Divine Worship: The Missal

Along with the ordination of married former Episcopal and Anglican priests, the Pastoral Provision of 1980 permitted the establishment of Anglican Use parishes in the United States and created a special missal called the Book of Divine Worship using liturgical elements from the Anglican tradition. Like most versions of the Book of Common Prayer, the Book of Divine Worship both the function of missal and breviary, including the preliminary Anglican Use Divine Office.

The apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus issued by Pope Benedict XVI on 4 November 2009[3] dramatically expanded this concept and led to the creation of three personal ordinariates, one in England, Scotland and Wales, one in the United States and Canada, and one in Australia.

Anglicanorum coetibus specifically authorized the creation of liturgical forms for the personal ordinariate through a new missal called Divine Worship: The Missal, which gives expression to and preserves for Catholic worship the Anglican liturgical tradition and patrimony, understood as that which has nourished the Catholic faith throughout the history of the Anglican tradition and prompted aspirations towards ecclesial unity.[4] On 29 November 2015, Advent Sunday, the new missal went into use. The Book of Divine Worship was retired on 1 January 2016. Earlier efforts by the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham produced a Divine Office companion, The Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham, in 2012; this was replaced by Divine Worship: Daily Office during 2020 and 2021.

Divine Worship: The Missal was developed by the interdicasterial commission Anglicanae Traditiones of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments to be the liturgy for all Ordinariate parishes worldwide. All three ordinariates—the Personal Ordinariates of Our Lady of Walsingham, the Chair of Saint Peter, and Our Lady of the Southern Cross adopted the missal. Advisers to the commission included Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia, Msgr. Steven J. Lopes, Msgr. Andrew Burnham, Auxiliary Bishop Peter J. Elliott, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, Fr. Uwe Michael Lang, Dr. Hans-Jürgen Feulner, Dr. Clinton A. Brand, Fr. Andrew Menke, and Msgr. Peter Wilkinson.[2]

Divine Worship: The Missal opens with the decree of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments authorizing the publication of the missal. These are followed by proclamations from the Ordinaries of each of the three Personal Ordinariates specifically authorizing its use. It then contains a complete copy of The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) and the Divine Worship Rubrical Directory which provides instructions on how the Divine Worship Liturgy differs from the Roman Rite (of which it is an expression). The Calendar of the Church Year used in the Personal Ordinariates comes next, followed by the propers for the portions of the Church Year including Advent, Epiphany, Pre-Lent, Lent, Passiontide, Holy Week, Eastertide, Trinitytide, and Feasts of the Lord. The Order of Mass appears at this point, followed by the Propers of Saints and Holy Days, the Commons for various purposes, several appendices, and prayers for before and after Mass.

Divine Worship Sunday Missal for lay use.

For each Mass, the Proper of the Mass includes the appointed Introit, Collect, Gradual, Alleluia or Tract, Offertory, and Communion. The Epistle and Gospel readings for Sunday are to be taken from the Revised Roman Missal, using the Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition translation. Divine Worship: The Missal preserves such features and elements that are representative of the historic Anglican Books of Common Prayer and Anglican Missals, in conformity with Catholic doctrinal and liturgical norms, and is therefore at once distinctively and traditionally Anglican in character, linguistic register, and structure, while also being clearly and recognizably an expression of the Roman Rite.[5] Examples of this include the Summary of the Law or the Decalogue at the Beginning of Mass, the Bidding Prayers prior to the collection, an alternate version of the Confiteor, the Comfortable Words, chanting of the Alleluia prior to the Agnus Dei, the Prayer of Humble Access, and the Prayers of Thanksgiving after Holy Communion.

The Ordinary of the Mass contains many of the same elements as the Tridentine Mass in that it uses the traditional Offertory and allows for the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar and the Last Gospel, albeit in English rather than Latin, in the familiar language of the Book of Common Prayer, with translations of the Kyrie eleison, Gloria in excelsis, Credo, Sanctus-Benedictus, and Agnus Dei conforming to that linguistic register. The order of the Mass is not exactly as in the Tridentine form, but it is closer than the post-Vatican II Mass. The Missal also borrows from the Sarum Use, in particular in the form of the Collect for Purity, which is said at the beginning of Mass. The Missal contains two Canons. The ancient and venerable Roman Canon from the Tridentine Mass, in a new Elizabethan English translation, is the normative Eucharistic Prayer of Divine Worship: The Missal. The alternative Eucharistic Prayer, which corresponds to the Eucharistic Prayer II of the Roman Missal, is provided for Masses on weekdays, Masses with children, and other Masses where pastoral needs suggest it.

In 2020, a revised edition of Divine Worship: The Missal was released, containing the propers for St. John Henry Newman, whose canonization in November 2019 was celebrated by the Ordinariates.[6][7]

Public liturgical celebration according to Divine Worship is restricted to the personal ordinariates established under the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus. Any priest incardinated in these ordinariates may also celebrate the Mass according to Divine Worship outside the parishes of the ordinariate when celebrating Mass without a congregation, or publicly with the permission of the rector or pastor of the corresponding church or parish.[8]

In cases of pastoral necessity or in the absence of a priest incardinated in an ordinariate, any priest incardinated in a diocese or in an institute of consecrated life or society of apostolic life may celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass according to Divine Worship for members of the ordinariate who request it. Any priest incardinated in a diocese or in an institute of consecrated life or society of apostolic life may concelebrate Mass according to Divine Worship.[9]

• Anglican Use
• Daily Office
• Book of Common Prayer
• Anglican chant

• Order for the Celebration of the Mass according to Divine Worship: The Missal from Saint Gregory the Great Parish in Massachusetts, U.S.A.
• Webpage on the Divine Worship:The Missal from the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter.
• Flickr album of photos of the printed Divine Worship: The Missal by Fr. James Bradley
  • Fr. Bradley discusses photos and the liturgy on his blog