Knowledge Base

OK. So aside from my dissertation (Yes, Doc Dork, I am working on it), my obsession this summer has been trying to find a copy of the Divine Office with all 150 psalms in Latin, to keep my mediocre Latin skills from going to mush.

The progression of this obsession has been thus: last March I spent a few days at Our Lady of the Rock, where they did the Divine Office in Latin. I thought it was cool, but didn't think that much of it. Fast forward a few months, and I obtained a copy of the LIttle Office of the BVM in parallel translation. It's nifty, although it's not as user-friendly to the gamer geek grad student as the current 1975 version put out by the Catholic Book Publishing Co. The ICEL version I don't mind, aside from some cheesy 1960's hymns I can't stand. (I kinda like the Grail Psalms.) The big thing that I don't like about it is that they've taken out any part of the psalms that could be offensive, including the two cursing psalms.

So I started looking for a copy of the Monastic Diurnal. But geek that I am, I thought it would be cool to get ahold of Matins, as well, since I'm usually up then, anyway. Then I heard that the breviary published by the OSB in 1963 is the Diurnal + Matins. And, lo and behold, my university actually had a copy. (Which I'm scanning. At least the first 1040 pages of each volume are the same...) Then I hear that the version they published isn't really the Benedictine offices, but the Roman Breviary. Does the Diurnal have all 150 psalms? I know St. Michael's Abbey Press in the UK has a reprint of it, but I don't want to shell out money for it, until I know what I need.

Who's right about the 1963 breviary? And should I be concerned about these people? So much of the Latin liturgy has been coopted by weird scismatic groups, I'm not sure who to trust.