![]() They made fatal compromises, such as in the placing of the epiclesis in the eucharistic prayer and the abbreviation of the psalter (by omitting the unpleasant bits), and Anglo-catholics retaliated by largely rejecting 1927/8, even in the form commended for use by the Bishops after the revision had been rejected in Parliament. ![]() To understand the decision to stick with 1662 it is necessary to look back to the liturgical debates of a hundred years ago, when moderate high churchmen influenced the compilation of the 1927/8 Prayer Book in ways that did not satisfy Anglo-catholics. They have avoided temptations, such as reverting to 1549, with its differing start to the two cardinal offices. They also deserve credit for the important decision largely to maintain Cranmer’s Morning and Evening Prayer as found in 1662. The compilers and publishers deserve enormous credit for this. So, what does DWDO get so spectacularly right? Well, ‘spectacularly’ is the word because the volume looks and feels magnificent. In short, the Customary, commending particular practices and introducing flexibility, drew attention to the considerable number of variations and, in retrospect, made the mistake of preferring particular patterns in an area where people had particular preferences of their own. The reforms of the 1960s, including changing the order of Te Deum and Benedictus and the use of other New Testament canticles all played into the mix. In England, the penitential introduction to Morning and Evening Prayer was largely replaced by the simple and direct 1928 form and the State Prayers – at least in my experience of many years in cathedral and college chapel contexts – seldom used. Many places introduced the Office Hymn – either before proper psalmody, as after the 1970 reforms, or after ferial psalmody, before the Magnificat, as before the conciliar reforms. Thus, at St Stephen’s House, where I was a student and taught, the psalter at Evensong was the Revised Psalter and the second lesson at Evensong was replaced with a non-biblical reading. There was an acknowledgement of the long-standing Roman custom of laudate psalms (hence ‘Lauds’), encouraging the pre-conciliar practice of ending the psalmody at Morning Prayer with Psalms 148-150.Īll of this is now history – the Office in the Customary being superseded – but it is worth noticing that the adaptations and flexibilities acknowledged one of the features of the Prayer Book Office as celebrated in the Church of England in the twentieth century, namely the widespread practice of local variation. Flexibility was introduced, such as allowing the suffrages as found in the North American Book of Divine Worship, and the daily Roman psalm scheme as an alternative. The Customary then fitted the quirky Prayer Book tradition of having a table of lessons within it which had since been superseded! There was an attempt to recognise various Catholic usages, such as ‘O Lord open…’ only at the beginning of the day, ‘Alleluia’ after a fully congregational Gloria Patri, a range of Invitatory psalms at Morning Prayer in LH, the New Testament canticles in LH as an alternative to Nunc Dimittis at Evening Prayer when the Order for Compline is to be used later, and the Roman pattern of psalms for Lauds and Vespers on Sundays. The lectionary produced proved to be somewhat cumbersome, and it was revised in the annual Ordo. ![]() ![]() We envisaged that the typical user – an Ordinariate cleric, say – would be serving in both diocesan and Ordinariate contexts and that what we provided needed to work in both so that, for example, a priest could use the Liturgy of the Hours (LH) in the morning and Prayer Book Evensong in the evening. In preparing the Customary, we sought to provide for the use of the Cranmerian Offices, with the monthly psalter, co-ordinated with the Roman Office Lectionary and with post-biblical readings from the English spiritual tradition, notably from the writings of St John Henry Newman. The work has passed to a new generation and the underlying rationale has been revised. To state an interest, I was one of the compilers of the Customary, along with Fr Aidan Nichols OP, but neither of us was involved in DWDO. It marks a re-set, a change of direction for the UK Ordinariate, which had previously been using the Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham, published in 2012. It is beautifully produced, with clear type, and thin pages. OF ALL the breviaries and office books on my shelves none is more handsome than Divine Worship: Daily Office (DWDO), which arrived on 20 th September 2021. ![]()
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