
Here is a both a request and proposal for the Anglican Ordinariate, if I may be so bold.
Can you produce a version that can be reduced to a short booklet that contains the psalter and the unchanging prayers? If in addition to that we can find a way for the changing parts to be supplied by smart phone then I think that you will have something that will really catch on. It will be simple to use and cheap.
If the Ordinariate would produce something like this, then I for one would use it and promote it tirelessly. I know of several others who would be just as enthusiastic to see such a thing. Furthermore, I am ready to create online courses at Pontifex University that teach the singing of the Office in the home, and this would be my prefered option to recommend to families and lay people.
The Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham is wonderful but complicated to use and I’m never quite sure if I am getting those parts proper to the day right – and I am reasonable adept at breviary navigation. I have spoken to a number of lay people who bought it and gave up. This would work well for religious and those especially devoted to the Office who are likely to take the time to work out what
I am a great fan of the Divine Office as given to us by the Ordinariate because I think that it creates the possibility of greater take up of the praying of the Office by lay people. It offers the chance of praying the full psalter (ie no missing cursing psalms) in English in a translation that is both poetic and accessible. I have written about this in previous articles, such as this one here: The Anglican Ordinariate Divine Office – A Wonderful Gift for Lay People and a Source of Hope for the Transformation of Western Culture. (And incidentally, if you think I was resorting to hyperbole in the title of that article, I wasn’t. I really to do believe that it has this potential.)
Looking at the general guide for Morning and Evening Prayer for the Personal Ordinariates (which consitutes a recitation of the full Office), and drawing on its application in the Customary, I think that I can get the psalms for the day and all that is specified in the table below from (Read More)