At the Ordinariate Portal, a paper given Saturday, October 15, 2011, by Monsignor Andrew Burnham of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, at the Association for Latin Liturgy meeting at St Mary Magdalen, Brighton, England.
Ordinariate Liturgy, Reform of the Reform
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42 responses to “Ordinariate Liturgy, Reform of the Reform”
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“the preservation of a cultural patrimony much wider and deeper than that of the Anglican tradition”
Ouch – so much for ecumenism. Being a reader of Thinking Anglicans, I feel a bit suspicious of the Ordinariate program – if these guys love trafitional Catholicism so much, why not just convert?
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The cynic in me thinks that they don’t like traditional Catholicism so much, they just hate the idea of women on their altars. If they want to join the Catholic church, they should …. well … actually join the Catholic church.
The other thing that seriously bothers me is that priests who have ditched Anglicanism because they don’t much like women are welcomed with open arms, along with their wives while, at the same time, a Catholic priest who has remained faithful to his church has his loyalty punished and either cannot marry or must leave the priesthood in order to do so. It stinks.
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“Convert” isn’t the appropriate verb for describing a Christian’s coming into full communion with the Catholic Church, but that aside, these Christians who are making use of the Ordinariate are doing just that: coming into full communion with the Catholic Church. That means they assent to the Catholic faith. Is this what you mean by “just convert”?
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I meant become a Catholic, join the church, in the same way I did, through RCIA. I can’t help thinking they want to have their cake and eat it too, escaping the parts of Anglicanism they hate (women, gays) while keeping the parts they like (being married priests).
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I understand that the Ordinariate members mostly already considered themselves to be Catholic. They had hoped for the reunifaction of the Anglican faith as a whole. For them it was a matter of coming under the administrative authority of the Papacy, not just the moral authority. So they saw no need for conversion.
Although this does not seem quite right to Roman Catholics there are many intelligent members of the ordinariate who would be able to make a good case. Either way it is good that they are joining the true church in a fuller sense. Let us not quibble about the administrative process. -
Coming into full communion with the Catholic Church, and yet sitting in their own ghetto where they neither meet other Catholics nor celebrate the liturgies in the same way.
Yes. I, personally, am deeply suspicious.
So I throw up my hands in resignation and fall back on the Cradle-Catholic’s thick skinned approach to the hierarchy working in mysterious ways.
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Coming into full communion with the Catholic Church, and yet sitting in their own ghetto where they neither meet other Catholics nor celebrate the liturgies in the same way.
Do you feel the same way about Eastern Rite Catholics?
Is the issue that these Anglicans are not becoming, for lack of a better phrase, “full-fledged Roman Catholics”, but are maintaining what is being called their “Anglican patrimony”? They’re becoming “Anglican Rite (?) Catholics”, or “Anglican-Catholics” (in communion with Rome)?
This sounds like another uniformity vs. unity debate.
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I find it paradoxical that both Crystal and Paul think that the Anglican priests of the Anglicanorum Coetibus hate women yet wish to remain married to women. I hope someone will correct me if I’ve forgotten this history, but it seems to me that there were Anglican women priests long before Anglican men priests became disaffected enough to cross the Tiber. Didn’t the tipping point arrive when there was a threat of women bishops— women with authority over men? Wasn’t the problem one of authority, the same problem that was the sticking point for Rome in the ecumenical Lambeth conferences? As Peter Hayden writes, “For them it was a matter of coming under the administrative authority of the Papacy, not just the moral authority.” The Papacy gave them the reassurance they needed when it made the ordination of women as grave a crime as child molestation by a priest.
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I do think the tipping point was the making of women bishops, yes.
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Mary, thank you.
It may be that the prospect of women bishops was a tipping point but remember that there were “flying” bishops for those clergy not happy with changes already made. From the Anglicans I know the problem was the absence of any apparent sticking point. The approach seemed to be to make it up as they went along.
I think it is not fair to say that child molestation is seen as equal to the attempt to ordain women as priests. The first is primarily a matter for criminal law. The canonical consequences are secondary.
I would ask you to consider the relative evils of murder, manslaughter or child molestation. Which of these should lead to greater or lesser canonical consequences?
Now what about dangerous driving which might endanger life? -
Mary,
The first wave of married Catholic priests came when the Anglican church first started ordaining women. Another wave joined when women bishops started looking like a possibility.
I don’t recall suggesting that any of these men hated women, just considered them lesser beings. People love their dogs but don’t consider them equal. I am certain that these men love their wives deeply. The problem I have is that they don’t consider that their wives, or any women, are capable of priestly ministry or even that the Holy Spirit is capable of calling a woman to priestly ministry.
Given that there have been female Anglican priests for a number of years now, is there any evidence that their ministry is, in any way, less competent or less valid than their brother priests?
Is there anything to suggest that a woman bishop is going to be incompetent or invalid? Are these men so insecure in their masculinity that they feel diminished at the prospect of being under the authority of a [dramatic music] WOMAN? I honestly cannot see the problem.
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“Anlgican use can be summed up as singing appropriate words, to tunes of appropriate mood, for an appropriate length of time at points in the service where, in the Catholic tradition, the propers are otherwise cited.”
If there be any enrichment of the Roman rite tradition by the “full communion” with folks who maintain the kind of Anglican tradition he cites, then is it possible that even in the Roman rite (OF), such use of hymns might be learned and found porfound? The best of the “reformation” hymns are gems, like verbal and aural icons.
After all, the Anglican liturgy, however reformed, derived from none other than the Roman rite.
BTW even in the 16th Century, Cranmer, who threw in a lot of very fancy words, did not think that calix was a chalice, at least in the texts.
Mark MIller
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Do Mgr Burnham’s ideas reflect the current thinking in the CDW? If so, his views of the Anglican liturgical patrimony will have a very limited appeal to most Anglicans. Then again, I think the underlying assumptions leading to the creation of the ordinariate were deeply flawed to start with.
Most Anglicans still reject what they see as the “monarchical papacy”, are perfectly comfortable with the idea of the lady rector/vicar, and participate in the decision-making life of their church and diocese in ways not even contemplated in Benedict’s ordinariate. So, what’s to like? -
Peter Haydon :
I understand that the Ordinariate members mostly already considered themselves to be Catholic. They had hoped for the reunifaction of the Anglican faith as a whole. For them it was a matter of coming under the administrative authority of the Papacy, not just the moral authority. So they saw no need for conversion.Although this does not seem quite right to Roman Catholics there are many intelligent members of the ordinariate who would be able to make a good case. Either way it is good that they are joining the true church in a fuller sense. Let us not quibble about the administrative process.This is the most accurate and intelligent understanding of the Anglo-Catholic experience in becoming one with the Catholic Church that has been expressed here. Those above who seem to think of this journey in negatives do us (and themselves) an injustice. The negatives, such as ‘ordination’ of women, certainly played their part, but were only the ‘straws that broke the camel’s back’. It became increasingly clear that the Anglican Communion was moving irrevocably further rather than closer to Rome (and the Orthodox), and, far from being influenced by Catholic witness in these and other matters, was actually disdainful of the same. The Anglo-Catholic witness and patrimony could only find safety and a true home in full communion with Peter. In that way we have, in fact, ‘just become Catholic’. Perhaps those above who think that we haven’t ‘just become Catholic’ think that the Eastern Rite Catholics, too, should ‘just become Catholic’ — what a grievous loss to the Catholic Church that would be. We are blessed and grateful for the acceptance and blessing we have received by Holy Fathers Benedict and John Paul. This is oecumenism fulfilled.
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It’s interesting that you use quotes around ordination when the ordinand just happens to be a woman. What is it about womanhood that turns a valid Anglican ordination into a sham?
Has anyone seen pictures of the Virgin and Child? All mothers cradle their children to their breast, except this one. She is always depicted holding him out from her body, offering him to humankind. Before any Apostle, priest, bishop, pope or even Christ himself said “take, for this is my body”, Mary herself said “take, for this is from my body, and I give him to you”. She didn’t have to give him freely, yet she did. John’s gospel shows that he was not ready to begin his ministry at Cana, but she told him that it was time.
Mary of Magdala was not a prostitute (read Luke’s gospel more carefully if you think she was, chapters 7 and 8), she was a woman of means who supported Jesus from her own resources and was the first witness of the resurrection. Were the Apostles going to shut her out and deny her ministry in the infant church because she had breasts?
And what do breasts have to do with it, anyway? How do you define a woman? If you say a woman is a human with two X cromosomes, is it then OK to ordain an XY person with androgen insensitivity syndrome? They have male cromosomes and testes yet, to all external appearance, they are women.
The Holy Spirit calls whom he will to priesthood. Those Catholic women who have been called are shunned and ridiculed by men who simply cannot abide the idea the the Spirit is independent of man. You must be mistaken: the Spirit would never call you, a woman, that’s a crazy idea. The fact that you have spent, literally, years in prayer and discernment means nothing. You have breasts. Goodbye.
Be very careful before you claim to know someone else’s vocation more clearly than they do themselves.
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Jackson
Thank you for your kind words.
I suspect that Father Hunwicke (see his Liturgical Notes) would be one of those Anglicans. Note how, in one post, he says that the question of the validity of earlier ordinations was considered delicately. Many Anglicans seem to have tried to have an ordination with a valid Catholic Bishop. I struggle to understand this but Fr Hunwicke would make a case very well worth considering.
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What bothers me: First there’s the way our church went about setting up the Ordinariate program without even notifying Rowan Williams. There’s the way that our church seems at pains to accomadate only conservatives like the disaffected Anglicans and the SSPX bishops … as David Gibson once wrote, the cafeteria line seems to be forming to the right. Then there’s the thing about Anglican orders – did the guys who were Anglican bishops/prists believe somehow all the time they were presiding, that their orders were invalid? As for them already seeing themselves as Catholic – I find that strange – did they just not notice the Reformation? And finally, I despise the triumphalism that thinks a few disaffected Anglicans joining the Ordinariates is evidence that the Catholic Church is the only “true church”.
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Crystal, I have to say I can’t disagree more with this (as someone who came from Pietist/Anabaptist roots through Anglicanism on the way to Latin Rite Catholicism). There are many Latin Rite Catholics who believe substantially different things than the deposit of faith suggests they should; however, they are still considered Catholics, no? Is this not broadening the tent? I think so. Certainly, the accomodation of these “conservative” groups (which I think is a misnomer and unfortunate accretion from political discussions) is fairly strict: there are many shades of Anglicans, and the ordinariate will only interest those (as MJO mentions above) who are functionally Catholic. I think you should probably read some about the “continuing churches” and Anglicanism in general: there is a lot to learn and appreciate, but I have a feeling you might want to read some books. I did…and ended up Catholic!
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Bruce, thanks for the reply.
I do have a lot to learn, and I’ve not been a Catholic very long myself. My opinion about the Ordinariate has been mostly formed by my visits to the Episcopal Cafe and Thinking Anglicans. But also the lecture I posted a link to below speaks to my misgivings about the Ordinariate as it impacts ecumenism. Maybe I’m just going off an a weird tangent, though 🙂
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Not only did Rome not consult with archbishop Rowan Williams, from what I’ve been reading they didn’t consult much with the Catholic bishops of England and Wales either. “Just obey and fall into line”!! The UK hierarchy seem to have been dragging their feet from day one. TCreating no small amount of friction beween the British bishops and the Vatican.
Some of these ordinariate-bound Anglicans are real trips. They obsess over who can wear the pectoral cross and who can’t and fuss over what is the true “Anglican patrimony” and what isn’t. Mirror mirror on the wall,who is the truest of them all!
There’s something very shoddy about Rome dangling goodies before Episcopalians to get them to buy into this thing. When all the horse trading is over I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a lot of them wading back into the Tiber and swimming home to Canterbury or maybe even Constantinople.
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Somehow Msgr Burnham thinks he speaks for us?
Wanna know what our Anglican Ordinariate, Msgr Burnham, wants for the rest of the Roman Catholic Church then read on :
“A fourth edition of Missale Romanum might meet some – but undoubtedly not all – of the concerns of those who presently prefer the Extraordinary Form…. it would be good to have the traditional eucharistic lectionary return, at least as a possibility. It would be good to have the Gallican Offertory Prayers return, at least as an option for use at the altar whilst music is being sung. It would be good to encourage the use of Latin for the solemn mass, and in particular for the Liturgy of the Eucharist. It would be good for versus orientem to become normative again, with permission for versus populum where a particular architectural style or spirituality requires it….
Talk about Hubris!
Sorry to disappoint you Msgr Burnham, we are still fighting over the third edition which hasn’t gone into effect here, a fourth edition would be strangled in the cradle.
If the above is what you want for YOUR Divine Worship text for your little group then fine but DON’T speak for the rest of the Roman Catholic world.
I believe John Allen recently stated that the coming over of Anglicans is losing steam fast and there may not be many more in the next year. One can only hope so.-
Amen, Brother!
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The Ordinariate system seems to me to be a subtle co-opting of other religions. There’s a past example – “Uniatism” – and it wasn’t pretty.
I read a lecture about it – “The Healing of Memories and the Problem of Uniatism”, 21st Kelly Lecture, University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto, Canada, 1 December 2000, The Very Rev. Archimandrite Robert F. Taft, S.J., Vice-Rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome
It can be found here and here. Here’s a bit from the beginning …
“[…] the phenomenon known as “Uniatism,”[2] a pejorative neologism coined to denote a method of Church union the Orthodox see as politically rather than religiously motivated, and contrary to the “communion ecclesiology” of the Church of the first millennium.[3] In “Uniatism,” one Church is perceived as an aggressor against a “sister Church” with which it happens at the moment to be in schism, absorbing groups of its faithful deceptively by allowing them to retain their own liturgical and canonical traditions and a certain autonomy. This type of union, considered the result of political pressure reinforced by violence, created not unity but new divisions in an already fragmented Christendom …”
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Off the topic, for sure, but so much is these days.
I’m just wondering: which English bishop did the “monsignorial makeover” of Father Burnham so soon after the latter did his Tiber swim? Or was he previously an Anglican monsignor?
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Oops! I was just informed offline that Monsignor Burnham is the former Anglican Bishop Burnham.
As Roseanna Roseannadanna was wont to say: “Never mind.”
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Further off-topic: through your fault, through your fault, through your most grevious fault.
Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
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And you are not “Worthy that He should enter under your roof”.
Just kidding of course, Fr. Ron!ps I loved Roseanna Roseannadanna on SNL when in college, she was truly a funny actress!
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That reminds me. I need to get my unworthy roof fixed…
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Paul Robertson wants to know what it is about womanhood that turns an [otherwise] valid Anglican ordination into a sham. The same thing about them that was in Jesus’ conscious ordaining and commissioning of only his male disciples in the upper room. The underlying principle here is that this is Jesus’ deliberate choice, not ours. He did not ordain women; we, therefore, have not the authority to do so. He did many things that were not done by good Jews in his day, such as forgiving sin on his own authority and making such blasphemous assertions as ‘I and the Father are One’, or ‘before Abraham was I AM’. He was crucified for doing much that wasn’t done in his culture, and in doing so ‘fulfilled in the fullness of time all that the Father sent him to do’. He perfectly performed his mission, omitting, the scriptures tell us, nothing that was the Father’s will.
That is why the ‘ordination’ of a woman is not valid in the mind of the Church. This says nothing of women’s great holiness, that they live exemplary Christian lives as mothers, teachers, religious, artists, builders….. there aren’t too many things that women can’t do as well as men. But there are some. Men and Women are different; they are different inwardly as well as outwardly; they have different gifts as well as gifts in common. Why did not Jesus call them to be apostles is for the Church to discern ever more clearly through the scriptural record, the patristic record, through prayer and good will and the guidance of the Spirit. But to chortle that ‘a woman can do this job just as well as a man’ is not a reason for this unique ‘job’.-
I didn’t notice Jesus performing an ordination rite anywhere in the Bible. The Apostles ordained Matthias bishop, I can see that much. Also, I can’t see any account of the upper room that states that ONLY the men were present. Given the sexual politics at the time, it is entirely plausible that they could have been there yet disregarded by the evangelists.
Maybe we can learn something from Luke 15:21-28 where a woman is turned away by Jesus repeatedly — he calls her a dog — yet she persists and she makes him repent (he has a change of heart: I’m not suggesting he has sin to make good on here) and he says, of this gentile woman, “you have great faith” and gives her what she asked for. Maybe women today (and men, for that matter), who have been equated with dogs for centuries, need to be persistent.
I made the point earlier, and I’ll make it again. What do you say to a woman whom the Holy Spirit, by his own divine will, has called to priesthood? She has spent years in prayer and discernment “how can this be, for I am a woman?”, yet the consistent call to her heart is to the priesthood. Do you have the audacity to tell her that the Spirit is lying to her? Do you have the audacity to tell her that she is deluded, having gone through the same process of discernment that opens the door to priesthood for a man? Do you have the audacity to tell the Holy Spirit that he is mistaken. “Sorry, God, you must have not noticed the ovaries, I’ll just correct your mistake”?
Again, I raise the point of androgen insensitivity syndrome. Is it OK, under Canon Law, to ordain a woman with AIS? She has testes and a Y chromosome, just like I do. What is the clear differentiator that makes one human a viable candidate for ordination and another not?
I am aware of what recent popes have said on the matter. I am convinced that they are wrong, just as you are convinced that they are right. I am equally sure we will never agree on this matter.
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I made the point earlier, and I’ll make it again. What do you say to a woman whom the Holy Spirit, by his own divine will, has called to priesthood? She has spent years in prayer and discernment “how can this be, for I am a woman?”, yet the consistent call to her heart is to the priesthood.
You say the same thing that you say to the man who has spent years in prayer and discernment and whose conistent call in his heart is to the priesthood when the bishop won’t ordain him: only when you are ordained by the Church is it certain that you are called.
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M.J.O. thanks for the recent parodies! Some of the anachronisms are howlers though.
It would be helpful to differentiate between “The Twelve,” disciples and apostles.
Jesus didn’t ordain any person in any sense remotely similar to the modern use of the term.
If the Last Supper was a Passover meal, it is more likely than not that there were children present, since there was a ritual role for the youngest child who could carry out the function. Is it likely that children were in the company of males only?
In Luke 10.1 we read that Jesus sent out 70 others. By definition each of these was an apostle. The sex of these apostles is not differentiated. To presume that all were male is to work from a biased premise.
As far as we know Jesus didn’t send out any Irishmen. That is not enough to prevent them from being ordained.
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Well, first, it most likely was NOT a Passover meal in the strict ritual sense, but a pre-Passover meal. (I will leave aside such interesting technical issues as minutiae about the kind of bread that would have to been used in the period after the sweeping out of the yeast and the nightfall of Passover – in modern Judaism, IIRC, it’s egg matzot, as you can’t eat the regular Passover matzot until Passover, but there’s no yeast around….) Even the current Pope has conceded this point in private opinion, though the matter remains open for discussion.
Second, the Passover seder ritual we are familiar with post-dates the destruction of the Temple.
That said, the Passover meal was a family celebration par excellence, and family of some sort would have been around for the days of preparation for the feast, even understanding that our Lord made provision for fully furnished facilities. (And we know, from the accounts of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, that the full “family” was present for the festal pilgrimage, though not necessarily the Last Supper itself.) There were duties that women had to perform, and duties men had to perform. However, the Last Supper as a pre-Passover meal need not have involved everyone; it could have been more intimate. Indeed, the conjecture is that Peter was located in the position of service, opposite John, Jesus and Judas, but neglected to wash the feet of the other guests (which would have been more typically done by a woman or servant if such had been present).
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Many men, as well as women, are certain, after much prayer and personal struggle, that they are called to the priesthood. It is the Church that confirms or denies the genuiness of each particular calling. Not all are accepted.
The Church does, indeed, regard Jesus’ encounter with his disciples in the upper room after his resurrection as the first ordination. We are told specifically that he breathed on them and sent them forth:
‘And when he had said this, he shewed them his hands and his side. The disciples therefore were glad, when they saw the Lord. He said therefore to them again: Peace be to you. As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them: and he said to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained. (St John 20.20 ff, Douay-Rheims)
This, sometimes called the great commissioning, is regarded by the Church as the first ordination, performed by Jesus himself.
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And to the text.
“The doors were closed in the room where the disciples were for fear of the Jews… Thomas, called the Twin, who was one of the Twelve, was not with them…”
Point 1: John does not specify the gender, nor the quantity, of the disciples who were present in the room. Given that he identifies Thomas as being specifically one of the Twelve, we can assume that, if it were the Twelve in the room, he’d have said so and not just “the disciples”. There is nothing in this passage that excludes women. In fact, the only person whose gender we can positively identify was not even in the room at the time.
Point 2: Thomas was not in the room for the Great Commissioning: does that mean that he was not ordained with the others? Were the people he went on to baptise and otherwise initiate into the new church incorrectly initiated?
And as for saying that a calling is only valid once a bishop decides it is suggesting that a) all bishops are totally open to all ordinands and are led only by the Spirit and b) all bishops are telepathic and can truly understand the discernment process as undergone by the ordinand and c) God speaks only through the officers of the church (because Christ, brought up in the Temple and trained in all matters religious, never called fishermen or tax collectors, you see)
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I made the point earlier, and I’ll make it again. What do you say to a woman whom the Holy Spirit, by his own divine will, has called to priesthood? She has spent years in prayer and discernment “how can this be, for I am a woman?”, yet the consistent call to her heart is to the priesthood.
You say the same thing that you say to the man who has spent years in prayer and discernment and whose conistent call in his heart is to the priesthood when the bishop won’t ordain him: only when you are ordained by the Church is it certain that you are called.
Of course, the ones who established that rule were the ones who do the ordinations, not the One who does the calling.
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“only when you are ordained by the Church is it certain that you are called”
Spiritual director William Barry SJ has written in “Paying Attention to God: Discernment in Prayer” that he believes many women are called by God to be priests – I posted a bit of what he wrote here … http://povcrystal.blogspot.com/2007/11/william-barry-sj-women-and-ordiantion.html
What Timothy Radcliffe once wrote in the Tablet (http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/662) about gay priests is true too, I think for women … “a vocation is a call from God. It is true that, as the document says, it is “received through the Church, in the Church and for the service of the Church”, but it is God who calls.”
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S.J. Howard “only when you are ordained by the Church is it certain that you are called.”
What about all of those who presided at the Eucharist in the early centuries before ordination became the norm?
What about those who had oversight in the various communities before the office of bishop as we currently understand it became the norm?
What about the likes of Rodrgio Borja, Theophylact Jnr, and Sergius III. All ordained. by the Church. You’re certain they were called?
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K.L. S.
The jury is out on whether the Last Supper was a passover meal or not.
The seder may postdate the destruction of the Temple. Who is to say that the ritual elements required of men, women and at least one child didn’t have antecedents that predated 70 CE?
A conjecture of who sat where is just that – a mighty exercise in guesswork and a sheer waste of time.
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M.J.O.
“The Church does, indeed, regard Jesus’ encounter with his disciples in the upper room after his resurrection as the first ordination.”
“This, sometimes called the great commissioning, is regarded by the Church as the first ordination, performed by Jesus himself.”
What you mean is you regard them as such.
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Nah, Jeffrey, it’s just plain prejudice. They’re British and they don’t see the need to dump all that to come into fuller communion with Rome, whilst the non-British which dominate church structures insist that they do out of prejudice. Let it go. It’s fine. Don’t try to be more Catholic than the Church.
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I don’t think it’s that. I’m British, too, and I am deeply suspicious of the Ordinariate (see above). Many of my British church friends are also suspicious. Many others think it’s fine. It’s all part of life’s rich tapestry, I guess…
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