Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Mass of Installation of the First Ordinary of the Ordinariate in the USA

By way of Fr. Dwight Longenecker, news of the installation of Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, the first ordinary of the (Anglican) Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter in the United States. The Mass of Installation took place in the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston, Texas.

Fr. Longenecker paints the following picture of the liturgy:

Mass was then celebrated according to the Anglican Use, and it was quite something to see two cardinals of the Catholic Church kneeling with us to recite the Prayer of Humble Access..."Lord we do not presume to come to this Thy table, trusting in our own goodness, but in Thy manifold and great mercies..."

Music was provided by combined choirs of the Catholic community in Houston led by the eminent organist and composer Dr. Kevin Clarke, himself a convert from Anglicanism--now an organist of St Theresa's, Sugarland. Among the classic pieces of English music was Byrd's Mass for Five Voices, Parry's great anthem, I Was Glad, O Sacrum convivium by Thomas Tallis, and Bl. Cardinal Newman's great hymn Praise to the Holiest in the Height.

Appropriately, for the establishment of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, the readings were the passage from Isaiah about the steward of the King, I Peter 5. 1-4, in which St Peter encourages his bishops to be 'fellow shepherds' and Matthew 16 on which Christ founds his church on Peter the Rock.

The Ordinariate Portal provides the fully text Msgr. Steenson's homily.

The following photos were made available by the Houston Chronicle (and are copyright the same):


Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson



More recent articles:

For more articles, see the NLM archives: