Monthly Archives: April 2010

Pluralism, Christianity, and Separate Truths

There’s an article by Stephen Prothero at BU on the topic of religious pluralism that’s been making the rounds. This really is an important topic that we need to wrestle with especially as it relates to how societies negotiate pluralism and how open-minded Episcopalians comprehend and enact evangelism. I doubt much that I write here is new. Lee and others far more read in the topic than I will, I suspect, be able to trace what I write here to certain figures in the modern debate. I have no doubt many have been filtered to me by various teachers and texts. In any case…

In the main, I agree with what Prothero writes and the perspective that he takes. One of my early mentors who encouraged my academic investigations of Buddhism and Asian religion impressed upon me that if all religions are simply a path to the same thing that there was no reason for us to talk. That is and remains a fundamental principle of mine and is an important core around which to form an understand of pluralism as it exists in modern America.

Where Prothero doesn’t go is into the specifics of how Christians understand salvation and I think the specific nature of Christian salvation is what’s key. To say more, I have to back up a few steps, though.

Glancing over the comments at the Cafe, I think George Clifford makes a useful distinction (but I, no doubt, take it in some different directions from where he does). That is, human brains seem to be wired to expect and experience something beyond empirical materialism. There is an ultimate reality. I believe that we are biologically wired to experience glimpses of it and even to participate in it, but I do not believe that we have sufficient capacities to comprehended it in the fullness of what it is. In an effort to move towards comprehension, though, human societies use social constructs called religion.

Every human society that I know of has religion which, if we get reductionistic about it, tends to join notions of transcendence and experiences of the holy—those glimpses of ultimate reality. Within this group, I see two rough categories, one of which ties transcendence and holiness into ethics or some form of personal behavior which aligns humanity with transcendence and holiness, and those that do not. (Do note that under this means of describing things, a “secular humanist” does indeed fall into the first category; I do see that as a faith system even if it is a non-theistic or athiestic one.)

Furthermore, of the major ethically-connected religions, it seems to me that many of them describe ethical paths with remarkably similar outcomes. That is, the major faiths teach messages of compassion and love and avoiding unnecessary violence and exploitation. Framed another way, they encourage virtue and seek to restraint of vice in individuals and society. Framed broadly, this works. When we start looking at specifics like, oh say, sexual behavior, there may be sharp disagreements between different systems about what constitutes vice and virtue.

Within most religions, though, the ethical outcomes are the ancillary or secondary principles that derive from the primary principles which relate to deities or ultimate human purposes. Thus in Christianity, morality flows out of who we believe the Trinity to be. In Buddhism, morality flows out of an understanding of the human condition. I’m not at all using secondary to mean unimportant; rather I’m using it to designate the fact that there are other first principles from which these notion flow.

What complicates things is the principle of revelation. Most faith systems (whether theistic, nontheistic or atheistic) root their primary principles in the belief that there is a substantive shape/form/direction in/of ultimate reality that the reality itself has communicated or mediated to humanity in some way. In a less qualified means of expressing myself, [God/the gods/the universe itself] communicate(s) with us; our primary principles are rooted in this communication.

Interreligious dialogue is entirely necessary and proper—as regards secondary principles. We should talk with others to learn about the attainment of virtue, paths and practices that move us personally and as societies towards compassion, non-violence, and human flourishing. But we must be honest to ourselves and to our faith systems. Interreligious dialogue is genuine when first principles are not compromised.

Moving specifically to what Prothero writes, he approaches the question from a slightly different direction than I do. That is, he starts from the premise that religions agree that things are screwed up and that religions try to answer the question of how people and societies move to/don’t participate in the state of screwed-upness:

What the world’s religions share is not so much a finish line as a starting point. And where they begin is with this simple observation: Something is wrong with the world.

I think he oversimplifies this (and that’s likely related to his venue and audience rather than full-blown imprecision on his part); I think he’d agree that what he’s saying is that the world’s religions agree that the quotidian human engagement with the world is wrong. (That is, some think that there’s nothing wrong with the world, just with how humans engage it and act within it…)

I come from a different angle. I do prefer to start from the finish line: how do we connect to and participate in ultimate reality?

Prothero and I agree that Christians have a unique answer to this drawn from our first principles. He writes:

It might seem to be an admirable act of empathy to assert that Confucians and Buddhists can be saved. But this statement is confused to the core, since salvation is not something that either Confucians or Buddhists seek. Salvation is a Christian goal, and when Christians speak of it, they are speaking of being saved from sin. But Confucians and Buddhists do not believe in sin, so it makes no sense for them to try to be saved from it. And while Muslims and Jews do speak of sin of a sort, neither Islam nor Judaism describes salvation from sin as its aim. When a jailer asks the apostle Paul, “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30), he is asking not a generic human question but a specifically Christian one. So while it may seem to be an act of generosity to state that Confucians and Buddhists and Muslims and Jews can also be saved, this statement is actually an act of obfuscation.

The conventional expression of this is the belief that good people will “go to heaven” even if they’re not Christians.

The problem is that this conventional sense is a fundamental misconstrual of Christian salvation as taught by the Church. I’ve talked about this before in a Cafe article (one of my favorites, actually), a bit of which I’ll quote here:

Being a Christian isn’t about getting to heaven. Being a Christian is about participating in new life, in divine life, sharing in the very life of God. In baptism we have been—in my favorite phrase from Paul—“hid with Christ in God.”

This is both the point and the purpose of Christian salvation. It’s not about waiting around to go somewhere or existing in some state after we die; it’s about participating in the life of God both now and later. Life is the point. Opening our eyes to and taking hold of what God has done for us in creation, in incarnation, in the crucifixion and the resurrection—that’s the point. The purpose is no less clear. It’s to live that life and to share it, to help it expand to others.

It’s to live a life hid with God in Christ.

This post also attempts to encapsulate it in a concise statement. That’s how I understand how Christians comprehend ultimate reality: we are joined in the sacramental, mystical, and eschatological Body of Christ within which we participate in the life of God. When viewed from this perspective, is this something that a Buddhist desires? Or a Muslim? I can’t imagine they would…

Can I say without reservation that because of this Buddhists and Muslims cannot connect into ultimate reality? That’s harder.  This is the classic: do all religions “go to the same place”/”shoot for the same goal” question, I suppose. My sense is that most religions do have a sense that we need to engage ultimate reality but we all do a have a different sense of what this is and how we do it. Ultimately, I think our answers to this relate to how we understand the human capacity to grasp and comprehend ultimate reality. Expecting it and experiencing it are not the same as comprehending it.

My Christian first principles tell me that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and that none come to the Father but through him. Or, to use the language that I’ve been using up to this point, Jesus Christ (and therefore incorporation into his sacramental, mystical, and eschatological Body) is the only means for participating within ultimate reality. I’m also told that my incorporation comes wholly through God’s grace and that the channel of this grace is normatively expressed in the sacrament of Baptism. The Tradition of the Church admits exceptions to this rule; Aquinas’s discussion on the issue shows some open doors and many Christian thinkers far better and wiser than I have wrestled with the fate of those to whom the Gospel has not been proclaimed.

One answer is that a Buddhist or Muslim may encounter ultimate reality and that the agency is Jesus Christ whether the unbeliever knows it or not, recognizes it or not. Personally, I think this leads to a road that cannot be traversed with certainty due to our human inability to comprehend the scope and nature of ultimate reality. Because here I think we run into the problem of dividing and separating that which is authentic divine revelation from what is not. Buddhists, Muslims, disagree with my grasp of first principles because of their conflict with the other believers own first principles. I think mine are right and that theirs may be a faulty human construction that miusconstrues the true nature and state of ultimate reality. Or, on the other hand, can those apparently alternate and contradictory notions be resolved a=on a plane for beyond my comprehension?

Where things become dicey, therefore, is when we start examining the line between revelation and human construction. What are the fundamental truths that [God/the gods/the universe itself] has bequeathed to us and what are human constructs built upon and around this revelation? Obviously the issue here isn’t just religions talking to one another. The proliferation of Christian denominations is intimately related to how this question is answered, into how and where we draw the lines between the divine and the human which is further blurred by the belief that God inspires humans and societies towards the fulfilling of his will and purposes.

In the clearest for-instance I can drag up, the Young Fogey and I absolutely agree that the distinction between our systems of belief rests in the principle of infallibility. The Young Fogey believes that the Church as a whole has been granted the capacity to rightly discern the fundamental divine teachings of revelation from the human constructs built upon them that may be altered. (I believe that’s a fair statement and I know he won’t hesitate to correct me if it’s inaccurate…) I have less faith in the Church as a whole. I believe that the Church as a whole is not able to infallible determine and discern the fundamental divine teachings from human constructs. I believe that the Church as a whole is on the right path and that in the great majority of things the Tradition of the Church has judged rightly,  but I do not, cannot, and will not use the word infallible to speak of the human institution of the Church. As a Body of believers we still stumble from one age to the next, sometimes correcting misapprehensions from earlier ages, sometimes creating new ones as we go. The Spirit directs us and clarifies but always through the inspirations of humans whose wiring does not have the capacity for complete comprehension due to the dual issues of material limitation and sin.

To complicate matters even more, I think that our tradition presents clear warnings against a clear and easy distinction between what is divine and what is human. Consistent wrangling on the nature of Christ and the Trinity seems to always come back to the fact there there are two distinct natures—the divine and human—which subsist in their entirety within Jesus Christ. To my unsystematic mind, this means that we recognize that there are these two different states [imprecise word, I know] but that the act of trying to separate them out from one another is fundamentally problematic.

My solution a sa an admitted unsystematic kind of guy who believes in the humani inability to fully comprehend the  divine is to throw up my hands and to retreat to ascetical theology. Thus, I say that I understand Christianity as the proper path to ultimate reality, the Triune God, as taught in the Scriptures, Tradition, and practice of the Christian faith. I really cannot say what happens to those who are not baptized, not being privy to the God’s deliberations and expressions of grace. I do know that I have been charged to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that [Jesus] has commanded [us]” and that part of being a Christian means doing this.

Another part means fussing around the dividing line of what is divine revelation and what is human construct, all the while knowing that I can never know if I’m really right but knowing that life in God and the formation of virtue are my truest guides through the mirk.

This is how I closed out the Cafe piece referenced above and, since it’s still where I come down on it, I’ll end this post that way too:

[The Christian purpose] to live a life hid with God in Christ.

And I’d tell you exactly what that phrase means, except that I’m not sure myself.

Oh, I have some ideas. One revolves around how much the New Testament uses the word “abide” as an activity that God does with Jesus and Jesus does with God and that we do with Jesus and therefore we can do with God and so on and so forth. Abide. Sometimes I think it means just lying in the presence of God in prayer and sometimes I think it means walking in love as Christ loved us and sometimes I think those are just two small parts of the fullness of what it really means. I’ll keep working on abiding…

Another idea has to do with our good ol’ Anglican worship. It’s how certain moments catch me and throw me—sometimes in church or sometimes days later—and give me a taste, a moment, that I can put my finger on and say, “Wow—that definitely connects to the life of God.” Worship doesn’t just fit us for the life of God but gives us moments and examples with which to see the slow yet steady spread of the lushness of God’s life and God’s will into our life that twines around the pillars of our hearts and with its soft, seeking roots cracks through calcified compassion.

In short, I’d tell you—but I think it’s got to be lived not told.

This Easter enjoy life, embrace life, share life, and live out a life hid with Christ in God.

Vidi Aquam at the Episcopal Cafe

My new piece is up at the Cafe. I thought I’d do a piece on one of the liturgical texts of Easter and settled on the Vidi Aquam. For a long time it’s been one of my favorite Easter texts precisely because so much biblical and theological material is packed into such a small space. So, I took a moment to unpack it.

This work is the kind of thing I love to do—demonstrating how Scripture, liturgy, hermeneutics, sacramental theology and ritual practice combine in one apparently throw-away text. And yet, so much of our liturgy is like this, deep and thickly textured.

Commemorations

I have more to say on this topic that I have the time for now but will direct your attention to a recent posting by Fr. Hunwicke on commemorations. While he’s speaking principally concerning masses—and masses conducted according to a rite with a Last Gospel, the topic he raises has implications for the Office as well.

The explosion of liturgical occasions promulgated by Holy Women, Holy Men, exposes one of the issues with both post-Vatican II principles and the rubrics of the ’79 BCP. A common goal of the Cranmerian Prayer Book reforms and Vatican II reforms is the cultivation (I won’t say “recapturing” as it’s historically tenuous…) of a “noble simplicity” both in the liturgy and in the celebration of sanctoral occasions. I agree with both to a point. However, sometimes simplicity of aim must be balanced with the complexities of life.

The ’79 BCP does not allow for commemorations, that is, a system of principles for acknowledging that one day can have more than one meaning given to it by the Church. To maintain a unitary focus on one-and-only-one theme, the options are to transfer an occasion or to suppress it. Commemoration is the third way and, I believe, more adequately captures the complications within which we dwell.

Practically, functionally, most former commemoration rules meant adding prayers and “prayer-packets” anchored by collects to the proper place for collects in the liturgy. In order to keep these from getting out of hand, there were further rules as to how many collects could be said during a liturgy. Needless to say, the liturgical powers-that-be(were) saw the whole discussion as getting too complicated and unnecessary, and axed them all.

I think that it’s time that we looked at these again…

Initial Breviary Stats

Looking Back

When I set up the page code for the St Bede’s Breviary, I decided that it was important to track general—not individual—usage information. Thus, one of the tables gathers style, kalendar, and rite selections. Again—I don’t capture any user or computer data and am using this only to get a sense of what features are being used to better accommodate those who choose to use it.

I tapped into the table the other day and pulled down data that has been accumulating since December. Because I’m not tracking individual data, I can’t pull out the many times I’ve accessed it to test out various features. Too, due to the way the table is populated, there are some situations where data is not returned and blank fields are entered. I’ve not messed with these resulting in a margin of error equal to the blanks. That having been said, here are the breakdowns for various categories for the 6,376 visits logged:

Despite my preference for Rite I, breviary users are evenly split between Rites I and II. I’m pleased to see this as it indicates to my mind that advocates of both rites are well represented here.

I found at least two items in this data set of interest. First, the data seems to reflect my own difficulties. In trying to fit the offices into a full life with children, I find I’m more regular with Morning Prayer than Evening.  As over half of all offices prayed are Morning Prayer and Evening is roughly half of Morning, it seems I’m not alone… :-) Second, I note that the Little Offices (Noon Prayer and Compline) share an equal though low percentage (7%). I don’t know if this means that those who do Noon Prayer are also those who do Compline but it’s a likely conclusion.  At the end of the day it seems clear that the two principal offices—Morning and Evening—are indeed what people are coming to the site to pray.

This slide indicates that the breviary is serving its primary function. I specifically coded the breviary for flexibility—I wanted Anglicans of all stripes to be able to find a means of praying the office that fit their spirituality best and I consider this data set to be a vindication of that decision.

This data set indicates an almost filibuster proof preference for the BCP kalendar.

Going Forward

Ever since it’s been up the Breviary has had the tag “Beta test” which is entirely necessay. I’m trying to move it out of beta status though. There’ll be several sets of changes required to make that happen and given my schedule it won’t be complete anytime soon. However, I do have some concrete plans for next steps. These include:

  • finally getting around to implementing the BCP rubrics on the placement of the gospel readings—i.e., morning in Year 2 (thanks for the reminder, Bill)
  • inserting NRSV readings into Rite II
  • re-doing the guts in ways that (hopefully) no one will notice on the client-side but will streamline the server-side and under-the-hood functionality
    • chiefly this means moving from a table-based daily calculation system to a rule-based system
    • consolidating kalendar tables which will enable me to roll out the other kalendars that I’ve had on ice for a while
  • fixing innumerable design issues and irritants
  • providing music for the hymns (square-notation at first, modern notation perhaps later based on some promised assistance, sound files are but a hopeful dream at this point)
  • integrating the breviary into a more coherent web presence

I can say that one major undertaking on the horizon after these are incorporated includes provisions for sung offices. No ETA on that, however.

As always, I’m open to your suggestions and corrections. On that note, let me conclude with a big thank you to Richard and Ron, my faithful entirely voluntary proofreaders who mercilessly call to my attention every error they see in Rites I and II respectively. Thank you for your assistance and persistence!!

On Eves, Vigils, and First Vespers, II

On the Value of First Vespers

Having reviewed a bit of the pre-Reformation and pre-conciliar practice regarding First Vespers Offices, we move to the practical question of how to define and utilize a First Vespers within the prayer-book tradition.

The first question to be tackled, of course, is: who cares? And indeed, the ’79 BCP itself seems to be raising that question. To sketch briefly, the 1662 BCP allowed First Vespers, the American 1928 BCP recommend First Vespers, while the 1979 BCP permits and appoints them but then turns around and relegates them to a back-shelf.

Let me explain that a bit…

Going by strictly BCP materials, there are only two items at Evening Prayer that indicate the liturgical observance: the Collect and the Lessons. Since 1662, using the Collect of a Sunday or Feast on the evening before has been approved. The American 1928 goes a step farther and provides proper Lessons for Eves in the Fixed Holy Days table (pp. xliv-v). The American 1979 provides Eves for a few Feasts in its own table of Holy Days (pp. 996-1000) but places most of them after the table itself in a lump titled “Eves of Apostles & Evangelists”. Comparing the ’79 to the ’28 there is a clear minimization of proper Lessons for Eves and the logic behind this is probably correctly captured in Hatchett’s discussion of the Daily Office Lectionary rubrics:

One of the frequent criticisms of earlier lectionaries in the Prayer Book was that sequential readings were often interrupted by proper lections for saints’ days and their eves, lections which contributed little or nothing to the congregation’s knowledge of the saint being commemorated or of sainthood in general. The reading of John 11, the story of the raising of Lazarus, for example, was frequently interrupted by lessons for the feast day (and/or eve) of Saint Matthias; none of these lections mentioned Matthias. In the 1979 Book, a general permission is given, when a major feast interrupts the sequence of readings, to lengthen, combine, or omit some of the appointed readings in order to secure continuity or avoid repetition. (Hatchett, CotAPB, 592)

Or, to restate more simply, the Daily Office Lectionary should be as continuous as possible for it to achieve its catechetical function.

While I agree with the premise as restated above, I disagree with Hatchett and am disappointed in how the ’79 Lectionary has changed to make these charges more credible.

First, let’s consider the catechetical aspect. We must recognize that when we discuss the liturgy in general and the Office in particular, we’re never dealing with just one “goal”; instead, we’re operating within an economy of catechetical goods—some of which come into conflict with each other. I would identify some of the catechetical goods from daily recitation of the Offices as:

  • An increasing awareness of the presentation of the Gospel through the patterns of the liturgical year
  • An awareness of the Communion of the Saints through liturgical celebration of those who intercede on our behalf
  • Saturation in the Scriptures through yearly repetition
  • Saturation in the Psalter through monthly repetition
  • Formation into key evangelical principles in the daily repetition of the Gospel Canticles
  • Formation into key interpretive principles with twice-daily repetition of the Apostles’ Creed

Hatchett is identifying a conflict between two of these goods: repetition of the Scriptures and acknowledgment of the saints. There are three problems, however, with the way that he constructs this.

The first is the nature of the conflict. I don’t see this as being a conflict between the Scriptures and saints. Rather, we are dealing with two different means of encountering the Scriptures. All of the feasts that have readings appointed for First Vespers are either Principal Feasts, Feasts of our Lord, or Major Feasts—all of which are Scriptural in nature. All of these people and events celebrated are specifically called out in Scripture. Thus, I think that Hatchett is setting up a false dichotomy.

The second is scope. Yes, the lessons for St Matthias will impede part of John 11—-in some years. But not others. Hatchett’s criticism makes sense if we are going to go through the lectionary cycle once. But if it is to be repeated year after year, then this charge does not make sense. Christian formation is a process measured best in decades. In a similar fashion, if I miss the Daily Office for an entire day, I regret not having said those psalms but have confidence that I’ll get them the next month. Perhaps that’s lackadaisical, but I’ve found that my spiritual health is greatly improved when I balance scrupulosity with a long-view approach to my holy habits.

The third is that, when Hatchett mentions “avoid[ing] repetition” at the end of the passage, he refers to a problem of the ’79 BCP’s own making. Repetition for Holy Days is not a credible charge when the American ’28 lectionary is concerned; each Holy Day has its own distinct readings for the Eve and the Day. Six readings with no overlap in the table. Look at the ’79, though. There is no overlap in what is presented in the table, but all Eves of Apostles and Evangelists are grouped together with two readings provided for them all. Now there’s repetition!

Not only that, but due to this way of proceeding, feasts not in the ’28 table (and even some that are) are now Eve-less: St Joseph, Independence Day, St Mary Magdalene, St Mary the Virgin (!!), St Michael and All Angles (!!), St James of Jerusalem, and Thanksgiving Day. Yes, we can stretch the definition of “Apostle & Evangelist” for St Mary Magdalene and St James of Jerusalem, but no reading for the BVM or St Michael?! You’ve got to be kidding me!!  Oddly, four readings are presented for Evening Prayer on these days, providing enough readings for a First and Second Vespers but the sets are not specified for use at either.

In other words, in comparison to the ’28 BCP, the ’79 BCP has made a hash of the Eves of Holy Days under the guise of simplification.

I disagree with Hatchett and, presumably, whoever compiled the Daily Office Lectionary tables. There are two ways to celebrate a First Vespers in the Prayer Book tradition: with the Collect alone or with the Collect and Appointed Lessons. My sense is that the first is appropriate for Sundays, the second is appropriate for Principal Feasts and Holy Days. The interruption of the continuous reading of Scripture is unfortunate but it is occasional (31 days sprinkled throughout the year), and is not consistent over years. No Scripture will be permanently impeded due to these occasions.

The benefit is that a First Vespers puts emphasis on those days, those events, those concepts, and those individuals who truly are important as examples, intercessors, and signs of the Christian life. No, Matthias is not mentioned in the readings on his day as Hatchett notes. He’s only mentioned in one pericope of Scripture which is appointed for his Mass. But, like other of the apostles, his significance is in his life and witness. His importance in our faith rests not on how many times he appears in Scripture but that he was a called and consecrated apostle. Indeed, most of us will be far more like him than Peter and Paul, not large in the annals of the church but nonetheless the faithful workers through whom the Gospel also flourishes.

First Vespers play an important role in marking out liturgical time and structuring our year. They need to be observed because of the emphases and counter-point that they give to the liturgical seasons.

Sunday Morning Prayer in Parishes?

I usually receive an email a week or so from a reader or from someone who happened upon the blog concerning proper protocol for the Daily Office. Not infrequently, those who write are in parishes that can no longer financially sustain full-time clergy. As a result, Morning Prayer has once again become a regular Sunday service despite the best intentions of both prayer book and parish.  With the unintentional suppression of Morning Prayer with the advent of the ’79 BCP, though, not all of the lay leaders in this situation have a lived tradition to fall back upon, and the clergy who do assist them may not either.

Are there enough readers in this situation or enough interest in this topic to warrant setting up a Morning Prayer Q&A page?

If so, what sort of content would be most helpful to those in this position? What questions need to be answered?

On Eves, Vigils, and First Vespers, (Digression)

Some comments on the last post prompt me to say a little more about the pre- and non-Reformation systems for dealing with kalendars. Let me say right off the bat that this is not an area where I consider myself an expert; I’ll be grateful for additions here from more informed readers.

One of the reasons I start off that way is because of the situation in the time of my main focus. In the early medieval monastic period, there are few clear surviving written records concerning how rules of precedence and such were ordered (observe for a second the number of caveats there: “clear”, “surviving”, “written”!) If you go to the seminal piece on liturgical books in Anglo-Saxon England,* the only text for dealing with such issues is item U: Consuetudinary. When you go to the text itself, Gneuss gives only a brief note:

The ordinal contains instructions concerning the texts and performance of the liturgy of mass and Office, either for the whole church year or for certain parts of it. In the consuetudinary (or customary) such liturgical instructions or ordines are combined with rules relating to the life and customs of a monastic community or a collegiate church. Such ordinals and consuetudinaries may vary considerably, according to the time and place of their composition and use. I have chosen the heading ‘consuetudinary’ because the pertinent Anglo­-Saxon (and early Anglo‑Norman) texts whose editions are listed below do not deal exclusively with liturgical matters. As will be seen, all these texts were intended for use in English monasteries and cathedral priories in the tenth and eleventh centuries. No specific Old English term seems to exist; none of the texts is found as a separate volume.

Gneuss throws around a number of terms here that will become technical terms for writers dealing with later periods. The ones I’ll note are ordinals, customary, and consuetudinary. There is no real precision to their use here because, as Gneuss says, the distinctions haven’t evolved yet.

The Ordines Romani are an important factor here. While they don’t receive a category of their own—i.e., we don’t really have “ordinals” proper yet—these were the documents that told you how all of your different books were supposed to fit together. Remember, within the early medieval period we had liturgical books with contents grouped by function: the choir had their book, the cantor had his book, the priest had his book, etc. The ordines provided the structure for how they interrelated. I confess that I don’t know if ordines XX-XXXVIII address precedence issues or not. We do have some surviving continental manuscripts that are collections of ordines (like Cod. Sang. 349) but these are also not ordinals in the future sense.

In any case, Gneuss lists four customaries, two of which may be familiar to readers of these pages, the Concordia Regularis and Aelfric’s “Letter to the Monks at Eynsham” (LME). These texts tend to be instructions that fill out the sparse descriptions of common life in Benedict’s Rule with a more precise detailing of the day, season, and year and add in the extra liturgical services common within a Cluniac inspired monastic system.

As you read through the LME, therefore, you find lists of incipits and when they are supposed to begin and end. On the matter of festal days, Aelfric makes two comments, one in his discussion of the liturgies of the summer period, the other tucked into his discussion of the readings of the Night Office:

55. If the Nativity of John the Baptist should fall on a Sunday, we desire to retain all the readings and the responsaries about John himself. The same [rule applies] for [the feasts of] the Assumption and Nativity of St Mary and the Feast of St Michael: should [any of these] occur on a Sunday, we desire to retain [their liturgies] in full. Again, we do the same for the feast of All Saints and [the feasts] of all the apostles, except those which occur in Advent or [in the period] from Septuagesima to Easter. But as for other feasts not observed by the laity, if they fall on Sunday and have a full history [of their own], let us read about them in the first and third position, and about the Sunday in the second. (LME, 139)

Then later on the Night Office:

73. But on all feasts of the saints, throughout the entire year, we read lives or passions of the saints themselves, or sermons appropriate to the given solemnity, and [we sing] proper responsories, if these are to be had; if not, we sing other appropriate ones and adopt for the third position [readings] from a homily on the gospel as we do always and everywhere. (LME, 147)

Thus, there is very little here about the vexing issue of Vespers, notably because of Aelfric’s focus on the Night Office.

Going back to the issue of liturgical books, there was one other item used in conjunction with the customary and that was the computus/compotus (OE gerim). This is the book that would tell you how to calculate the movable feasts and get into fun topics like lunar epacts, Golden Numbers, and dominical letters. (Gneuss discusses these briefly under item X with Calendars).

So, there were three major items, the ordines, the customary, and the computus that could be used in conjunction to figure out what was done when. The overwhelming sense that I get from reading the customaries, though, is that these tended to be descriptive rather than prescriptive and that, practically, it would boil down to however the community decided to run things.

As things evolved within English liturgy and as we moved more to the sway of the Sarum Rite, there were, in theory, two major texts which are edited together (among other items) in the two volume Use of Sarum, the consuetudinary and the ordinal. Knowing the early medieval background, having two documents makes perfect sense: the consuetudinary discusses the ritual and tells how the various groups of people interact, while the ordinal describes the liturgical orders and what masses and offices are to be said when.

The “old Ordinal” and the succeeding “new Ordinal” didn’t answer all of the possible questions so in the late Sarum period we get documents like the Crede Michi that address controverted questions. These led one Clement Maydeston in the early 1450’s to create a master document called the Ordinale Sarum sive Directorium Sacerdotum that serves to solve these issues once and for all. (This was edited in two volumes for the Henry Bradshaw Society, vol. 20 and vol. 22.)

If you do the math, there are 35 ways that the liturgical year can be arranged based on the possibilities for the date of Easter and when Sundays fall. Accordingly, Maydeston laid out those 35 options from the period between the Sunday following the Octave of Epiphany through the first few Sundays after Trinity. These were then labeled according to the dominical letter  A through G, then the five possible options for each of these were laid out (e.g., primum A, secundum A, tercium A, etc.). Once the “Easter affected” portions of the year had been dealt with,  the rest of the year was gathered into a sixth section (e.g., sextum A).

Here’s a sample for Jan 19th through the 22nd for primum A:

sample from the Directorium

Thursday is of St Wulstan, bishop and confessor; nine lessons are read from the Common of Saints. The Little Chapter starts: “Behold a priest…” At First Vespers and the Night Office there are memorials of the BVM. Second Vespers is of Sts Fabian and Sebastian. Little Chapter starts: “The souls of the righteous…” and there are memorials of St Wulstan and the BVM.

Friday is of the martyrs Sts Fabian and Sebastian; nine lessons are read at the Night Office with no exposition of the Gospel of the Day and there is a memorial of the BVM. The Second Vespers is of St Agnes, virgin. The Little Chapter starts: “I will confess…”, and memorials are made of Sts Fabian and Sebastian and the BVM.

etc. . . .

Thus, it identifies First Vespers (primas vesperas) and Second (Secunde vespere) and lets you know what to do in each case.

Parts of this tool, then, were  cut up and inserted into the Sarum Breviary as the pica or directions on what to do.

Considering the level of detail to which the Directorium descends, Anglo-Catholics through the ages have wondered if Archbishop Cranmer had not exaggerated the difficulties facing clergy in understanding how to say their breviary. All they had to do was flip to the right section of the Directorium and they could tell what was to be done.

I’m not even going to touch that one…

Furthermore, the whole issue of precedence of Vespers has, in modern times, been reduced to a chart that offers a comparison of what is done when. Here’s one from the Marquis of Bute’s English edition of the Tridentine Breviary:

As long as you know the rankings of the various days, you can figure out what you’re supposed to be celebrating. It makes sense, but isn’t an intuitive process until you’ve used it for a little while.

So, these are some of the items referred to in the previous post that give more information on the pre- and non-Reformation ways of reckoning the Vespers issues. Back to the American 1979 BCP in the next post.

* Helmut Gneuss, “Liturgical Books in Anglo-Saxon England and their Old English terminology,” pages 91-141 in Learning and literature in Anglo-Saxon England : studies presented to Peter Clemoes on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, edited by Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985)

Central Churchmanship: Was There an American Form?

Here’s an interesting post from a Continuing bishop discussing the revisionism of both the Left and the Right wings of Anglicanism, and calling for a return to the central position which he identifies as: “based on the Bible, the Early Fathers, the Articles of Religion and the Prayer Book.”

What strikes me as odd is his appeal to “Central Churchmanship.” I’ve only seen the term used by the Young Fogey before and I wonder if this is a particularly English party. That is, here in America I’ve only heard of Anglicanism described in three branches: Evangelical, Broad, and Anglo-Catholic. These are also the parties described by an impartial historical observer as found in the 1907 (biased yet still entertaining—to me, at least) Catholic Encyclopedia article on Anglicanism.

I can see an appeal in what is being described here, but has it ever existed as a discrete body on American soil?

RBOC: Low Week Edition

  • Took some time off to get away with M and the girls—back to the grind today, however…
  • M ran a great time in the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler on Sunday; I ran a local 5K and finished a minute slower than last time. I need to hit the pavement more seriously. The main goal at the moment is my first half-marathon at the Baltimore Running Festival.
  • Oddly, one of the things that keeps me motivating with regular running is scanning the news at the Oil Drum. The idea of declining medical facilities as I age suggests that the time to get serious about being healthy is now…
  • More on kalendars after other fires get sorted out—there were lots of good comments below I haven’t gotten around to addressing yet.

On Eves, Vigils, and First Vespers, I

I frequently mention various liturgical things in passing and, as a correspondent has noted, it never hurts to stop and define these every once in a while. A classic case is the term “First Vesper.” So, with that in mind, here are some definitions, explanations, and applications concerning the “First Vesper” and how it both appears in and impacts liturgies in the ’79 BCP.

Some Background

The Western Church has tended to sort days into one of two categories: feasts days and regular days (aka ferial days or simply ferias [Yes, that’s not a correct Latin plural—deal with it.]). A feria is reckoned the same way a secular day is; it starts and ends at midnight. Speaking litgurically according to the old canonical hours, therefore,  ferias begin with Matins at 3:30 AM or so and end with the conclusion of Compline at around 8:30 PM. Feast days work on a slightly different axis.

Following Jewish tradition and therefore the practice of the first generations of Christians, feast days begin at sundown on the day prior to the feast and end at sundown on the day of the feast. However, sundown is easier said than scheduled. As a result, there’s a de facto “liturgical sundown.” On regular feasts—Simple feasts to use the technical term—the feast began at the Little Chapter during Vespers then would run through the end of the None Office the next day. Thus, a Simple feast is actually a little bit shorter than a full day; if back-to-back Simple feasts show up in the kalendar, it actually creates a little gap.

Example: on February 13th in 1486, the Feast of St Valentine started at Vespers with the Little Chapter. February 14th continued the feast as it  ran through Compline, Matins, Lauds, and the Little Hours up to None. At that point, the feast of St Valentine ended. Vespers began as the Vespers for Tuesday, following the psalms appointed for Tuesday. After the opening and the psalms, though, the feast of Sts. Faustinus and Jovita starts and continues through the rest of the 14th and the 15th as far as None.

This looks confusing, but makes perfect sense if you recall one basic principle: the psalms for Lauds and the Little Hours were mostly static; to cover all of the psalms in a week (RB 18.22-25), 1-108 were covered at Matins and 109-147 were covered at Vespers (roughly). If proper psalms kept being appointed for feasts there’s no way they’d make it through the last third of the psalter!

Not all feasts are equal, though; not all feasts are Simple. The more important feasts were referred to as Doubles, presumably because at some point in the Early Church a regular Office of the day was said, then an additional Office was said for the saint or feast. By the time we have extant manuscripts and descriptions of Offices, though, this was not the case. Instead, a Double were lengthened according to their importance. A Double began at the beginning of Vespers on the Day before, continued through Compline into the feast day proper and did not end after None but continued on through a second Vespers and a second Compline. Thus, a Double had two Vespers, one on the evening before the feast and one on the feast itself. (It had two Complines as well, but Vespers is a much larger, more involved, and more variable Office than Compline, so a second Compline has little practical effect on the liturgy’s celebration.

In theory, you might expect that most feasts would be Simples and that the more important feasts would be Doubles. And perhaps that how it was at one point. By the modern period, however, it was not the case. Looking at the kalendar of Pius Xth from 1920, we see that of the 296 fixed festal days of the year, 256 were Doubles of some sort; only 27 were Simples. (And it may be alleged that the psalm issue had something to do with it—the festal psalm sequence used for Vespers on Doubles tended to be a bit shorter than the ferial sequences; messing with the psalms was sometimes the intention!)

So to recap, in the West through the reforms of Pius X there were three kinds of days reckoned differently in the church:

  • ferial days ran from midnight to midnight, starting at Matins and running to the end of Compline
  • Simple feasts ran from evening to evening in a shorter sense, starting from the Little Chapter at Vespers and running until the end of the  None Office
  • Double feasts ran from evening to the next night, starting at the beginning of Vespers the evening before and running through Compline on the day of the feast

This, then, is the origin of “First Vespers.” It designates the Vespers Office that begins a Double feast to differentiate it from Vespers on the next day. Furthermore, the liturgies of these days were often different, usually having different antiphons for the psalm and Gospel canticle and having different hymns.

The thing I need to point out now, though, is the implications of having a First Vespers.

In the example under Simples, I demonstrated how the system worked when two Simples were back to back. There was no problem since one Simple ended before the next Simple began and the ferial Office filled in the slack. Consider the Double, however—the longer day means that overlap between one feast and another is entirely possible. And if you have 296 of them, well, you do the math… And then you add in all of the Sundays which are semidoubles at the least…

Suddenly, figuring out which Vespers goes with which day and should be celebrated in which way becomes a lot more difficult.

As a result, the classification of Double feasts began quite an involved matter and there grew a range—from Semidouble to Double to Greater Double to Double of the Second Class and Double of the First Class—in order to properly arrange the feasts so that everything received its due ceremony. Sets of tables clarify the relation between them so that you can calculate what happens if two feasts fall on top of one another (quite common when you suddenly merge 52 Semidouble or greater Sundays into the pre-existing 296 Doubles) or, as happened almost daily, when adjudication had to be made between whether or how you ought to celebrate two feasts at the same time within one Vespers Office.

Example: Consider March 6th. The kalendar tells us that it is the feast of Perpetua and Felicity. This feast is a Double. So, Vespers on the 5th (and the 5th is a ferial day) is the First Vespers of the Perpetua and Felicity. The feast continues onto the 6th. However, March 7th is the feast of Thomas Aquinas—also a Double—which means that its First Vespers is abut to concur with the Second Vespers of the Perpetua and Felicity. What do you do? There are three options: division, commemoration, or suppression.  In this case, since both feasts are Doubles the answer according to Tridentine rules is division: it’s the Second Vespers of Perpetua and Felicity from the opening and through the psalms until the Little Chapter. At that point (liturgical sundown), it becomes the  First Vespers of  Thomas Aquinas. Right after the collect of Thomas, though, is included a commemoration of Perpetua and Felicity which is created by bundling the Magnificat antiphon with the versicle which would have followed their hymn and concluding it with their collect.

Don’t ask what happens if either of these days turns out to be a Sunday, because then things start getting complicated…

It’s precisely these sorts of issues that led reformers from at least the time of Wyclif to condemn what had happened to the Offices, charging that clergy had to spend far more time figuring out their breviaries than preaching the Gospel. We can see many things that Cranmer did to simplify the Offices (following in the footsteps of other reformers frequently) but this is one of the most invisible to modern Anglicans. In simplifying the kalendar he, with one stroke, removed one of the major objections to the Offices as they had been practiced at that time. By removing all antiphons and hymns, the liturgical elements to be calculated dropped dramatically; only the collects were proper to feasts. The Office became simple again—no calculations required (certainly in comparison to what it had been). However, the Office also lost the richness and depth that it had and the connections between Mass and Offices were reduced to a single point, the collect.

Where we are now and what this means for our BCP will come in another post.