Calendar of saints

The calendar of saints is a traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. (The word "feast" in this context does not mean "a large meal, typically a celebratory one", but instead "an annual religious celebration, a day dedicated to a particular saint".)

The system arose from the early Christian custom of commemorating each martyr annually on the date of his or her death, or birth into heaven, a date therefore referred to in Latin as the martyr's dies natalis ("day of birth"). In the Eastern Orthodox Church, a calendar of saints is called a Menologion. "Menologion" may also mean a set of icons on which saints are depicted in the order of the dates of their feasts, often made in two panels.

History

As the number of recognized saints increased during Late Antiquity and the first half of the Middle Ages, eventually every day of the year had at least one saint who was commemorated on that date. To deal with this increase, some saints were moved to alternate days in some traditions or completely removed, with the result that some saints have different feast days in different calendars. For example, Ss. Perpetua and Felicity died on 7 March, but this date was later assigned to St. Thomas Aquinas, allowing them only a commemoration (see Tridentine Calendar), so in 1908 they were moved one day earlier. When the 1969 reform of the Catholic calendar moved him to 28 January, they were moved back to 7 March (see General Roman Calendar). Both days can thus be said to be their feast day, in different traditions. The Roman Catholic calendars of saints in their various forms, which list those saints celebrated in the entire church, contains only a selection of the saints for each of its days. A fuller list is found in the Roman Martyrology, and some of the saints there may be celebrated locally.

Calendar

A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. A date is the designation of a single, specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physical record (often paper) of such a system. A calendar can also mean a list of planned events, such as a court calendar or a partly or fully chronological list of documents, such as a calendar of wills.

Periods in a calendar (such as years and months) are usually, though not necessarily, synchronized with the cycle of the sun or the moon. The most common type of pre-modern calendar was the lunisolar calendar, a lunar calendar that occasionally adds one intercalary month to remain synchronised with the solar year over the long term.

The calendar in most widespread use today is the Gregorian calendar, introduced in the 16th century as a modification of the Julian calendar, which was itself a modification of the ancient Roman calendar. The term calendar itself is taken from calendae, the term for the first day of the month in the Roman calendar, related to the verb calare "to call out", referring to the "calling" of the new moon when it was first seen. Latin calendarium meant "account book, register" (as accounts were settled and debts were collected on the calends of each month). The Latin term was adopted in Old French as calendier and from there in Middle English as calender by the 13th century (the spelling calendar is early modern).

The Catholic Register

The Catholic Register is the oldest English language Catholic weekly newspaper in Canada, launched in 1893 (and tracing its roots to The Catholic, 1830).

Based in Toronto, Ontario and circulated nationally, it is owned by the Archdiocese of Toronto, and published weekly in tabloid format, with 47 issues per year.

News coverage includes local, national, and international Church-related news (frequently reprinted from other Catholic news syndication services), plus various columns and editorials. In their own words:

The Catholic Register has been in the forefront of public debates concerning the Church. Whether it be education, military conscription in wartime, the battle against poverty or human rights, Register pages have been a forum for discussion and presenting the Catholic viewpoint.... The Register tries to present a broad spectrum of views from within the Catholic community, as well as views from those outside the faith which would, in the opinion of the editor, help Catholics better understand their world.