Deconstructing The Process

The visitor whom I quoted yesterday has prompted me to try to figure out a more basic set of questions: what problem, among other things, was the Vatican trying to solve when it published Divine Worship: The Missal? Two papers have emerged from principals involved, Bp Lopes's 2017 address and one from 2013 that my regular correspondent has tracked down, '“Anglican Use of the Roman Rite”? The Unity of the Liturgy in the Diversity of Its Rites and Forms', by Hans-Jürgen Feulner. This piece is ponderous, it copiously footnotes matters not in question, its English is infelicitous, and it's opaque over any issues of remote interest.

With so little insight from those close to the project, I'm inclined to want to approach the overall question the way a strategist, an engineer, or a corporate manager might. So let's start with a given: someone decided that Anglicans need to be brought into the Catholic Church with a unique liturgy that expresses their diversity in the unity of the Catholic Church, or something like that. I won't question this for now, I'll just proceed from the given.

What Problem Were They Trying To Solve?

It seems to me that there were three problems that stemmed from the existing Book of Divine Worship (a given) that needed to be addressed:

1. The Rite Two modern language version of the Holy Eucharist in the Book of Divine Worship was suppressed in 2011 with the issuance of the revised Novus Ordo translation of the mass. Thus the BDW needed revision in any case.
2. The Book of Dvine Worship, which reflected the 1979 US Book of Common Prayer, was seen as US-centric.
3. A standardized Anglican rite for use in all Anglicanorum coetibus ordinariates was thought desirable.

What were possible solutions?

It seems to me that the simplest solution would have been simply to rewrite the Rite Two section of the BDW to conform to the 2011 Novus Ordo. For that matter, mutatis mutandis, other aspects of Rite Two could be rewritten to reflect a modernized ordinariate liturgy. As someone who's undertaken similar corporate writing projects, I would estimate that a capable writer, under the supervision of liturgical specialists, could accomplish this in a matter of weeks, and approval could proceed as approvals proceed, with political pressure applied at higher levels as needed to stop any dithering or resolve concerns in a timely way.

What were the disadvantages of this approach? I think the biggest was that the 1979 BCP was problematic not so much because it was US-centric, but because its use of contemporary language and optional eucharistic prayers was Vatican II-centric. Cardinals Law, whose pet project the Anglican business had been, and Levada, prefect of the CDF, were part of a strange "conservative" wing of the US Church that had nevertheless been mentored by the liberal Cardinal Joseph Bernardin and also actively enabled the tolerationist status quo over clerical abuse.

A continued "modernizing" of the Anglican liturgy was apparently not in the cards, notwithstanding a traditional-language rite would still have been included. An alternative that was clearly under consideration, given the record of what emerged, was the uniate masses that originated from Anglican papalist sources in the UK in the early 20th century. Unlike the 1928 or 1979 BCP, these had never been authorized by any Anglican denomination and were highly controversial among Anglicans generally, since they incorporated specifically Catholic doctrinal references. The Anglican papalist wing was also seen as heavily homosexual, with the published texts reflecting a highly romantic style in art and typography.

It is not known what other options may have been under consideration. The decision that emerged appears to have been against a pragmatic, "modernist" choice and in favor of an archaizing, "romantic" style that specifically rejected contemporary language or choice in eucharistic prayers in favor of a made-up simulacrum of Tudor prose.

What were the resources?

Time: Bp Lopes made it clear in his 2017 address that the project took place over a five-year period, from 2010 to 2015. From a real-world perspective, this is an absurdly long time. Corporations rise, merge, and go bankrupt in that time. National leaders undergo re-election in that time. Wars are fought, lost, or won in that time. We're talking about a specialized liturgy that will apply, so far, to something like 10,000 people worldwide, in a Church that has billions of members.

Personnel: According to Bp Lopes, there was an interdicasterial committee. The full membership is published here. We know that Bp Lopes was a representative from the CDF, and that Prof Feulner of Vienna was apparently also on it as a liturgist. (His command of written English is not encouraging.) My regular correspondent suggests a Clinton Allen Brand was on the committee (a published article here), and

Probably Msgr Andrew Burnham, an experienced liturgist, produced a first draft for comments. He is credited as the co-author of the Walsingham Customary, closest thing to a Daily Office Book so far produced in the Ordinariate, and he is on the committee which has been attempting for about five years to produce a version acceptable to all three Ordinariates.

I would be interested in any further information or insight visitors may have on the makeup of the committee. My overall impression is that these are people who met, by Bp Lopes's account, about three times a year on this project. This is not hard work by any estimation. Msgr Burnham, after more than five years, seems to have struggled to produce a finished product of any sort in his own assigned area.

But the actual result, the Divine Worship missal, it seems to me is recognizably derivative of a single source, the Anglican papalist uniate mass from the early 20th century. A committee of experts spent five years to bring it to birth. A follow-on is indefinitely delayed. The altar missal version is out of print. The project it supports is stalled.

I'll have more to say about this boondoggle tomorrow.