Page 30 - The Priest, Summer 2015

ling towards Catholic unity.”
The new Missal, drawing on Angli-
can sources, is the work of an interna- tional liturgical committee set up in 2012 by the Congregation for the Doc- trine of the Faith and the Congrega- tion of Divine Worship. The committee is known by its Latin name, Anglicanae Traditiones. Its members include canon law experts, liturgists, and prelates with both Anglican and Latin rite back- grounds, including Bishop Peter Elliott, an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Melbourne, who was brought up as the son of a Vicar.
‘Prayer Book English’
The elements of the Anglican liturgi- cal patrimony incorporated into the li- turgical life of the Ordinariate through the Missal seek to balance two historic principles — that Christian prayer and proclamation should be offered in the vernacular and that the language of worship should be sacral.
According to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, in its explanatory notes, the Divine Worship Missal:
gives expression to and preserves for Catholic worship the worthy Anglican liturgical patrimony, understood as that which has nourished the Catholic Faith throughout the history of the Anglican tradition and prompted aspirations to-
wards ecclesial unity. . . .
. . The Anglican liturgical tradition
draws on the English monastic tradition and develops entirely out of the context of the Roman Rite. The celebration of the Holy Eucharist expressed by Divine Worship is at once distinctively and tradi- tionally Anglican in character, linguistic register, and structure, while also being clearly and recognisable [sic] an expres- sion of the Roman Rite.
In reference to language, the Con- gregation says:
the liturgical texts found in Divine Wor- ship are in English, but an idiom of English best described as ‘Prayer Book English’ . . . the texts are broadly rep- resentative of the classic Prayer Book
tradition while also attempting to avoid undue preference for wordings distinc- tive to any particular country. The texts provide for a certain adaptability to local custom such as, for example, using ‘Holy Ghost’ interchangeably with ‘Holy Spirit’ throughout the celebration of Mass.
Collects and canons
The Rite for the Ordinariate Mass is one that most Anglicans will find famil- iar, including such classical expressions of English Christianity as the Collect for Purity from the pre-Reformation Sarum rite and the later Prayer of Hum- ble Access, much loved by Anglicans as a preparation for Holy Communion.
A number of alternatives and vari- ants in the texts (following Anglican tradition) enable the Rite to be cele- brated according to local traditions and allow for variations and customs which existed in the former Anglican jurisdic- tions of the three Ordinariates.
Two Eucharistic Prayers are author- ised. These are the traditional Roman or Gregorian Canon (in Prayer Book English) which must be said on Sun- days, and a second Eucharistic Prayer which may be used on weekdays and other occasions, but not on Sundays. This Prayer is based on the second Eu- charistic Prayer of the Roman Missal, which is in turn a variant of the oldest known Eucharistic Prayer, the Canon of Hippolytus (c. 210AD).
The liturgical calendar
The liturgical Calendar of the Or- dinariate is the universal Calendar of the Catholic Church, but with the ad- dition of certain commemorations with an English or Anglican ‘flavour’ such as St Alban the first English martyr, St Thomas of Hereford, St Edward the Confessor, St Frideswide of Oxford, St Aidan of Lindisfarne, and various can- onised Archbishops of Canterbury, in- cluding of course St Augustine of Can- terbury. More recently recognised holy persons, such as St Elizabeth Seton and Blessed John Henry Newman, both con-
verts from Anglicanism, are also found in the Ordinariate calendar.
The Sunday cycle follows that of the older Anglican tradition. Sundays are numbered ‘after Trinity’ as in the Book of Common Prayer, rather than Sundays in Ordinary Time found in the Roman Missal and the later revised An- glican Prayer Books.
The Pre-Lent Sundays of Septuages- ima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima are restored. Major feasts such as the Epiphany and the Ascension are as a rule to be kept on the traditional day of commemoration, rather than trans- ferred to the nearest Sunday, as has be- come the custom in some parts of the Latin Church and some Anglican juris- dictions.
The traditional Ember and Rogation days are observed.
A remarkable development
The establishment of the Ordinariates by the Papal Constitution, and the pro- duction and authorisation of liturgies for use within the Roman Catholic Church with a distinctive Anglican identity, is a remarkable if not radical development in Church history.
Certainly, it is a situation which both Catholics and Anglicans, even in the re- cent past, would hardly have dreamed about, let alone considered. Who would have thought that the sacral English of the Book of Common Prayer and many of the liturgical traditions of post Ref- ormation Anglicanism would find an honoured place in the life of the Catho- lic Church in the 21st century?
These developments have not oc- curred without difficulties on both sides of the fence – centuries old preju- dices are not easily bypassed. Nor will they suddenly disappear. But thanks to the vision of Pope Benedict XVI, in the spirit of the seventeenth chapter of St John’s Gospel, and with the ongoing support and involvement of Pope Fran- cis, that unity for his followers for which Christ prayed is a little bit nearer than ever before. Ä
30 – Summer 2015
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