I'm a former high-church Episcopalian-turned-RC via the Ordinariate, who now worships in my local diocesan parish. I'm very sympathetic to your questions about what problems the Ordinariate is trying to solve. That's. . . not really clear, which is part of why I'm at a diocesan parish with resources for families, stability, and a proper religious education program.An angry visitor asked me yesterday,I couldn't help but notice a significant and perhaps revealing error in the excerpt you reprinted from the Mt Calvary website:
Why do you receive Communion on the tongue at Mount Calvary? Can I receive Communion in the hand?As Bishop Lopes himself has stated, the Ordinariate Use is:We encourage communicants to consider the example of Masses celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, where the faithful receive the Host directly on the tongue. Reception on the tongue is an ancient and honored practice in both the Divine Worship and the Roman Rite. As with the Roman Rite, communicants have the right to receive the Host either on the tongue or in the hand.
. . . the Roman Rite as it was taken up and developed within an Anglican context and now reintegrated into Catholic worship...It is understandable that the nuances and accents would perhaps be different, but the basic shape and structure of the Mass remains the same. The Holy See has given the name 'Divine Worship' to our liturgical and sacramental rites, so we worship according to the 'Divine Worship' form of the Roman Rite.The Ordinariate web site reinforces this:Is the Ordinariate a separate Rite within the Catholic Church? No. The Ordinariate exists entirely within the context of the Roman Catholic Church. Its worship, while distinctive, is a form of the Roman Rite. Ordinariate parishes celebrate Mass using Divine Worship: The Missal, a definitive book of liturgical texts promulgated by the Vatican in Advent 2015. This missal uses Prayer Book English — language derived from the classic books of the Anglican liturgical tradition — that is fully Catholic in content and expression.Whether it's a careless mistake or something else, its just inaccurate as a factual matter to draw a distinction between the Roman Rite and the Ordinariate Use as though they are on par, instead of the latter being a subset of the former. At worst, this also risks reinforcing a boutique or ghetto mentality (we're this but not that), which is already present in some quarters.Just my two cents.
who among the Ordinariate's potential members is looking for Rite II with EP III, especially considering the fact that the revision of the English Mass in 2011 supersedes the ICEL translations used in the 1979? Do you really think there is a large group of potential TEC converts to the Ordinariate who are looking for a plain vanilla Rite II with EP III? Why would they bother?But the first visitor characterizes himself as a high-church Episcopalian (I assume he at least tolerated Rite Two) who found, on balance, that an EP III diocesan parish had more to offer a Catholic family than the ordinariate, He questions whether the ordinariate is in fact setting itself up as something separate, and of course better than, the diocesan Church.
And this goes to the reports I periodically hear that the CDF has been carefully edging away from terms like "Anglican Use" or "Anglican Ordinariates", as the people in them are no longer (or have never been) Anglican, and it could be ecumenically touchy to use the term. So now we see people on Facebook and elsewhere describing themselves as "Ordinariate Catholics". But why not, like the visitor himself here, just say they're a "former high-church Episcopalian turned RC"?
Doesn't the angry visitor just above help make his point? He's saying a normal 1979 BCP Episcopalian won't be interested in the ordinariates, and he's basically calling me a dummy for thinking that was ever the case. He feels the ordinariates are for those select people who want over-the-top, not just high church Episcopalian, not just the Roman Canon, but something infinitely, sublimely better!
I'll leave aside the question of how many people will be, or are, attracted to this enterprise if we drop 1979 BCP Episcopalians.
But what do we do? Delete the Anglican from Anglicanorum coetibus? What happened to if you like your Anglican, you can keep your Anglican? What happened to the precious spiritual treasures of the Anglican patrimony? What do you replace the blank with in ______orum coetibus?
