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A friend sent me something in Middle Low German by a well-known Beguine and asked me to translate it. I was happy to do so, but what was sent to me was written not in Middle Low German but rather Middle High German. There is a world of difference between the two at the level of genuine meaning though from a distance and with a casual glance one could misconstrue them to be the same thing.The same thing can happen with liturgical orders. A casual glance can be deceiving. One can read "Order for Funerals" without it registering that the proper Anglican language of such a thing is "Order for the Burial of the Dead" and in the context of the Holy Eucharist the proper anglo-catholic expression is Requiem Eucharist not Funeral Eucharist. Once upon a time a great deal was made of the fact that ours were not pagan funeral or funerary rites but were rather orders for the Christian burial of the dead. One wrote of and spoke of the burial rite even though the secular culture spoke of funerals, the funeral business, and funeral rites.
The Anglican liturgical heritage at its best held together the idea of a common order for a kind of liturgical need with a realisation that one size does not fit all. For that reason Anglicans developed beautiful (but not sentimental) burial services for children. The Anglican Church in Australia developed a particular order when cremation was involved. There is wisdom and value in all of these, and the omission of them from a liturgical order begs questions of method and agenda.
There is a pastoral reason for having a separate rite of Christian burial for a child or an infant. Likewise, there are theological and psychological reasons for the same. We live in an age where those who have been in the "business" of liturgical revision have become enamoured of multiple variations within one order or rite. I find it makes for liturgical chaos and destroys the notion of Common Prayer altogether. It is far better to have several complete liturgies targeted to particular pastoral, seasonal, or extraordinary needs, liturgies that are prayed through as they are printed, rather than to have one form deeply infected with options and that most annoying rubric of choice today: "or this" .
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