A new Missal of the Catholic Church will be used for the first time in parishes of the Ordinariates in Australia from the end of this month.
Leader of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, Msgr Harry Entwistle said the new Missal, called Divine Worship, is amazing because its texts have by and large been developed from the Book of Common Prayer and the Anglican tradition or patrimony.
Msgr Entwistle explained that the new Missal contains the Order for the Mass, and the variable prayers and other scriptural texts, instructions and rubrics and music, and the liturgical calendar for Ordinariate congregations.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI established the Ordinariates by Papal Constitution in 2009.
Anglicanorum Coetibus was a response to requests from Anglicans worldwide wishing to return to the rock from which Anglicanism was originally hewn, without losing their identity or liturgical heritage.
It was a pastoral and ecumenical initiative, building on, although separate from the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission on unity, established in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.
The decree of the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments officially authorising the new Missal, was promulgated on 27 May this year – the memorial of St Augustine of Canterbury – for use from Advent Sunday, 29 November.
It stands alongside the Roman Missals of 1970 – third edition, and the 1962 version of St Pius V’s Missal [the ordinary and extraordinary rites] as an officially authorised liturgical use of the Latin or Roman rite.
“The new missal is thus firmly in the western tradition, being a form of the Roman Rite,” Msgr Entwistle said.
This will be the second liturgical book published by the Holy See for the Ordinariates. The first, called ‘Divine Worship – Occasional Services’ was published last year.
The new Missal, drawing on Anglican sources, is the work of an international liturgical committee set up in 2012 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [and the Congregation of Divine Worship].
The committee is known by its Latin name, Anglicanae Traditiones. Its members include canon law experts, liturgists, and prelates with both Anglican and Latin rite backgrounds, including Bishop Peter Elliott, an Auxiliary bishop of Melbourne, who was brought up as the son of a vicar.
Msgr Entwistle went on to explain that anyone in communion with the Holy See may receive Holy Communion at celebrations of the Ordinariate Mass, and fulfil their Sunday obligation.
Any member of the Ordinariate may receive Communion at any other authorised Eucharistic rite of the Catholic Church. Normally, a priest of the Ordinariate will be the celebrant of the Ordinariate Mass, but any Catholic priest may celebrate the Divine Worship Rite for an Ordinariate congregation if an Ordinariate priest is not available for some reason. Any Catholic priest may concelebrate at an Ordinariate Mass.
A copy of Divine Worship -The Missal will be presented to Pope Francis on Advent Sunday and will be used for the first time in the church is Saints Ninian & Chad, 11 Susan St, Maylands, at 9.30 am on 29 November. Anyone who would like to share in this historic moment are welcome to join this celebration.
Courtesy The Catholic Weekly, Archdiocese of Sydney.