The 1928 BCP, The EF Eucharistic Prayers, And The Divine Worship Roman Canon

Several visitors have taken me to task for comparing the Divine Worship missal text to Eucharistic Prayer III in the OF English mass. One said,

In the Roman Missal, Third Edition, Eucharistic Prayer I, referred to as “The Roman Canon,” is the modern English form of the primary Rite I eucharistic prayer in DW. You may never have heard this in a diocesan parish as it is generally used for feasts and solemn occasions. It is indeed “larded” with references to Abel and Melchizedek, but in normal parishes it doesn’t seem to take any longer than the other eucharistic prayers. We seem to use it in our diocese of Washington (DC) parish about once a month.

I understand your point about the DW liturgy being puffed up and unfamiliar to many former Episcopalians. I believe the “alternative eucharistic prayer” is equivalent to Eucharistic Prayer II used in regular Catholic parishes. If as mentioned this is normally used at SMV Arlington that is interesting. I have contended that if they had made the Divine Worship liturgy “feel” just like Episcopal church “used to,” it would have been better.

In fact, since I've been Catholic for nearly seven years, I've been to more than 350 OF English masses and at no point have I ever heard the Abel and Melchisedek part.

Another visitor wrote:

Comparing anamneses from EP I in each version, we get:

Therefore, O Lord, as we celebrate the memorial of the blessed Passion, the Resurrection from the dead, and the glorious Ascension into heaven of Christ, your Son, our Lord, we, your servants and your holy people, offer to your glorious majesty, from the gifts that you have given us, this pure victim, this holy victim, this spotless victim, the holy Bread of eternal life and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.

Be pleased to look upon these offerings with a serene and kindly countenance, and to accept them, as you were pleased to accept the gifts of your servant Abel the just, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the offering of your high priest Melchizedek, a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim. (Roman Missal, 3rd Edition)

And:

Wherefore, O Lord, we thy servants, and thy holy people also, remembering the blessed Passion of the same Christ thy Son our Lord, as also his Resurrection from the dead, and his glorious Ascension into heaven; do offer unto thine excellent majesty of thine own gifts and bounty, the pure victim, the holy victim, the immaculate victim, the holy Bread of eternal life, and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.

Vouchsafe to look upon them with a merciful and pleasant countenance; and to accept them, even as thou didst vouchsafe to accept the gifts of thy servant Abel the righteous, and the sacrifice of our patriarch Abraham; and the holy sacrifice, the immaculate victim, which thy high priest Melchisedech offered unto thee. (Divine Worship: The Missal)

While there's still a difference in language (one is perfectly acceptable modern English, the other is the so-called "sacral" English), the content of both is pretty much identical. I'm not sure why you felt the need to point out that the Ordinariate version takes up "full three times the space" as a completely different EP - as you can see, comparing regular apples to sacral apples, length really isn't the issue.

By the same token, there are other passages that don't occur outside Eucharistic Prayer I but are included in the DW mass, such as

graciously grant some share and fellowship with your holy Apostles and Martyrs: with John the Baptist, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, (Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia) and all your Saints; admit us, we beseech you, into their company, not weighing our merits, but granting us your pardon,

In fact, I never heard this passage either in the 1928 BCP nor 1979 Rite One as an Episcopalian, and in fact I wasn't aware of it until I heard it used in the c 1905 "uniate" mass previously used at St Mary of the Angels, which the DW mass in fact closely resembles..

But I disagree with the first visitor bove who doesn't think a mass with EP I takes longer than any other. Especially since the Divine Worship mass includes the Cranmerian prayers not in the Roman mass, plus the additional material from EP I (with the diction archaized), it is fully understandable that a DW mass would take 90 minutes where a normal diocesan English mass would take 60.

So this does leave me with a puzzle. Recall that the target market for both the Pastoral Provision and Anglicanorum coetibus was Episcopalians unhappy with the revisions to the 1979 BCP. But the DW missal is proving to be a liturgy that's even more unwieldy than the EP I English mass or the 1928 BCP. The first visitor above replied to my concerns:

! I think some regular Catholics roll their eyes when they hear a priest start it [EP I], figuring they’ll never get out of there. But it contains a roll-call of saints (including 7 women), many of whom I had never heard of in the Episcopal world, and it’s been fun finding out about them.

But how would he feel if he had the Cranmerian prayers on top of Saints Felicity and Perpetua? But then we come to the question of why cradle Catholics -- though a very small contingent -- would be attracted to a mass with the most tedious features of both the Anglican and Roman masses, when real-world Catholic priests avoid EP I, and real-world Anglican priests tend to prefer 1979 Rite Two.

For that small group, I've got to continue to ask if there's some other payoff.