The RSV Rite

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Though someone else may have already done so, I hereby christen the new Ordinariate liturgies as "The RSV Rite".


Of course, the RSV Common Bible and its version of English has not been the standard for Anglicans in our worship.  Some of our Canticles derive from the Great Bible.  Our Scriptural quotations come from the Authorised Version and the Great Bible.  Our Psalter is a recension of Coverdale's great translation.  Yet based on what we have seen thus far, what we have been told to expect, and the silly claims for the RSV that have been made together with the news that the RSV is to be the only translation from which Scripture quotations shall be taken, The RSV Rite seems apt enough: a little tradition sprinkled atop modernism.


We don't know if the RSV in question is the RSV of the Common Bible or the RSV, 2nd Catholic Edition.  It is the latter that is in the beautiful Lectionary from the West Indies.  The English in the rite -- like that found The Manual of Anglo-Catholic Devotion -- could best be characterised as stately and modern rather than traditionally Anglican.  So, The RSV RITE is born.


Thankfully, the use of a recension of the Coverdale Psalter will be used.  Few are able to explain beyond "we like it; that's why we're using it" what is the proper reason for using it  i.e., it is the traditional Anglican Psalter being the first part of that reason.


The second and most important reason for the Coverdale Psalter is that Coverdale was aware of the sound of the Vulgate chanted. He thought of the Psalter as a text to be sung in worship.  His English with chanting in mind so beautifully fits to Sarum and Gregorian chant.  Later it would prove the perfect text for our  Anglican Chants.  The Authorised Version Psalter in comparison is at a great distance from the original sung tradition of the Church in England before the dreadful divorce.  The Psalter in the Authorised Version (King Jas.) is a literary triumph.  But as a vehicle for singing and chanting day by day it comes in second-place to Coverdale.  For similar reasons the Great Bible texts for the Gospel Canticles were retained (though in various recensions) in all of the traditional Books of Common Prayer.


If there is room for Coverdale's Psalter, why is there no room for those two Bible translations that have been so important to Anglican life and worship: the Great Bible and the King James Bible?  The reason is that this new Ordinariate Liturgy is not one of Anglican comprehension: it is The RSV Rite.

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Lazy, Mediocre

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In my email I have messages that describe the new Ordinariate rites as "a lazy effort" and "a mediocre result from the same infertile ground of the Church of England" and many far more colourful and indeed graphic.   "If one can say "quick and the dead", one can 'suck it up' and say Holy Ghost."  I also agree with several who observe that no church musician must have been involved with this effort.  Yes, needed permissive rubrics are missing.


I also note outrage among many that the King James version of the 23rd Psalm has been eliminated from the Funeral Rite.  The anglo-catholic doesn't worry about that because he is accustomed to doing whatever he wants.  Having the Authorised Version of that Psalm was an act of genius in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the Book of Divine Worship and provided an element of ecumenical consideration for most Christians know the Psalm in that form regardless of the Church membership or denominational affiliation.


Most of you are not aware that the Authorised Version and the Great Bible have already been thrown under the bus according to English reports on the Ordinariate working group and  that only texts from the RSV are to be used wherever Scripture is to be cited.  What an unmitigated disaster! The consolation prize is the retention of the so-called Coverdale Psalter from the Great Bible.  

Let us be clear: the marriage rite and funeral rite are within the scope and frame of Anglican Liturgy as the texts in the main arise from those in The Book of Divine Worship (Rite One), the Proposed 1928 Prayer Book (England), the Shorter Prayer Book (England) and Series One (England).  


What is wrong with this picture?  


The Book of Divine Worship (Rite Two) has vanished -- an incredibly short-sighted decision driven by personal taste.  Also, there is no evidence of consideration of those prayers and rites found in the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of South Africa, the Church of the Province of the West Indies, and the list goes on.  And what of the texts as they stand in the first Book of Common Prayer.  So, dear reader, one can say that it appears little effort was made to comprehend and embrace the Anglican liturgical tradition in these rites.  On the contrary only a very narrowly focused attention was given to a small body of Anglican texts and then overlaid with an unfortunate veneer of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Missal.


There is no comprehension or embrace of the rites and traditions of Sarum or the ancient British documents we have regarding such things.  Discontinuity reigns.  There is no articulation of a vision of liturgical CONTINUITY from the Anglican Patrimonial liturgical heritage.


The rites themselves are a soft-boil version of what was served up in the 20th century: liturgical discontinuity.  Yes, it looks "conservative" and sounds Anglican.  But the new rites remain a form of liturgy in discontinuity with the broader Anglican experience as well as the vision cast by Pope Benedict XVI in Anglicanorum coetibus.


Most Anglicans today do not worship with traditional Anglican sacral English.  Nothing is provided that recognises their experience, tradition, or needs.  No Anglican person called to the Catholic Church should be told that they should go to the normative Ordinary Form Mass "if they want that sort of thing".  And while some English anglo-catholics very inadvisedly jumped aboard the Roman Missal with its dreadful ICEL English translation early on, this is not Anglican tradition but rather disobedience of an English anglo-catholic sort.


As liturgical texts, these represent no serious work at all.  I have now been told several times that because 'the English' like Series One Marriage, so the world shall have it.  Et cetera.  Certain 'new Catholics' do not like to say "Holy Ghost" so the offending words shall not be printed in the texts.  Very shabby grounds for such decisions.  Liturgical discontinuity is still on offer here though veiled in an Anglican-sounding form.
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The South African Nuptial Blessing, 1989

from An Anglican Prayer Book, 1989
Church of the Province of Southern Africa


THE NUPTIAL BLESSING

The Priest, standing before the couple gives the Nuptial Blessing as follows

Merciful Lord and heavenly Father, by your gracious gift humankind is increased: bestow upon  N and N the gift of children; and grant that they may so live together in godly love and honesty, that they may bring up their children in faith and virtue, to your praise and honour, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen

God our maker, you have consecrated marriage
as a wonderful mystery
a sign of the spiritual unity
between Christ and his Church:
look in mercy on these your servants
that N may love his wife
as Christ loved his bride the Church
and also that N may love her husband
as the Church is called to love her Lord.
Bless them both
that they may inherit your eternal kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen


The Priest may add further prayers at this discretion.

Almighty God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
sanctify and bless you
that you may please him both in body and soul
and live together in holy love to your lives' end.
Amen

The Priest blesses the congregation. 
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Unfortunately, the liturgical working group of the Ordinariates has chosen to abandon all contemporary English forms in favour of personal in-house recension of Anglican traditional liturgical language.  A thinking person would assume that some effort would be made at least to draw those best elements from Holy Matrimony Rite Two in The Book of Divine Worship into the new Marriage rite, but instead the Ordinariates have been given what one may find more or less in the Shorter Prayer Book, Series One and Rite One in the Book of Divine Worship.  Unfortunately there are some unnecessary touches from the Ordinary Form of the Roman Missal in English.


The Southern African An Anglican Prayer Book, 1989 is exclusively a modern idiom book.  It has moments where the language seems strangely dull, but it also has moments of sheer genius as in the contemporary recension of the nuptial prayer printed above.  Consider the effortless simplicity and elegance of this expression of the Ephesians teaching on husbands and wives:

that N may love his wife

as Christ loved his bride the Church

and also that N may love her husband

as the Church is called to love her Lord.

I had high hopes that the new liturgies would bring together the fulness of the traditional Anglican liturgical patrimony with the very best of contemporary expressions of Anglican liturgical writing.  It would be easy to recast the above prayer in traditional language and use it during the unspecified "Prayers of the people" for the Ordinariate marriage liturgy when Nuptial Blessing A is employed.  I prefer paragraph form but for ease of reading I provide an example as follows according to line sense:

Most merciful God, our Maker and our Judge, 

thou hast consecrated the holy covenant of Marriage, 

that wonderful and sacred Mystery, 

that in it is manifested the spiritual marriage and unity 

betwixt Christ and his Church: 

Look in thine abundant charity 

upon thy servant and handmaiden
that N may love his wife

as Christ loved his Bride the Church

and that N may love her husband

as the Church is called to love her Lord.

Bless them both

that they may inherit thine endless kingdom;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

+Lord, in thy mercy, hear our prayer.