So when I discuss "Roman Canon" on this blog, i'm talking specifically about the section of the Divine Worship Missal entitled Roman Canon, as opposed to OF Eucharistic Prayer I. This is a confusion that I didn't create, but it exists, so I need to be as clear about it as I can. I think the visitor and I agree on several key points. The OF Eucharistic Prayer I is always licit and may be used on any day for any mass, as may any of the other eucharistic prayers. Which one is used is up to the judgment of the individual priest, based on the pastoral situation on the ground.
For instance, the Sunday mass that Bp Barron celebrates on YouTube in the current crisis is based on eucharistic Prayer II, normally used for weekday masses. It is licit for Sunday and apparently judged to be most appropriate for situations where those hearing it are not physically present for the Sacrament. I assume the Sunday masses Bp Barron celebrates at parishes in his area are usually EP III. He's exercising pastoral judgment.
I think the visitor and I also agree that one pastoral issue is the question of time. The visitor says,
It seems to me that in the past you have been resistant to the idea that Vatican II and the Bishops attending never intended to entirely supplant the Roman Canon with EP III, only provide new options for pastoral reasons. Some of the issue has to do with the end of the High and Low Mass in the Catholic Church after Vatican II. High Mass was about an hour and a half long and only occurred once a week at the main Mass on Sunday (the smells and bells). All the other Masses were Low Masses and only lasted between 30-45 minutes. The Masses used the same Roman Canon. The High Mass was sung by the presbyter, usually involved a choir, and included using incense but the Low Mass was spoken with little to no singing and never incense, thus it was quite a bit shorter in duration.So even in pre-Conciliar conditions, there was flexibility in how masses were celebrated, based among other things on how much time communicants could afford to spend. The Second Council, as the visitor agrees, simply extends these options.
After Vatican II, with so many parts of the new Mass becoming optional to sing or say, include or omit, the pastoral choice of almost all parishes became keep the singing (for the people, not necessarily the priest) because the folks seemed to really like that but also keep the Mass really short because the people really liked that, too. Hence, EP I fell out of usage for so long I would wager more than a donut that most everyday Catholics have no idea the Roman Canon is even an option in the Mass, so accustomed are they to only hearing EP II or EP III.But note the visitor says above that the pre-Conciliar Roman Canon took about an hour and a half on Sundays. This would be without all the Cranmerian insertions in the Divine Worship Missal, leaving out all the incentives for pomposity mediocre men in fancy vestments can't resist. I may yet copy the text of the DW Roman Canon into MS Word, get a word count there, and compare it to the text of the OF and 1979 Rite One. I think a good ballpark estimate would be that the DW is 1000 words longer than the OF or Rite One. The Sunday mass at St Mary of the Angels, using a uniate liturgy not far from the DW Missal, took two hours, with just a few dozen communicants.
The visitor does recognize that the DW mass is not the same as the Roman Canon EP I. I'm not claiming that EP I in particular should never be used on Sunday, only that priests are expected to use good judgment, and it's likely that an EP I that routinely takes 90 minutes would not be popular in a parish where a reverent and inspiring, fully licit, EP III can be done in an hour. The bishop, looking at the weekly offerings, would probably weigh in on this matter himself.
There's another issue that a different visitor has brought up, which I'll go into more tomorrow. But let's recognize that I'm a convert. I came from The Episcopal Church, where I matured as a Christian for 30 years. The Catholic Church set up Anglicanorum coetibus specifically to appeal to potential Episcopalian converts like me. I took up the Church's offer in good faith but felt I had to go in via a different route only when it became plan that the ordinariate wasn't anything like what I'd been led to expect.
As just one example, the Divine Worship Missal bears no resemblance to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, which in the spirit of Vatican II offered two versions of the eucharist, as well as different individual eucharistic prayers. Episcopalian parishes typically offer Rite One at 8:30, Rite Two at 10:30 or vice versa, or Rite One on the first Sunday of the month, Rite Two the rest of the month, or something similar. The Divine Worship Missal and ordinariate practice have been set up specifically to exclude such options, when in fact those options were inspired in The Episcopal Church specifically by Vatican II.
And Rite One can be very well done in an hour.
