Other Anglican Matter In The Divine Worship Mass

Yesterday's visitor gave a very clear, and to me enlightening, explanation of the structure of the Divine Worship mass and exactly what came from where. I decided to dig more deeply into the "Anglican Matter" in the mass and compare it to the 1928 BCP. What I found is that roughly 98% of this textual matter comes directly from the BCP or other Anglican equivalents, with only occasional changes in format, typography, and punctuation -- and these may be explained by exactly which editions were being used for the source text. Most textual emendations relate to pronouns. This raises a puzzling question for me that I'll explain at the end of this post.

Here are the Collect for Purity and the Summary of the Law in the Divine Worship mass, taken from the St Gregory the Great pew missal available online:

THE COLLECT FOR PURITY

ALMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Then facing the People, the Deacon, or Priest, may say:

THE SUMMARY OF THE LAW

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets

Here is the Collect for Purity (called just the Collect) in the 1928 BCP:

ALMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

And the Summary of the Law (not specifically identified as such) in the 1928 BCP:

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith. THOU shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

Here is the Penitential Rite in the Divine Worship mass:

THE PENITENTIAL RITE

Facing the People, the Deacon or Priest says:

Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways: draw near with faith, and make your humble confession to Almighty God, meekly kneeling upon your knees.

Or:

Draw near with faith and make your humble confession to Almighty God, meekly kneeling upon your knees.

The People kneel. Silence may be kept, and then the Priest, facing the altar, begins as follows and the People join in saying:

ALMIGHTY God,
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
maker of all things, judge of all men:
We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness,
which we from time to time most grievously have committed,
by thought, word, and deed, against thy divine majesty,
provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.
We do earnestly repent,
and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings;
the remembrance of them is grievous unto us,
the burden of them is intolerable.
Have mercy upon us,
have mercy upon us, most merciful Father;
for thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,
forgive us all that is past;
and grant that we may ever hereafter
serve and please thee in newness of life,
to the honour and glory of thy Name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Priest says:

May Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of his great mercy hath promised forgiveness of sins to all those who with hearty repentance and true faith turn unto him, have mercy on us, pardon and deliver us from all our sins, confirm and strengthen us in all goodness, and bring us to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Here is the Penitential Rite in the 1928 BCP:

YE who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways; Draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort; and make your humble confession to Almighty God, devoutly kneeling.

Then shall this General Confession be made, by the Priest and all those who are minded to receive the Holy Communion, humbly kneeling.

ALMIGHTY God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men; We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty, Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, And are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us, Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, Forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter Serve and please thee In newness of life, To the honour and glory of thy Name; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Then shall the Priest (the Bishop if he be present) stand up, and turning to the People, say,

ALMIGHTY God, our heavenly Father, who of his great mercy hath promised forgiveness of sins to all those who with hearty repentance and true faith turn unto him; Have mercy upon you; pardon and deliver you from all your sins; confirm and strengthen you in all goodness; and bring you to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

So here's my biggest problem. Tuesday's visitor relates that ". . . for a considerable amount of time, until 2015 I think, there were actually two parallel Mass-rites being drafted for what became the Ordinariates[.]" These were, according to the visitor, two separate drafting committees, made up of liturgical heavyweights, working independently. Well, OK.

But I've worked as a policy and procedure writer, back when I worked. Let's say Company A merges with Company B, and it wants to merge the personnel policies of the two companies into a document that satisfies both -- this is not a total rewrite, mind you, it simply wants to select the best practices from both, eliminate any conflicts, and put them into a single document. Happens several times a week in the real world.

I'm sorry, if someone gave me that task, it might take me an 8-hour day to read both policies, think about them, and maybe take a few notes on what might go where. Remember, I'm sitting at a keyboard and desktop, and I have the cut-save-and-paste functions available. I've got a phone and e-mail, and I might run some ideas by my contacts in legal and HR.

As a physical process, I would say that, having slept on the project overnight, I would come in the next morning, and it would take me a couple of hours on the outside to come up with a draft. The Divine Missal product is not a rewrite, it's a cut-save-paste job from two sources, the 1928 BCP or equivalent and the 1970 Roman Missal. I would guess that a seminarian who'd paid attention could have come up with the idea that you'd graft some Anglican text onto the canon of a Catholic mass. Yeah, in a corporate world, some VPs might start quibbling over specific words until an adult told them to stop, but as the writer, that wouldn't be my problem.

How on earth did it take two separate groups of heavyweights some number of years to come up with this thing?

UPDATE: A visitor comments,

I asked a more knowledgeable person in my community about the fact the sometimes the pew missal uses holy ghost and other times holy spirit and his answer was that it was a cut and paste thing.