Do you compile your Diocesan Ordo?

[FrGareth]

This is rather a specialist matter but may save a lot of time for those few souls entrusted with the task:

Most diocesan yearbooks include a printed Ordo which lists the universal, national and diocesan liturgical observances and the anniversaries of deceased clergy. In Wales we have a particularly complicated situation where one yearbook covers three dioceses, and one diocese includes territory in England.

I have written software which mostly automates the task of making such a complicated Ordo, which may be useful to compilers in less complicated territories, too!

Please feel free to try it out: you need to download this Excel Spreadsheet http://www.drgareth.info/Ordo-Data.xlsm and this Word Document http://www.drgareth.info/Ordo-Show.docm into the same directory on your computer. Open the Word document (Ordo-Show), and if you are asked for permission to "Enable Macros", please do so. Then watch what happens!

If you would find this software useful, please PM me and I will discuss the special circumstances of your diocese (what its regional observances are) and advise you on tailoring the spreadsheet accordingly.

Happy Christmas - Nadolig Llawen!

[FrGareth]

PS the version I posted online has the Welsh calendar removed, as my colleagues in the other Welsh dioceses already have it. I've optimised what I posted for England, but it can be customised for other countries too!

[Southern Comfort]

PS the version I posted online has the Welsh calendar removed, as my colleagues in the other Welsh dioceses already have it. I've optimised what I posted for England, but it can be customised for other countries too!

Gareth,

The version you posted seems to contain

(1) The Introduction, in the Word document, 8 pages long with nothing following.
(2) A blank necrology (in the spreadsheet) apart from four sample entries (Paul Priest, David Deacon, Billy Bishop and Monty Monsignori [why the plural, I wonder?, and why nothing for Cornelius Canon?!]).

I do not find the General Calendar included anywhere, nor any of the other kinds of details one would also need to include, such as which week of the psalter, specifics of office and Mass where these are not obvious, recently added feasts in the Roman Calendar, liturgical colour of each day/celebration, diocesan prayer intentions for each day, diocesan and national collections, etc, etc, nor any provision for any of these, even though some of them are mentioned in the introduction with the implication that they follow in the Word document (they don't). The introduction additionally says that the Ordo does not include details of dedication/anniversary of dedication, but these are precisely what needs to go in along with everything else.

There seems to be something missing. Is there another file or database not yet posted to which the Word document would link? (The document itself appears not to contain any blind links.) If not, then what is provided so far appears to require the inputting all that information from scratch (as well as including diocesan feasts and memorials, etc) which those who compile diocesan ordos will have already done in their own databases, etc.

[FrGareth]

(1) The Introduction, in the Word document, 8 pages long with nothing following.
(2) A blank necrology (in the spreadsheet) apart from four sample entries (Paul Priest, David Deacon, Billy Bishop and Monty Monsignori [why the plural, I wonder?, and why nothing for Cornelius Canon?!]).
I do not find the General Calendar included anywhere...

Hi SC, thanks for letting me know something's not working right (the advantage of posting first in a friendly community.)

In the spreadsheet, there should be 16 separate tabs. Tab 2 should be called UniCal and contain the Universal Calendar.

When you open the Word document, do you get a popup box which says "Do you want to produce an Ordo?"

If you get the popup and choose NO, all that happens is you can see the frontmatter in the Ordo, which can be edited like any Word document.

If you get the popup and choose YES, you be asked to enter the year of your choice and will see Word compile the Ordo before your very eyes.

If you don't see the popup at all, that means either your version of Word can't run macros or your security settings are preventing Word accessing the macro, or at least the automatic start. Open the Word document and try pressing CTRL-ALT-X and seeing if that starts the Macro manually - and please let me know what happens!

PS - why the plural? Reasons of alliteration! (Or do I mean euphony - alliteration of the last letter rather than the first!)

[FrGareth]

The introduction additionally says that the Ordo does not include details of dedication/anniversary of dedication, but these are precisely what needs to go in along with everything else.

In Wales, we do not annotate our Ordo with the dedication dates of individual parish churches. If any diocese does include those in its Ordo, those annotations can be made on the relevant tab of the spreadsheet.

[Southern Comfort]

In the spreadsheet, there should be 16 separate tabs. Tab 2 should be called UniCal and contain the Universal Calendar.

At first I could not see these tabs at all. Upon closing and reopening the spreadsheet, I can now see all the tabs. They seem to contain most of what I was looking for. Alas, I immediately spotted a typo in UniCal line 29 (March 19 — scroll across: it should be Pope Francis with a full stop, not Franc)

When you open the Word document, do you get a popup box which says "Do you want to produce an Ordo?"

No. Nothing at all. Clearly that is the problem.

If you don't see the popup at all, that means either your version of Word can't run macros or your security settings are preventing Word accessing the macro, or at least the automatic start. Open the Word document and try pressing CTRL-ALT-X and seeing if that starts the Macro manually - and please let me know what happens!

Ctrl-Alt-X gives you an error message saying:
The macros in this project are disabled. Please refer to the online help or documentation of the host application to determine how to enable macros.

I am running MS Office 2007, if that helps.

PS: I see that the Portsmouth 2014 Ordo has just been put up online at http://www.portsmouthdiocese.org.uk — click on Diocesan Ordo link on the l.h. side which takes you to the page from where you can download the PDF. This document contains much of the material I was talking about in my earlier post. (No, I do not compile this Ordo, by the way.)

[FrGareth]

Ah! You may need to save the files in a Trusted Location - see http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/create-remove-or-change-a-trusted-location-for-your-files-HA010031999.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA010031071

It was written on office 2007 so should be compatible.

[FrGareth]

Alas, I immediately spotted a typo in UniCal line 29 (March 19 — scroll across: it should be Pope Francis with a full stop, not Franc

Try clicking on the cell - you may find it contains more text than the column width can display, but reads OK in the edit box at the top of excel.

[Southern Comfort]

Ah, much better! Thank you. And yes, I can now see the cells displaying correctly.

I think if you want to get better visibility for this useful tool, you would do well to circulate all diocesan financial secretaries as well as chairs of liturgy commissions.

I note that UniCal uses some incorrect spellings of saints, etc. Sometimes these are down to ICEL's USA usage, sometimes down to divergences between Missal and Lectionary usages. All spellings can of course be changed in the database.

For convenience, here is a brief list:
Line 33, 23 March: St Turibius of Mongrovejo — see, e.g., Lectionary
Lines 153 and 173, 21 July and 10 August: Laurence is the correct English spelling; Lawrence is the USA spelling
Line 156, 24 July: Though pronounced "Sharbel", his name is more correctly spelled "Charbel" (the French "ch" is an "sh" sound in English)
Line 214, 20 September: Tae-gon and Ha-sang are more conventionally printed without the hyphens, thus Taegon and Hasang, with or without accents
Line 217, 23 September: St Pius is more conventionally referred to as "St Pio of Pietrelcina" because he is "Padre Pio"
Line 247, 23 October: St John is more conventionally spelled "Capistrano" as in San Giovanni da Capistrano and San Juan Capistrano
Line 382, 28 April: "Grignion" is an ICEL attempt to spell phonetically the correct "Grignon" in Grignon de Montfort. In fact ICEL appear indiscriminately to use both spellings (see the Liturgy of the Hours Supplement Green Book, which has the wrong spelling in the body of the text but the right spelling in the index)

[FrGareth]

I note that UniCal uses some incorrect spellings of saints, etc. Sometimes these are down to ICEL's USA usage, sometimes down to divergences between Missal and Lectionary usages.
Lines 153 and 173, 21 July and 10 August: Laurence is the correct English spelling; Lawrence is the USA spelling
Line 156, 24 July: Though pronounced "Sharbel", his name is more correctly spelled "Charbel" (the French "ch" is an "sh" sound in English)
Line 214, 20 September: Tae-gon and Ha-sang are more conventionally printed without the hyphens, thus Taegon and Hasang, with or without accents
Line 217, 23 September: St Pius is more conventionally referred to as "St Pio of Pietrelcina" because he is "Padre Pio"
Line 382, 28 April: "Grignion" is an ICEL attempt to spell phonetically the correct "Grignon" in Grignon de Montfort. In fact ICEL appear indiscriminately to use both spellings (see the Liturgy of the Hours Supplement Green Book, which has the wrong spelling in the body of the text but the right spelling in the index)

Thanks for picking up my typos on Mogrovejo and Capistrano! For the other variant spellings you have identified in the text quoted, I have simply adopted the usage of the 2010 Roman Missal for England and Wales. Their conventions may or may not be as conventional as yours!