MANIPLES: the Finer Points

Moi, I am a pedant. I take my maniple off before saying the Leonine Prayers at the foot of the Altar. According to O'Connell, this is the strictly logical thing to do ... but it is, he says, commonly ignored.

It is the strictly logical thing to do because only the maniple is worn only during Mass. The Chasuble might sometimes be worn in extra-liturgical ceremonies ... but never the maniple. I remember that when Paul VI made the maniple optional, there was a most irate article in one of the old-style Anglican Papalist periodicals which still then survived ... it might have been the dear old Pilot ... in which some lovely ancient priest pointed out that, since the maniple is the vestment which par excellence is worn during Mass, the new rule meant, technically, that most clergy would now be saying Mass unvested.

One of the last of the old generation of Anglican Papalist priests, Fr Clive Beresford, followed such rules to the letter. Back in the early 1960s, in churches where the 'Western Rite' was followed, it was quite common, especially on Sundays, for some little bits of Cranmer to pop their heads above the parapet. For example, after the Secret, Dr Cranmer's Prayer for the Church Militant might be interpolated; after the Postcommunion, his Prayer of Thanksgiving After Communion. When pastoral necessity compelled Fr Beresford unwillingly to incorporate these dodgy Zwingligenous additamenta, he always took his maniple off before doing so.

We Anglican Catholics were a very principled people.

Too rarified to be allowed to survive, I hear you say ...