It is, says Fr Nichols, “a testimony to what might have been, had the English Reformation proceeded on Catholic lines, as did the Catholic Reformation in much of continental Europe”. What the Ordinariate will be practising will be a true and authentically English Catholicism, untainted by the reductionism of the “spirit of Vatican II”. And I suspect that in the future its influence over the rest of us may well be considerable.
He points back to an earlier column containing the full text of Miles Coverdale's translation of the Roman Canon, the ancient eucharistic prayer used in the churches of these islands for the millennium before the Reformation - the eucharistic prayer of Patrick and Augustine of Canterbury. As Oddie states, "this too is part of the patrimony":
Wherefore, O Lord, we thy servants, and thy holy people also, remembering the blessed passion of the same Christ thy Son our Lord, as also his resurrection from the dead, and his glorious ascension into heaven; do offer unto thine excellent majesty of thine own gifts and bounty, the pure victim, the holy victim, the immaculate victim, the holy Bread of eternal life, and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.
Vouchsafe to look upon them with a merciful and pleasant countenance; and to accept them, even as thou didst vouchsafe to accept the gifts of thy servant Abel the Righteous, and the sacrifice of our Patriarch Abraham; and the holy sacrifice, the immaculate victim, which thy high priest Melchisedech offered unto thee.
We humbly beseech thee, almighty God, command these offerings to be brought by the hands of thy holy Angel to thine altar on high, in sight of thy divine majesty; that all we who at this partaking of the altar shall receive the most sacred Body and Blood of thy Son, may be fulfilled with all heavenly benediction and grace ...
To us sinners also, thy servants, who hope in the multitude of thy mercies, vouchsafe to grant some part and fellowship with thy holy Apostles and Martyrs; with John, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicitas, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia and with all thy Saints, within whose fellowship, we beseech thee, admit us, not weighing our merit, but granting us forgiveness.
Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer did, of course, have faint echoes of the Roman Canon. This is testimony to Anglicanism's Latin Catholic heritage despite the painful rupture of the Reformation. In praying these ancient words, in a rich liturgical language, the Ordinariate can demonstrate what it means for the Anglican tradition to be reconciled to the See of Peter - re-embracing a catholicity with deep roots in the cultures of these islands and contributing to the new evangelisation of a de-Christianised Europe.
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