The Venerable English Mass of the Ordinariate: Renewal And Continuity

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The Venerable English Mass, Divine Worship, is the legitimate offspring of a conversation between continuity and reform that (re-)unites the Anglican Patrimony—that is, the Catholic Patrimony preserved in Anglicanism—with the Church.

Divine Worship is more than a collection of liturgical texts and ritual gestures. It is the organic expression of the Church’s own lex orandi as it was taken up and developed in an Anglican context over the course of nearly five-hundred years of ecclesial separation, and is now reintegrated into Catholic worship as the authoritative expression of a noble patrimony to be shared with the whole Church. As such, it is to be understood as a distinct form of the Roman Rite. Further, while Divine Worship preserves some external elements more often associated with the Extraordinary Form, its theological and rubrical context is clearly the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite. That I situate Divine Worship within the context of the Ordinary Form becomes a fact more discernable when one considers the dual hermeneutic of continuity and reform, which informs the project.—H.E. Steven J. Lopes, Bishop of the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter.

The Ordinariate Mass does more than simply retain the skeletal remnants of past rituals, despite what some modern iconoclasts may argue. In other words, the claim that tradition-minded Catholics value liturgical bling over the living God is unfounded. As Jaroslav Pelikan put it, "the living faith of the dead"—the faith of those devoted sons and daughters of the Church who upheld the Catholic truth without blemish by embodying it—is instead properly preserved by Divine Worship.

III. 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. | Anglicanorum Coetibus

The Apostolic Faith has always been celebrated through orthodox acts. Gestures, music, art, and architecture announce the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the salvation of souls.

Communities of the Ordinariate, as well as fraternities and institutes dedicated to the Extraordinary Form, help the Church to rediscover a rich vocabulary of acts of adoration and veneration that bring the humble worshipper into harmony with God's will and prepare the willing soul to receive God's grace.

The Triumph of Both/And

Divine Worship avoids the unnecessary dichotomies and useless polemics of the liturgy wars precisely because it is the fruit of an honest, intense and nuanced conversation between continuity and renewal that confidently asserts and celebrates the Apostolic Faith. Renewal and continuity are clearly visible (and audible) in the content and structure of the Venerable English Mass of the Ordinariate.

The Ordinariate Mass preserves elements from a rite or use that thrived prior to the Tridentine reforms. There is a strong flavour of the Sarum Use in the Ordinariate Liturgy. The Ordinariate returns to the Church many beautiful Catholic liturgical practices.

The 1549 Book of Common Prayer, a principal source for the Ordinariate Missal, is older than the Missal of Saint Pius V, and has its own origins in the Sarum Missal, a variant of the Roman Rite going back to the eleventh century.—H.E. Steven J. Lopes, Bishop of the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter.