North America’s Ordinariate Daily Office: Updates on the Next Printing & Errata Corrections

The first run of the North American Divine Worship: Daily Office, published last December by Newman House Press quickly exhausted a small print run of 500 copies in pre-orders alone. However, a second and larger run is now in the works and could be published by late February or March, or delayed to give the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter more time for fine tuning the Daily Office.

Divine Worship: Daily Office is a long-awaited achievement in the life of North America’s Ordinariate, and its increased availability to members (and friends) of the Ordinariate is expected to play an increasingly integral role in the daily life of the Ordinariate’s faithful and parish communities.

Discussions with Ordinariate officials and Newman House Press indicate that the second print run may come by late February or March. But Ordinariate officials may end up delaying Divine Worship: Daily Office’s second run further to address the book’s errata and omissions detected after the first printing.

In the first print run, a number of significant omissions were discovered: notably the latter part of the midafternoon hour of None, propers for four feast days in December, the hymn Urbs Beata Jerusalem, and one common are missing.

A team led by the ACS’s Jackson Perry, and assisted by ACS Vice President Peter Smith, John Covert (of prayer.covert.org), reviewed the book for additional errata during Christmas Week. The review deliberately restricted itself to looking at Divine Worship: Daily Office on its own terms, and did not involve suggestions or critiques of editorial and formatting decisions. The comprehensive list was sent up the chain to the Ordinariate’s officials on Jan. 5^th, and receipt was confirmed personally by the vicar general.

Setting aside the aforementioned omissions in the first print run, the book is functional and appears to be an effective synthesis of elements from the 1928, 1979, and 1962 Books of Common Prayer, the ecclesiastical traditions that have gone into the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. Most of the errata in uncorrected editions of Divine Worship: Daily Office can be addressed by penciling in the corrections.

A list of 97 errata labeled “more serious” are posted online here at John Covert’s website, where they can be viewed. This should be helpful for persons with one of the 500 copies from the first printing, and can be checked against the second printing in case something was missed.

Another 200 “less serious” errata were submitted, but those mainly flagged to the Ordinariate’s attention the following: sometimes-missing mediants in canticles (helpful for chanting), variations in Latin orthography, and pagination errors.

Overall, the widespread adoption of Divine Worship: Daily Office will strengthen the Ordinariate’s faithful, official communities, new groups seeking to become communities-in-formation, or associations of the faithful that meet regularly for prayer and fellowship.