Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Anglican Use Rite

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At Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, Texas.

Now, before these folks were brought into the Catholic Church, the Holy Father tweaked the Anglican liturgy slightly so that it would match up with Catholic sacramentality - so it's a thoroughly Catholic rite, I assume. What I want to know is, how come the Anglican Use rites and the Eastern rites are so lovely, while we in the normative Latin rite get the short end of the stick! I suppose there is always the Tridentine rite, the only difficulty being the endless search for the cubby-hole where they sometimes like to stash it ;)

I am wondering if anyone can answer a question I have about the Eastern liturgies, if the Easterners have a uniform practice ... Does the priest face the same direction as the congregation (which snarky and/or uninformed columnists refer to as "turning his back on the congregation"), or does he turn around to do show-and-tell, the way he does in the normative rite? I always prefer the first way, since it puts the emphasis on God and not on the priest as a "performer."

Hat tip to Recta Ratio for the pic (you can also see another great pic of the Anglican Use liturgy there).

3 comments:

  1. So, thease are Anglicans that caved or something (no offense meant)... and became Catholics again?

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  2. Yup. The Anglican Use liturgy is one of those pastoral provisions designed to alleviate some of the hardships associated with swimming the Tiber. The goal is to be as compassionate as possible and as generous as prudence allows.

    Letting married Anglican converts be ordained as priests is another example of the "pastoral provision."

    Schismatic "Traditionalists", i.e. SSPX adherents, will one day, hopefully, benefit from a similar arrangement.

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  3. ...Soooooooooooo... I guess I'm ok with these people then. (But I still think they could have been ACUSA anti-ECUSA Anglicans and not had to switch over, you know?

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