Among other responses to my saying canonisations aren't infallible, someone objected that it would mean the liturgy was fallible. On the feast of St Mary of Magdalen, that's something to think about. Thread. 1/

In the old Missal today, the Collect refers to her brother Lazarus. It gives Luke's account of the penitant sinner washing Jesus' feet. The octave of today is the feast of St Martha. Again, the Dies Irae identifies 2/

the sinner absolved by Jesus as 'Mary': presumably the 'woman taken in adultery' from John's gospel. The Gospels don't identify any of these women explicitly with the Mary Magdalen freed from seven devils who is present at the Crucifixion. The old liturgy reflects a tradition 3/

going back at least to St Gregory the Great which idenfied the Sinner with the ointment in Luke, the Woman taken in adultery in John, and Mary of Bethany, with St Mary Magdalen. This is reflected also in lots of religious art. In the reformed liturgy, not only are all these 4/

cross-references gone, but the identification of Magdalen with Mary of Bethany is actually excluded: Magdalen has one feast, and *Mary and Martha* another. Even the Dies Irae, where it survives at all - in the Office and in the Ordinariate Missal - 5/

loses the reference to 'Mary' and replaces it with 'sinner'. Now those who want to accord greater authority to the ancient liturgy, and the tradition of interpretation of the Latin Church behind it, than to the jejune speculations of the Bugnini boys, can count on my support. 6/

But this isn't the greatest argument for the infallibility of the canonisation of Paul VI, who authorised a Missal which explicitly disagrees with the historical/devotional facts laid out by its predecessor, and obviously never had a liturgical cult before 1962. Ends/

I've written more on the St Mary Magdalen issue here: http://www.lmschairman.org/2012/10/the-real-mary-magdalen-qui-mariam.html