THE P RTAL
June 2014
Page 20
The Ordinariate Liturgy
Mgr Andrew Burnham looks at the Ordinariate Use
and Anglican Patrimony
T
here Is
a story about Mgr Graham Leonard, formerly Anglican Bishop of London, being asked by
Cardinal Hume what he valued in the worship of the Church of England and would miss as a Catholic.
He replied that it would be the Prayer Book Offices of Matins and Evensong, and in particular the psalms in
course, following the Coverdale Psalter, as set in the Book of Common Prayer.
There is no doubt that the daily services
are the jewel in the crown and, when
both Pope Paul VI and Pope Benedict
XVI expressed their admiration for
Anglican worship, it was the public
celebration of the Offices that they had
most clearly in mind. Small wonder
then that the Ordinariate clergy in
the United Kingdom particularly value
the availability to them, as Catholics,
of Morning and Evening Prayer in the
Prayer Book tradition, as distilled in the
Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham.
modern Anglican and
Roman rites
But what of the Mass? Looking
back at the classical Anglican rite of
Holy Communion, this is clearly a Protestant service.
Yet there is much that can be rescued. The Ordinariate’s
Order of Mass incorporates this material and presents
it in a shape largely familiar to congregations of the
period up to about 1965 in such unlawful but widely
used adaptations of the Roman Mass as the English
Missal and Anglican Missal.
Fifty years have now elapsed and Anglo-catholic
congregations in England and Wales have almost
entirely used the modern Anglican and Roman rites
during this period. Nevertheless, it is good that there
is a distinct Ordinariate Order of Mass, that it is in the
sacral language of the Prayer Book, and that, though it
will not be usable in many pastoral contexts, there will
be some in which it is entirely right.
It is, and will be, a milestone in the journey of Western
liturgy and, like the other material incorporated into
the Roman Rite through the Ordinariates, it will be
very influential in the future evolution of the Roman
Rite as it is expressed in English.
Anglicanae Traditiones
Work is nearly complete on the Missal, or
Sacramentary, for the Ordinariate. Though the Order
contents page
of Mass has already begun to be used, the
largest task for Anglicanae Traditiones,
the liturgical Commission set up by
the Holy See, has been the editing of
the Propers. For almost every day
and almost every occasion there are
Propers.
There is the Introit, or Entrance
Antiphon, the Collect, the Gradual,
the Alleluia or Tract, the Offertory, the
Prayer over the Gifts, the Communion,
and the Prayer after Communion.
Add to these the Prefaces, for
use with the Eucharistic Prayers,
and the special rites for such
occasions as Candlemas, Ash
Wednesday, Palm Sunday, the Easter Triduum, and
the Vigil of Pentecost, and it is not hard to see why
the Missal is likely to weigh in at well over a thousand
pages.
Anglicans who are familiar with older versions of the
Missal – the English Missal or Anglican Missal – will
be surprised, perhaps, to discover that there are almost
no readings in the Ordinariate Missal.
One of the conventions of modern liturgy is that the
Mass Lectionary is published separately and, indeed,
we already have that for the Ordinariates in the Revised
Standard Version, 2nd Catholic Edition.
Those who have attended Ordinariate Masses
everywhere will have felt the impact of this version of
Scripture. It is much better suited for public reading
than the Jerusalem Bible, used in most Catholic
churches in England and Wales.
The Jerusalem Bible, itself a very fine piece of work in
its day, had its roots in an original French translation
but the RSV is directly within the tradition of English
Bible, stretching back to the work of Coverdale in
the sixteenth century and the King James Version of