Anglican Use

I went to the Anglican Use liturgy in Toronto today, associated with the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.

I have some shots from the booklet they use that I think are interesting:

The opening is different. Note the Collect for Purity and Summary of the Law:

Certain Gregorian melodies are apparently not all that hard to translate over to English. The music here was basically Gloria VIII. Notice "in earth," "goodwill towards men," and (of course) "thee," "thy," "thou," etc:

 

The Nicene Creed, likewise, was musically basically just Creed III in English. Notice "before all worlds," "Very God of Very God," and "of one substance":

Notice: "sitteth," "the quick and the dead," "Holy Ghost," and "proceedeth." I didn't get a picture of the next page, but it spake of the "One, Holy, Catholick, and Apostolick Church":

The Prayer of Intercession, followed by The Comfortable Words. I noticed especially the prayer for the Ordinary of the Ordinariate, for "Elizabeth our Queen, and the Prime Minister of Canada," the invocation of Blessed John Henry Newman, as well as the phrases "we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness," and  "thy wrath and indignation":

Hymn at the Offertory. It was interesting: they used, basically, Propers at the Introit, Gradual and Alleluia, and even for the "Offertory Sentence" and "Communion Sentence." Hymns in the Anglican choral tradition then came after the proper Offertory Sentence and Communion Sentence (almost like motets at a traditional Roman Mass). There was a recessional hymn at the end, of course. Not really enough people to sing four parts though, lol (not that I'd know how anyway...):

A lot of good stuff here; "And with thy spirit," "it is meet and right so to do," "bounden duty," "laud and magnify." It's like...they actually know how to speak English at more than a 3rd-grade reading level!!:

The anaphora was just the Roman Canon, but hieratic, with "thee" and "thy" and "spake" and "saith."

And the Lord's Prayer, the one place where the Novus Ordo maintains "thy" and "art"...is actually, in a few ways, more hieratic for the Anglican Use ("which art," "in earth") because it's taken from the Prayer-Book:

"O Lamb of God, who takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us." Then the Prayer of Humble Access:

My only complaint would be that there was a lay reader. Not that I mind that he (at least it was a male!) was lay; obviously, the server was too. But I do wish that readers would vest in cassock and surplice and sit in the sanctuary like the servers; why this need to have a secular-dressed person come up out of the congregation for the readings? It's a strange sort of populism, as I've discussed before, I think.

Other than that, though there weren't many in attendance, I was pleased. Communion was received kneeling and on the tongue. Some people then also received kneeling from the chalice, something I had never seen in a Catholic service before. In general there was a lot more kneeling at the Anglican Use liturgy than the Roman Mass (at the collects, for example, and during the intercessions). The Angelus was prayed after Mass at the Lady Altar. 

Then I was invited to the coffee and, for all my spieling here sometimes about Catholics needing more parish community and commending the Anglicans and the Orthodox for it...when faced with the actual prospect personally in a Catholic context, I could only think to myself, "What? Are you kidding me? We're Catholic!" and then told a white lie to high-tail it out of there without having to attend... :P

All in all, it's something I'm glad has a place in the Church, and it was worth seeing.