless desire on the part of human beings.
It was a definite teaching from God, presented as such by Our
Lord, and shown to be authentic through the various motives of
credibility He attached to it. Its development is merely the con­
tinued process of teaching this same doctrine by Our Lord through
the Church within which He resides.
Thus it is not true that Catholic dogma is in any way different
from the original deposit of faith or from the body of Catholic
teaching at any time during the history of the Church. It is true,
of course, that much of Catholic dogma finds no expression in the
earliest monuments of Christian literature. One who knows the
status of primitive Christian literature would never make the mis­
take of imagining that it contains all that was taught as divinely
revealed during the earliest years of the Church. It is also true
that a certain amount of Catholic dogma is not contained in the
inspired books of Sacred Scripture. The Scripture is not the only
source of divine revelation.
What the Church teaches today as Catholic dogma does not differ
in the least substantially and objectively from what the Church
taught as dogma during the first centuries or from what the Church
received as divine revelation from the lips of the original members
of the apostolic college. Although, from time to time during the

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course of the centuries, the Church has made use of new formulae
in teaching its dogmas, no one of these new formulae has ever
opposed or contradicted any dogma of the Church or any other
formula in which the ecclesia docens had authoritatively expressed
its divinely revealed message previously. Once the infallible teach­
ing Church has consecrated a formula as an accurate statement of a
divinely revealed truth, that formula can never be relinquished. It
always remains the infallibly correct expression of a truth con­
tained in the deposit of Christian revelation. In every case, new
dogmatic formulae serve to set forth explicitly truths already
forming a part of God’s revealed message, truths already presorted,
really though implicitly, under previously existing dogmatic for­
mulae. In no case can the new formula be understood as a correction
or replacement of the old.
Finally, it is quite misleading to imagine that Catholic dogma
today can accurately be described as something which the early
Christians could not and did not foresee. They were perfectly
aware of that message which is now expressed and enshrined in
Catholic dogma. They could not, of course, be expected to have
previous knowledge of the cultural and linguistic reasons which
made imperative the present mode of teaching the very truths which
they believed and which we believe. They could not foresee the
Tridentine expression of God’s revelation about His grace, but the
teaching they believed was and is the very doctrine which Trent
infallibly expounded.

Joseph Clifford Fentox
The Catholic University of America,
Washington, D. C.

Mission Intention
“The Church in the Belgian Congo" is the Holy Father’s Mission
Intention for the month of February, 1949.

Answers to Questions
ON THE REVIVAL OF VESPERS

Question: What is the obligation of a pastor to have Vespers
on Sunday afternoon or evening in accordance with the recent letter
Mediator Dei and the old prescription of the Baltimore Council?
As we have the Kyriale for the congregational singing of High
Mass, what do we have for the singing of Vespers ?
Answer: Vespers, in a more or less truncated form, used to be
the regular Sunday service for the afternoon and evening in our
churches but for several decades the practice has fallen into desue­
tude. In the Mediator Dei of our Holy Father there is an earnest
recommendation that the pious custom of holding the Vesper service
for the laity be not allowed to become obsolete but the encyclical
states that, in this matter, nothing is prescribed as of strict law.
"It is very earnestly to be hoped that lay folk should take active
part in reciting or singing the office of Vespers on feast days in
their own parishes.”
The Second Plenary Council of Baltimore (Tit. VI, Cap. iii, 379)
did order that Vespers be sung, and in their entirety, in all churches
on Sundays and feast days and that Vespers be not omitted on
account of other services. However, the Fathers of the Council
inserted the clause, "quatenus fieri potest,” in consideration of
practical difficulties in the carrying out of the decree. The Council
furthermore (loc. cit. 380) recommended that the rudiments of
Gregorian chant be taught in the parish schools to the end that
eventually a great part of the congregation would be able to chant
Vespers with the clergy. The Third Plenary Council (Tit. Ill,
Cap. iv, 118) legislated that Vespers must be sung in their entirety,
with no abbreviation of the psalms, and quoted (loc. cit. 119) the
words of the Second Council concerning the teaching of chant in
the schools.
As to the obligation of initiating or restoring Vespers as the
regular Sunday afternoon or evening service in parish churches,
while the Mediator Dei of the Holy Father certainly recommends
Vespers in preference to any non-liturgical devotion, nothing is
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