Note: These thoughts are Msgr. Burnham's speculations regarding the liturgical future of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham only. As he himself writes, "The setting down of these thoughts has no more authority than whatever is self-evidently sensible within them, and may be more or less influential on what develops and how it develops, depending on circumstances well beyond my control."
The Liturgical Patrimony of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham and the Reform of the Reform
This paper is in two parts. I suspect that some of those I am addressing are particularly interested in what is already happening in the first of the Ordinariates, the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham (OOLW). That is the subject of the first part of the lecture. The second part will be of interest to those, especially those in the Association for Latin Liturgy, and indeed many in the Latin Mass Society – and I do know the difference – who are anxious to see the preservation of a cultural patrimony much wider and deeper than that of the Anglican tradition. So, to begin with, and to justify the decision of the organizers of this event to invite me to address you, let me immediately identify myself with, and make common cause with, the aims of the Association for Latin Liturgy. We are keen ‘to promote understanding of the theological, pastoral and spiritual qualities of the liturgy in Latin’. We seek ‘to preserve the sacredness and dignity of the Roman rite’. We are anxious ‘to secure, for the present and future generations, the Church’s unique inheritance of liturgical music’. I don’t know if reciting those aims automatically enrols me in the Association but, if I have to sign something and pay a subscription as well, I shall be only too glad to oblige. I spent too long as a practising musician not to agree with these aims: I think a classical musician who wished to dissent from these aims would have to become a fan of Bartok or Delius or a member of the Nazi party to escape from the overwhelming beauty of the Catholic repertoire of liturgical music. To come to the point: the second part of my reflection will be on what is normally referred to as ‘the reform of the Reform’, and I shall come to that when I have shared some thoughts on the liturgical formation of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.
