The language of Divine Worship is one of the most obvious parts of the patrimony we have inherited and brought into the Church.

Fr Stephen Hill is an Ordinariate priest and doctoral student at the University of Vienna who is undertaking a research project on the language of Divine Worship and its pastoral implications. The project is supervised and co-ordinated by Professor Hans Jürgen Feulner of the University of Vienna who is an expert in Anglican liturgy, and served on the commission established by the Holy See to prepare the Divine Worship liturgy for use in the Ordinariates.

Fr Hill is asking members of the Ordinariate and anyone else who attends Ordinariate worship (or — for example — who says the Ordinariate offices in their daily life) to assist this important research by completing a survey on the language of Divine Worship. His survey asks some basic demographic questions; and questions about the Ordinariate liturgies you attend. There are some questions about Ordinariate liturgical books you might own (for example, Divine Worship: Daily Office, among others). The “meat” of the survey asks about how the language of the Ordinariate liturgies affects you. There are some open-ended questions about how the use of “sacral” English affects you and your worship, which it may be helpful to think about first.

We’ve made the survey available here, but you need to be logged in to access it.

The project is supported by our Ordinary and the results will be an important contribution to the ministry of the Ordinariate.

Please do think about the language we use, and participate in the survey. While there’s no set deadline, early responses would be appreciated and will be most useful to Fr Hill’s research.