I Hate To Say It, But This Is Awful

I hadn’t been following the issues related to Ordnariate liturgy, as I’m not an Ordinariate member and unlikely to attend an Ordinariate mass in the foreseeable future. But beyond that, there's been remarkably little said on blogs -- we have Fr Hawkins's remarks from February of this year disparaging the deliberate archaism in the Ordinariate mass rite. We have a report of an address by Msgr Steenson to the Anglican Use Society in November 2012 regarding the impending updates to the Book of Divine Worship, including the announcement that "this revision will include only the Rite I services; congregations wishing to use contemporary language are directed to use the Roman Missal, third edition, in the translation released in 2011."

A year later, we received the semi-official version of the Ordinariate Eucharisitic rite, via a post on The Anglican Use Of The Roman Rite Blog.

With the new Eucharistic rite's inauguration, the material in the Book of Divine Worship which remains normative has been further reduced. The funeral and marriage rites had been previously supplanted, as had Rite II of the Eucharist. All that remains as normative are the Daily Office, the Litany and Baptism. Doubtless, the Baptismal rite will be the next to be revised and published. I doubt we will see much change in the Litany, and so it remains to be seen what changes will come to the Daily Office.

Remarkably, there is only one comment to the post: "Thank you. I am much relieved after scanning through it and am glad for the consistency of style in the Tudor English. I had heard it was a 'hodgepodge' of Tudor/modern English." This reminds me a little of the brouhaha in the Los Angeles Zoo, wherein an African and an Indian elephant, who had been caged together for many years and had grown attached to each other, were separated due to the fact that African and Indian elephants do not occur together in the wild. I suspect the commenter would rejoice at that news as well.

A full analysis of the differences between the 2003 Book of Divine Worship and the 2013 approved Eucharistic rite is here. I don't know if the irony of presenting it 90-degrees out of kilter is intentional or not.

The bottom line is that if you don't want an antiquarian exercise, authentic to 1662, lasting upwards of two hours on a Sunday, you'd best hie yourself to a diocesan parish.

I'm puzzled. The 2003 BDW, in good Anglican form, continued to provide a Rite One and a Rite Two in the spirit of the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, with Rite Two reflecting well-rendered comtemporary language. I assume Msgr Steenson and the other intimates from the Episcopal Diocese of Forth Worth were OK with this, since their careers prospered pretty much with its introduction. Yet now we're left with Rite One alone -- which might satisfy devotees of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, a key fetish of "continuing Anglicans" -- but even the 1928 rite has been archaized.

Well, one rationale for Anglicanorum coetibus was to bring the gifts of the "Anglican patrimony" to the Roman Church -- fine. But Anglicanism didn't stop in 1662. Languages evolve. Nobody not involved in post-doctoral study wants to read Paradise Lost in its original orthography. That was part of the reasoning behind Vatican II, and Msgr Steenson himself has said he wouldn't have become Catholic had it not been for Vatican II. (Nor, though, would he have become Catholic had not Cardinal Law put his name up for Ordinary.)

I hadn't been paying attention. Whew.