Daily Office Part 0: Introduction

    This is the start of the first “series” on this blog. My goal is to write a series of articles on a specific topic, and then intersperse some miscellaneous postings between them. I decided that the first series would be a how-to on Divine Worship: Daily Office, which is the breviary used by clergy of the Anglican Ordinariates in the Roman Catholic Church. This is obscure Catholicism at its finest; however, this book is simply amazing. It has been my default method of praying the Hours for the past two years. a good breviary for Traditional Catholics who want to pray an Office rooted in the Tradition of the Church, but for whatever reason cannot pray with the 1962 Breviary. It also offers a nice hybrid of both the new and old liturgical calendars. For example, Ember Days and the Feast of St. John Paul II are both included in this book. Now, the story of what Divine Worship: Daily Office is and how it came to be in itself warrants a whole post, and will make explaining how to pray with this book a little easier. I apologise if this first part in the series is very heavy on the history, the next part will get into the nitty gritty of the book itself. So without further ado, let's get started.

    The Church of England (and by extension the other Anglican churches of the Anglosphere) has always had its little factions. In the 1500s, there were the Catholic loyalists, led by St. Thomas More, who sought to preserve the Church in England, and the Tudor loyalists, who wanted to reform English Christianity into the Church of England. In the 1600s, there were the Puritans and Laudians, and in the 1800s, there was the Oxford movement and the Ritualists versus the Evangelicals. In the 1900s, the Anglican Communion once again split itself into factions. Starting in the mid-1970s, the Episcopal Church and Church of England began to admit women to the sacrament of Holy Orders. Combined with this blatant disregard of church tradition, the Anglican bishops decided to abandon liturgical tradition and adopt the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, which abandoned the sacral English and classical æsthetics for a “spirit of Vatican II” order of service, which is devoid of all the Anglican beauty. These two decisions prompted the more conservative Anglo-Catholic factions of the Episcopal Church and the Church of England to split off starting in 1977. These schisms resulted in a dozen or so “continuing Anglican Churches”. These groups were Anglo-Catholic in liturgy, using the Anglican Missal (the Tridentine Mass in English with the option to use Dr. Cranmer’s prayer of consecration instead of the Roman Canon), the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. They were also conservative on social issues, being against women’s ordination, gay marriage, and abortion. Individual clergy of the Episcopal Church had begun to enter into communion with the See of Rome through the Pastoral Provision, which was set up by St. John Paul II as a way to allow married Anglican clerics to be ordained in the Roman Catholic Church. A few personal parishes were established for former Anglicans through the Pastoral Provision, most famously Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, Texas. These parishes used a hybrid of the Book of Common Prayer and the 1969 Missal. However, by the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were rumblings within the “continuing Anglican” churches. Some vocal members began to push for full corporate reunion with the Roman Catholic Church, following the precedent set forth by the Uniate Eastern Churches. One group, the Traditional Anglican Communion, sent groups to petition the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. They followed these petitions up with the “Portsmouth Letter” in October of 2007. They requested to “seek as a body full and visible communion, particularly eucharistic communion, in Christ, with the Roman Catholic Church, in which it recognises the fullest subsistence of Christ’s one Church” (Portsmouth Letter). They also sought to “achieve such communion while maintaining those revered traditions of spirituality, liturgy, discipline and theology that constitute the cherished and centuries-old heritage of Anglican communities throughout the world” (Portsmouth Letter). The Vatican studied the letter, and in the fall of 2009, Pope Benedict gave his response.

    On November 4, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI promulgated the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Cœtibus. This document established personal ordinariates. These function similarly to dioceses, with the key difference being that they are run by an ordinary, who can either be a priest or a bishop. Membership in these personal ordinariates would only be open to former Anglicans. Former Anglican Parishes could seek to corporately enter the Roman Catholic Church, letting them keep their property, pastor, and traditions. In a weird piece of historical trivia, Mt. Calvary Episcopal Church, which was the parish Gen. Robert E. Lee attended when he lived in Baltimore, chose to join the Roman Catholic Church this way. Finally, these personal ordinariates would be tasked with the mission “to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church” (Anglicanorum Cœtibus, III). Furthermore, Anglicanorum Cœtibus describes the liturgy of the Anglican Communion as a “treasure to be shared” (Anglicanorum Cœtibus, III). On January 11, 2011, the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham was established, covering England and Wales. On January 1, 2012, the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter was established, covering the United States and Canada. Finally, on June 12, 2012, the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross was established, covering Australasia and Japan.

    Keeping in line with Anglicanorum Cœtibus, work immediately began to bring Anglican Liturgical customs into the life of the Catholic Church. On November 29, 2015, Divine Worship: The Missal was released. Divine Worship: The Missal (also known as the Anglican Use or Anglican Rite) is a combination of the Tridentine Mass in English with the Book of Common Prayer, with the three-year lectionary. The language is quite beautiful, and the intrusions from the 1969 Missal are very minimal. We will not focus on Divine Worship: The Missal today, however, I may return to it sometime soon. In June of 2021, Divine Worship: Daily Office was released. It was based on the Book of Common Prayer, and has two editions, one for the Commonwealth Countries, based on the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and one for North America, based on the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and the 1962 Book of Common Prayer. I own the Commonwealth Edition, as the North American Edition is always out of stock. This series will focus on the Commonwealth Edition, but it will work for the North American Edition as well.

    So why did I tell you this? Because the stories behind our liturgies matter. The Anglican Use is just that, Anglican. It is Anglican in union with the See of Sts. Peter and Paul. Just as the Uniate Eastern Church was not mandated to give anything up when they reëntered full communion with Rome, so too are Anglicans, who were invited by the Church to preserve and celebrate their traditions. My goal is to teach you how to use Divine Worship: Daily Office. However, my goal is also to introduce you to another legitimate tradition that sits among the Maronite, Greek, Chaldean, and Roman as an expression of the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Faith.