Beyond Dividing Likes & Divided Liturgies

The Atlantic

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face though they come from the ends of the earth!

- from The Ballad of East and West (1892) by Rudyard Kipling

St. Mark 3:25

And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.

St. Matthew 12:25

Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.

St. Luke 11:17

Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and house falls upon house.

If the sustained heated chatter at various influential websites is any indication, the divide between Ordinary Form and Extraordinary Form enthusiasts is widening. Sample the combox traffic at the New Liturgical Movement.

• Rebuilding.

And, at LSN.

• How Vatican II elevated worshipers' "active participation" above worship of God.

The punches delivered by digital gladitors tend to fall into a range of categories not limited to those listed below:

1. The Novus Ordo Mass is valid but... .
2. The Novus Ordo is invalid.
3. The Extraordinary Form Mass is theologically out of touch with the Spirit-led Second Vatican Council.
4. The Novus Ordo is out of touch with the needs of today's youth who are seeking substance and not getting it in the Novus Ordo.
5. The Novus Ordo represents a failed experiment, an experiment not mandated by the Council Fathers.
6. The Extraordinary Form is Counter-Reformation Catholicism: reactionary; xenophobic; legalistic.
7. The Extraordinary Form is merely a performance, a stage show that is impersonal and fraught with unnecessary clutter that leads to worshiping the Liturgy instead of God.

Fear and loathing in the modern colosseum. Or,... who needs enemies when we can beat the stuffing out of each other?

It is highly unfortunate that many editors or moderators of websites host divisive articles that heighten the polarization that continues to develop between what are becoming irreconcilable factions in the Church. This is not to say that some critics' points are not valid.

Q. How many "Traditionalist Catholics" does it take to change a light bulb?

A. Beeswax candles, if you please!
vs

Q. How many "Progressive Catholics" does it take to change a light bulb?

A. What do we want? Women priests! When do we want it? Now!

A voice of reason is frequently crowded out, a third voice that bandages the bruised and bloodied partisans beaten in bare-knuckled battles pitting the Novus Ordo-nians in the red corner against the TLM-ers in the blue.

Morton's fork?

Folk of the 'Spirit of Vatican II' ilk and folk of the 'Bugnini was the antichrist' strain are the twain, and never shall the twain meet as long as they remain entrenched in one of two positions:

1. in the one trench the Second Vatican Council (and its principle expression the Novus Ordo Mass) mandated a break with Tradition; and in the other ditch
2. the Novus Ordo Mass represents an unsanctioned break with Tradition.

There are, at the margins batting grenades back and forth, proponents of two systems in play, two teams seeking or protecting influence.

Via Media

Beyond the two liturgical "likes" that divide people there is a love that preserves the rightness of both conservation and renewal. What is that third voice of love, that unity in truth, goodness and beauty? It is the Ordinariate.

The way forward can be found in the genius of the Ordinariates established by Anglicanorum Coetibus (See also: Complementary Norms). 

The Ordinariate Liturgy epitomizes

Vatican II's stated ideal of the Tridentine Mass reformed — not replaced — "with new vigour to meet the circumstances and needs of modern times" (SC4). - Stephen Bullivant

Attend an Ordinariate Mass and you will encounter:

1. Mass in the sacred vernacular that is reverent and entirely God-oriented.
2. music that preserves the primacy of Holy Scripture: chant; sublime poetry set to magnificent hymn tunes; glorious polyphony; beautiful prayer(s).
3. continuity with Tradition and authentic worship preserved by faithfulness to sober liturgical norms as is the habit of Ordinariate Catholics who desire to "worship God in the beauty of holiness" (Psalm 96:9);
4. the Apostolic Faith preached (2 Thess 2:15).
5. truth, goodness, beauty and hospitality of a kind that allows Catholics to meet Jesus Christ and to respond to the call of God to take up our crosses and continue His saving work.

Golden Mean

Divine Worship is a 'yes' to renewal and a 'yes' to tradition. The Mass of the Ordinariate is beyond the divisive polemics that possess and distract many of our best trained thinkers and those zealots fighting for the supremacy of either the Ordinary Form (Novus Ordo) Mass or the Extraordinary Form Mass.

Divine Worship, or the Traditional English Mass as it is occasionally known, is an authentic realization of the Second Vatican Council's vision captured in Sacrosanctum Concilium. Divine Worship manifests the living tradition of the Church.

The roots of Divine Worship include:

1. the ancient Sarum liturgy;
2. the various Book(s) of Common Prayer (especially 1549) that established Prayer Book English as a viable and desirable language of the Liturgy;
3. the English Missal - the Tridentine Mass (with BCP options) translated into English;
4. the Book of Divine Worship - a missal in use among Anglican Use parishes prior to the formation of the Ordinariate and the introduction of Divine Worship: the Missal.

Dr. Clinton A. Brandt weighs in:

https://ordinariate.net/divine-worship-missal

Anglicans have a tradition going back more than 400 years of adapting and translating Latin liturgical texts into English. It is a tradition that began with the translation of the Bible and continued with the development of the Books of Common Prayer. Anglicans pioneered a set of conventions and a memorable style for rendering Latin texts faithfully into English.

The Anglican tradition, then, created an impressive collection of texts which were, in effect, mostly translations and variations of ancient prayers from the Roman Rite. The [Anglicanae Traditiones] commission assessed this collection of texts going back to [the first English Book of Common Prayer of] 1549 and ranging through the Prayer Books of different countries — England, Scotland, Canada and the United States — to distill and assemble the richest, most faithful selections for this adaptation of the Roman Rite.

The Ordinariate and its Liturgy take us forward by taking us back into the living story of the Church, a story told by the lives of the saints who with/by their whole lives loved the Holy Eucharist, the "source and summit of the Christian life".

Again, if the voluminous chatter in Catholic media and blog comboxes is any indication, chatter about the state of Catholic liturgy, the Church desperately needs to recover that oft chatted about sense of organic development. The various regional Ordinariates - North America, the United Kingdom and Australia/Japan/Torres Strait Islands - are perfectly suited to the task of celebrating the Sacred Liturgy in a way that is faithful to the legacy of the Holy Spirit to offer people the opportunity to discover Jesus Christ and to enter into communion with Him and the Church He founded - the Catholic Church.

If we are to avoid (Too late?..) a divisive diversity, the Church desperately needs the unifying genius of the Personal Ordinariates. The work of the Anglicanae Traditiones Commission has helped to restore to the Church an apostolic praxis whereby legitimate avenues for the Holy Spirit to draw all into communion with Christ are hosted (realized) at the parochial, diocesan, national and international levels.

(The) correspondence between Pope St. Gregory the Great and St. Augustine of Canterbury (...) has taken on new resonance in the liturgical project of the Ordinariates: Augustine's Second Question: Since we hold the same Faith, why do customs vary in different Churches? Why, for instance, does the method of saying Mass differ in the holy Roman Church and in the Churches of Gaul? Pope Gregory answers: My brother, you are familiar with the usage of the Roman Church, in which you were brought up. But if you have found customs, whether in the Roman, Gallican, or any other Churches that may be more acceptable to God, I wish you to make a careful selection of them, and teach the Church of the English, which is still young in the Faith, whatever you can profitably learn from the various Churches… Therefore select from each of the Churches whatever things are devout, religious, and right [quae pia, quae religiosa, quae recta]; and when you have arranged them into a unified rite, let the minds of the English grow accustomed to it.- Saint Bede the Venerable, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, trans. Leo Sherley-Price (London – New York, Penguin Books: 1990) I, 27, cited in The Worship of God in the Beauty of Holiness, A Presentation of Divine Worship, Most Rev. Steven J. Lopes, STD, The Liturgical Institute, Mundeline, June 21, 2017 (Hillenbrand Lecture).

The English Catholic patrimony preserved in the Anglican Communion, through former Anglicans received into full communion with the Catholic Church, is the liturgical patrimony that can rescue English speakers from the chaos never imagined by the fathers of the Second Vatican Council. That liturgical/spiritual, cultural, theological/intellectual and pastoral patrimony can reorganize and direct English speaking Catholics in a vital way that enables theological and social cohesion which can then inform and transform the wider culture.

Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P. wrote in the article Divine Worship and the Liturgical Vitality of the Church (Antiphon 19.2 (2015) 109–115) that

Without excluding liturgical celebrations according to the Roman Rite, the Ordinariate has the faculty to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and the other Sacraments, the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical celebrations according to the liturgical books proper to the Anglican tradition, which have been approved by the Holy See, so as to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared.

That "gift", i.e., the Ordinariate, is a way to overcome the divisions currently plaguing the Church, at least the English-speaking portion of the Flock, that distract her members from the mission of Christ.

The liturgical and pastoral genius of the Ordinariate, which preserves the Anglican Patrimony, can unite divergent factions. For example:

1. Divine Worship provides for worshipers a right understanding of the contemplative and the evangelical, the 'Mary' and the 'Martha', if you will.
2. The music of the Ordinariate, syllabic plainchant or homophonic Anglican chant, is ideally suited to the realization of authentic participation in the mystery of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
3. Tradition-minded Anglicans have had centuries of experience, rooted in a day-to-day parochial experience, of worshiping God in a manner that invites people to embrace thoroughly the Scriptural text as truth, as wisdom revealed by God and therefore essential to a Catholic's spiritual formation, something severely lacking in most Roman Catholic parishes today.

That experience of living the transcendentals, that wholistic liturgical, spiritual, intellectual, pastoral and cultural patrimony, is returned to the Church in the Ordinariate.

This single Church of Christ, which we profess in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic “subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him. Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside her visible confines. Since these are gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, they are forces impelling towards Catholic unity. - Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus (2009) by Benedict XVI.

With the publication of Anglicanorum Coetibus, there is now a structure within the Catholic Church that both gives that English tradition concrete expression as well as fosters its growth. The Ordinariate, with its “catholicized” English liturgical patrimony, is being invited to be a guardian and promoter of its own long and varied tradition as a gift to be shared with the whole Church. - Divine Worship and the Liturgical Vitality of the Church by Archbishop Augustine J. Di Noia: Antiphon 19.2 (2015) 109–115.

At the same time, the importance of Divine Worship is not limited to the parochial communities of the Ordinariates. The ecumenical contribution of this provision should not be underappreciated. In a lecture at Queen’s College, Canada, in 2010, Cardinal William Levada, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, noted: Twenty-eight years ago, the great historian of ecumenism, Fr. Yves Congar, wrote that if we take seriously that the Holy Spirit has been working among our fellow Christians, we have to take seriously the ways they express their beliefs. When their particular expression of faith adds harmony to ours, and ours add harmony to theirs, the logical step is to pass from talking longingly about unity to living in unity, a unity whose essence is revealed in harmonious diversity. Divine Worship and the Personal Ordinariates represent, in many ways, a realized ecumenism. Here, the unity of faith allows for a rich diversity in the expression of that faith, creating a space wherein the cadences of the Coverdale Psalter and the sobriety and disarming frankness of the Prayer Book will continue to resound and call to faith. Article III of Anglicanorum Coetibus had it right: this is indeed a treasure to be shared. - ibid. 

Divine Worship, the Mass of the Ordinariate, represents an opportunity for all Catholics to discover how unity and diversity can be fully realized in truth and charity.