Online Liturgy Roundup

Here are some things that have been brought to my attention recently for one reason or another. bls is the source of a couple of them so thanks to her for those… The presence of an item here doesn’t mean I endorse it, it means I think it’s a good thing to know about. In no particular order, here are some liturgical resources online to be aware of:

Chad Wohler’s Books of Common Prayer. This one’s a no-brainer and I heartily endorse it. If you don’t know about this site, you should–I don’t care what denomination you are. Speaking of, I’d love to see other denominations do something like this with their worship books as well. [server problems today…GC related?]

Anglican Gradual and Sacramentary. This is a pretty massive project. I’m still trying to figure out what I think of this. Essentially, it’s an attempt by Affirming Catholicism folks to construct something like the Anglican Missal based on the American 1979 BCP and related uses (Lesser Feasts & Fasts/Occasional Services/etc.) In my opinion it falls short. Yes, it has extensive propers for a whole lot of days including lections, collects, secrets, postcommunions, etc. but it feels like a tack-on to the ’79 BCP rather than an organic whole. The propers are only a part of an Anglo-Catholic celebration. A larger part is the ceremonial and the prayers prayed privately by the priest. This is lacking that component as the Eucharistic liturgies are essentially from the BCP with only a few of the more standard Roman additions at innocuous points. Another thing that concerns me a bit is that so much of the additional material is from the 1974 Roman material. What’s the rationale for wanting to adopt modern Roman pratice? Anyway, there’s a lot here–some of it may be helpful.

Gregorian Liturgy. This is from a Tridentine Mass group in Bonn. Not for the faint of heart; you’ve got to know your psalm tones if you intend to try any of the Office material because they just give the traditional pattern–the incipit then the last few notes keyed to E U O U A E (from the last phrase of the Gloria Patria: …seculorum. Amen. If your totally hardcore you’ll be able to read their versions in traditional German notation (I can’t…). All in all, the main site is worth checking out even if your German is as rusty as mine. Many of the links go to the traditionalist English language Confraternity of Ss. Peter & Paul like this Breviary link which has parallel Latin and English.

The Anglican Breviary. Speaking of both Breviaries and people who want to be more Roman than the Romans, here’s the Anglican Breviary. The Breviary itself isn’t online, but the instructions for use are worth looking at.

Pointed Gospels. Here are Gospels pointed for singing. They are NRSV and (I believe) follow the BCP’s lectionary. Take the time to read the note; their tone varies a bit from that which is strictly traditional. They wanted theirs to have more musical interest which, frankly, isn’t the point of singing the Gospel. It should be sung to be better heard and understood, not so it can be performed. Annunciation and clarity ought to be paramount above all else. Actually, thy’ve got quite a lot of good links off this page but it has sound–so mute before you go there if you’re in a place where a chanting computer would be odd…

That’s all for now…

18 thoughts on “Online Liturgy Roundup

  1. *Christopher

    Here’s another attempt by Maxwell Johnson et all: Benedictine Daily Prayer.

    It still seems that “catholic” means Roman practices for Anglo-catholics. Some of our most catholic practices from the 1549 as interpretted through the Scots are Eastern Christian in origin. As are several of the catholic prayers in the 1979 BCP–Prayer D, for example.

    Again it seems to get down to provenance and century of choice here about what catholic means. I wish someone would consider doing 1549 or 1928 rendered poetically in modern English and put in conversation with Sarum and other English usages of the Roman rite. On the other hand in composing Prayers for the first part of the Ordinary Time for my parish, I wish I could’ve thrown in a “thine” here and there. As it was, I only got in a “divers” and “whence” :-)

    Honestly, having prayed the Office in its Roman form and now in the English form, I’m perfectly happy with the English form. I find other ways to get in my Ave Marias and such. And that way I can pray with my more Protestant partner on a regular basis without eyebrows getting raised or theological discussions ensuing.

  2. Lutheran Zephyr

    On a purely practical, worship-planning, bulletin-building note, Augsburg Fortress (publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) has created http://www.sundaysandseasons.com. This website allows congregations to download, tweak and customize all the currently published liturgies in the Lutheran church (from the Lutheran Book of Worship, With One Voice, This Far By Faith and Libro de Liturgia y Cantico worship books). The website also includes occassional services, lectionary readings, a planning calendar, collects, hymns, etc. etc. etc.. It is a pretty impressive tool (designed with the church administrator in mind, not the academic).

  3. Derek the Ænglican

    Lz, you wouldn’t be pushing your products on my blog, would you? ;-)

  4. Lutheran Zephyr

    Well, it seemed fairly relevant and I just couldn’t help myself . . . ;)

  5. LutherPunk

    Sundaysandseasons.com is actally a good product. We use it here all the time.

    Derek – I still have something forthcoming about a Lutheran’s experience with the Anglican Breviary, and just haven’t had the time to put it together. But I will say that the website you point to was essential in learning to use the thing.

  6. LutherPunk

    It still seems that “catholic” means Roman practices for Anglo-catholics.

    And ditto for Evangelical Catholics. I think it behooves us to look East for “renewal” efforts. One of the things I appreciate about the Kyrie in the LBW is its adaptation of Eastern patterns. I would like to see it expanded a bit.

    It would also be nice to see a clear epiclesis now and again.

  7. Caelius

    But we’re free to receive anything Eastern. That’s one of the reasons why catholic Christianity is so cool, there’s a much higher standard for cultural exploitation.

  8. *Christopher

    Anastasia,

    We may not be Eastern but we who worship in the U.S. being receivers of the Scottish usage have received much that is Eastern. Not to mention ++Cranmer was a scholar of the Fathers, especially the Cappadocians. And we of course have a Celtic inheritance as well, which was largely Eastern in outlook, so to deny the Eastern aspects of our catholic heritage in thinking through our catholicism seems problematic.

  9. bls

    I can’t figure out why my Adobe Reader won’t load those German site files. I’m glad you got a chance to see them, though, and I finally looked at them at the library. That’s the whole shebang, isn’t it?

    BTW, did you see the Passion According to Mark at the Grace website? I think that’s new.

  10. Derek the Ænglican

    I’m kinda with Anastasia on this one… I find the alien culture piece a thick barrier in relating to Eastern stuff. And, sometimes I think westerners are attracted to it for the cultural novelty factor. (not that some of us don’t succumb to an antiquarian novelty factor in old western sources… :-D)

  11. Brandon

    Annunciation and clarity ought to be paramount above all else.

    At first I thought ‘annunciation’ was a typo (for enunciation); but if so, it’s a happy one, since ‘annunciation’ is really more accurate, isn’t it? The points are to facilitate annunciation….

  12. Derek the Ænglican

    Heh–quite right, Brandon. It is a happy typo… Blogging may not bring out the worst in my character–but certainly the worst of my spelling. ;-)

  13. *Christopher

    I think its more than that. Icons for example speak to many people in the Western churches these days, and I think part of that is a return of the visual Word lost at the Reformation. The Trisagion is lovely and Eastern, as is the Phos Hilaron in our Evening Prayer. So I think it depends. Much of the novelty happens in the repetiveness (which I might add is similar to the Gallican Rite, a Western rite) and in ceremonial. I might also add that the English up to the Reformation were known for their florid liturgy and intense devotion to Mary, something the Sarum text cannot fully make clear.

  14. Anastasia

    it’s also pretty clear to me that it speaks to some people because it’s fashionable.

  15. *Christopher

    That may be the case for some, but I think that for many I know attracted to Eastern liturgy, it’s because the West became happy clappy, all light, and lost a solemnity and mystery that meets folks in their sense that liturgy should have something to do with Heaven. I came to the liturgical traditions, first being Roman Catholic, through my contact with iconography in my studies of Christian history. Icons meet folks in a way our emphasis on the spoken word in the Reformation and Tridentinte traditions do not, and I think this is the reason for some going multimedia. I like pointing out there are better ways than multimedia to bring folks to the word through vision.

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