AU: Banal liturgies 'drove Anglicans away': ex-Anglican theologian

Wednesday, 22 June 2011
  By Anthony Barich

THE Anglican patrimony of the new ordinariates due in Australia next year will likely enhance the liturgical culture of the post-conciliar Catholic Church, leading Australian theologian Tracey Rowland said.


In November 2009, Pope Benedict announced his decision to erect personal ordinariates (non-geographical dioceses) for former Anglicans who wanted to enter into full communion with Rome while preserving liturgical and other elements of their Anglican heritage, including a certain amount of governing by consensus. Dr Rowland, the author of Ratzinger’s Faith: the Theology of Pope Benedict XVI and Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed, said many commentators have observed an affinity between the Anglo-Catholic approaches to liturgy and the Pope’s own liturgical theology.

“In particular, (Pope Benedict) is very concerned about what he has variously described as ‘parish tea party’ liturgy, ‘pastoral pragmatism’, ‘emotional primitivism’, ‘Sacro-pop’ and ‘utility music’,” Dr Rowland told an Anglican Ordinariate Festival in Melbourne on 11 June.

Dr Rowland, a former Anglican, said that, in her personal experience, the barriers to full communion with the Catholic Church are primarily cultural rather than doctrinal.

“They have been reluctant to seek full membership of the Catholic Church because of a not unreasonable belief that they would have to abandon whole elements of their Anglican cultural heritage,” Dr Rowland said. “It is precisely this problem Pope Benedict hopes the creation of an ordinariate will overcome. the rest