Snapd
ragon
THE P RTAL
November 2013
Page 8
A precious gift
U
nfortunately
I
I undervalued the liturgical treasures of Anglicanism
wasn’t present at the ‘launch’ while I was an Anglican. It is not that I was rejecting my
of the Ordinariate’s new Mass Anglican heritage per se; rather the ways I worshipped
liturgy celebrated by the Ordinary at were an expression of a conviction and desire to be
Warwick Street in October, and which reconciled with the communion to which I belong
has prompted much debate. But I now, and a sense of alienation from the communion to
was present at another celebration which I belonged then.
according to the Ordinariate Use a
few weeks earlier, again celebrated traditions of Anglicanism have
formed me and my Catholic faith
by the Ordinary.
Ironically it is since I became a Catholic that I have
It was nothing fancy – no deacon come to appreciate just how much the liturgical and
and subdeacon, no Howells, no other traditions of Anglicanism have formed me and
journalists, no reception afterwards, just
a very simple Low Mass on the Feast
of Saint Theodore of Canterbury, as it
happened.
quite natural and
comfortable
It would be untrue to say that those
present – there were about eighty of us
– were not critically analysing the Mass
like the journalists would be at their first
showing, but actually my experience
was of a liturgy that in a sense was quite
unremarkable because it felt quite natural
and comfortable.
It seemed to me that two great
traditions were coming together quite easily and with
a pleasing result (to my great relief). Affirming and
reclaiming for Catholic worship the “precious gift”
of the Anglican liturgical patrimony, the celebration
seemed a faithful expression of what the Ordinariates
are intended partly to be and do.
my Catholic faith, and to see the need for them to be
integrated into the Catholic Church, where they rightly
belong and can enrich the lives of so many more who
profess the Catholic faith.
not as rivalling but complementing
But won’t the new liturgy be divisive? Not unless
we allow it to be, which applies more generally to the
But wasn’t Archbishop Cranmer a heretic? It is true whole ordinariate thing really. The Ordinariate Use will
that the new Mass liturgy draws heavily on the Book of be strange to most Catholics, but if it is implemented
Common Prayer, the work of protestant Archbishop sensitively and sensibly by the Ordinariate and
Thomas Cranmer, who was tried for treason and presented not as rivalling but complementing existing
heresy and burnt at the stake under Mary Tudor. But forms, it needn’t be an alienating thing. There are,
those who are troubled to see Cranmer’s influence after all, already different forms of the Mass, and sane,
on the new liturgy need to be reassured that nothing peace-loving adherents of Tridentine and Novus Ordo
of Cranmer-the-theologian’s un-catholic eucharistic do not allow difference to equate to division.
theology has a place in the new form (how could it?);
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