No More Novenas?

"Acres of old maids" (as one priest puts it) have loved the novena--the Roman Catholic prayer service, usually offered once a week in the evening in honor of a saint or the Virgin Mary. Now the novena seems to be dying. Next month the magazine Novena Notes, published by the Servile Fathers to promote novenas to Our Sorrowful Mother, will suspend publication because there is no real demand for it. "The novena is no longer very popular," say the editors. "In fact, attendance has fallen to a perilous low mark."

The word novena comes from the Latin word for nine, and originally meant a nine-day cycle of Masses said for the repose of a dead person's soul. Gradually it evolved into a prayer service in which people asked a favorite saint to plead their cause in heaven. In modern times, many novenas became perpetual--conducted weekly in churches throughout the year. The most popular were dedicated to the Virgin Mary under a variety of names such as Our Lady of Perpetual Help or Our Sorrowful Mother.

In the U.S., novenas reached a peak of popularity during the Depression and World War II; in New Orleans, for example, nearly 30,000 people jammed the streets for Perpetual Help novenas at two adjacent churches. Now Novena Notes' circulation is down from a peak of 600,000 to 50,000, and the number of churches offering Our Sorrowful Mother novenas has dropped in five years from 872 to 115.

Priests have a number of explanations for the decline: competition from television, introduction of evening Mass, the florid and old-fashioned tone of most novena prayers, which are aimed at Mary rather than Christ. But the deeper reason is that the Vatican Council's liturgical reforms have given Catholics an opportunity to participate actively at Mass, thus making it vastly more meaningful than the novena as an expression of their faith. Says one Boston priest: "The Mass has taken over--thank God."

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