Why is the Catholic Church cannibalising the Book of Common Prayer? Sacred Mysteries: The words of the Reformation leader Thomas Cranmer now appear in a new Order of Mass Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury (c.1547) Photo: Bridgeman Art Library By Christopher Howse 7:30AM BST 18 Oct 2014 I’ve always felt sympathetic to foreigners on holiday in England who come across a church advertising Mass and displaying crucifixes and statues inside. When they discover later that they have been at a service of the Church of England, not of the Roman Catholic Church, they are puzzled and confused. So what would you think if you went into a church and heard the clergyman begin: “God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit…”? If you said it was an early part of the Anglican service of Holy Communion, you’d be right. But I’ve just been looking at a new service booklet with the Order of Mass according to the Use of the Ordinariate. It begins with that prayer, yet it is a Roman Catholic liturgy. Instead of bells-and-smells Anglicans stealing the Catholics’ clothes, as it were, we have Catholics (Roman Catholics) cannibalising the Book of Common Prayer. It’s the work of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, set up under Pope Benedict XVI to allow Anglicans become members of the Catholic Church while retaining their “Anglican patrimony”. This struck some Anglicans as poaching. Click here for the rest of the article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/rel...-cannibalising-the-Book-of-Common-Prayer.html
That is your first clue. I don't think we will accuse them of too much poaching, they may want a few cathedrals back!
Isn't it a good thing if they find our prayers "acceptable"? Side note: I honestly cannot say how long I'll be an Anglican (especially of Canterbury) - but I must say that there are prayers that I'd feel really sad if I were to drop them completely from my worship prayers. This is one of those prayers.
The Collect for Purity Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secretes are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy holy spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name: through Christ our Lord. Amen. Cranmer did not write the prayer, though his classic rendering of it has sustained many of us. It is found in Latin in the Prayers of the Leofric Missal, in the prayers before the Mass. It is almost certainly part of the preconquest liturgical rites of the English Church so has been being used by people in the tradition of the English Church for at least 1100 years, and probably much longer. It is without doubt one of the most beautiful, classic and noble prayers of our tradition, and in but a few words manages to encapsulate what needs to be said, embracing both the transcendence and the immanence of God. Side note: It may be easier to take people out of the Anglican Communion than it is to take the Anglican Communion out of those people.
They were not poached if they chose to leave because of decisions made by the Anglican Communion (Canterbury) that they could not agree with. I am surprised, however, with the ease they accepted doctrines such as papal infallibility. I think that in England, if a Church calling itself Anglican is not part of the Canterbury Anglican Communion most people don't consider it to be truly Anglican - there is a degree is suspicion. There is a need to feel part of an established Church - C of E, RC or, to a lesser extent, EO. It's an English thing I think.
For the greater part of my life I'd assumed that all Anglicans were Church of England, Church of Ireland, Church of Scotland etc. The only Anglicans outside the British Isles that I'd heard of were the episcopalian
Me too. Me too, but in fact there are lots of other Churches, not in communion with Canterbury, that regard themselves as Anglican. See below. http://anglicansonline.org/communion/nic.html http://anglicansonline.org/communion/infull.html http://anglicansonline.org/communion/index.html