The Ordinariate's Second Wave

At Westminster Cathedral this morning, 17 men were ordained for the diaconate of the Catholic Church in the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. All told they already had between them 500 years of priestly (and diaconal) service. This was not just in the Church of England. One had spent his entire ministry as a missionary in the Church of the Anglican Province of the West Indies; one had served as a priest of the Scottish Episcopal Church; three were formerly of the clergy of Anglican Churches that had never been in communion with the Anglican See of Canterbury: two from the Traditional Anglican Church in the UK, and another from the Anglican Province of America.

Westminster Cathedral has been generous not only in providing a space for the Ordinariate's inaugural series of ordinations, it has also made its fine resources of liturgical and musical ministers. And the Episcopal Delegate of the Bishops' Conference for the Implementation of the Ordinariate is Bishop Alan Hopes, an auxiliary of Westminster diocese; so there is always this special bond between Westminster and the Ordinariate. After all, the diocesan seminary at Allen Hall is also providing the courses and formation from which the Ordinariate's clergy are benefiting.

Fr Mark vests Deacon Masaki in the dalmatic,
photo (c) the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham

The Catholic League was represented by the General Secretary David Chapman, the Treasurer Cyril Wood, trustee Mrs Mary Bacon, Fr James Bradley, who served as the occasion's official photographer, and the Priest Director, Fr Mark Woodruff, a Westminster priest. Fr Mark had been invited to support and vest an Anglican priest and a small group received in his home parish in Lancashire, St Bernadette's in Blackpool, the Revd Masaki Narusawa, once of the Anglican Church in Japan but ordained in the Church of England Diocese of London.

John Hunwicke, photo (c) the Personal
Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham

But the League's turned out was especially heartfelt for its highly regarded and much loved, and long term member, the Revd John Hunwicke, whose learned analysis of matters liturgical, ecclesiological and ecumenical are available to a wide audience, through his blog, Liturgical Notes. We certainly hope this lively and informative blog will be resumed after Father Hunwicke's understandable online fasting while he prepared for ordination is over, and he is more Father Hunwicke than ever.

Congratulations to the Catholic Church's new deacons, especially Masaki Narusawa and John Hunwicke. Axioi!

In the usual Westminster custom, the great Liturgy of Ordination was marked with ceremonial precision and simplicity, and sung by the Lay Clerks of the Cathedral Choir. The Latin propers were sung at the Introit, Alleluia and Communion, allowing for three hymns to be appropriately added in supplementation from the rich patrimony of English hymnody. The ordinary of the Mass (Kyrie, Gloria and Agnus) was the peerless Mass for Five Voices by William Byrd from the 1590s, sung by men's voices. We have already commented on the significance of Byrd's liturgical compositions in promoting the liturgical renewal of the 16th century Catholic Church and his energies devoted to maintaining the identity and continuous musical and sacramental patrimony of the old medieval Church of England's Catholic constituency, while he also served as a court musician for Queen Elizabeth I. We have also mentioned the role played by Anglican musicologists in retrieving Byrd's music and restoring it by putting it into service in English Anglican Cathedral worship and from there to the wider Christian Churches. So something that forms rightly both part of the Anglican patrimony and the Roman Catholic:

Byrd was probably born in 1540 at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. He witnessed the collapse of the shortlived and futile Henrician pseudo-Catholic Church in 1547 and its replacement by a more thorough Protestant Reformed Church of England under his son, with worship in English according to the First and Second Books of Common Prayer until Queen Mary restored the English Church's allegiance to the Catholic Church. Possibly by then he was a Chapel Royal choirboy. Certainly he was a pupil of Thomas Tallis, who as a Gentlement of the Chapel from 1543 to his death in 1585 was a leading court composer, serving Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. Like Byrd he remained a Catholic throughout, but avoided religious controversy, adapting his musical style and output to the tastes and requirements of his royal employers. The young Byrd collaborated with Tallis, John Sheppard and William Mundy in writing new music for the Sarum rite used by the Chapel Royal towards the end of the reign of Queen Mary in 1558. Thereafter, with the Church of England re-established and its Prayer Book restored, Byrd's public musicianship had to serve the requirements of Queen Elizabeth. After he too became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1572, he collaborated with the aged Tallis on the publication of a collection of motets in Latin. Dedicated to the Queen, the collection comprised items used in the Chapel Royal, in which the Prayer Book was used in Latin translation. But Haec Dies comes from Byrd's own 1591 second volume of Cantiones Sacrae, containing his later output of motets more specifically reflecting his Catholic perspective. Like his subsequent Masses ...  they may well have seen service in the clandestine masses and performances of religious music in the houses of Catholic patrons.

So the composition of the Three Part Mass represents an attempt to recover the motifs, influences and  tradition of a Catholic musical and liturgical patrimony Byrd treasured from the time of his youth, as well as to renew it with influences from the continent and developing tastes in secular music, - all at the same time as his outstanding and innovative contribution to the emergence of the Anglican musical and liturgical patrimony.

But despite his high reputation as a master of European Renaissance music in his lifetime, and despite such illustrious pupils as Peter Philips, Thomas Tomkins and Thomas Morley, the English tradition of Latin sacred music died with him. The place of his secular music in the repertoire declined with changes in popular taste and it was only his Anglican music that preserved his fame beyond the Restoration, until it too fell out of use. But the story does not end there. Despite various attempts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to revive interest in his enormous output over such a long life, it took an Anglican clergyman and musicologist, Edmund Fellowes, to edit and publish twenty volumes of Byrd's music as well as the remarkable series, Tudor Church Music, through which he also recovered the long forgotten works of other English Renaissance composers, notably Orlando Gibbons.

So the selection of this Mass could not have been more apt for the ordination of deacons for the Ordinariate:

Ostensibly a piece of Catholic patrimony from the age of the Tudors, it speaks of the genesis of the Anglican musical patrimony by the same hand. Furthermore, it was recovered for re-reception within Catholic worship through the scholarship of a Church of England priest, as a labour of love that he thought would enrich the Anglican choral tradition in such places in which he served as Bristol Cathedral, St George's Chapel, Windsor, and St Michael's College, Tenbury (1856-1985 - a school founded by Sir Fredreick Gore Ouseley as a model for church music raised to the highest standards, in reaction to its parlous condition in the mid-nineteenth century). It is interesting to reflect that the sacred music of the English Renaissance that is associated with the Anglican patrimony par excellence ... owes its place deep in the heart, imagination and folk memory of the Church of England's cathedral tradition to the efforts of a clergyman who flourished in the first half of the twentieth century, a matter of mere decades ago. It is also worth bearing in mind that long before Anglicanorum Coetibus, the restoration of Anglican patrimony brought with it some treasures to be restored to their rightful and much loved place in the Catholic liturgy too.

The readings were from Acts 6.1-7 and Matthew 20.25-28, although using the Jerusalem Bible translation customary among English Roman Catholics, and not the Revised Standard Version more familiar in North America and now the norm for the Ordinariates.

At the rite of Ordination, the prayer devised in 1995 for recognising Anglican ministry, its acceptance and incorporation in the sacrament of order of the Catholic Church was prayed and a fine sermon delivered by Monseigneur Andrew Burnham on the pastoral leadership set apart by the apostles for the maintenance and service of the churches they had founded on their journeyings.

The new translation of the Litany of the Saints, with responses at last designed to fit the well known melodies, came into its own. Unlike in some Ordinariate ordinations, perhaps reflecting the dioceses in which they took place, silence was allowed in, as Bishop Hopes went through candidate after candidate, all seventeen of them, to receive the promise of obedience to the Ordinary, the traditio evangeliorum - the placing of the Book of the Gospels into each deacon's hands - and the Kiss of Peace from the ordaining bishop to each one. During vesting, the clerks sang Ubi Caritas to Gregorian chant, an apt connection to the diakonia of Christ to his apostles on the night before he died and, so to speak, they concelebrated with him the First of all Eucharists.

The motet at the Offertory was Psalm 116/117, Laudate Dominum with Gloria Patri set by Thomas Tallis, Byrd's teacher and mentor. Queen Elizabeth granted them the joint monopoly of printing and publishing music, remarkable for two such well known Catholics - even more remarkable that she provided her patronage for their editions of Latin sacred music, since some of it could be used in the Anglican services in her Chapel Royal, which were in the Latin in which she was fluent, despite some of the pieces being clearly for none other than the Catholic liturgy. Laudate Dominum was thus dedicated to Queen Eizabeth, collected alongside the Mass Puer Natus and the Lamentations.  Some say that Laudate Dominum is likewise for the clandestine celebration of the Old Rite (the psalm occurs both as the last of five in Sunday and Festal vespers, and as the psalm in the truncated vespers at the end of the Easter Vigil rite on Holy Saturday), but it could equally have served in the Latin language Anglican Chapel Royal among the set course of psalms for Mattins of the 24th Morning of each month - perhaps December? In any case, it is not a motet for Mass (the Gloria Patri gives it away as a setting from the Office), or for Benediction, which had not then reached its present form and content.

The naming of the bishop remains a problem of ecclesiology in the Ordinariates, since their Ordinaries are not bishops, but rely on bishops of Latin territorial dioceses to ordain on their behalf. Thus, correctly, the order of service showed that these were not ordinations "in" the Diocese of Westminster but "for" the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. Bishop Alan Hopes, as a bishop of the Westminster Diocese in its Cathedral, was both generous host and welcome guest, and Monseigneur Newton was able to refer to this generosity of gift and service from Westminster Cathedral and especially from the Bishop in his concluding remarks. At the Eucharist prayer (the Roman Canon), Benedict our Pope was commemorated, Bishop Alan recalled himself as it the custom and then Vincent our Bishop and Keith the Ordinary. As Mgr Newton is head of the ecclesiastical circumscription that is the Ordinariate, who as such is the chief minister in communion with the Bishop of Rome (in much the same way as Abbots are mentioned in the Eucharistic Prayer in their monasteries), Keith is "our" ordinary, not "the" ordinary, in the Liturgies of the Personal Ordinariate. That said, Westminster is the primatial Cathedral of England, and its bishop is by long custom the English Catholic Church's primate, usually thus serving as President of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. It was only fitting, therefore, that, even though this was a Mass in the Ordinariate, Archbishop Vincent be commemorated in his own Cathedral Church, in his own diocese and as primate of the England & Wales Catholic Church of which he is presiding bishop and protos, and which includes the Ordinariate.

The Communion motet was Victoria's O sacrum convivium. We have commented on Victoria and his relevance to Anglican patrimony before:

Tomas Luis da Victoria was born in the province of Avila, Castile in 1548 and sent by Philip II to be cantor of the Collegium Germanicum founded by St Ignatius of Loyola in Rome. It may well be that he studied under Palestrina and he counts as one of the three great Catholic composers of the Counter-Reformation, alongside Palestrina and the Franco-Fleming from Mons, Orlande de Lassus. Not only was his music thus forged in the context of the Catholic Church reforming itself partly in response to the challenges of the Reformation, it also stands in a musical process of development that would later come to influence, through Andrea and Giovanni Gabrielli, the Protestant composers Hans Leo Hassler, Heinrich Schütz and thus the great musical theologian of Lutheranism, John Sebastian Bach. Again, we see how entwined the Anglican and Catholic liturgical and musical patrimonies truly are; as Pope Paul VI remarked of Anglicans and Catholics, they share a "communion of origins".

After the Communion and before the concluding remarks of the Ordinary, Bishop Alan called up the wives of the new deacons for a special blessing. These were each of them people who had devoted lifetimes as wives and mothers to their husbands, and served as fellow-workers and supporters of their ministries with a remarkable apostolate all of their own.

The complementary hymns were splendid. Prior to the Offertory in the Procession, we sang the great Ascensiontide hymn, Crown him with many crowns, by Matthew Bridges, 1800-72. He was a prolific versewriter, translator of poetry and church apologist. At first, he followed the Anglican evangelical line that the Roman Catholic Church was a manifestation of superstition sustained by the papacy; but, under the influence of  Blessed John Henry Newman and doubtless in response to similar intellectual and spiritual crises, he became a Catholic in 1848. In 1852 he issued Songs of the Passion, a collection of verse devotions to accompany the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, dedicated to Cardinal Wiseman. Crown him with many crowns appears as the Song of the Seraphs, to reflect the Third Sorrowful Mystery. This writer expects that many readers will have assumed that you could not find a more classic example of Anglican hymnody, yet this is a Catholic creation, albeit imbued with his earlier Evangelical fervour (cf. "for thou hast died for me" and the penultimate verse that we omitted and that forms the last verse in the English Hymnal, its second a line a delight to choirboys:

Crown him the Lord of years,
the Potentate of Time,
Creator of the rolling spheres,
ineffably sublime!
Glass'd in a sea of light,
whose everlasting waves
reflect His Form - the Infinite! -
who lives, - and loves, - and saves.)


It is no suprise that these inspired six verses, among Bridges' less remarkable poetry, became so popular. They were included in the Appendix to the Oxford Movement's Hymns Ancient & Modern in 1868.  This prompted the Revd Godfrey Thring, a prebendary of Wells, adapted them in Hymns and Sacred Lyrics of 1874 for use in the more Protestant-leaning parts of the Church of England, adding verses to stress the final achievement of the Atonement on Calvary, and to lessen the significance of the Marian reference to the Mystic Rose's role in the history of salvation, and the possible interpretation that the destructive side of the Sacrifice of Christ ("rich wounds yet visible above") is maintained or renewed in the Mass. Thring's verses are not the equal of Bridges' and thus they have not been retained in the memory of the Tradition. Matthew Bridges went to live for many years in Quebec, but eventually returned to England, dying in a villa belonging to the Sisters of the Assumption at Sidmouth, Devon in 1894. The usual tune, Diademata (which means 'crowned') is by Sir George Job Elvey, 1816-1893, who began his musical career as a choirboy at Canterbury, before he won the position of Master of the Boys and Organist at St George's Windsor at the age of 20. He remained there for the next fifty years. His two other famous tunes are Rock of Ages and St George's Windsor, well known as the tune to the great Harvest Festival hymn, Come, ye thankful people, come. Diademata was written for the hymn's inclusion in Hymns Ancient and Modern with its first Appendix in 1868.

At Holy Communion we sang the affecting and much treasured Just as I am, without one plea by Charlotte Elliott, 1789-1871. She came from a clerical family with links to the Clapham Sect in her parents' generation. At the age of 30 she became infirm and retired to Hove, where she spent the rest of her life battling her conditions and writing to poems, prayers and hymns to encouarage other invalids spiritually. Only Just as I am has stood the test of time, having been adopted by the Anglo-Catholic movement as a Communion hymn, because of its (unintended) allusion to the Agnus Dei in the Ordinary of the Mass and to the prayer O Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof (Domine non sum dignus ut intres....), neither of which occurs in the Book of Common Prayer. The usual tune nowadays is Saffron Walden by Arthur Henry Brown, 1830-1926, written for the third musical edition of the Hymnal Companion to the Book of Common Prayer in 1890, another hymnbook from the Oxford Movement stable but, for a time, aimed at a more mainstream Anglican audience. Brown was an active member of the Gregorian Association, which supports the restoration and use of plainsong in Anglican worship, as did Sir John Stainer, the musical editor of the Hymnal Companion.

Finally, we sang the stirring Lord enthroned in heavenly splendour, by George Hugh Bourne (1840-1925) as a recessional hymn. On the face of it, it is an Ascensiontide hymn, but in fact it is a hymn of adoration to Christ in the Eucharist. It first appeared in Bourne's privately published Seven Post Communion Hymns of 1874, whence it passed into the First Supplement of Hymns Ancient & Modern in the 1875 Edition. So, in modern usage, its proper place is either in anticipation of the Consecration and the Real Presence of Christ in the eucharistic species at the Offertory, at as a hymn of thanksgiving as the Rite of Communion draws to a close. "Here for faith's discernment pray we, lest we fail to know thee now" makes the point, since in the Latin Roman rite we had, by this stage, consumed the Blessed Eucharist. Yet not in the Anglican rite for which Bourne, a long serving prebendary of Sarum, was creatively hymns to meet new liturgical needs. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer provides for the unconsumed "elements" of consecrated Bread and Wine to remain on the Holy Table until the end of the Holy Communion, when they are to be reverently consumed. This may sound odd to modern thinking, but it was a provision (a) to prevent the Consecrated Sacrament being ignored or thrown away as the service moved on (a practice that had grown as the memories of the old Mass and reservation faded), and (b) to promote reverence to Christ in his sacramental presence.

This reverence led some to a contemplative devotion to the Risen and Ascended Christ at this point in the Anglican Liturgy. In particular, this is expressed by the great and holy Charles Chapman Grafton, 1830-1912, who became second Bishop of Fond du Lac,  Wisconsin USA. He was a devout Anglo-Catholic priest serving in Maryland, but after the American Civil War he went to England where, with Richard Meux Benson and Simeon Wilberforce O'Neill, he was one of the three founders of the Cowley Fathers, the Society of St John the Evangelist, the first monastic foundation for men in England since the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. Sixteen years he returned to the USA to take the missionary work of the Society there (its last surviving monastery is still in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the English congregation having to all intents and purposes died out), he was elected bishop of Fond du Lac and withdrew from the Society to concentrate on his new mission as a bishop. He has left behind a wealth of sermons and writings, which are testament to his evangelistic vigour and the significant growth he brought to his diocese. One of these is the beautiful Plain Suggestions for a Reverent Celebration of the Holy Communion. In chapter nine, The Mystical Meaning of the Liturgy, he focuses on the Post Communion section of the Anglican liturgy, in which the Eucharist is not merely left on the altar to be dealt with later but forms the climax of the reception of Holy Communion, with priest and people standing in the presence of the Lord of heaven:

It is full of the spirit of the risen and ascended Christ. As the first two portions of the Liturgy set forth His prophetical and priestly work, here He is brought before us as our risen and ascended King. The Roman mass practically ends with the priest's communion, and then he consumes the elements. Is it not something worse than disloyalty for an Anglican priest to imitate this in the face of our rubric, which enforces the reservation of the sacrament until after the benediction? If it was for communion only that the sacrament was instituted, we might conceive that as soon as the communions were made the sacrament should be consumed. But the Prayer-Book orders its reservation and that the Benediction shall be given in its presence. Like the apostles, we assemble about our risen Lord, and are with Him, like them, in the sacred enclosure of the closed doors. He is in the midst of us, and we have received Him, and He is in us and we in Him. We rejoice in Him and adore Him as our King. We are incorporated into His mystical body, and are ready to do all such good works as He has prepared for us to walk in. We gather about Him as when the disciples took their last walk with Him in the glorious sunlight of His resurrection, and He led them out as far as Bethany. Not unfittingly does our Liturgy reserve the Gloria in Excelsis for this place. It is the triumphantly filled-out response made by the Church to the angels’ song at Bethlehem. We have been raised up and made to sit in heavenly places. We gaze not up into a material heaven, but into the heaven whereof we form a part and wherein we are one with the apostles, as when they gathered beneath the benediction of the uplifted hands, and worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 

And then, after the blessing, the priest immediately and reverently consumes the sacred gifts, and can we but think of the saying: "He was taken up; and a cloud received Him out of their sight.

So, although it was not intended, here was a particularly thought-provoking reference to a forgotten facet of old Anglican Patrimony, that the shape of its classical eucharistic rite translates the Church on earth to stand among the Church Triumphant before the "Lamb who died, risen, ascended, glorified".


The hymn's tune is usually St Helen of 1874 (although I would love one day to hear the roof of a Catholic cathedral raised by Bryn Calfaria, the English Hymnal 's tune, by the Welsh congregationalist slate quarryman, William Owen, 1813-1893, written in 1852). It is by Sir George Clement Martin, 1844-1916, composed in 1874, the year he left being organist of St John's Edinburgh, to take on the training of boys at the new choral foundation at St Paul's Cathedral, where he stayed for the rest of his career, succeeding Sir John Stainer as organist in 1888. He wrote the Te Deum that was sung on the steps of St Paul’s for the famous open-air Diamond Jubilee service, celebrating Queen Victoria’s 60 years on the throne, for which she knighted him.

Vatican II Hymnal: Book Review

Vatican II Hymnal, ed. Jeffrey Mark Ostrowski, Corpus Christi Watershed, Corpus Christ Texas, 2011, pp. 709 plus indices.


In some ways this is the hymnbook Catholics should have had 40, or even 30, years ago. Put briefly, it is a compendium of all the music and text needed for the worthy sung celebration of the revised form of the Roman Mass, supplemented with a modest collection of hymns and tunes that lie largely in the public domain. A good number of these hymns belong to the body of Catholic devotional verse that was available for extra-liturgical services like Benediction, or permitted to be sung in association with Low Mass; but most come from the riches received from other western Christian traditions (through their North American manifestations), thanks to Catholic entry into using the English-speaking hymn tradition at Mass, by way of the ecumenical exchange of gifts suggested from the Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism onwards and allowed for in the rubrics of the liturgy revisions under Paul VI.

At first glance, it may not look like such a contemporary resource for Catholic worship; but it is actually the print interface of a large online project to ensure that the mass reformed after Vatican II, especially when celebrated in the vernacular, benefits from access to Catholic liturgy's broad and continuous musical tradition in both Latin and English. So, technologically speaking, it would not have been possible to have this hymnal even ten years ago. Furthermore, the Vatican II Hymnal is issued through low-cost self-publishing to order; in other words, production costs do not reflect the business plan of a large book-publishing and distribution house. My hardback draft & review copy cost $17-91; and the final version edition is now ready at $19, costing less per copy the more you order. Also available are supplementary printed books for SATB choir or vocalists' settings of masses and responsorial psalms (notably Jeff Ostrowski's St Noel Chabanel psalm project; and Aristotle Esguerra's modal Responsorial Psalms) and for organ accompaniments, at similarly low prices, or by download to your computer. This in itself is an interesting development for the promotion of quality new writing for Church liturgy and hymn resources, as well as of familiar standard material (and there is also a remarkable parallel online resource providing all the propers in English and Latin with accompaniments). There is now no excuse for churches and their musicians to be bound to the printed books and collections stocked in the organ loft or the choir vestry, or to the poor mass music and low quality worship songs that have formed our habits for decades. For the Vatican II Hymnal not only provides a core repertoire, it also has the capacity to extend itself constantly with the compatible invention of new and restored resources on line.

But what is the Vatican II Hymnal like? Being for Catholic use, it is primarily a liturgical resource to put in order the music for the ordinary and the proper of the Mass, including appropriate "strophic", metrical hymns that can also be included in the Ordinary form of Mass. So it is a hymnale, not a hymnbook, that is a collection or approved selection of hymns. Thus its contents are arranged to serve the celebration of mass. This marks it out as different in structure and presentation from other hymnbooks, even those used and approved in Catholic circles. Thus it is almost a Sunday missal, lacking the variable prayers, but including the readings and the texts of the chants of the Proper of the Mass (think of the similar pages in the English Hymnal), that often neglected but in fact integral component of the Mass, which provides all the Scriptural texts of the variable chants at the Entrance, the Gradual (psalm between the readings), the Offertory and at Communion. Apart from the hymns (to which we will return), the Hymnal draws on a large body of work developed by Watershed, a charity founded in 1996 in the Diocese of Corpus Christi, Texas (see the links above). Watershed has expended considerable energy on collating music from the historic, liturgical patrimony (Gregorian and polyphonic) that can be newly deployed in the service of the revised form of mass - they do not need to have been set aside, and can be re-received. It has also been promoting the work of composers, who see their task is to develop fresh sacred music for the Ordinary Form of Mass (especially in view of the new translation) that stands in continuity with the same traditions as music written for the solemn sung musical celebration of Mass from before the Vatican II reforms, yet not in Latin but the vernacular. In this the group seeks to be in accord with the spirit of Vatican II's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. The driving philosophy is that, while for most of us the revised form of mass in the vernacular seemed to mark a radical rupture from what went before, the Council Fathers actually envisaged not abolition but direct continuity - with some desirable organic develoment, certain improvements and corrections -and an aggiornamento, an updating, to enable the people of the present day to be drawn into and participate in the mass, "actively" (i.e. not merely attend as passive spectators) . Far from a wholesale change, the contention is that the Council sought previously obscured aspects of the Catholic tradition to be restored to them, through the growth and enrichment of what was already in place.


Yet, as is well known, in many if not most places, choirs, organs, Gregorian chant, motets and settings in Latin - and even singing the mass apart from some hymns - were abandoned. Two generations have passed since this rupture and we have become accustomed to folk groups, guitars and bands, liturgical music loosely similar to contemporary popular music (although not always of like quality and creative skill). There is also a body of supposedly distinctive Catholic non-hymnic worship songs, created because their advocates reject the English-language hymn tradition as essentially Protestant. Yet they resemble neither the English liturgical custom of strophic metrical hymns, nor the Roman Graduale's native tradition, whether in using Gregorian chant or other compositions to set the Proper (the Latin tradition is, at heart, to sing the psalms of the Bible at mass with responses). As Professor Paul Fiddes, the great English Baptist theologian, has often observed, you will get more Scripture heard and read at a Catholic mass than at many a Protestant service. But these "distinctively Catholic" liturgical songs are by no means always related to the Scriptures or to the Propers, and thus they stand in clear contrast to many a suitable and well chosen classic hymn, rooted in the metrical singing of psalms and the other Scriptures. This is all by way of saying that for years Catholic eucharistic musical worship in English has been in search of its idiom and identity. It began by adopting aspects of contemporary culture; it looked to some of the features of music and hymnody in the worship of ecumenical friends; it developed its own formats to meet the shape of parts of the renewed rite (eg the Gospel acclamation); and, in the influential minds of some leading Catholic "pastoral musicians", strove for a musical and doxological genre that could distinguish vernacular Catholic worship as different. The search has been protracted and hardly successful.

The reason is because it lost touch with its own underlying tradition, continuous for 1,500 years. In England, the Vatican II Constitution seeking to re-establish the solemn sung mass as the norm for Sunday worship - opening up the accessibility and implementation of the sung High Mass - has by and large not been implemented. Instead we have remained wedded to the idea of a spoken out Low Mass, with such additional material for singing as resources or inclination allow, as the intended and welcome manifestation of the reform. Thus, long since English became the norm, it is still usual at many a Sunday Mass for the psalm not to be sung, but to constitute a dialogue between the faithful and the reader. Even where the Alleluia is sung to one of a handful of tunes that people know (often the antiphon from the end of the old Vesperal Paschal Vigil, stuningly effective of in its annual simplicity, but devalued by overuse, as though we are incapable of encompassing anything more demanding), the verse is often merely said. The entrance chant and the communion antiphon as given in the missal, without their psalm verses, are declared as slogans where they are used at all. Few parishes can rely on a well known tune to which to sing the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus. The new translation of the Missal into English, backed with some firm directions from the bishops (e.g. an expectation of the greetings and prayers to be sung by the priest), boldy attempts to move the worshipping Church to the original objective of the full sung celebration as the norm, casting other forms of mass seen as gradations that cut down on that norm, according to available resources and circumstances. But a culture shift from seeing the said Low Mass as the basic buiding block, with musical settings seen as optional and potentially complicating extras, will take decades of unrelenting determination to succeed. This is why such an initiative as the Vatican II Hymnal is a godsend. As its name implies, it sets our to implement the vision of what many are coming to believe is something approaching the shape and culture intended by the Constitution on the Liturgy. Arguably, we had to go through what we have experience and experimented with over the last five decades, in order to evaluate the true direction of our liturgical tradition for the future as well as for retrieving its past. Arguably, too, we may be too late to recalibrate the momentum of the vernacular tradition as it is now, upon the trajectory of the larger tradition out of which it is supposed to have arisen. There are those, too, who will say that the genie is out of the bottle, and that too much change and innovation has become so ingrained and accepted by the faithful as the authentic liturgical language of the Anglophone cultural continuum, that it cannot be undone with more alienating rupture. But at least the Vatican II Hymnal has arrived and can influence for good what lies ahead in the organic redevelopment of our tradition.


Clearly, the Hymnal resonates within a North American culture, at a time when there is fresh heart among a new generation of musicians who have realised that "modern" can soon become dated, and that in the Church's long tradition there are many compositions that were once modern, that stood the test of time, or were later revived when their moment came again, and that this should never have been something we swept away, but built upon. The present writer, a Catholic priest, came from an Anglican musical background, where a mature musical and choral culture was able to take reforms to liturgical texts and formats in its stride because, far from dispensing with the treasury of the past, there was an assumption that it was still available to be pressed into service, and even added to. (Incidentally, this difference in culture is one reason why some Anglicans, convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith, have nevertheless found it difficult at points to make a transition to the Catholic Church's liturgical life in Britain. This is nothing to do with fondness for elaboration in ceremony, or the complexity of music with choirs and organs, but the rupture in the mediation of a culture of sacred poetic and musical art and its sacral performance. A good pastoral and evangelistic point is that music - through involvement in choirs and organ-playing, as well as other kinds of instrumental ministry - strongly embeds its performers in the life, rhythms and custom of Christian belief and worship. As many vocations to the priesthood and religious life came from singing and accompanying at Church services regularly for years on end, as from serving at the altar. Sadly, there are fewer routes for this spiritual deepening nowadays as once there were. In my view, it is an urgent work, for the renewal and building of the Body of Christ, to have choirs and music-making for children and young people that can inspire and stretch their love of worship and, in turn, of God himself. I know from experience that, while it takes hard and long term work, it is not difficult. But the opportunities are now rare. An English vision like that of Watershed in Corpus Christi, Texas, building on, retrieving, newly creating, and developing a deep and continuous liturgical music tradition, is needed sorely. The Music Makers, led by the excellent Jeremy de Satge in Balham, London, are perhaps the standard bearers for a better approach in England and they deserve keen support.

But the Vatican II Hymnal, having been devised with North American customs and familiar pieces in mind, even with so much good new writing, cannot be transferred as it stands to England. That said, whole portions of it - the settings of the Ordinary of the Mass, the excellently conceived psalm response in Gregorian and modern styles, the Alleluia chants - are a model of what a hymnal resource should be. In conception, it reminds me of the Hymnal Companion to the Book of Prayer and the English Hymnal Service Book from the Anglican tradition. In other words, it is not a supplement of hymns, but a handmaid to the liturgy, with the chants that the liturgy requires and the arrangement of hymns to suit the needs of the rite and its seasons. I would take issue with the adaptation of some of the Gregorian chants to English texts, as more than occasionally the relationship between melody, stress and quantity have escaped the editors. But the efforts are nonetheless very singable and serviceable; and they amply demonstrate that it is not only possible to sing the liturgical texts without having to locate or compose a modern substitute, but that the tradition we ought to be more conscious of having received and standing in can adapt, grow and be no less native in English than it is in Latin.

What impresses me most about the Hymnal is its treatment of the hymns as theological and liturgical texts, not as stand along pieces that can be inserted. First, however, I will say something adverse. The selection suffers from being a gathering of texts that are mostly out of copyright. This means that a huge number are at least over fifty years old. The many classic texts have not always been selected with proper heed to the sources. So, accretions and lesser editorially adapted versions have crept in because of common usage, in preference to retrieving, for the formation of the future tradition according to the principles of establishing a classic Catholic liturgy in the vernacular, the authentic texts or their best developments. It also means (and I recognise that there are copyright and royalty implcations that may have made it prohibitive) that the best of the so-called "hymn explosion" in the last half century, has been missed (in England one immediately thinks of the work of the Anglicans Christopher Idle and Bishop Timothy Dudley-Smith, and there are many more Catholics and Reformed/Methodist writers who justly stand in the classic hymn tradition).

As it is, given the texts of the missal, lectionary and propers, the hymns in the Vatican II Hymnal occupy perhaps just a fifth of the book. But the positive thing to say is that these have been set out with regard not just to the seasons, but also to the place they could occupy - and the purpose they could serve - in the liturgical celebration. For many years, hymnbooks, and the various guides to liturgy and music for it, have proposed helpful lists of suggested hymns and songs - a tradition begun by the English Hymnal of 1906. But unless I am very much mistaken this is the first time we have had a hymnbook (even with so few hymns - just items 203 to 373) that sets out in order its suggestion of which Christmas or Lent hymn should come at the Entrance, Offertory, or Communion, or after the eucharistic action. 170 hymns is not much to work on for an English hymnodist, but the structure and conception is very helpful. Hymns need not replace or overshadow the Proper of the Mass in the Roman rite. But in a contemporary liturgical setting, where we use the vernacular for the engagement and access of the people of the present age, hymns - another aspect of our deep-rooted religious and doxological tradition alongside the historic riches of our tradition - can supplement and amplify it. For instance, as I wrote in Hymns: the Sound of Communion in 2010, this treasury of our religious, social and musical culture, faithful both to the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church's teaching grounded in them, can provide splendid adornments to the Latin rite liturgy both in English and Latin. For instance, a great hymn in English can precede the Introit and form an act of worship at the conclusion of mass. Certain kinds of English hymn can serve as a Sequence alongside the Gradual and Alleluia (Adeste fideles began in this way, but there are other great hymns that likewise reflect on the scene to be announced in the Gospel). Already, even in some Latin celebrations, an English hymn can stand in for the traditional motet in the place of the Offertory or at Communion. I think particularly of the Solemn Christmas Mass at St George's Cathedral in Southwark, England, where a Latin ordinary of the mass and other chants, has been adorned with the addition of Latin and English hymns for the sake of the people's "active participation", and it works very well. By the same token, there is a wealth of Wesleyan and Anglican hymns that were devised for the celebration of the Eucharist, and not for eucharistic adoration at Benediction, which lend themselves to the rite of Communion in a way in which some English Catholic hymnody does not. All this is pointed to in the Vatican II Hymnal. What is needed in an English milieu, however, is a much more ample treatment of the classic English hymn tradition, along with its development in the last half century and more. This would call for a collection of nearer three hundred strophic, metrical hymns (in association with the provision of the other liturgical music setting the Ordinary and the Propers as in the Hymnal, as well as the online resources), but arranged not in reference to themselves as a collection from the great corpus of hymns, but in terms of how, when, where and how, they can serve the celebration of the Mass and the observance of the Catholic liturgical year. This would be a large ambition, exceeding in scope what the editors of the Vatican II Hymnal set themselves, but it would be a remarkable service to the Church in its present situation and to the development and re-enrichment of our tradition in its English vernacular and pastoral appearance.

Fr Mark Woodruff (RC Diocese of Westminster), Priest-Director of the League
Precentor, St Edmundsbury Cathedral, 1989-91, Organist, St George's Anglican Cathedral, Jerusalem, 1982.

Priestly Ordination of our trustee, Fr James Bradley

Fr Mark Woodruff writes:

Three officers of the Catholic League, Fr Mark Woodruff (priest-director), Mary Bacon, and David Chapman (secretary-general) were present for the ordination of our fellow trustee, Fr James Bradley, to the priesthood of the Catholic Church in the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. Also ordained was our friend from the Oxford Ordinariate Group, Fr Daniel Lloyd. As Mgr Keith Newton pointed out, the ordination was historic and more than usually joyful, because these were the first new priests for the Ordinariate who have not previously served as Anglican priests and parish priests. We offer our warmest congratulations and the promise of our prayers for Fr Daniel and Fr James in our Lord's service as his priests.

Over the last year and more, we have offered some reflections on the great services of reception and ordination that have marked such significant moments in the establishment of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, with an eye to aspects of the great Anglican patrimony, as their distinctiveness meets the fullness of communion in the Catholic Church with integrity for both. This is to observe "united, not absorbed" in action, as one foretaste of the unity of Christians in the Universal Church of Christ, which the Catholic Church is bound to realise and manifest, according to the most urgent appeal of Christ to the Father, in his high priestly prayer on the night before he died. So the ordination of every priest is intimately connected not only with Christ's institution of the Eucharist and the offering of his Sacrifice, but also his pleading for the oneness and unbroken communion of his disciples - "that the world may believe it was you who sent me". So we also pray that, from the beginning of their priesthood, consciously bearing their Anglican Christian formation and identity, in fullness of communion with the successor of Peter as witness to the Lord's resurrection, they may live for the fullness of communion of all Christ's followers as ministers of reconciliation.  The Liturgy of Ordination at which this work was set in motion indicated the richness of the "noble simplicity" of the Latin Roman rite of the Catholic Church, but also the way in which it now receives treasures from other Christian traditions, and makes them her own precisly because they already belong as gifts to the Universal Church of Christ which subsists in the same Catholic Church. In a way, the natural home for the Anglican tradition is the Catholic Church, "united, not absorbed", and not in our continued separation.

The Mass was celebrated at the most magnificently restored Church of St Patrick, Soho Square, in London. The Ordinariate currently lacks churches of its own (please pray and give generously towards this, as its future mission will rely on centres of liturgical life and pastoral mission), so various diocesan Catholic cathedrals and church have been generously offered for significant events. The Ordinariate's first Chrism Mass was held at St James's,  Spanish Place, and these ordinations benefited from the astonishing beauty of a once struggling church, that is now a centre for bold Catholic evangelisation in the heart of London. Fr Alexander Sherbrooke deserves gratitude not only for his great hospitality, but also for his faith and vision in transforming an historic church (there is a plaque inside the door marking its foundation in the 18th century, not all that long after penal times, and before both the relief of all civil discriminations against Catholics in Britain and the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and the foundation of the present diocese of Westminster) from a crumbling inner London building that had lost its old constituency and some of its sense of purpose, only to recover its confidence through the pressing task arising from Pope Benedict's proclamation of a "new evangelisation of old Europe".


Fr Alexander encourages complete silence in the Church outside of services - as a sign reads in a Church in France that I recently visited, "Si vous parlez ici, ou prierez-vous?" Thus, in deep spiritual concentration and anticipation, we began John Mason Neale's unrivalled translation of O Filii et Filiae - and we needed ten verses of Ye sons and daughters of the King to accomplish the entrance procession. The Latin hymn is traced back to Jean Tisserand, a French Franciscan of the Order of Friars Minor, who died in 1494. With its opening triple Alleluia, and its sole Alleluia refrain - and given that the last verse in Latin is a trope on the closing versicle and response in the Divine Office (Benedicamus Domino - Deo Gratias), it was presumably written as a joyous conclusion to Lauds and Vespers of Easter Day, possibly for procession. Thus it later became associated in the parishes of France with Benediction on Easter Day. It remains very popular in France, and this is immortalised in the electrifying 1973 recording of Pierre Cochereau, titulaire at Notre Dame de Paris, with the choirs of the Cathedral, Grandes Heures Liturgiques. Neale's translation (from Medieval Hymns and Sequences, 1851) is the superior of Fr Edward Caswall's (see The Catholic Hymn Book, Gracewing, 1998, no. 86, and you will see what I mean), but sadly, like Caswall's version, it is little known. Indeed, I cannot remember singing it since the late 1980s, when I served with Fr David Skeoch, my vicar at St Gabriel's, Warwick Square, who, I am delighted to remark, was my fellow-concelebrant at this ordination, having been ordained priest for the Catholic Church in the Ordinariate only in June last year. Perhaps the problem for this hymn's popularity is Samuel Webbe's ornate arrangement of the 17th century version of the tune. Mercifully, the robust late-plainsong version that is native to the text was chosen. The plainsong strongly suggests its being sung in triple time (like Corde Natus from the Sarum rite), because the verse-writing accords neither with the rules of classical metrical quantity nor of more modern accent and stress - the lilt keeps the "rude Latin" to a discipline and enables it to be sung. Neale observed the canons of poetic metre and so, even when the congregation faltered at the beginning, by the third verse we were singing lustily and unforgetfully. Perhaps this particular jubilant Latin Catholic hymn, mediated by perhaps the greatest of English scholars in classical hymnography, can restore some Catholic patrimony by way of the receiving of gifts from the Anglican patrimony. It deserves to be far better known and we learned how quickly it can be much loved. One interesting note on the triple Alleluia: an ancient design was that it be sung by a sole cantor, repeated by the choir, followed by the verses (each concluding with a single Alleluia), alternated between the cantor and main body of singers, and interspersed with the triple Alleluia until the last turn is taken by the sole cantor at the solemn zenith, so to speak, of the entire canticle. Judging from the order of service, the intention seems to have been the custom (from North American usage) to open with a triple Alleluia and sing the verses through with just their sole Alleluia and dispensing with a triple refrain. Inspiration seems to have taken hold of us all, for we all sang every word, and each verse was adorned with the exhilarating triple Alleluia.  It was quite unforgettable.

Bishop Alan Hopes, Titular Bishop of Cuncacestre and Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster, presided as Episcopal Delegate to the Ordinariate from the Bishops' Conference. The first reading, Hebrews 5.1-10, was read by the Revd Dr Robin Ward, Daniel's and James' Anglican theological college principal at St Stephen's House, Oxford. Those clergy who have not yet read his On Christian Priesthood, a model of classical Anglican divinity and of the theological methodology beloved of Archbishops William Temple and Michael Ramsey, synthesis (namely integrating different and even sometimes opposing perspectives in exposition of the received truth, in this case Anglican divines, Catholic saints and theologians and Eastern Fathers and teachers), are missing a feast for the mind and spirit alike. Servers were supplied by the young and reinvigorated community at St Patrick's, monks of Farnborough Abbey, and seminarians from Oscott and Wonersh. Deacons likewise came from Wonersh and the ordinariate's permanent deacon, who cannot proceed to priesthood for the moment because he is a serving judge - His Honour the Revd James Patrick. The gospel, read by a deacon from Wonersh, was from John 17, verses 6 and 14-19. The text of Mgr Newton's Homily concludes this post.

The Ordinary of the Mass was the Missa Laetatus sum a 12 by Fr Tomas Luis de Victoria, 1548-1611; the related motet setting of Psalm 121/2 (Laetatus sum - I was glad), also for three SATB choirs, was sung at Holy Communion. These works were published in 1600 in Madrid, in the collection Missae, Magnificat, Motecta, at alia quam Psalmi plurima, Victoria's penultimate collection, during his 17-year appointment as the chaplain to the Dowager Holy Roman Empress Maria of Austria, daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and brother of King Philip II of Spain (king matrimonial of England as husband of the Catholic Mary I), at the Convent of Royal Discalced Clares in Madrid, where he also served as an organist and choirmaster. There is not much "Anglican patrimony" in Victoria's liturgical music, except we can note that, as the most significant composer of the late Renaissance as it was affected by the Counter-Reformation, especially while it was undergoing the influences of spiritual renewal in Spain familiar to us in the Carmelite reform movement and the foundation of the Society of Jesus, he will have been deeply aware of the turmoil in the Church in Europe in the times he lived in. So, just as north European Protestant musicians were influenced by developments in music led by Catholic composers embracing the liturgical and pastoral reforms of the Council of Trent, Catholic musicians, too, were writing in a context deeply conditioned, not only by religious renewal movements within Catholicism, but also by the phenomenon of the Protestant Reformations and the Church's reaction to it. Victoria is seen as belonging to the "Roman School" and thus influenced by Palestrina, under whom he may have studied while cantor at the Jesuits' German College and whom he succeeded as master of music at the Roman Seminary after his wife's death, the first Spanish composer to master Palestrina's style. The Fleming Lassus was a contemporary, as was Guerrero. We have observed elsewhere the influence of this school on Protestant musicians with contacts in Italy (fourth paragraph from the end). It is thus worth bearing in mind that Victoria was born in the year of the first English Order of Holy Communion and died in the year of the publication of King James I's Authorised Version of the Bible. As a Counter-Reformation priest, as well as a musician, he will have been stirred by contemporary strife between Catholics and Protestants - and the need to address it - not least through the engagement of Philip II with England through his wife Queen Mary and through an attempted conflict with her Protestant sister Elizabeth I. Victoria was greatly admired by King Philip, so it is possible that his music was known and and sung in Queen Mary's chapel royal, since Mary was keen in her religious policy not to turn back the clock but to embrace the Catholic reforms and make England the best exemplar of the Tridentine Church's efforts at aggiornamento. Victoria's place in the repertoire of church choirs in England was pioneered by Sir Richard Runciman Terry, first organist and choirmaster of Westminster Cathedral (from 1896).

The Responsorial Psalm was 109/110, with a Gregorian psalm-tone for a response and Sir Henry Smart's double (Anglican) chant in G, often associated with the second section of the Te Deum (Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ), for the verses. It was wonderful to hear this perfectly executed by the superb choir, the Newman Consort from Oxford, and various onetime choristers among the clergy and among the faithful, joining in the harmonies. It was an inspired musical choice from among the best loved parts of Anglican liturgical and cultural heritage.

With respect to the rite of Ordination itself, it is worth pointing out that the Anglican Use of the Latin Roman Rite that is currently in development will not included liturgies for the sacrament of Order. As the Ordinariate is not a sui iuris church with a separate liturgical tradition belonging to a different canonical integrity, it is to use the same rites of ordination as other Latin Catholics. Thus, at the vesting and anointing of priests, on this occasion the (fine but somewhat approximate) translation of Veni Creator Spiritus by Bishop John Cosin (Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire) from the Anglican Ordinal was not used. Instead the hymn was sung in Latin. It was interesting to note that many of the Ordinariate priests know this by heart - given so many ordinations in the last year. The full complement of priests now stands at 60. In itself, this small detail was a profound sign of communion.

The Litany of the Saints included appropriate petitions to additional saints - for example, St Anselm, the great philospher Archbishop of Canterbury whose feast it was; St Patrick, patron of the parish; Saint Frideswide, in recognition of the Oxford Ordinariate group for whom Fr Daniel is serving; Saint Claude de la Colombiere, patron of the Parish Hall and evangelisation centre in which we would later enjoy a reception; Saint Jose-Maria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, which operates a student house and ministry near the parish of the Holy Ghost in Balham where Fr James is serving.

Sadly, the custom in Westminster diocese and many others, of laying of hands by all the priests present in complete silence after the ordaining Bishop does so, was not followed. The rubrics enjoin silence when the Bishop lays hands, and insists that likewise the priests say nothing. So while the priests laid hands, in place of silence there was an organ improvisation referencing Veni Creator. While this was executed with great discretion and sensitivity, and it is not technically forbidden by the rubrics, nonetheless the usual silence is arguably among the most profound opportunities for the lay people to enter at length and deeply into reflective prayer that exists in our Rite, as they pray for the new priests in the moment of their ordination and as they enter into the liturgical action of the presbyterate in union with the Bishop as one priesthood, through a genuine and utterly absorbing participatio actuosa. Truly this point in the rite is a moment out of time.

The hymn in place of the Offertory was John Mason Neale's translation of an Easter hymn by St John Damascene, Come, ye faithful, raise the strain, on which we reflected last Easter (sixth paragraph).

During the Eucharistic Prayer (the Roman Canon), Bishop Alan Hopes rightly did not commemorate the diocesan Bishop, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, because, even though the Ordination physically took place within a church of the Diocese of Westminster, ecclesiologically and in terms of communion with the Catholic Church and the successor of Peter, it took place within the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. Nonetheless, as an Auxiliary of Westminster within the territory of the diocese, he referred to "Keith the Ordinary", not "our" Ordinary, having referred to his own ministry as principal celebrant in the usual way.

The Lord's Prayer was in Latin, a csutom increasingly taken up once more with great vigour by Catholic congregations. The Communion antiphon, Ego sum pastor bonus, was sung to the setting by Claudio Monteverdi, from the Sanctae Cantiunculae published in Venice in 1582.

Also at Communion was sung Father Edward Caswall's translation of St Thomas Aquinas' Adoro te devote, O Godhead hid, devoutly I adore thee, to the tune Aquinas by Sir Richard Terry. This hymn and its tune are not so familiar to Catholics today as they once were, but the choice was felicitous for two reasons. First, Caswall (1814-1878) had once been an Anglican priest, steeped in the Church of England's Oxford tradition. After his wife died in 1849 he was received into the Catholic Church. Strongly influenced by Newman, he joined the Oratory of St Philip Neri in 1850. This hymn was included in his 1849 collection, Lyra Catholica, containing all the breviary and missal hymns. It was his wife Louisa who mostly translated The Altar Manual, a translation of a popular French devotional book,  that Caswall issued at the same time as the Lyra. The title Lyra Catholica is a clear reference to the Lyra Davidica of 1708, a collection of English hymns, including translations from German Protestant sources (the best known today being Christ the Lord is risen today - famous for its tune, Easter Hymn - and How brightly beams the morning star), and perhaps more particularly the Lyra Apostolica, a collection of hymns by Tractarian writers edited by Newman in 1836. Texts we recognise from this collection today include Hail, gladdening light, and Newman's Lead, kindly light. Keble's Blest are the pure in heart comes from his Lyra Innocentium of 1846. Secondly, the choice of hymn signals that Anglican patrimony, in this case the judicious use of the English hymn tradition in the mass of the Roman rite, is not static or locked in Anglican custom from the past, but is able to grow and develop through its contact with another religious tradition (itself influenced by Anglican hymnody in its earlier stages). In this particular case, the Ordinariate is not only embracing a favourite old Catholic hymn, it is somewhat restoring it within a community that risks losing the use of it. Reading the words, one can see how influential Caswall's translation was on the version by Gerard Manley Hopkins; another reason to sustain its use within the Church's living Tradition.

The Mass was concluded with Regina Caeli, set by Gregor Aichinger (1565-1628), organist to the great Fugger family in the mixed Catholic-Protestant imperial city of Augsburg in Bavaria. Jakob Fugger sponsored his trip to Rome and Italy for music studies for two years from 1599. Musically he was influenced by Giovanni Gabrielli, but religiously he was so inspired by the Catholic reform movement of the Counter-Reformation that he became a Catholic himself, was ordained priest and became, on his return to Augsburg as a vicar choral at the Cathedral, one of the principal exponents in Germany of the principles of the Counter-Reformation - itself an outreach to meet the concerns that had driven many to the extreme of rupture of communion within the Church - as they were implemented through the music of the liturgy. This little piece (no mere choral work, since it constantly refers the listening worshipper back to the joyful salutation of the Virgin Mary on account of the Resurrection of her Son - Regina Caeli, laetare) dates from after the period of deep change in Aichinger's passions, faith and outlook; and it is a sign of the need at once for reform and renewal, and of the Church's deep instinct and need for the fulness of communion. Apparently, it is a great favourite with the choir at St Stephen's House, where Frs Daniel and James trained; and it is in so many ways the aptest of choices with which to end this magnificent and inspiring Liturgy.

At the end, hundreds of the faithful lined up to receive the first blessings of the new priests. I am very glad to report that Father Daniel Lloyd did so in a full English surplice. Vivat traditio Anglicana, patrimonium Catholicum vere.



Mgr Keith Newton's homily, preached at the ordination to the Sacred Priesthood of Fr James Bradley and Fr Daniel Lloyd on Saturday 21 April 2012:

As you send me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth. John 17:19

The popularity of David Attenborough programmes such as Frozen Planet, Life of Mammals, and so on, shows the continuing fascination many people have with the natural world. We inhabit this planet with many other creatures but, in a large measure, its future is in our hands whether we believe in global warming or not. That God is the creator of the world and all that is in it is a basic doctrine of the Faith. It was for this world that our Blessed Lord lived and died, as Saint John reminds us in one of the most well-known verses of the Gospels:

‘God so loved the world that gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’ John 3:16

Did you notice, then, that the word ‘world’ occurred nine times in today’s Gospel reading? In it, Jesus tells his disciples that they do not belong to the world. They are in it but not of it. This is because they have been chosen by Christ, and the world will hate them as it hated him. There are really difficult words, and certainly Jesus did not leave his followers under any illusions about the consequences of following him, and in those early years his followers experienced what it meant to be persecuted.

But how are we to understand this passage? What does it mean for us not to belong to the world, when at so many levels we obviously do belong to the world? We eat and drink and breathe, fall in love and marry, buy and sell houses and take part in politics. Such passages have led some Christians to shun the world and to see Christianity only involved with the things of the Spirit. But other parts of scripture lead us to believe that creation is good and the material world has been sanctified by the incarnation of Jesus, who took flesh for our sake.

In Saint John’s Gospel, the world ‘world’ often seems to suggest not only the created order, but also a human society which has no place for God. Inevitably there is bound to be a clash between those for whom God is the all-embracing and abiding reality for whom the demands of God control the way we live, and those for whom such talk is meaningless or irrelevant. But even within the Christian world there is significant difference between those who believe that God has acted and revealed himself in Jesus and that revelation challenges us about the way we conduct our lives, and those for whom religion seems little more than a way of expressing our deepest human aspirations. Between those who think faith is a gift to be received, however challenging for us, and those who think we should always be acceptable to the world as a way of gaining followers.

It seems to me that Pope Benedict’s teaching often focuses on this; the need to stand up for the values of the Gospel in a secular world. We are, as Catholics, counter-cultural; we will often find ourselves against the world as far as the prevailing culture is concerned - which in the ‘post-Christian world’ does little more than pay lip-service to the Faith. We are beginning to learn this as never before, when a government tells us it values the Christian Faith, and yet is planning to bring forward legislation on marriage which will undermine some of its basic truths.

James and Daniel: it is in this world that you are called to minister and will have to live out your priestly calling. It is an office of great dignity, but of great challenges. Indeed, for the most part, the world does not understand what a Priest is. It will often be an heroic struggle, as there must be an element of sacrifice in your life, where your priestly ministry must be put before your own personal needs. For this you will need to put your life close to Christ. Indeed, in a few moments you will be encouraged to ‘model your lives on the mystery of the Lord’s cross’.

Of course, the words of that opening text apply to all Christian disciples, but they apply in a particular way to those who have been chosen to share in Christ’s Priesthood through ordination.

As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth.

Jesus was aware that he had been sent by the Father, and he now send you out with the same mission, to preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments in a secular and sometimes hostile world. In the second volume of his book Jesus of Nazareth, our Holy Father Pope Benedict considers this passage and points out that consecration and mission are intrinsically linked. Sanctity or holiness belongs only to God, so to be consecrated means to be set apart for God, but also for his mission to the world. “Consecration”, he says, “means that God is exercising a total claim over this man, ‘setting him apart’ for himself, yet at the same time sending him out for the nations”. There is your commission.

No doubt you will both be feeling ill-equipped and unworthy of this great calling: and so you should, as none of us can be Priests because of our own goodness or in our own strength. A few years ago my attention was drawn to a poem by George Herbert, a seventeenth century Anglican Divine, which I hope is part of that Anglican Patrimony we bring to the Catholic Church. The poem is called Aaron, and in it he begins by describing the lovely robes of Aaron the priest, and goes on to lament the defects of his own life by comparison, and says ‘poor priest thus am I drest’.

In the following verse he gives the solution. The priest is not a priest in his own right, but acting as a representative of someone else. It is that persons character and goodness he ‘wears’ as if it were a garment. In him, he says, he is ‘well drest’.

Then he reveals that the person is Christ himself who is described in the Epistle to the Hebrews as ‘our great high priest’.

Christ is my only head,
My alone only heart and breast,
My only music, striking me ev’n dead;
That to the old Man I may rest
And be in him new drest.

James and Daniel: I hope you have prepared for this day with awe and trepidation. It is a great calling, but one all priests know they can never live up to - you will live with that knowledge all your life. But you need also to have confidence that, through his grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, you will be set apart to stand in his place as you present his sacrifice in the Mass, and in him you will be ‘well drest’.

Solemn Evensong: for the First Anniverary of the Ordinariate: Some Patrimonial Reflections

Fr Mark Woodruff writes:

Just after the New Year, I went to the Cotswolds to visit a retired evangelical Anglican archdeacon friend of mine. Without hesitation I would say that he is western Catholic, a true churchman, to his finger tips. The retreats for priests he used to give were pearls of the Wisdom of the Scriptures and the Church’s Tradition he had received in the Church of England and was passing on to those who had ears to hear. One of the things that has united the Anglican archdeacon and the Catholic priest, grateful for his own roots and formation in the Church of England, is our love for the rites of the Book of Common Prayer, with its daily rhythm of Morning and Evening Prayer, the pastoral offices and the “noble simplicity” of its Office of Holy Communion. Once, he asked Graham Leonard, the retired bishop of London, whether there was anything he regretted about becoming a Roman Catholic. “I don’t regret anything for a single minute; but the one thing I really do miss is Evensong. We have nothing quite like it.” My archdeacon friend said he had always regarded Evensong as a perfect tool for pastoral mission, with its near perfect structure of reverent beauty, music, preaching, Scriptures and prayer, for drawing in those who were moved to worship but not yet ready for the sacramental life. “The Catholic Church should really give some thought to adopting Anglican Evensong,“ he said. “But it has!” I replied; “and I am going to Choral Evensong as a service fully of the Catholic Church next weekend.” He was as moved as I was to think that this peerless liturgy, increasingly difficult to find even in Anglican parishes, has been embraced as a treasure by the Catholic Church from the Anglican tradition, as a foretaste of the unity of all Christendom in which all our churches will own the gifts given to each other for the Universal Church.


18 years ago I gave away my surplices, scarves and hood to friends, as I prepared to enter into the fullness ofcommunion in the Catholic Church. I was one of many who was told by Cardinal Hume to “bring your Anglicanism with you”; but there were some aspects of it that lamentably I was leaving behind - “friends I have loved long since and lost awhile,” you might say. One of these was classic Anglican worship. From now on, I participated in it as an ecumenical guest. It was my tradition, yet it wasn’t. As a former Anglican cathedral precentor, this was something I loved inside out, but could never really contribute to or participate in from my place within Christ’s Church as a Catholic. Until now.


On Sunday, I joined over a dozen priests, his excellency the Ordinary of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, Bishop Peter Elliot of Melbourne, Australia, the Abbot and several of the brethren of Farnborough, a dozen Knights of Malta and a congregation of hundreds for Solemn Evensong at the Westminster diocese’s Church of St James, Spanish Place in London to give thanks for the first year of life of the Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham. St James’ was the perfect setting. It may have a venerable history as the Chapel of the Embassy of Spain in origin; but it is also a neo-Gothic English church in the Early English style (with some transitional-Norman features) and you could be forgiven for thinking you were in a corner of Westminster Abbey, Salisbury Cathedral or Christ Church, Dublin. It felt like this was Anglican Evensong on home territory.

 
As the liturgy progressed, a profound sense visited me, that something that I had laid down for the sake of Catholic communion was being restored to me. It took me back to my teenage membership of the choir at St Paul’s Marton in Lancashire, which somehow integrated a Roman-oriented feel to the conduct of worship with the traditional services and music of the Church of England – Ireland in F, and Stanford in B flat (under the gently but impassioned direction of Mr Ray Fishwick).I had suggested to Fr Christopher Pearson of the Ordinariate, who organised the celebration, that to be truly Anglican he and his brethren should wear surplice, scarf and hood. Of course, not many of them had either possessed or used this vesture in their Anglican days. So, here we were, nearly forty years later, processing into Evensong in cassock and cotta to the strains of Anglican choral music, just like Fr John Cayton and Fr Maurice Haigh in Marton of yore. Of course this was Solemn Evensong and it struck me how like in dignity and simplicity the ceremony was when I was a student at the College of the Resurrection at Mirfield. I was deeply inspired; I knew every word by heart and every note of the music, down to the harmony of the chants and hymns. Afterwards, speaking to seasoned Catholics, to generous Anglican friends who had come specially - in support and out of affinity – and to many newly made friends among the faithful and clergy of the Ordinariate, we discussed time and again the point that had dawned on us: that there was nothing distinctive of Anglicanism that could not be lived in communion with the Catholic Church as it now is. Nothing that is true of the classic Anglican tradition, its orthodox teaching and its liturgical and spiritual treasury, requires separation for protecting its integrity or principles.


Prior to Evensong, the organist, Iestyn Evans, played Herbert Howells’ Psalm Prelude Set One, Number One (opus 32). This is perhaps the most famous, soul-searching and best loved of his organ pieces. Howells’ music for the organ and the services of the Anglican Church has such a distinctive voice that, beyond the cornerstone laid by the music of Charles Villiers Stanford, it has set the tone for what we now instinctively recognise as the characteristic style of Anglican liturgical singing and organ improvisation. He was a student of Stanford, Hubert Parry and Charles Wood at the Royal College of Music, following earlier training under Herbert Brewer at Gloucester Cathedral. It is a nice coincidence that one of his earliest pieces of liturgical music, the Mass in the Dorian Mode, was first performed at Westminster Cathedral soon after he arrived at the College, thanks to the interest of Richard Runciman Terry, the cathedral’s great first director of music. The first set of Psalm Preludes dates from 1915-16; and the first piece especially betrays the profound effect on him of Vaughan Williams and his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis that had so moved him at the 1910 Three Choirs Festival. Dating from the First World War, each Psalm Prelude in this set, arguably, should be considered alongside the war poets, with the events at Ypres, Gallipoli and Verdun. Set One, Number One is a meditation on Psalm 34.6: This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.


Then came George Thalben-Ball’s Elegy. Thalben Ball was a fellow student of Howells’, a prodigious pianist, who gave the first English performance of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto at the Royal College of Music at the age of 19. He became organist of the Temple Church, taking its choir to international fame with the recording of Mendelssohn’s Hear my Prayer and its solo, O for the wings of a dove. The BBC’s daily service on the radio during the Second World War came from the Temple and the Elegy began as an improvisation when the service ended a few minutes earlier than expected one day. It was an immediate “hit” with the public.


Then the procession of the Ordinary and other clergy made its way into church with Sir Hubert Parry’s Introit for the Coronation of King Edward VII in 1902, I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the house of the Lord (Psalm 122, Laetatus sum). The striking introduction and the interplay of choirs and organ or brass fanfares were actually written for a new version, for the coronation of King George V. Parry’s original was more reverential in tone. The rewritten piece, however, has been used time and again to match national and local services of joyful celebration ever since. It is known to be a great favourite of the Prince of Wales’, who urged it be used for the Bridal Procession at the marriage of his son, now HRH the Duke of Cambridge, to Kate Middleton.


The responses (which are vestiges of the recitation of Psalm 51 (the Miserere) at a dawn vigil and Psalm 70 (Deus in adiutorium) as an introductory psalm at offices) were sung to the setting by Bernard Rose written for Magdalen College, Oxford (which will figure again later). Since publication in 1961, their popularity has never waned. Strangely, they were intoned by a member of the choir, not the Officiant or another precenting priest.


Psalms 114 (In exitu Israel) and 115 (Non nobis, Domine) followed, sung exquisitely to familiar Anglican chants. The choice was a perfect match for the words, as the writer cannot remember which chant was used: possibly the Reverend Sir Frederick Gore Ouseley’s double chant in A flat. If so, Ouseley is an embodiment of the nineteenth century nineteenth century English church music and Anglo-Catholic patrimony. A baronet, he was ordained to serve as curate at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, and its foundation to exemplify the ideals of the Tractarian and Ritualist revival, St Barnabas’, Pimlico. He rose to be Professor of Music at Oxford and founded St Michael’s College, Tenbury Wells, his school for the renewal and revival of English choral church music. His chants and other settings of the Anglican liturgy were thus written to bring that revival about. His most famous student and disciple was Sir John Stainer, his organist at St Michael’s for a while, who not only eventually succeeded him as Professor of Music, but also raised standards in cathedral worship from his influential posts as organist at Magdalen College, Oxford and then at St Paul’s Cathedral. His researches into early music began to establish in English liturgy the treasures of Tudor composers, unheard for centuries. He was also a champion of the adaptation and revival of plainsong in Anglican worship. Thus he was at the heart of a movement, led from the cathedrals he influenced, to bring high aspirations even into small parishes for excellent choral leadership of psalm-singing, hymns and anthems.


In a slight departure from the order of Evensong, the lessons were introduced and ended in the same way as in the new Roman Missal (“A reading from….” and “The Word of the Lord: Thanks be to God”). This is not the custom even at Roman rite Vespers or Readings. Let us hope that at future Evensongs the classic and familiar forms will be allowed their rhythms: “Here beginneth the seventh verse of the fifteenth chapter of the Book Deuteronomy” and “Here endeth the First Lesson.” The second lesson was from II Thessalonians 2. 13-14.


Although in Anglicanism, both in the Catholic tradition and in the Cathedrals, it can be customary to sing an office hymn after the first lesson and before the Magnificat (a tradition consolidated with the publication of the English Hymnal in 1906, which gave a complete set for Morning and Evening Prayer, mostly translated by John Mason Neale and set to the Sarum form of the tunes), this practice was not followed at St James’, even though it was a Solemn Evensong and incense was to be prepared for the Ordinary to cense the altar. Monsignor Newton was attended throughout by two deacons, one transitional and the other permanent, each vested in dalmatics.


The canticles were to a setting by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, from the magnificent Service in C from 1909. This is Irish Anglican patrimony. A Dubliner, he studied at Cambridge, Leipzig and Berlin. His orchestral music is strongly influenced by his German experience, and owes a debt especially to Brahms. His attitude to the Anglican Church to which he belonged, in comparing it to the Lutheran churches he encountered in Saxony and Prussia, would have been shared with many of his ordinary Anglican contemporaries in the second half of the nineteenth century: that the Church of England was a Protestant Church alongside and essentially like those of Germany. He had no Anglo-Catholic inclinations, but may have seen the need for Anglican liturgy to aspire to the musical standards and artistic traditions so vigorous historically in the Lutheran church-world. This interplay with the culture of fine Protestant sacred music was a factor in the creativity of some of the Renaissance and Baroque Catholic composers (as we have noted before); so it is interesting to note the musical absorbency of Anglicanism, too, in the century of the rediscovery of Bach’s music, and the long forgotten works of the first composers for the English liturgy. The craftsmanship of Stanford’s writing marked a turning point in the English tradition of church music and set high new standards. His pupils included Gustav Holst, Herbert Howells and Ralph Vaughan Williams; their calibre may have surpassed their master’s, but there is no doubt as to the debt they owe him for the skills he passed on to them. And even with their very different compositional styles and inspirations, it is still Stanford whose music seems to provide the familiar terra firma on which other forms of sacred Anglican church music, some earlier and some later, can stand and excel.


After the Third Collect, the rite of Evensong as authorised for use in the Ordinariate revealed a small detail that showed the effect of fullness of communion in the Catholic Church: as it is a custom to commemorate the dead at Vespers, the Ordinary greeted all the faithful and said, “May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.”


The anthem was Henry Balfour Gardiner’s lush Evening Hymn. This great favourite is one of the few compositions of his that survive. He was highly self-critical, probably destroying much of his own work while generously promoting that of others, both financially and as a conductor. Gustav Holst and Frederick Delius owed much to this man’s benefaction. Evening Hymn is really a sumptuous setting of the Compline hymn, Te lucis ante terminum and comes from the period he was teaching music at Winchester College.


The Ordinary’s glad and thoughtful sermon, a reflection on Newman’s thinking as he responded to the call of God to become a Catholic, and ending with an act of trust in God for the future and what may be called of the Ordinariate, may be found on the Ordinariate website.


The hymns – and their tunes - were all chosen by Mgr Newton himself. Thus Newman’s Praise to the Holiest in the height from the Dream of Gerontius was sung to Sir Arthur Somervell’s Chorus Angelorum. See our earlier post on this tune.


Ready for the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, the choir sang O Salutaris Hostia by Edward Elgar. For a century and more, Anglican Catholics took devotion to the Blessed Sacrament to their heart. By them it was sung in English long before Roman Catholics followed suit, and by them it was maintained long after it practically disappeared from many Catholic parishes. So Benediction was in English, but O Salutaris and Tantum Ergo were in Latin. Elgar’s Catholic church music is remarkable because it belongs to the tradition of English Cathedral church music, for which he also wrote. Once again, here we see, long before the Decree on Ecumenism and Ut Unum Sint, an exchange of treasures and gifts, or at least giftedness, between the Anglican and Catholic churches. By the same token, both motets form part of the regular repertoire of Anglican choral foundations – far from just being Latin and Roman Catholic they have been warmly embraced as part of the Anglican patrimony for years. Tantum ergo was to the setting by Déodat de Séverac, the Provençal composer of operas and piano music, the promise of whose mature, melodic style was cut short at 49 in 1921.


The hymns for the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, at which the Knights of Malta provided an escort and over which they carried the canopy, began with William Chadderton Dix’s Alleluia, sing to Jesus. Many of Dix’s hymns were conceived during a time of great depression, following a serious illness of which he almost died aged 29. It is thus a hymn of the deepest hope and confidence, and the phrases, “not as orphans are we left in sorrow now,” “shall our hearts forget his promise, “I am with you evermore?”” and “Earth’s Redeemer, plead for me” are thus especially poignant. But it did not come to public attention until publication in 1867, after which it was immediately snapped up for inclusion in the Anglo-Catholic Hymns Ancient and Modern as an Ascensiontide and Communion hymn. The tune, Hyfrydol, was by Dix’s mid-nineteenth century contemporary Rowland H. Prichard. The wedding of the verses and the perfect tune for them seems not to have come about until the inspired editing of the music of the English Hymnal in 1906 by Ralph Vaughan Williams, who rearranged the harmonies in the form familiar to most choirs today.


The second hymn was George Hugh Bourne’s Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendour from 1874. This is another Ascensiontide Communion hymn, perfectly fitting a Procession of the Blessed Sacrament into the Holy of Holies, the sanctuary. Vaughan Williams set this to another Welsh tune of rare and powerful melody in G minor, Bryn Calfaria; but most people prefer a Victorian tune in a major key; so at Evensong we followed the Ancient and Modern tradition and used Sir George Clement Martin’s St Helena from 1889. Martin followed Stainer as organist of St Paul’s Cathedral. He wrote the Te Deum that was sung on the steps of St Paul’s for the famous Diamond Jubilee open air service, celebrating Queen Victoria’s 60 years on the throne. 


After a prayer for the Pope, we joined in saying before the Blessed Sacrament exposed the beautiful General Thanksgiving from the Book of Common Prayer. Generations of Anglican confirmation candidates had to know this, as well as the Commandments and the Creed, by heart. It was written not by Cranmer in the sixteenth century, but in 1661 by Edward Reynolds, a gentle Puritan, who had succeeded John Donne as Preacher at Lincoln’s Inn and later submitted to what looked like the final Presbyterian settlement of the Cromwellian Commonwealth. Yet he did not accept Presbyterianism as the sole doctrine or system to the exclusion of others, and did not differ from the teaching and order of the Church of England, provided it might rightly be governed. He believed, for instance, that bishops were acceptable as long as they were not prelates and sole rulers, but fellow-presbyters with the other ministers and governing in council with them. (This is not so dissimilar from the synodal form of governance provided by Anglicanorum Coetibus for the Ordinariates – or indeed from the spirit of Lumen Gentium!) Others were more resolute in their defence of the old order of the Church of England and lost their livings and office. Reynolds benefited from his moderation and equivocation, becoming Dean of Christ Church and Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford, although he advocated mitigation and reason in the application of the Commonwealth Solemn League and Covenant, rather than intolerance and severity. It was his opposition to the Commonwealth’s later test of allegiance to the English state, so as finally to exclude the monarchy, that finally lost Reynolds his position of influence from the University of Oxford. He returned to his parish at Braunston and was soon given the living of St Lawrence Jewry in the City of London. With further change and uncertainty in church life, as well as the burden of an unstable constitution, sustained not, after all, by Parliament but by force of arms and dictatorship, it was Reynolds who preached before Parliament in April 1660, condemning the uncertainties and wrongs of the preceding years and calling for a settled constitution to be brought back in its old form. In May he was sent by Parliament to Breda in the Netherlands to ask King Charles II to return to England as monarch and accept a moderate form of episcopal governance in the Church. Upon the king’s Restoration, such was his renown for learning, preaching and personal holiness, Reynolds was appointed a Court preacher with nine other Presbyterian divines. On the basis of the king’s Royal Declaration calling for conciliation between the Anglican and Presbyterian parties, he accepted episcopal ordination and the see of Norwich. But his conciliatory efforts at the Savoy Conference (that had resulted from the Declaration) were to no avail; and Parliament, now solidly Anglican and in no mood for accommodating the Presbyterians, refused to back the King’s efforts at a settlement. He continued at Norwich, seeing himself as a chief presbyter among other presbyters, tireless in the relief of the poor and conciliatory to those who were now cast as Dissenters and Non-Conformists. A Puritan, he was not a Calvinist. He did not preach a narrow doctrine of election but an Evangelical proclamation of the gospel that is open to all. Of the Father, he wrote, “Adam looks on Him as a judge, and hides - the prodigal looks on Him as a father and returns”. The magnificent General Thanksgiving he wrote conveys his spirit of God’s generous love that provides freely “the means of grace and the hope of glory”. Its sense of relief at the restoration of order in society and government after years of strife, turmoil and bloodshed is expressed in blessing the Father of mercies. Its hope for unity and peace in the Church is found in the typically Puritan resolve on a simple, thankful life in God’s service and the pursuit of holiness. More or less the same sentiments were voiced by Fr Paul Couturier in the 1930s, when he called all Christians to pray that they might become united in their hearts and outdo each other in aspiring to an ever greater holiness that would inevitably bring them closer in union to Christ and thus each other. It is amazing that this prayer by a Presbyterian, Puritan, Evangelical bishop is now a prayer cherished in the Catholic Church. Perhaps Reynolds, if he had lived in the mid twentieth century would have readily recognised his own faith in the Church of Christ as it was expressed in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church at Vatican II, Lumen Gentium. So perhaps this miracle in the lex orandi is nothing more than the natural outcome of the lex credendi we all held together all along.

Before the Blessed Sacrament we stood for the Te Deum, to the setting in B flat by Stanford. At the Coronation of King Edward VII in 1902, choirs up and down the land chose to sing Sir George Martin’s Te Deum composed for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. But at Westminster Abbey, it was Stanford’s Te Deum in B flat that was chosen. Stanford composed a new fanfare and introduction for the occasion, based on the solemn intonation of Gregorian canticle verses in tone eight.

We genuflected, as I just about remember doing as a child, at “We therefore pray thee, help thy servants, whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious Blood”. After the Te Deum, we knelt at de Séverac’s Tantum Ergo, the versicle, response and Collect (in English), before the Ordinary gave us Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament. The Divine Praises were followed by Psalm 117 (Laudate Dominum) with its antiphon, Adoremus in aeternum, to the Roman (not Sarum) tone six.

The final voluntary was the Finale from Louis Vierne’s First Organ Symphony. Vierne was organist of Notre Dame de Paris from 1900 to 1937. He was a man who, throughout his life, suffered – from the almost full loss of his sight, the loss of his wife in a divorce, the loss of his two brothers in World War I and an organ in a terrible state of repair. He raised the funds in America to restore it and this kind of determination and patience deeply impressed his many pupils, who recognised it in his kindness and patience with them. This persevering and imperturbable faith, enduring life’s troubles, reveals itself in his music. In the Finale there is the joy and exultation, but also an air of vigorous effort and even some hint of anxiety. Perhaps it was the perfect piece to choose to end this magnificent and so gratifying celebration. As Mgr Newton said in his sermon, quoting Dag Hammarskjold, surveying an exhilarating and challenging first year, slightly daunted by what may lay ahead, but confident that all has been and will be in God’s hands, “For what has been, thanks; to what will be, yes.”

Fr Keith told me they originally doubted whether people would come up to London on a Sunday and that the special Evensong would only attract a few. The Church, however, was packed with members of the Ordinariate and its friends, both Catholic and Anglican. At the reception afterwards, the Ordinary was generous in his thanks to all those who had helped and encouraged him and the Ordinariate in the past year, including the Catholic League. But what the strong body of support showed was more than money and good will in the past: here was the strong desire to sustain this initiative into a brave future by the grace of God.

It also showed that there is not only an urgent need for the Ordinariate to obtain its own buildings as the focus and bases for its unique mission, life of worship and thus a vitally needed witness. There is evidently determined and reliable support that could help to bring this about – and clearly, judging by the hundreds who came, there is a need in people that is seeking to be met.