What are the differences between Anglican Use Mass and Anglican Mass?

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On another thread, a poster mentioned the Anglican Use Mass and the modifications necessary to make it legitimate for Catholics. How does the Anglican Use Mass differ from the Anglican Mass? I have never been to an Episcopal or Anglican Church, and there are no Anglican Use Catholic parishes where I live.
 
I suggest that you go a google search on “Anglican Use”.

You will find a lot of information, even a link to the actual liturgy. You can compare this to the Anglican one or you can find someone that knows more about it and ask them.
 
I suggest that you go a google search on “Anglican Use”.

You will find a lot of information, even a link to the actual liturgy. You can compare this to the Anglican one or you can find someone that knows more about it and ask them.
I checked out a few websites and it seems that the Masses are almost identical, with the exception of a few prayers for the Pope. If I ever get to Texas, I would like to go to an Anglican Use Mass. Or perhaps, I could go to one in Scranton, PA, which is not that far from where I live.
 
Anglican Use Mass= fully Catholic. Part of the pastoral provision which allowed parishes to ‘come over’ in the wake of Lambeth 1990.

Anglican Mass= invalid. Not part of the Church.

C’est simple!
 
Everyone forgot the biggest differance- the Anglican-use Mass has a valid Eucharist, while the Anglican Mass is just pretend.
 
Everyone forgot the biggest differance- the Anglican-use Mass has a valid Eucharist, while the Anglican Mass is just pretend.
Oh, I know that. I wanted to know about the differences in the prayers. I would like to attend an Anglican Use Mass someday (the valid, Catholic one).
 
On another thread, a poster mentioned the Anglican Use Mass and the modifications necessary to make it legitimate for Catholics. How does the Anglican Use Mass differ from the Anglican Mass? I have never been to an Episcopal or Anglican Church, and there are no Anglican Use Catholic parishes where I live.
They’re similar, but the Roman Canon is used during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. There are other differences in some of the prayers, but that’s the biggest one I can think of at the moment. Definitely try to get to the one in Scranton; it’s a wonderful experience.
 
On another thread, a poster mentioned the Anglican Use Mass and the modifications necessary to make it legitimate for Catholics. How does the Anglican Use Mass differ from the Anglican Mass? I have never been to an Episcopal or Anglican Church, and there are no Anglican Use Catholic parishes where I live.
I realise that this post may not be the epitome of clarity so some links to various services may help you better.
The 1979 Book of Common Prayer (USA)-the official one. Many radical changes from the structure of previous BCP’s.

The 1928 Book of Common Prayer (USA)-it caused some friction when this was replaced, and many protested. Relatively recently, the General Synod allowed this previous edition to be used while apologizing for hurt feelings caused.

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer (UK): the official prayerbook of the Church of England. Classicly Protestant though sufficiently ambiguous.


Common Worship (UK)
: This is the de facto book of services in the Church of England. By law, the Book of Common Prayer for the UK is required to be ratified by parliament, so rather than go into the hassle: they just issue this book and call it as a supplementary book but in truth it is a virtual prayerbook. As you can see, a variety of service styles are possible.

Anglican Missal : a hybrid book meant for Anglo-Catholics (see below)

This site: with links to prayerbooks of all the different Anglican Communion. Of particular interest is the prayerbook of the Church of Melanesia which, though it is the updated modern version, is still the most Catholic of all prayerbooks throughout the Communion. The reason for this is that it was influenced greatly by Anglo-Catholic missionaries.See for example, the Offices of Prime and Compline, the preparations for Holy Communion, etc.

(Forgive me if I go into a bit of background but it’s kindof difficult to know where to start)

As such there is no such thing as an “Anglican Mass”. Within the Anglican Communion there are varying views on theology and ritual, sometimes quite opposite. Those with “higher” views –the Anglo Catholics-may accept doctrines like the Sacrifice of the Mass (note: that although even bishops of the Anglican Communion may be counted among the adherents to the Catholic doctrines, it is not officially sanctioned in most places- in fact, in some places, official doctrine seems directly to contradict it). Usually it is such people who will describe their services as a Mass. Sometimes it may be nothing more than a change in ritual, but at other times it might involve hybrid books (see below) and prayers form the Roman Missal.

In the 19th century there arose the ‘Oxford Movement’. with ‘High’ views of Church ecclesiology. Although the first were not ritualists gradually the movement developed and spawned the Tractarians, the Ritualists and many other movements.

The Ritualists started to emphasize ritual along with doctrine. They adopted ceremonial practices, reinstated Holy Communion rather than Morning Prayer as the principal service of a Sunday, started to face East and wear vestments (at that time a coloured stole made one suspect of being a Papist) etc. Today in the Anglican Communion, especially in the West, these things are more common, as are candles etc. but there are still places where it is not so accepted such as in the Church of Ireland.

They were divided into 2 types:
the Prayer book Catholics or the ‘English Use’. They contended that the Anglican Prayerbook (of the Church of England) was the logical successor of the Sarum practises. Thus they interpreted everything as far as possible with reference to how they perceived the Sarum rubrics. So for example, the rubric requiring two candles on the altar was only because in mediaeval times, candles were placed behind the altars or on riddle posts. Rood screens and mediaevel vestment colour sechemes were restored. The book ‘A Parsons handbook’ by Percy Dearmer it gives a good idea of how ‘English ceremonial’ should be-an earlier version is there on archive.org.
 
The ‘missal’ Catholics- they copied Rome in varying degrees. Some adopted the Roman use and ceremonial wholesale. The English Missal is a good example of this: it contains verbatim the Roman Missal translated into English (complete with feast of the Immaculate Conception and Votive Masses for the Pope) . It provided suitably marked in case the celebrant wanted to omit it, Anglican collects and Eucharistic Prayer and preface, but otherwise you could use it at a Tridentine Mass and you wouldn’t know the difference. (except it would be in English though a small number of AC priests also used Latin). Even today in England, there are Anglo-Catholics that eschew the books of their own church in favour of the revised (post 1970) Roman Missal.

The second way was to stitch together the Anglican service and the Roman Mass. Claiming that the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, the Last Gospel, etc were the private prayers of the celebrant for devotional reasons these were inserted but at the same time parts of the BCP were retained (unlike the English Missal where the only option for using the Ordinary of the BCP is the second half of the service: from the Prayer of Oblation after the Offertory to the Postcommunion). Another practise was to say the Anglican “Prayer of oblation*”,Eucharistic Prayer, etc. aloud and the Roman Canon softly. Prior to the 70’s/80’s the Anglicans only had an Epistle and Gospel anyways. Such books were the Anglican Missal, which conformed more to the Roman Mass than its successor in America, the American Missal.

(* A prayer for the government, and people and so on…made at the Offertory. A synthesis of parts removed from the Eucharistic prayer)

Officially though, these books are not approved for use in the Anglican Communion although one can now use them in quite a few places without repercussions. Even certain bishops use them on occasion.

The official prayer of each church in the Anglican Communion is given in that region’s Book of Common Prayer (and supplementary service books). As a rule most of the BCP’s are not very “Catholic” (except for the Province of Melanesia) .But then the Anglican Communion consists of many churches each with their own rites, prayerbooks and ceremonies. That way one gets a lot of variation like the Church of Ireland whose prayerbook was quite Protestant and the Province of Melanesia which borrowed from the Roman Missal quite a lot and included such things as the Angelus, Anima Christi and the Hail Mary in their prayerbook.

Let me muddy the waters a tad more and say: certain of the newer revisions of Prayer books in the West are going more for diversity and ambiguity and are no longer so staunchly Protestant. In fact, one might say that they lend themselves to ritual quite easily and in some cases contain doctrinal shifts. An example of both is the official 1979 BCP (USA) and Common Worship (UK). These books lend themselves to variety of service styles ***

Strictly speaking though, just doing what the Prayerbook says, there are quite a few Anglican churches who manages to have something not representing the Mass at all-yet others conform there ritual in such a way that the difference is not immediately apparent. This depends on their theological stance. You can have this or thiss-clements.org/Photos.html:

The Anglican Use Mass is based on the Book of Common Prayer of 1979 as used in the US branch of the Anglican Communion. However, from the Offertory until the end of the Eucharistic Prayer it is from the Roman Missal. Added also, are various prayers that do not appear in the Book of Common Prayer:
Example: In the invitation to communion in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer one of the words used is “The Gifts of God for the People of God”. The Anglican Use adds after this the Roman prayer “Behold the Lamb of God,” etc.

*** An example: the Common Worship allows the sign of Peace in 3 places:
-at the Offertory: for those who want to emulate proper liturgical practice
-after the Our Father: for those who want to follow Roman practice
-at th end of the service: for those who want ot be all modern and innovative.

Again for the invitation to communion, you can say
“Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those, etc.” if you want to be Roman
“Draw near with faith, etc.”-the Cramnerian prose- if you want to be traditionally Anglican
“Holy things for the Holy”- if you want ot get a bit of Byzantine in your service":
 
Oh, I know that. I wanted to know about the differences in the prayers. I would like to attend an Anglican Use Mass someday (the valid, Catholic one).
Just so you know, about the only places it is offered are in Texas- and, considering how big Texas is, there aren’t very many of them there either, so they will be hard to find. I also am a little skeptical of something that is called “Anglican Use”- just the name makes it sound so…temporary. I wouldn’t get my hopes up for it.
 
Just so you know, about the only places it is offered are in Texas- and, considering how big Texas is, there aren’t very many of them there either, so they will be hard to find. I also am a little skeptical of something that is called “Anglican Use”- just the name makes it sound so…temporary. I wouldn’t get my hopes up for it.
Sadly, that’s true that it doesn’t HAVE to be a permanent establishment. However, some of the Anglican Use parishes in Texas have established themselves very well, that I do think there’s hope for it to continue. Because of distance I haven’t really been able to get too invovled in it, but I do know that there are several people trying to publicize the Anglican Use more.
 
From what I’ve seen, the Anglican Use Mass is based on Rite I of the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. The Liturgy of the Word is almost identical to the Episcopal Rite I with only a few slight modifications. The Liturgy of the Eucharist, however, is signficantly different from Rite I in order to make it conform to Catholic norms.
 
Thank you THutch, AJV, and rr1213 for your great explanations. AJV, thank you for the excellent links.

Although there are no Anglican Use Masses available in Cleveland (closest is Scranton, PA), I may check out a High Church Anglican (Protestant) Mass that is in my city some time (of course, I’ll also attend Catholic Mass and no, I would not receive communion at the Anglican Church–I already know that). There is a parish I know of that is Anglican but not Episcopal in Cleveland that has High Mass and Low Mass, so I could get some idea of the High Church Anglican services.
 
In the UK church that I attend we are officially C of E though we never refere to ourselves as such. We call ourselves Catholic. We have Confession, the Mass in English and Latin, offer prayers for the Pope & venerate Mary.

We are also part of the Forward in Faith movement that contains similar churches.

I know that some people would still view what we do as invalid. And technically they may be right but it is a hurtful attitude to take when we are sincere in what we do. Maybe it would be more helpful if the Church of Rome would reach out to us & help us get back in to communion.

I hope that like me there are many who would like to make ammends for Henry VIII’s heresy.
 
In the UK church that I attend we are officially C of E though we never refere to ourselves as such. We call ourselves Catholic. We have Confession, the Mass in English and Latin, offer prayers for the Pope & venerate Mary.

We are also part of the Forward in Faith movement that contains similar churches.

I know that some people would still view what we do as invalid. And technically they may be right but it is a hurtful attitude to take when we are sincere in what we do. Maybe it would be more helpful if the Church of Rome would reach out to us & help us get back in to communion.

I hope that like me there are many who would like to make ammends for Henry VIII’s heresy.
Henry wasn’t heretical. Henry was schismatic. Edward was heretical.

But don’t blame RCs for affirming what the RCC teaches. It’s not logical. The RCC would be happy to assist you in getting into communion with Rome. It’s a simple process.

GKC

Anglicanus Catholicus, also in communion with Forward in Faith
 
I just thought I would addto AJV’s post that the newest UK books are not actually “official” books in the fullest sense - they were approved as “optional” service books because Parliament refused to approve the proposed new prayer book. Thus, the official book for the UK remains the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

Now, I realize that state establishment has been the only thing keeping Anglicanism going throughout its history (it would have splintered long ago otherwise), but just step back and imagine how ridiculous it would be for American Catholics to have to ask the likes of Barney Frank and Barbara Boxer to approve our liturgy . . . No, don’t stop laughing yet . . . not yet . . . okay, maybe now.
 
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