The Ordinariate's Divine Worship: An Anglican perspective

There have been a number of comments online from Roman Catholics about the new Ordinariate Rite, Divine Worship, whether very positive about the introduction of Cranmerian English and traditional devotions, or more critical about the introduction of Protestant eucharistic theology into the Roman Catholic Church through the back door. What has generally been lacking, however, is an Anglican comment on the rite, possibly because most Anglicans see it as a bit of a cul-de-sac. However, I think there are lessons that Anglicans could, and possibly should, learn from Divine Worship about the nature of modern Anglo-Catholicism.

With many Roman Catholic writers, I tend to agree that Divine Worship does not really work as Roman Catholic liturgy. Why? Well, a good deal of it is inspired by the shape of the rite in the very Reformed 1552 Prayer Book, and that book's subsequent influence on the rites of 1559 (which was 1552 with some small but substantial modifications) and then 1662. This seems odd, when the order of the rite in the 1549 Prayer Book, or indeed that of the Order for Communion 1548, would provide a more traditionally catholic reading of the liturgy.

For example, consider the placing of the confession in Divine Worship. DW does not follow the 1548 and 1549 rites in having confession, absolution and the prayer of humble access in that order immediately before communion, but rather in DW only the prayer of humble access is immediately before communion. Instead the comfortable words and confession are placed before the eucharistic prayer: in DW the comfortable words and the confession occur just before the offertory, whereas in the Prayer Book order of 1552 it occurs just after. That this has happened is significant. In Cranmer's early work he was essentially following a medieval view of confessing immediately before communicating, the sacrifice having been offered and the presence of Christ now resting on the altar under the forms of bread and wine (even if Cranmer questioned this himself by 1549). The 1552 book relocates these prayers, so that confession occurs before a eucharistic action in which bread will be blessed, broken and eaten as part of the eucharistic action. The absolution and 'comfortable words' in 1552 and DW assure us before the eucharistic action, rather than before a eucharistic presence located in the elements.

That Divine Worship follows this pattern possibly demonstrates just how Anglican it really is. Rather than the Ordinariate looking back to the medieval church and using the Order for Communion with the Sarum Use or the Extraordinary From of 1962, the liturgy looks back to the days of Anglo-Catholic illegal rites in the 1920s: bits of Roman liturgy fitted into a Prayer Book service. One almost expects that half way through the Roman Canon provided in the DW rite the celebrant will move from speaking in sotto voce to saying loudly 'All glory be to thee...'

From that perspective, what we have here is something very Anglican, albeit inspired by 1920s Anglo-Papalist illegality.  It is interesting to note that very few changes would be needed to turn the service into a legal Anglican one: replace the Roman Canon with CW Eucharistic Prayer C, and 'us' with 'you' during the absolution, and you are on the way to having a legal 'Service of the Word with Holy Communion'.

As such, I want to suggest that DW may be of more interest to Anglicans than Roman Catholics. Let me explain why...

One of the things that is most notable about Common Worship is that 1. it lacks traditional language propers (no CW Holy Week texts, no CW Festivals texts for Holy Days) 2. it lacks the more traditional propers, such as introits, sequences, offertory sentences, communion sentences. The problem with CW traditional language is that it provides for 'said 8 o'clocks', but really is not adequate to provide for main services for the church's year. This may be one of the reasons why, during my ordained ministry, traditional language services have gone from the mainstream to being a bit of a fringe interest. This I think is rather sad, not because I do not like the modern language liturgy that I commonly use, but because something is in danger of being lost: the Church of England's memory of the central prayers of her traditional rite has been eroded. It may be true that these are matters indifferent but, when we have prayers of such beauty, it would be a shame to consign them to history. 

Which is where DW comes in. If Church House Publishing could publish an altar book with propers in a similar form to the DW missal with introits and sentences to fit our rite and calendar, with CW collects and post communions, prefaces and prayers over the gifts, all in traditional language and set to the relevant music found in the RSCM publications, we would have a useable traditional rite in one book. And after all, if my memory is correct, I believe Thomas Cranmer was rather fond of one book solutions to liturgy!