Ordinariate Mass - look carefully and you can see Lutheran and Calvinist influences

Fr Gregory-Palamas
30 September 2013, 9:00

Last week the ordinariate created by Pope Benedict XVI for former Anglicans announced that a special liturgy was to be launched in London next month. It mixes the Roman Rite with material from the Book of Common Prayer. I was an Anglican rector until 1978, but was re-ordained 21 years ago to serve as an Orthodox priest. I was shown a copy of the liturgy and wanted to see how it had been put together.

The vocabulary, syntax and style of liturgical English crafted from the Reformation period until Shakespeare still has a resonance for many Christians today. I still have nostalgia for the language of the Book of Common Prayer. Some Orthodox Christians have opted for this older linguistic style with varying degrees of success. Practically it would be unhelpful for most of our people, since they have not been immersed in the language of Cranmer and Shakespeare.

Although Henry VIII and his Archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, were excommunicated in 1533, and the revocation of papal authority became de iure in 1534, nothing was changed in the Mass until an English Penitential Rite was added in 1548; it was placed between the Lord's Prayer and the communion of priest and people. It consisted of an Invitation, Confession, General Absolution, Comfortable Words and Prayer of Humble Access. Although the words were by Cranmer, the rite drew heavily on the 1543 Hermann's Consultation. Hermann von Wied was the Prince Archbishop of Cologne and he made a definite move in 1542 towards reformation and was excommunicated in 1546. Hermann's Consultation, with inputs from Hermann's court preacher, Bucer, and Luther's companion, Melancthon, had among other rites a form for administering The Lord's Supper. Bucer and Melancthon later fled to England and assisted Cranmer with his work.

In 1552 Cranmer published the second Prayer Book as he moved towards a more Calvinist, perhaps even a Zwinglian, stance. The 1548 Penitential Rite, without the Prayer of Humble Access, was placed after the Intercession, a procedure followed in the Ordinariate Mass. At the same time the Ten Commandments were inserted at the beginning of the Lord's Supper under the influence of Valerandus Pollanus and John A'Lasco, who were Calvinist ministers fleeing to England to escape persecution. Appendix 4 of the Ordinariate Mass allows their recitation at the same point. In 1552 the Kyries became the people's response to them, together with the additional Calvinist phrase: 'and incline our hearts to keep this law'.

The Summary of the Law from Deuteronomy, 'Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith', first made its appearance in the Established Church in the proposed 1928 Book of Common Prayer, though it was used earlier by the eighteenth-century non-jurors.

The Offertory Psalm verses were abolished in the 1549 book and replaced with scriptural quotations encouraging the people to be generous in giving a collection for the poor. These may be used in the same way in the Ordinariate Mass, but the Roman Offertory prayers over the bread and wine have been added. The 1549 book also has a large psalm introit and 22 Post-Communion verses not dependent on any season. These were omitted in 1552, and although they were present in the Non-Juror Prayer Book of 1718, have not reappeared in the Ordinariate Rite.

None of the above affects the validity of the Ordinariate Mass, since the permitted Anaphoras (Canons) clearly proclaim the Eucharistic Change. Cranmer in his first Prayer Book, on the other hand, in writing that the 'creatures of bread and wine ...may be to us the body and blood' was clearly enshrining a Lutheran Theology, and in his Second Book was proclaiming a Calvinist/Zwinglian Theology: 'Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for you.'

The Ordinariate Mass shows how liturgical phraseology and content, forged in the white heat of the Lutheran, Calvinist and Anglican Reformations, can be employed in a Catholic context. The twin danger is precisely the same as that faced by the Western-rite Orthodox within the Orthodox Church. The Western rite Orthodox are essentially a small minority who use the Roman rite used before the Schism of 1054. Can birthright Catholics or Orthodox accept those using these rites as fellow members of the same Christian family?

Protopresbyter Gregory-Palamas is priest of the Orthodox church of SS Demetrios and Nikitas in Plymouth