Liturgy And Agenda

Ordinariate News links to an article by Herr Prof Dr Hans-Jürgen Feulner on the Ordinariate liturgy (full text here). My first reaction is that it reads like a clumsy translation from stilted academic German, which is unfortunate, since given the subject, it ought to be more accessible to an Anglophone audience. The whole thing is heavy going indeed:

October 2011 saw the convocation of the international commission Anglicanae Traditiones: Interdicasterial Working Group, at first organized only by the CDF, which has been responsible for preparing a liturgical order for all the Personal Ordinariates according to the requirements of AC III and in due consideration of the Book of Divine Worship, of Sacrosanctum Concilium, and of what is meant by “Anglican Patrimony.”

Even so, it says very little. It boils down to saying, with footnotes, that Anglicanorum coetibus provides for an Anglican liturgy, to be determined. There are ins and outs. We've made progress.

It doesn't answer the question I've had for several months now, how a hybrid liturgy that, as far as we know, was the project of a small group of Church of England clergy in 1905 made it to official status through the intricate bureaucratic process (komplizierter bürokratischer Prozess) Herr Prof Dr Feulner refers to (aufbezieht).

Nor does it answer the question of why, particularly in the UK, this liturgy has been disastrously unpopular (unbeliebt). It has been so unpopular that the Vatican, in the person of Msgr Lopes, has taken note of it:

He added that it was ironic that many Anglo-Catholics who have joined the Ordinariate did not use Anglican prayer books as Anglicans but the Roman rite.

“We have many people in the Ordinariate who are unfamiliar with some of that wider tradition, the depth of tradition, in Prayer Book forms and Anglican Missal forms of worship. In a certain sense it’s an irony because here’s this wonderful liturgical patrimony and we have Ordinariate communities saying ‘wait a minute, that’s actually quite new’,” he said .

Mgr Lopes added that if an Ordinariate community simply uses the Roman Rite it becomes “indistinguishable.”

The issue, though, is not that it's unaccustomed (ungewöhnlich), rather that it is tedious (langweilig) and contains affected archaism (künstlicher Archaismus). As far as I can see, it reflects the private agenda of an in-group, which in various ways has been a feature of both the US and UK Ordinariates.

Lack of transparency (Not von Durchsichtigkeit) is simply one cause of the disappointing outcome of Anglicanorum coetibus.