More On OLA Liturgy And Pew Missals

A visitor pointed me to this announcement on the OLA Website:

Revised Liturgy Coming

October 19, 2015 by admin

Last year, His Eminence, Cardinal Müller, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, conveyed to Bishop Vann, Pastoral Provision Delegate, that “the parishes of the Pastoral Provision have permission to use Divine Worship: Occasional Services, and in the future, you can expect similar permission when the Missal is published.”  With the pending publication of the new Divine Worship Missal slated to be released in Advent, Fr. Phillips wrote to Bishop Vann to inquire if permission has been extended from the Holy See for this parish.  The response from the Bishop’s secretary is in the affirmative, and a formal letter will be sent.  More information will follow.

So on one hand, there's the origin of the parish's 2016 use of DWM while still in the Pastoral Provision. The visitor also notes,

I missed the meeting, but having asked the instituted acolytes after Mass the changes are mainly postures for the congregation where the rubrics supposedly indicate "according to custom". Customs apparently vary between parishes, which is usually the case between parishes within a diocese.

The parish will also start using their acolytes in the role of sub-deacon. I don't know If any of the Ordinariate parishes had instituted acolytes before Bishop Lopes was installed, even if it has been provided for in the Missal.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent adds,

Bp Lopes simultaneously scheduled the first training weekend for instituted acolytes in 2016 and informed OCSP groups that no one but a priest, deacon, or instituted acolyte could function as a sub-deacon at a high mass. I believe that this had not been the case previously.

Regarding printing the text from DWM in pew missals, my regular correspondent says,

When the DWM was first published, groups were warned that the text was copyright and could not be reproduced. At first there was some discussion about whether even the day's propers could legally be printed for congregational use---the first advice was that they could, if they were collected at the end of the mass! This policy has never been officially changed, as you can see from the wording of the second announcement here. "[O]ther Ordinariate communities have persisted printing a comprehensive: liturgy guide" definitely implies that these communities are flouting the rules But it also implies that STM is one of the few that has tried to get by with distributing just the propers and/or the congregational responses, rather than a "comprehensive liturgy guide," despite the fact that no copyright license for the latter has been issued. Of course the CTS has asked for trouble by not making an affordable legal version available for the last two years, nor even giving a firm date when one is likely to be available.

I notice that many OSCP congregations also print the words to hymns in the service leaflet without any indication that they have paid the requisite licensing fee, although in most cases these licenses are readily available.

While I'm not an expert on Anglo-Catholicism, our previous TEC parish, St Thomas Hollywood, brought in its current rector, Fr Davies, from All Saints Margaret Street in London, which I've been told is the "gold standard" for Anglo-Catholicism. Previously, Fr Barbour purchased bulletins with the Sunday propers from a Lutheran publisher, and he was proud of how much he saved by doing this. Fr Davies instituted a new practice of publishing a new bulletin each week containing, as yesterday's visitor suggested, a full "liturgy guide" with the propers, collects, responses, hymn music, and announcements each week in a pamphlet that probably runs a dozen pages.

This is also elaborately decorated with sentimental clip art and looks very much like bulletins that have been posted from St John the Evangelist Calgary and St John the Baptist Bridgeport, so I assume this sort of thing is "gold standard" Anglo-Catholic practice. All I can think is that Houston is looking the other way for OCSP parishes that do this. (A disadvantage of this practice is that Fr Davies at St Thomas feels free from time to time to make tasteful emendations to the text of the liturgy in the pew missal -- in fact the liturgy he started with was never quite out of anyone's BCP in any case. But this comes with the Anglo-Catholic package.)

Another visitor notes,

I attend a diocesan (Novus Ordo-only) parish in East Texas. My pastor does "the whole fuss and feathers routine" every Sunday at two of his morning Masses. It takes away nothing from the significance of special feasts. It's worth noting that every single Sunday is a special feast, which is why as Catholics we are obligated to attend Mass on that day. And it is only right and just to give the greatest glory to God that we possibly can, at every opportunity. This is a good, Catholic feature, not a Ordinariate bug.

I'm a little surprised to hear of this in any diocesan parish anywhere, and certainly I can't condemn it. But I would also say that this confirms my impression that diocesan parishes vary widely in the reverence of their liturgy, and any stereotype of flip-flops and halter tops is incorrect.