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The Anglican Patrimony contains 450 years of 'facing East' after the rupture with Rome, and the substance of that Anglican heritage -- of looking to and borrowing from the Eastern Church and its worship -- cannot be divorced from the authentic Anglican Patrimony. To try to do so is simply to engage in the kind of Latinisation that is as inappropriate for the Anglican Patrimony today as it was for the Eastern Catholic Churches.Those trying to promote a liturgy that has been stripped of 'Byzantine' elements simply do not understand what the Anglican Patrimony is.
It was many years ago that for the first time I heard an Opus Dei priest say that any future for Anglicans within in the Catholic Church would have to be within the Latin Rite with a liturgy purified from its Byzantine elements.
I remarked to him at the time that what he proposed did not value the Anglican experience and would yield something that was in no way Anglican. His response was, "Precisely."
I am now told that this "de-Byzantising" project is part and parcel of the fashioning of rites for the Ordinariates. I am saddened to hear of this though not altogether surprised.
Latinisation is a nasty habit of Vatican bureaucrats and those who seek to curry favour with them.
The Anglican Patrimony includes over 450 years of looking to the Eastern Church, to the Divine Liturgies, yes, to Jerusalem. There is no Anglican Patrimony without the full inclusion of those liturgical influences and elements as well as that history.
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