Friday, December 1, 2017

Take A Closer Look At The Chronology

One thing that's escaped me until I looked at the chronology behind the issuance of the DWM missal is how closely it corresponds to Bp Lopes's arrival as Bishop of the OCSP. Per Wednesday's post,
On 29 November 2015, Advent Sunday, the new missal went into use. The Book of Divine Worship was retired on 1 January 2016.
Per Bp Lopes's Wikipedia entry:
On November 24, 2015, the Holy See announced that Lopes would be the first bishop of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter for the Anglican Use. In assuming that responsibility, he succeeded Monsignor Jeffrey N. Steenson, a former Episcopal bishop appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to the position of "ordinary" in 2012.
A little higher up in the Wikipedia entry, we see
Starting in 2012, Lopes served as the secretary of the Vatican commission Anglicanae Traditiones, which was formed with the goal of developing a missal that would hybridize Anglican and Roman Rite liturgical elements for the use of the personal ordinariates.
I think this makes it a little plainer that Bp Lopes, clearly a protégé of Cardinal Levada, whom he "served as a personal aide. . . from 2005 to 2012", was on the fast track and had been in line for this appointment from the start, even before Steenson's 2007 move to Rome. There was nothing sudden about the appointment, and it probably had little to do specifically with Msgr Steenson's performance..

However, I've got to think that the CDF has expected more than it's seen so far. I'm also sorry that we'll almost certainly never get a tell-all from Msgr Steenson. I wish I could chat with him the way I've chatted with Abp Hepworth.