On a Rorate Caeli post, NLM: “The Potentialities of the English Missal for the Ordinariate and the Roman Rite” there appeared an interesting comment:
Actually the only thing that can give the Anglican Ordinariate any long-term prospects is the Sarum rite. I say this as an ex-Anglican myself who went to Book of Common Prayer services during my Anglican days. The ‘Anglican patrimony’ is the patrimony of a criminal organisation, the Church of England, that suppressed the Catholic Church by state terror and lies; and the Book of Common Prayer was put together by one of the leaders of this project. The ‘Anglican patrimony’ will only be important to people who leave the Anglicans and have an attachment to it because of their Anglican past. One the supply of these people is sued up, there will be no-one who will be interested in becoming a priest in an ordinariate devoted to this ‘Anglican patrimony’, and the organisation will eventually die out as a result. If the Sarum rite is adopted as an option for the ordinariate, there will be a real reason for its existence; the preservation of the distinctive liturgical patrimony of Great Britain. That is the basis for a long-term project. The ‘English missal’, as other commenters have noted, is by its nature simply a halfway house between the Roman rite and a ‘reformed’ liturgy; it will not offer anything, and will be used as a weapon against traditionalists who want to have the Latin rite in the Latin language. I am surprised that you do not take this last factor into account, New Catholic.
I had not wanted to go into the fray concerning the English Missal or the use of the “extraordinary” Roman rite in the ordinariates. I was discussing all this stuff two or even three years ago, and no one has got anywhere. Personally, I just don’t care what they do in the ordinariates, as it is just not my problem and never will be.
But, the point about the liturgy is interesting. Either Anglican Catholicism, whether in communion with Rome or not, needs to have a distinctive liturgical identity – or people like Fr Symondson, John Bowles and Robert Ian Williams are right. Just join the mainstream Roman Catholic Church and attend your local parish regardless of how bad the liturgy is. Just stick with your owner and leave your personality and intelligence behind. The more you suffer, the more meritorious it will be!
I have had to realise that there is very little interest in Sarum. It is a taboo subject with some. Square pegs and round holes indeed. Shoot me down for denigrating Rome or the ordinariates if you like, but they are not my problem. There seems little point in preserving Sarum in isolation from an ecclesial communion.
Truth to be told, every time I look at institutional churches, I have that heart-sinking and foreboding feeling. Church begins to leave a heavy and horrible after-taste, and I appreciate more and more how people either no longer go to church or do so without getting the least involved in it. As Young Fogey wrote in a recent post, quoting Monsignor Ronald Knox, the passengers on a ship stay out of the engine room. He has a point.
I’m through with all the controversies. I have nothing to do with the ordinariates, and even little with the church I am told I belong to. I celebrate the Sarum Mass, but it does not matter to anyone. Never mind. That is of no importance to me. It seems to be about God and not the esteem of others.
All being said, this comment highlights a serious problem in the notion of Anglican identity, if that identity is not Protestantism. The false dilemma in place since the Reformation is Protestantism against the reinforced orthodoxy of post-Tridentine and Ultramontanist Catholicism. The western equivalent of “natural” Orthodoxy (conciliar eccesiology) is now a thing of the past except insofar as you have to accept goofy liturgies and “progressivism”.
Is there any point in going on? I’m open to positive ideas outside the old dilemma of the apologists.
The Blue Flower 
“The western equivalent of “natural” Orthodoxy (conciliar eccesiology) is now a thing of the past except insofar as you have to accept goofy liturgies and “progressivism”.
Well, I’m “progressive”, but our liturgy, that of the historic W. Syriac rite, isn’t exactly “goofy”.
Actually, I see any principled dissent against the party line, whether of “left,” “right,” or “center”, as being a manifestation of that which U speak.
It all depends what you mean by progressivism and progress. Like most people, I use modern devices like this computer. I am all for progress in knowledge and technology as well as moving ahead with moral values and culture. This is human life. What I meant in that precise context was the ideology that claims to oppose traditionalism and conservatism but imitates fundamentalism or intégrism in its intolerance.
Indeed. Something that is perhaps akin to Leninism in the religious sphere perhaps.
Yes there is a point in going on. Sometimes reading your writings depresses me that is why I only do it about once a month any more is bad for me.
I am still interested in what you have to say because of your disarming honesty.
“Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!”
Thank you for your equally candid answer. We are clearly no longer in the autumn of 2010. Reality is there to be seen, and some of us have lost the “game”. I am not in the business of “it can’t be wrong so therefore it is right“. I may be wrong in some of my observations and ideas, but everything I have been “offered” so far is hollow.
Perhaps I lack faith or trust in God’s unfathomable ways, but at the same time, I cannot believe that God is fickle and totally irrational – which would only create a reason to mock Him and refuse his divinity. I therefore am forced, like most people, to distinguish between God and the Church and recognise that – most of the time – the latter separates people from the former.
Well I thought the fuss about the ‘EF’ was total nonsense. How can a rite in use in the Roman Church between December 1962 and 1964 possibly be considered part of the patrimony of Anglicanism? The BCP, and its derivatives, has a far greater value to Anglican Patrimony surely.
As to Sarum I too am dismayed at the lack of interest. If patrimony has any importance then one would have thought the RCC in England and Wales should be promoting Sarum not the CofE and a sensible vehicle to do that would be the Ordinariate. However, my understanding – and I would welcome correction – is that the clergy of the English Ordinariate just want tarted-up modern Roman liturgy.
Depressing!
I have for a long time tried to understand what Anglican patrimony is in the minds of those who founded the ordinariates in England and the USA. It does seem to be modern Roman Catholicism with dispensations from celibacy. I am not being derogatory or negative. Perhaps this is how it was to be. It was also the vision of our TAC bishops from Archbishop Hepworth to many of the others.
When I first joined the TAC, I continued to use the Tridentine rite as I was accustomed to using it as a Roman Catholic deacon and “independent” Catholic priest. My reasoning behind Sarum is that it represents a distinctive identity whilst marking itself out from the Prayer Book Anglicans, more or less exactly observing this book, and from traditionalist Roman Catholics. At one point, I asked myself whether I should be using the modern Roman rite with “conservative options”. Sarum is a ready-made and traditional rite. It needs no “doctoring up”, and it is as distinct from the rite of the traditionalists as the Dominican and other local rites in more recent usage. That is my rationale.
Quite frankly, if Anglican patrimony is what I seen over the past forty years, then I rapidly lose interest.
Today, I went to the Isle of Aix (off Fouras where I am on holiday and doing a lot of serious sailing) and visited the church. In it are buried the remains of hundreds of refractory priests who were done to death during the Terror in the rotting ship hulks of Rochefort, many of whom were beatified by John Paul II. As I touched the gravestone containing a pile of their bones found in another place, the idea came into my mind to ask those priests for something. I simply answered “my vocation”.
It does no good to criticise or denigrate Rome or the Ordinariates. I wish them every good and happiness. But they are the way only of a small proportion of Anglicans and TAC folk. As yet, I see little left of the TAC, but I keep my eyes and ears open, just for a little time…
What really was in the Pope’s mind when he conceived the notion of the ordinariate? I used to think he had a large vision of making a space within the Catholic Church for a reconciled reformed tradition, in which Anglicans would feel at home, protected from interference. Perhaps this is happening in North America but any such hopes in England seem to have collapsed, with the connivance of both sides. I also used to think he was planning something similar for the Lutherans.
Father,
I’m an American FSSP attending Roman Catholic with an affinity for Anglican liturgy. I’ve followed your blogs for several years now and enjoyed them tremendously. LIke Brian Taber, however, I’ve found your posts over the last year or so depressing to the point of despair.
I only know you from what you write, but it seems to me you’re a man with a broken heart.
Please know you’re very much in my prayers.
Count me in, Father, for the return of Sarum as a legitimate option. And as a nod to Cranmer (and Vatican II), allow it to be sung in a sacral English translation.
That’s long-term prophetic thinking there. Though I am a Yank, I agree with you that the Church is rapidly losing its respectability, and we could do well to transition out of respectable, worldly, user-friendly liturgies like the Novus Ordo. If the Ordinariates have a future as part of a Church that faces vast intolerance and persecution in this century, then it’s about time we were formed by stronger stuff liturgy-wise. There’s no point in the Ordinariates if they only become slightly more tasteful versions of warmed over, compromising, banal late 20th-century institutional Catholicism.
Give us Sarum, in Latin or English.