Daily Archives: April 18, 2011

Canadian Bishops on CWOB

I’ve been away from the computer for a while or, at least not in the blogging Anglican circles. I was alerted to an interesting news item by a friend of the blog. Looking back on the various sites that I frequent, I find it interesting that none of them has made mention of the recent meeting of the Canadian House of Bishops. At their just concluded meeting they “unanimously reaffirmed that the sacrament of the holy Eucharist is to be given only to those baptized in the Christian faith.”

Read more about it here.

Needless to say, I applaud the bishops for their decision. There is a logic to our sacramental rites that moves from Baptism to Eucharist. If anything, this was greatly enhanced by the 1979 Prayer Book. The new elevation of Baptism is an innovation, but I think a positive one. Any movement to degrade the position of Baptism is a clear step away from both the logic and theology of the Christian Church throughout the ages, and a big step away from the direction our prayer book leads.

I can only hope the American House of Bishops will issue a similar statement.

Holy Week Offices

After a year and a half, I still consider the breviary to be in beta because of issues like this morning—a missing collect and, in some cases, missing lessons. They’re fixed now and part of today’s events include a check through the rest of Holy Week to make sure everything’s functioning properly.

Exactly how the Holy Week and Triduum Offices are to be celebrated is a favorite topic among Anglican armchair liturgists; the various Books of Common Prayer give no indication of changes during this time but catholic practices give a variety of options with the Roman variations being predominate but I’m sure we can find some divergences even from that among regional uses (like the 24 candles of the Sarum tenebrae hearse as opposed to the more pedestrian 15 of Roman practice). I did write a bit about this last year which covers some of the various points to weigh.

Bottom line at the breviary is this: the breviary keeps the gloria patris for the beginning of Holy Week, but gives reduced offices for Triduum. The BSG version, however, does not use reduced offices but presents a full, regular, prayer book office. This probably is something that I should build into the preferences but haven’t had the time to do.