God-Wottery

I had an e-mail over the weekend from a visitor who raised again for me some questions that first appeared in a blog entry by Fr Allan Hawkins, the now-retired pastor of the St Mary the Virgin parish, Arlington, TX. The visitor told me that he was formerly a member of that parish, so Fr Hawkins may have had some influence on him as well. In the blog post, Fr Hawkins expresses a preference for Rite Two of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer over the more Cranmerian version in Rite One:

Monsignor Edwin Barnes, in his blog entry of November 29, 2014, refers to what he calls the American “God-wottery” of the Ordinariate Use. (Helpfully, he adds an explanation: “God-wottery” is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as ‘an affected quality of archaism, excessive fussiness and sentimentality’.) And Father Barnes adds that these are the very things that many English members of the Ordinariate, who have grown up with contemporary rites over a couple of generations now, find so unhelpful.

He refers to what he calls the excessive fussiness of the three-fold repetition of “Lord, I am not worthy …”. And why, Fr. Barnes asks, has the Ordinariate rite (re)-introduced the celebrant’s multiple kissings of the altar?

My impression (admittedly as an outsider) of the US-Canadian Ordinariate is that it is heavily influenced by "continuing Anglicanism", which fetishizes the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. And there was indeed considerable "archaism, excessive fussiness and sentimentality" among the core group of St Mary's troublemakers. But nobody among God-wotters needs to become Catholic, and I think this is part of the tension that broke up the parish. As I've observed, three-fold repetitions are plenty for those who simply want to overcompensate for other lacunae in their religious observance. The obligation to confess such lacunae sacramentally is far more than they wish to have.

Interestingly, my correspondent mentioned that he now sometimes attends an Ordinariate mass at a different, though large and successful, parish -- except that, well, there are Latin-rite parishes between his home and the Ordinariate one, and, well, it's often easier to make the Latin-rite masses of a Sunday. And the Latin-rite ones are guaranteed to last exactly an hour, and there's none of the threefold stuff.

When I was an Episcopalian, the parishes I attended were often proud of the fact that parishioners would pass by other, closer Episcopal parishes to worship there. Doesn't sound like even the most successful Ordinariate parishes necessarily have the same draw. God-wottery, frankly, is a tough sell. Fr Hawkins concluded his post with the observation,

There will surely be only few more Anglicans still looking for a congenial home in communion with Peter. Thus there is, I am convinced, a real danger that it could swiftly become nothing more than a liturgical museum – of interest only to a dwindling esoteric band.

I like the Ordinary Form, I'm coming to recognize, because it's so much like Rite Two.