There is a posting in Deborah Gyapong’s blog: What role should Sarum play in the Ordinariate liturgy?
In a discussion with a friend about Msgr. Stephen Lopes’ excellent talk on developing an agreed upon liturgy for the Anglican Use Ordinariates, my friend noted that of all the sources mentioned in the talk, Sarum was omitted.
How important should Sarum be in the considerations of the international liturgical commission?
to which I added a comment:
This is a particular drum I banged for years. It is not going to happen, as so few are interested in Sarum. The English Ordinariate is Novus Ordo with a few Anglican trimmings, with some parishes using the BDW. I don’t know about Aussie, but the Ordinariate in the US would be more for the Anglican Use as it stands with a few improvements and corrections.
There is also quite a deal of “inverted snobbery” with Sarum: quite a few have an academic interest but are afraid of peer pressure against the practical use of an “obsolete” rite with no pastoral relevance in their eyes. Not many of us use it with any frequency. At an official level, I would be surprised if Sarum is even being considered.
I have had enough experience of Roman Catholic liturgy to know that the Roman Catholic Church is arid ground for traditional liturgies. The only scope for “initiative” is within the Novus Ordo matrix, and the screws are being tightened there. Perhaps a good thing, perhaps a return to a kind of rubricism that defeats its own purpose. The traditionalists had enough difficulty in getting still quite parsimonious deals for the Tridentine liturgy. There are fairly frequent Ambrosian rite masses celebrated in northern Italy and some young Dominican priests have rediscovered their rite. I recommend consulting The New Liturgical Movement to know what goes on.
Sarum has been discussed quite a lot on the New Liturgical Movement, but there is no real desire to revive it as a living liturgical tradition. Strangely enough, the Diocese of Salisbury in the Church of England has been interested in experimenting with Sarum customs and trappings. I have yet to hear about a full Sarum Mass being celebrated there. There were the famous (notorious) Sarum masses celebrated by Fr Sean Finegan in Oxford in the 1990’s. They were reported by some zealous conservative Novus Ordo type and were stamped on.
You can type the word “Sarum” in the search box of this blog, and also on the The Anglo-Catholic where my old pre August 2010 articles remain. I pushed it, but there is too much opinion against Sarum in favour of modern liturgical styles or the Prayer Book as being considered as more properly Anglican than a pre-Reformation custom.
The Blue Flower 
Fr. Anthony, I can sympathize with all sides to this issue. But wwhat you write about living liturgical tradition–“Sarum has been discussed quite a lot on the New Liturgical Movement, but there is no real desire to revive it as a living liturgical tradition.”–is something one doesn’t fully appreciate until one encounters a prior tradition that hasn’t been fully alive for a lengthy period of time. I experienced this in my area when ROCOR ordained a former French Orthodox priest (who had been ECUSA before that) and set up a Western Rite mission. He did a Gallican liturgy in English, possibly the only one in the entire USA. There was no service book. Just printed off pages and weekly pages for all the variable prayers and propers for that liturgy. (Seemed like the Gallican liturgy has a tremendous amount of weekly variability.) I just couldn’t find it edifying or useful. Came across as almost made up, archaic, completely foreign and alien. Unfortunately, some language in it almost made me laugh. It seemed like the weirdest amalgam of Eastern and Western sources that ended up coming across like it was…Ethiopian, Syrian, Egyptian or something exotic. (Over the months I asked some visitors what they thought. I didn’t get a favorable impression from many. Think it was just too strange?)
Michael, I think we have to be very careful in comparing the Sarum Use (which is liturgically complete, with both Missal as well as Breviary [in both its original Latin and several English translations]) with the so-called Gallican rite which is mostly a Byzantine fantasy used by the Russians. The ROCOR “gallican rite” is really mostly the Russian recession of the Byzantine rite with a few things gleaned from incomplete liturgical bits and pieces of the old Gallican rite of France. The Russians have not stopped in liturgical fantasy with only the “gallican rite” but have as their official “Gregorian rite” a liturgy that is just as fantastic (it can be seen here: http://web.archive.org/web/20110719095628/http://www.theorthodoxchurch.org/docs/FraternityOfSaintGregoryOfficialLiturgy.pdf). One may notice that they are using the novus ordo offertory prayers! Such recreations are never edifying…they tend simply to be the personal opinions of certain individuals.
The same may be said for the so-called “sarum rite” of the same group, which calls for a full Proskomedia, ikonostasis, opening and closing of “holy doors” (all of which are traditions nowadays only followed by the modern recession of the Russian liturgy) etc., etc., but we are expected to believe that it was part and parcel of the ancient rite of England! Hardly serious.
Actually the referenced Gregorian Liturgy with web address in your post is in no way official for all of ROCOR Western Rite. This liturgy was compiled from various liturgical resources by a single man for use in his former independent church received by ROCOR in 2010. It was decided, by The Metropolitan, their group may use this liturgy, however others entering ROCOR Western Rite have been made to feel obliged to use this liturgy, not by the hierarchs, but by the same man who compiled it. There are others of us who use a liturgy based upon the Rite of Grenoble as edited by Dom Augustine Whitfield, of Blessed memory, others use a Sarum Use, which has been translated and edited by one Dom Aidan Keller. Strict liturgical uniformity is a product of Trent against the homespun services the Protestants were fabricating. Diversity in Orthodox Rites is in no way a divergence from the Orthodox faith!
Would be interesting to see what has happened to the ROCOR Western Rite over the past couple of years. Seemed like they suddenly (re)ordained a lot of priests and started a lot of small missions. I wonder how many have taken off, how many are struggling, and how many have failed. [The one in my area, started summer of 2010, doesn’t appear to have grown much, if at all. Believe they are still periodically worshipping on Saturday nights at an ECUSA church and their priest is also periodically celebrating the Byzantine liturgy on Sundays at a recently opened Serbian church that doesn’t have its own full-time priest. Makes me wonder if he and his small flock might end up Byzantine.]
I personally feel that the multiplicity of so-called “western rites” within the ROCOR exist simply because the tradition is not taken seriously. There are, online, photos of some of the ROCOR parishes, what a miss-mash, Gothic chasubles, kamilavkas, ikonstasi, cube altars etc., etc. Hardly serious at all. There was, until recently, a youtube example of their western rite celebrated in England by Bishop Jerome, what a joke; it was the Preface and Canon, but the missal was still on the Epistle side of the altar; and that was a minor issue compared to the rest of the service, really, really a liturgical Frankenliturgy. Personally, it would appear that the whole thing is, as Fr Andrew Philips of England as already stated, simply a temporary allowance until the proper Orthodox liturgy can be adopted.
Far serious would be to accept simply the Roman rite as approved in 1871 by the Holy Synod celebrated according to O’Connor…but that would indeed be too serious and far less exotic.
The Antiochian books are, outside of a few rather odd Byzantinizations, far more realistic, and real a well.
I would like to mention that I am not at all opposed to the idea of a western rite in Byzantine Orthodoxy on principal at all (actually the idea sounds rather wonderful), but in practice it does not seem to work out too well. And the absolute hatred expressed by so many Byzantines towards it is almost sickening.
“full Proskomedia, ikonostasis, opening and closing of “holy doors” (all of which are traditions nowadays only followed by the modern recession of the Russian liturgy).” Sorry, I meant only the opening and closing, throughout the liturgy and offices, of the holy doors only; this is not done by those churches which follow the Greek recession of the Byzantine liturgy.
strange that ‘dale’ won’t add his email to his posts anywhere so a person can’t ask him questions or answer his pontifications. why is that?
I’m eastern orthodox, and probably can’t match him since he knows much more than I do, but I would like to talk with him sometime.
Rdr. James Morgan
PS Fr. Anthony, I hope this doesn’t upset or disturb anyone here, but I think you are much more eienic than some of your correspondants.
E-mail addresses of readers who send comments are always hidden in comments. Blog moderators are not allowed to publish e-mail addresses either. What you can do is to respond to a comment on the blog.
I will send a private message to Dale with your e-mail address saying that you would like private correspondence with him.
Hello Fr Anthony. Since I do indeed cite my sources, all of which are from Byzantine Orthodox sources, to be accused of “pontifications” by the same Byzantines who love to kill the messenger and having dealt with such before, I have no real interest in corresponding with such.
You are free to dialogue with other Orthodox readers, but I will not intervene. I try to be tolerant, but the more contentious dimension of Orthodoxy is something that alienates me totally.
Fr. Anthony, As for the more contentious Orthodox, it is usually pretty easy to remind us of our need for humility and charity by merely pointing out the intra-Orthodox squabbles between patriarchiates and jurisdictions, the lack of concrete cooperation amongst the diaspora, the sad state of our mission and evangelism efforts worldwide, and our need for reapproachment with the Oriental Orthodox. I’ve found that the most contentious are those least in touch with the tempestuous ecclesial reality of Orthodoxy today. They are often most contentious with their fellow Orthodox, wanting to be the orthodox Orthodox without quite being Old Believers?
We Orthodox need to first and foremost work on removing planks from our own eyes before throwing stones at others. (Hope I’ve mixed my biblical metaphors sufficiently.)