That is solipsistic. I do encourage you to read it carefully and to compare it, line by line, with the equivalent passages in the 1928 BCP as well as the current Roman Missal. Of the three, I am quite content with the BCP. Second would be the Missal. The AU is a distant and muddled third, combining the Zwinglian tendencies of the BCP with RCC patches that only muddle the sense and reorgane the rite to completely disorient the congregation for which it is intended. Not very charitable, actually, and just the kind of thing that Anglo-catholics have been trying to escape in the legalistic CoE for centuries: a centrally-promulgated liturgy having no feel for the belief of the congregation and no real core theology but which is put forth in the attempt to co-opt the texts with which that part of the Body would be vaguely familiar.
The result is a dying Faith.
BTW, I happen to have a wonderful Sunday Missal from 1959. I'd use that, in the Latin or in English, over the AU or the current Novus Ordo Romanus any day of the week.
And your charity could use a touch-up too, Siobhan.
In Charity through Christ,
Deacon Paul+
Keep your spiritual advice to yourself, you non-Catholic non-deacon. Your Catholic pretense is a lie, and I denounce you for it.
Deacon Paul,
I just wanted to pint out something simple that you seem to have missed:
When a Catholic priest says Mass, according to a Church apporoved liturgy, you have the following: 1) a sacrament, 2) a real Mass, 3) Transubstantiation.
When you have an Anglican say service -- any service at all -- you have the following:
1) perhaps a nice service, but no sacrament, 2) a Protestant service, but no Mass, 3) just bread, always was bread, never became anything else.
I think that there is more beauty, and in many respects, more Catholicity to the words fo the 1928 BCP than to the AU Mass. We agree on that entirely. And other Anglicans, like St. Clement's in Philadelphia already use the Roman Missal (you mentioned one from 1959) as their basic rite. This, however, doesn't change reality. We have a sacrament, no matter how unattractive the modern liturgy is (which is why I don't usually attend it), while you have a pretty ceremony that is devoid of sacramental significance. Personally, we should have both a beautiful Mass and a sacrament. I have both. Most Catholics have at least a valid sacrament. You have a pretty ceremony. Who benefits most in the Christian economy? We who have the valid sacrament.
Want more than the pretty ceremony? Become a Catholic. Want more than just a sacrament even? Want a beautiful Mass as well? Great! Then become a traditionalist or join an Eastern Catholic Church. Why not have truth, a valid sacrament and a beautiful Mass all at once? I don't know why people settle for half-measures and empty gestures.