AGNES ELIZA GEORGINA KENRICK

                                  LATINIST AND LITURGIST
                                              Born 1861
                                       Died 5 April 1941

Agnes nata Dickson, herself the daughter of a priest, married in 1895 Fr H. W. G. Kenrick. It is he who was responsible for the first printed edition of the English Missal in 1912. This work soon became the almost universal Altar Book within Anglo-Catholicism, containing, dovetailed into the Prayer Book liturgical texts, the entire Roman Missal translated into English. Bishops banned it. Consistory courts ordered its removal from churches. It was for more than half a century at the centre of the religious life of countless priests and layfolk. There must be thousands of copies now covered with cobwebs in sacristy cupboards all over England. May God forgive us the cobwebs.

This liturgical masterpiece is a lineal ancestor of the Ordinariate Altar Missal.

The vast work of translation was largely carried out by Fr Kenrick's wife Agnes, who was a very fine Latinist and an accomplished English stylist. Any who criticise her learning or craftsmaship need to be able clearly to display their own superiority! And they should tread lightly on the memory of all those priests whom, though her labours, Agnes Kenrick accompanied each morning to the Altar.

This liturgical production by a 'clergy daughter' who became a 'clergy wife', a 'presbytera', is one little example of the deep and rich culture of the 'Vicarage Family' which is such a central part of our 'Anglican Patrimony'. Mrs Kenrick is also a reminder of the Learned Lady, a phenomenon which did not delay its appearance until the invention of feminist ideological dogmas.

This is a Patrimony, and that is a culture, which God calls upon us in the Ordinariate to preserve.

                                CUIUS ANIMAE PROPITIETUR DEUS.