ELS Interview on Personal Ordinariates
02 Wednesday Sep 2020
Posted in Canon Law, Ordinariate
Category Archives: Ordinariate
Some Thoughts on Polity
17 Wednesday Jun 2020
Posted in Ordinariate
This article is taken from the Newsletter of the Friends of the Ordinariate (Summer 2020). You can view the article and support the work of the Friends by visiting the website: http://friendsoftheordinariate.org.uk
Letter from America
Washington is a great city for walking. Arriving back in town at the end of a mild winter, I have spent the last few months taking advantage of the lighter evenings and warmer weekends to relearn my way around the downtown area and, more selfishly, to lose a couple of pounds in the process. Happily I’ve found that a good walk from my home at Saint Mary’s in Chinatown to the National Mall, and back again, takes about the same time as a podcast of Choral Evensong on Radio 3. The present restrictions on movement are not as strictly-enforced as seems to be the case in England, and the improving weather (to say nothing of a more flexible routine) means I am still able to take advantage of a daily stroll.
The Anglican Road to the Catholic Church
15 Monday Jun 2020
Posted in Ordinariate
I was recently interviewed on The Cordial Catholic Podcast on my own journey to the Catholic Church and the role and purpose of the personal ordinariates. K. Albert Little, the presenter of The Cordial Catholic, is himself a former Protestant who came into the Catholic Church around the time of Anglicanorum cœtibus.
What is the Ordinariate?
12 Friday Jun 2020
Posted in Ordinariate
Here is a recent interview with Pierpaolo Finaldi, CEO and Publisher of the Catholic Truth Society, on the life and mission of the personal ordinariates. The CTS publishes Divine Worship: The Missal, Divine Worship: Occasional Services, and Divine Worship: Pastoral Care of the Sick and Dying. They are currently working on the Divine Office for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham and the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross.
Homily for Lent V
02 Sunday Apr 2017
Posted in Homily, Ordinariate
The Raising of Lazarus, 4th or 5th century A.D., Tunisian. The Walters, Baltimore MD
Over these weeks the gospel reading at our Sunday Mass has reflected on Christ’s ministry of healing, albeit in a variety ways. Two weeks ago we heard of the Samaritan woman at the well, offered the living water of life by Christ as the antidote to her life of sin. Last week we heard of the recovery of the sight of the man born blind; an analogy for our own cleansing from original sin. And this week we hear the familiar story of the raising of Lazarus.
Divine Worship: Inculturation
05 Tuesday Jul 2016
Posted in Liturgy, Ordinariate
Tags
anglicanorum coetibus, BSDW, Cardinal Sarah, Divine Worship, inculturation, liturgy, ordinariate
Cardinal Robert Sarah at Sacra Liturgia (Photo: Sacra Liturgia)
Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, has this evening delivered the opening address of the 2016 Sacra Liturgia conference in London. His Eminence made many important and significant points concerning the celebration of the sacred liturgy, and indeed the particular reforms and liturgical renewal that took place at, and following, the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. He also made a number of practical suggestions – what he described as “possible ways of moving towards ‘the right way of celebrating the liturgy inwardly and outwardly,’ which was of course the desire expressed by Cardinal Ratzinger at the beginning of his great work, The Spirit of the Liturgy.”
Homily for Trinity IV
19 Sunday Jun 2016
Posted in Homily, Ordinariate
Tags
Saint Peter depicted in Gonzaga University Chapel, Spokane WA
What is now known as the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was founded by a community founded in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States by Father Paul Wattson in the 1890s, and entering the full communion of the Catholic Church in 1909. To begin, this time set aside to pray for the reunion of Christendom was known as the Octave of Christian Unity, running from the 18th to 25th January each year. These dates are of course significant: 25th January is the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, whilst 18th January is known as the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter or, in some Anglican circles, as the feast of the Confession of Saint Peter. In fact, the gospel traditionally assigned for this feast—whichever name we choose to apply—is the account given by Saint Matthew of what we have just heard this morning from Saint Luke, which includes the Christ’s response: Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church (Mt. 16: 18). In other words, the confession of Saint Peter—Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God—is intimately linked with the power bestowed on him by Christ in his Chair, that seat of his apostolic authority after which the personal ordinariate in North America takes its name.
Divine Worship: For The Priest Himself
21 Thursday Apr 2016
Posted in Liturgy, Ordinariate
Tags
BSDW, Divine Worship, liturgy, ordinariate, ordination, priesthood
The anniversary of my own ordination to the priesthood provides an occasion to offer a short post about the propers in Divine Worship: The Missal for one of the Masses for Various Necessities and Occasions designated For the Priest himself. This Mass formulary is given the additional title, in parentheses: “especially on the anniversary of ordination.” The majority of the propers for this Mass come from the Mass In Any Necessity, but the Introit, Collect, Prayer over the Offerings, and Postcommunion are proper to this formulary in Divine Worship. In the catalogue of masses in this section of the missal, this follows those For the Pope or Bishop and For the Election of the Pope.
Divine Worship: Easter Octave
01 Friday Apr 2016
Posted in Liturgy, Ordinariate
Tags
baptism, BSDW, Divine Worship, easter, liturgy, octave, ordinariate
Holy Water, the Cathedral Church of Our Lady of Walsingham, Houston TX
The days of the Easter Octave retain a special character throughout the Roman Rite. This is true of both the Ordinary Form and the Extraordinary Form, and also of Divine Worship: The Missal, which preserves this sacred time in accordance with ancient practice, whilst also making use of certain Anglican translations and practices.
Overview of the Easter Octave
If the Paschal Vigil is “the mother of all vigils,” then the Easter Octave is to be considered the mother of all octaves. Its origins predate even those of the Octave of the Nativity of the Lord, of the Epiphany, and of Pentecost, and of course those of later feasts such as Corpus Christi. Blessed Ildefonso Schuster goes so far as to say that the octave “was characteristic of the Easter festivities.” Dom Prosper Guéranger says, with equal eloquence, “So ample and so profound is the mystery of the glorious Pasch, that an entire week may well be spent in its meditation.” With an overview of its associated practices, we can see how right they are.
Divine Worship: Lent Ember Days
16 Tuesday Feb 2016
Posted in Ordinariate
Tags
anglicanorum coetibus, BSDW, Divine Worship, ember days, lent, liturgy, ordinariate, ordination, patrimony
Ordination of a Priest, Saint Mary’s Seminary, Houston TX
Having already discussed the general origin and development of Ember Days in their context in the season of Advent, this article will consider the second set of Ember Days in the liturgical year, those of the first full week of Lent, as they appear in Divine Worship: The Missal.
History of the Ember Days in Lent
To begin we must look at the specific purpose of the Ember Days in the season of Lent. Dom Prosper Guéranger notes that, in common with those in December, these Ember Days are oriented toward the bestowal of holy orders that traditionally took place on Ember Saturday, just before the Second Sunday of Lent. He comments that they are also “to offer to God the season of spring, and, by fasting and prayer, to draw down His blessing upon it.” The context of the Ember Days within the season of Lent is in fact a later development. Marking the natural season, rather than the liturgical season, the Ember Days began as celebrations of the season of spring in the first week of March, and were only fixed to days in Lent by Pope Saint Gregory VII in the eleventh century. Archdale King notes that the Ember Days in general “appear at the first to have no fixed date, the Pope announced their celebration some time in advance.” More than that, Josef Jungmann states that the idea of holding Ember Days in spring at all was, in fact, a comparatively late addition, introduced only after the development of those in summer, autumn, and winter. He writes: “We say quattuor tempora, but the most ancient sources of the Roman liturgy speak only of three such times … The fourth place, in spring, remained free, because there was already the great season of Quadragesima.” According to Jungmann, the adoption of the fourth set of Ember Days, in spring at first and then later specifically in Lent, may have brought about the transferral of the Mass formulary for the Ember Days in December to Lent, and the composition of new texts for the Ember Days in December with, as he puts it, “an Advent character”—an hypothesis he draws from the history of ordination practices in Rome.
