It seems most likely that Catholic canon law actually prohibited the Parish of Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, Texas, from changing its celebration of mass from the previous Book of Divine Worship to the new Divine Worship missal until the new pastor assumed his office.Later, the visitor remarked,
Perhaps you can check the dates more readily than I can, but my recollection is that Archbishop Garcia-Siller formally removed Fr. Phillips from the position of Pastor of the Parish of Our Lady of the Atonement well before the promulgation of the Divine Worship missal. Now that Fr. Lewis is the pastor, he has the authority to legislate the actual change within the parish.This sent me to Wikipedia, whose entry on Divine Worship: The Missal says
On 29 November 2015, Advent Sunday, the new missal went into use. The Book of Divine Worship was retired on 1 January 2016.A visitor from OLA notes, with reference to yesterday's post,
The pew missals [at OLA] were updated in 2016. The new front cover was changed to read "The Order of Mass according to the Divine Worship Missal". I wonder why it was not fully implemented.This raises an interesting question: DWM, according to Wikipedia, is "used in the parishes and other communities of the personal ordinariates for former Anglicans". However, OLA did not enter the OCSP until the decree was issued in March of this year, which means it remained a Pastoral Provision parish until that time. It would appear that the replacement of the BDW by DWM applied to the two remaining Pastoral Provision communities in 2016 as well, if this chronology is reflective of the actual circumstances.
In any case, as best we currently understand it, OLA had the authority under Fr Phillips to implement DWM in 2016 while he was still pastor, although I assume Abp Garcia-Siller would have had to approve it as well. However, my regular correspondent points out,
DWM is currently available only in the altar format, at approx US$400, which explains why there are no copies in the pews at OLA. A[n approved] pew version is apparently in the works, but no date has been given.The first visitor here notes,
As to printing liturgical booklets for the use of parishioners, I have visited quite a few parishes that print their own worship aids. Such parishes can put everything (hymns, readings, responses, antiphons, etc.) in the actual order in which they occur in the liturgy so the parishioners don’t have to go fishing back and forth between the rite itself, the propers, and the hymns and other musical selections to find all of the elements of the liturgy. The copyright licenses required to do this actually are quite inexpensive, so it may actually cost less than the published paperback booklets distributed through normal commercial channels.Yes, I've seen this too, and in fact it's much preferable to the cheapo paperbacks like Breaking Bread, which as far as I can tell is actually pretty expensive. Some OCSP parishes have in fact issued their own pew booklets with the DWM order of mass, and it appears that OLA did this in 2016. But a remaining question is exactly what was in those pew missals at OLA that represented themselves as "according to the Divine Worship Missal". Did Fr Phillips insert incorrect liturgy, or did he ignore what was in them and simply do things his own way?
Any further information will be most appreciated! Maybe this would indeed require a meeting to sort it out!
