An update on the news reported here last December concerning a gradual for the Divine Worship missal (DWM).

The gradual is in the proofreading stage. It follows the DWM outline of minor propers for the Sundays after Trinity. But it will include an index that cross-references the Graduale Romanum’s chants according to the Ordinary Time sequence.

The remainder of this post is provided by Clint Brand, one of the members of Anglicanae Traditiones. At my (Br. John-Bede Pauley, O.S.B.) request, Clint has provided the following helpful ratio of how the propers for the DWM were selected and, if deemed necessary, adapted.

Some Notes Explaining the Arrangement and Distribution of Minor Propers for Divine Worship

Wherever possible (i.e., wherever the Ordinariate Calendar accords with the General Roman Calendar, as revised in 1969 by the motu proprio Mysterii Paschalis of Pope Paul VI), the minor propers of Divine Worship: The Missal and its companion Gradual, noting the Mass antiphons (Introit, Gradual, Allelulia/Tract, Offertory, and Communion), follow and correspond to the Graduale Romanum (1974). Divine Worship diverges from GR 1974 only in those instances where the Ordinariate Calendar differs from the current General Roman Calendar and where the Ordinariates commemorate a few Saints and Blesseds not represented in the third typical edition of the Missale Romanum (2008) nor included in various national adaptations of the General Roman Calendar.

In the Temporale (Of the Church Year), these differences include provisions in Divine Worship for the Ordinariates’ observance of the Pre-Lenten Sundays (Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima), St. Mary in Passiontide (on the Friday of Passion Week), the Embertides, Rogation Days, and Whitsun Week (the Pentecost Octave), together with the counting of Sundays “after Trinity” – Trinitytide (in place of the Roman Rite’s sequence for post-Pentecost Ordinary Time).

The minor propers for these occasions generally revert to those inscribed in the Missale Romanum up to 1962 and represented in the previous edition the Graduale Romanum (1961) and which happen to correspond with the Mass antiphons translated for Anglican worship in The English Missal (1958) and The Anglican Missal (1961). As noted for chanting, these texts in Divine Worship match by-and-large those given in The Plainchant Gradual (2nd ed., 1965) of G. H. Palmer and Francis Burgess, together with Burgess’s The English Gradual (1955).

Texts of the minor propers in the Sanctorale (Of Saints and Holy Days) and associated Commons, supplementing the Roman Missal and GR 1974, have likewise been taken wherever possible in the wording given in The English Missal and The Anglican Missal to preserve as much as possible the sustained tradition of using the Mass antiphons in Anglican worship according to the classic Books of Common Prayer and kindred Anglican variants of the Roman Rite.

The particular selection and arrangement of minor propers in Divine Worship: The Missal issued from the working hermeneutic of the Anglicanae Traditiones commission in discerning, adapting, and applying Anglican liturgical patrimony for Ordinariate worship. Identifying as worthy patrimony all that originally issued from the historic Roman Rite (including its English scion in the use of Sarum), together with much that developed over the period of ecclesial separation but which nevertheless was compatible with Catholic doctrine and that nourished aspirations to Catholic unity, the commission took as standards of judgment (1) substantial unity with the Roman Rite and full conformity with Catholic doctrinal, liturgical, and sacramental norms, and (2) within this context a preference for Anglican forms exhibiting integrity of linguistic register, continuity of lived experience, and proven pastoral utility in parochial settings.

For the minor propers, these criteria resulted in a number of concrete decisions: (1) in tandem with the framework of the 1969 General Roman Calendar and the modern Roman Eucharistic Lectionary adapted for the Ordinariates, the adoption of the corresponding Mass antiphons appointed in the Graduale Romanum 1974 wherever possible; (2) where the texts of the GR 1974 (for singing) occasionally differ from the 2008 Roman Missal’s Entrance and Communion antiphons (presumably said), preference for the GR 1974 versions as normative; (3) with the retention for the Ordinariates of some calendrical features distinctive to the classic Books of Common Prayer shared in common with pre-Conciliar Catholic usage, a select reversion to the matching texts shared between the Anglican Missals and older forms of the Roman Rite; (4) as the minor propers consist largely of quotations from and paraphrases of Holy Scripture, a preference for the idiom and phraseology of the Coverdale Psalter and of the so-called Authorized Version of the Bible.

Hence, as much as possible, in reviewing the minor propers, the commission decided simply to receive the received texts with a sustained history and currency in the Anglican “bloodstream,” so to speak, and to do so with a minimum of modification and only a few necessary adjustments. In a very few cases, though, a couple of the minor propers were slightly revised for enhanced fidelity to the original Latin texts; in the case of a few particularly difficult archaisms, readings from the 1928 American version of the Coverdale Psalter were preferred to the 1662 English version of the Coverdale Psalms; and in another instance or two, wording from the RSV-CE was chosen over the corresponding AV (KJV) texts. Such “tinkering” with texts, however, was kept to a bare minimum in order to respect and preserve Anglican musical settings of the minor propers in English and with a particular view toward maintaining the English plainsong tradition exemplified in the work of Palmer and Burgess and commendably adapted for use with the Book of Divine Worship, under the Pastoral Provision, by C. David Burt in his 2007 Anglican Use Gradual.

The arrangement of minor propers for Trinitytide, given the difference between calculating post-Pentecost Ordinary Time and counting the Sundays after Trinity, posed a particular challenge and hence deserves special comment. The Holy See authorized for the Ordinariates use of the modern Roman Eucharistic Lectionary, which counts the weeks of Ordinary Time after Epiphany and after Pentecost, per the revised General Roman Calendar, but the Holy See also mandated that the Ordinariate Calendar would keep Anglican tradition, preserved in the classic Prayer Books and going to back to pre-Reformation Sarum usage, of counting the Sundays after Trinity. Where the modern Roman schema essentially counts backward from the 34th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Christ the King) to the resumption of Ordinary Time on the Monday after Pentecost, traditional Prayer Book usage counts forward from Trinity Sunday such that in any given year there can be as few as few as 22 Sundays after Trinity or as many as 26 such Sundays (keeping, that is, the last Sunday of the liturgical year as Christ the King). Though the commission considered the possibility of adapting for Trinitytide a system of dated propers (as used in 1979 American BCP, many modern Anglican formularies, and in the Book of Divine Worship) in order to keep readings and propers aligned per the Eucharistic Lectionary and GR 1974, the Holy See decided instead to preserve the integrity of the traditional Sundays after Trinity with their designated Collects and attendant minor propers. Since the propers and readings at this time of year (Trinitytide or Ordinary Time after Pentecost) are, for the most part, thematically diffuse and much more loosely linked than during other seasons, it was decided to forego to the presumed benefit of the few times when the GR 1974 antiphons and the Lectionary really are coordinated in favor of keeping the traditional Trinitytide Collects and minor propers together and allowing the Mass readings for Ordinary Time to assume their place in any given year on something of a sliding scale. The First Sunday after Trinity, for instance, in any given year, could correspond to a range from the 8th to the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time. Hence for Trinitytide the Divine Worship minor propers follow older Catholic practice (counting from Pentecost) and the traditional Anglican sequence after Trinity and do not perfectly mesh with the modern Roman distribution of minor propers, thus illustrating a cardinal principle of the liturgical provision for the Ordinariates, certifying an hermeneutic of continuity, and allowing some diversity of expression within the fundamental unity of the faith.