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October 8, 2021On Friday September 24, the Durandus Institute for Sacred Liturgy and Music organized a Mass honoring the Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham using the Divine Worship Missal of the Ordinariates, or the “Anglican Use Mass” as it was called some years ago. The Church of St Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue hosted the event. St Vincent is the “twin” to St Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue. Both were the work of the architect Bertram Goodhue.
While this was the first Mass here with the Ordinariates’ Divine Worship Missal, this was not the first ever “Anglican Use” Mass in New York City, let alone at this church. The Anglican Use Society (today known as the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society) organized and advertised this first Mass which was celebrated, using the Book of Divine Worship* on Sunday, May 30, 2004.
Let me provide some background. The Society was organized in 2002 to promote the Pastoral Provision which was approved by St John Paul II in 1979. It allowed for Episcopalian groups/parishes in the United States to enter the Catholic Church as a personal parish in the local territorial diocese. The Pastoral Provision also permitted married Episcopal priests to be ordained in the Catholic Church to serve either with a Pastoral Provision parish or parishes of a territorial diocese. Over 100 priests entered the Catholic Church to serve in various roles after 1979.* Later, this precedent in the United States served as the rationale to permit over 200 married priests from the Church of England to become Catholic priests in England after 1992 when women were permitted to be ordained as priests in the Church of England.
At the formation of the Anglican Use Society, we wanted to evangelize and organize groups in various cities. At the time there were only four Pastoral Provision parishes in the country. New York City seemed an obvious place to promote the formation of a group because of its size and strong Anglo-Catholic heritage in the area.
Among the founding directors was Father Joseph Wilson, a priest in the Diocese of Brooklyn who was sympathetic to Anglican liturgical traditions. He had become supportive to St Athanasius in Boston, a Pastoral Provision parish, and would celebrate Mass there in the then Anglican Use, when Father Richard Bradford was away. Around this time, he wrote an interesting article worth reading now to explain his interest in the parish and its Anglican liturgical heritage.
We knew St Vincent’s would be a stellar location to do this in New York. Both Fathers Wilson and Bradford knew the Dominican pastoral team there would be supportive as well. Father Wilson contacted them and we were on our way to the May 30 date. We obtained the necessary permission to use the Anglican Use and advertised the Mass in both the archdiocesan paper Catholic New York, and The New York Times.
The Mass was scheduled for early on the Sunday afternoon and followed by a small reception in the rectory. Fr Bradford celebrated the Mass and David Burt, also a founding member of the society, organized a small choir to help the congregation participate in the liturgy. The music selected was traditional Anglican service music, chants and hymns. We used Healy Willan’s music for the Gloria, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei and the hymns were mostly from the 1940 Hymnal. An exception was the inclusion of Parry’s “Jerusalem” which I requested. It was our wedding anniversary that weekend and “Jerusalem” is my wife’s favorite hymn. The organist was a member of St Vincent’s staff.
We had around 35 worshippers that Sunday. Many stayed for the reception. We answered questions and left a plate for people to leave requests for more information and donations. When I reviewed the items, I found a card from a representative of the Ship of Fools-Mystery Worshippers group. The group visits churches around the world and makes an assessment of the liturgy which is later posted on their web site. We received a passing grade.
That allows me to say that our resources then were very limited and sometimes it felt like the effort did not equal the results. We had little support from the leadership in most dioceses.
However, while we did not plant a group in New York as we hoped, we otherwise gave early moral support and encouragement to Fr. Eric Bergman’s journey with his parishioners in Scranton, Pennsylvania from The Episcopal Church to the Catholic Church via the Pastoral Provision. The Anglican Use Society decided subsequently that we wanted to host annual conferences to evangelize the cause. We held 8 conferences between 2005 and 2012. The first two were in Scranton hosted and supported by Father Bergman’s group, which is now St Thomas More Parish and part of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. I think we can say that is an example of an oak tree from an acorn.
Today we now have the Ordinariates for the Anglican tradition established on three continents. The Anglican Use Society, which is now the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society, helped to focus that process through our conferences and still aims to promote the growth of the Ordinariates through our efforts and initiatives today.
Joseph G. Blake was a Founding Director of the Anglican Use Society and was President from 2003-2014.
*Author's notes:1. The Book of Divine Worship was derived from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church, USA. The form of the Mass used an alternative Canon to conform to Catholic belief about the Eucharist. Otherwise, it was the same as the Holy Communion service in the 1979 BCP, both Rite 1 and Rite 2. We used Rite 1, which was the traditional Anglican service closer to the 1928 Prayer Book.
2. The Anglican Use Society also assisted several priests to do this in various ways including financial aid.
