Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Basically Pope Benedict has Moved Anglo Catholics From an Apartment to a House

AtonementOnline , who is the Priestof an Catholic Anglican Use parish in Texas has a great post on yesterdays big news. See Questions, questions... . I think he sums what is going on hwell. Read the whole thing but let me quote three parts of this that caught my eye. The bolding is mine!!!

I've been asked how this idea of a Personal Ordinariate is different from what we already have in the Pastoral Provision. Here's an imperfect analogy: it's kind of like the difference between living in an apartment and living in a house. What do I mean? As things are now, we have a wonderful home in the Catholic Church. We have a beautiful liturgy. We have a marvellous church and school. We have a terrific archbishop who readily expresses his respect and affection for us. We're extremely fortunate. That's not the case in many other dioceses. There are bishops who have made it clear that they don't want an Anglican Use parish in their jurisdiction, and there have been many cases where requests have been flatly refused. Many chancery officials view the Pastoral Provision as being temporary, and will do very little to assist Anglican clergy and they completely ignore the inquiries of Anglican laity. As it is now, the Anglican Use depends upon the charity of the local ordinary. That's a very shaky foundation for building anything permanent. A landlord can eventually get rid of an unwanted tenant. A home-owner has a whole lot more stability.

Exactly!!! By the way his comments on how local Bishops have not taken advantage of the Pastoral shows partly why Benedict has decided after two decades of the Pastoral it is time for him to take action if his Bishops will not.

I thought this was very interesting too

Some people have asked, "What about our beautiful liturgy? Will that change?" Actually, it probably will -- and for the better. The present Book of Divine Worship, while it's a thing of beauty and is far more than we expected at the time, isn't completely satisfactory. The liturgical politics of twenty-five years ago meant that we were required to "novus ordo-ize" parts of the Mass. Too much was incorporated from the 1979 Prayer Book, which is not the version most of us knew and loved. Many of us had come from what were called "Missal parishes," where we used things like the Anglican Missal, the English Missal, or the Knott Missal. These were beautiful expressions of the traditional Catholic Mass, in impeccable English, incorporating the Prayer Book along with traditional and ancient Catholic elements. Many of the Anglicans who will enter the Church through the Personal Ordinariates come from those same kind of parishes, and will be looking for that kind of liturgy. The Book of Divine Worship serves us well, but it needs to be amplified and improved. It's my hope that this will happen now.

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