TO THE EDITOR:
I feel I must first clearly state how much I enjoy Father John Kiley’s columns. It is therefore with some trepidation that I feel I must correct a few statements from his recent column, “The heart and soul of Catholic worship” (20 January 2022). In that column, Father Kiley said:
“From the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century until the Second Vatican Council in the twentieth century — that’s four hundred years — the Gospel passages at Sunday Mass were taken exclusively from the Gospel according to Matthew. Saints Mark, Luke and John never made a Sunday appearance.”
The 1962 edition of Missale Romanum has proper Masses for 53 Sundays, the Gospel readings for which predate the Council of Trent as “for more than 1,200 years, the Church read nearly the same pericopes over the course of the liturgical year” (Father Michael Fiedrowicz, “The Traditional Mass” (2020), p. 251).
Only 20 of these 53 Sunday Masses have readings from St. Matthew’s Gospel, with 18 Sundays having readings from St. Luke. Twelve Sundays have readings from St. John, including all the Sundays after Easter, up to and including Pentecost Sunday. Only three Sundays have readings from St. Mark, but at least one of these is Easter Sunday!
So, while the Gospel according to St. Matthew is indeed the most represented of the four evangelists, it is outnumbered by all the other evangelists combined.
Geoffrey W.M.P. Lopes da Silva, Monterey, California
