Today is one of those oddities of the liturgical calendar where a holy day of obligation is observed during the week in some places, and is moved to the following Sunday in others.
This is anathema to certain traditional Catholics who blame Vatican II for every bad thing, up to and including sunspots, but the liturgical calendar has always seen minor variations. The fact is that the old liturgical calendar was the calendar when it was devised. The Protestant Reformation and the rise of secularism have combined to force some accommodation on the part of the faithful. I have little patience for people who demand others take time off from work (or lose wages) to observe a solemnity while they merely pause their authorial or podcasting duties.
“Pastoral care” has gotten something of a bad reputation since it seems chiefly used these days to facilitate mortal sins, but in its true form, it is about helping the faithful survive in an increasingly hostile environment. In the early missionary days, months might past before itinerant priests arrived, and they had a full schedule of performing marriages, hearing confessions, offering Mass, and conducting funeral rites.
To put it another way, it is all well and good to recall the medieval liturgies and form of worship, but there is a reason it is no longer in use. Indeed, there is something of the Pharisees in people who demand various forms of restoration.
I think there is room for both, and I certainly oppose effort to restrict traditional rites, which add to the depth of richness of the faith. I have at various points been able to go to daily Mass, but I would never hold that over people who do not.
This is why I take issue with charts purporting to show that Vatican II and the new forms destroyed Mass attendance. It’s true that it dropped, but all denominations saw a falloff in the 1970s. For a while, the Evangelicals flourished because they were snapping up disillusioned Mainline churchgoers, but decline of Christianity was not limited to Catholics.
Moreover, not all Catholics use the Roman Rite. There are 23 other churches in communion with Rome, and to my knowledge, their liturgies were unaffected. I do think the abandonment of tradition was poorly managed, and many people fell away because of it, but there were also larger forces at work.
Indeed, I’m starting to think that maybe what happened was best, because it proved that tweaking the liturgy has its limits. It also made the older forms objects of interest and curiosity, and I cannot ignore the fact that the trend towards more traditional forms is being driving by the grass roots, not the hierarchy. In my parish, the number of people kneeling to receive the Host necessitated special stations to speed up the service, and at this point, what was the habit of a few is becoming preponderant, and it is primarily young people who are driving it.
Missing a holy day of obligation is a sin, but for it to carry weight, it must also be something within the reach of the average worshipper. Otherwise, we fall into the heresy of Jansenism, in which salvation is simply impossible for most, and a version of the Calvinist-type Elect is chosen instead.
The Church must not be of this world, but it must be in this world, and throughout history accommodations have had to be made to the prevailing environment. Collapsing a few solemnities seems like a very small thing to get worked up about.
The important thing about Christ’s Ascension is not what day of the week it is observed.
Chateau Lloyd 
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