Vatican website translation:
98. Members of any institute dedicated to acquiring perfection who, according to their constitutions, are to recite any parts of the divine office are thereby performing the public prayer of the Church.
They too perform the public prayer of the Church who, in virtue of their constitutions, recite any short office, provided this is drawn up after the pattern of the divine office and is duly approved.
Latin text:
98. Sodales cuiusvis Instituti status perfectionis, qui, vi Constitutionum, partes aliquas divini Officii absolvunt, orationem publicam Ecclesiae agunt.
Item, publicam Ecclesiae orationem agunt, si quod parvum Officium, vi Constitutionum, recitant, dummodo in modum Officii divini confectum ac rite approbatum sit.
Slavishly literal translation:
98. Members of whatever Institute of a state of perfection, who, by the force of their Constitutions, are bound to any parts of the Divine Office, do the public prayer of the Church.
Likewise, they do the public prayer of the Church if they recite that “Little Office,” by force of their Constitutions, as long as it is created in the structure of the Divine Office and is rightly approved.
Continuing the Council Fathers’ discussion of what would constitute a proper substitution for the Liturgy of the Hours for individuals, attention now turns to those religious communities who are not bound to pray the entire Office each day. Even though their constitutions may call their members (outside of clerics bound to the entire Office) to pray only segments of the Office (e.g., perhaps only Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and Night Prayer), they are nonetheless praying in the name of the Church. This raises the thorny question of how to determine the various “categories” of the Church’s prayer: liturgy, para-liturgy, devotions, pious exercises, group prayer, etc. There had been an argument that for a ritual prayer form to rise to the level of liturgy, it had to be not only regulated by the Church’s official liturgical books, but also had to be presided over by a cleric. This would relegate the Offices of women’s communities to the status of para-liturgy, even though those communities might pray exactly the same texts as those in the official liturgical books as long as no cleric presided over their common prayer. (A similar earlier categorization appeared to make choirs of males [because they were all potentially clerics] genuine “liturgical” choirs while “mixed” choirs and those totally composed of women were considered “para-liturgical” choirs, even though their repertoire might be the same.) That understanding is challenged here by the Council Fathers stating that any who join in the official prayer of the Church act as agents of the Church’s liturgy.
The second sentence acknowledges the development of various “Little Offices” (of the Holy Spirit, of the Cross, of the Passion, of the Sacred Heart, etc.) whose invariable content usually made those hours easier to memorize in contrast to the high variability of the official Divine Office. Probably the most famous and employed of the “Little Offices” was that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, often adopted by active religious communities whose pastoral responsibilities made recitation of even portions of the variable Divine Office too burdensome. (Since “Little Offices” were also attractive to devout laity, they sometimes appeared in the vernacular.) Usually praying a “Little Office” was considered a devotional exercise (like the recitation of the rosary) rather than genuinely liturgical prayer, prayed “in the name of the Church,” but the Council Fathers take the opposite tack.
Pray Tell readers might want to discuss the relative merits of adaptations of the official Divine Office such as Morning Praise and Evensong, Praise God in Song, and the Liturgy of the Hours sections in contemporary hymnals for individual and communal prayer.
Please leave a reply.