Category Archives: Anglican

CWOB Posts: A Post-Mortem

My presentation for the Society of Catholic Priests on Communion without Baptism (CWOB) went up on the Episcopal Cafe last week. Due to its length, it was broken up into three parts:

The goal was to provoke thought about the issue and I think we did. Jim tells me that as of today, the pieces have a received a total of 5,800 page views. (How many of those were unique I don’t know,  but it’s still a lot of pondering…)

I think we reached a record on number of comments as well. Over the course of the series we had 138 comments. Editorial conflation of some edits drops the true number to 134.

What’s significant is that of these 134 comments, there were only 25 total commenters. Of these 25, 8 were responsible for 74% of the comments (100).  Within these, there were some clear “identities”.

  • 28 were from a couple who chooses to play the role of “village atheist” on the site
  • 34 were supporting the piece and were advocating for the traditional order of things (16 of these were my own comments)
  • 24 were defending the communing of the unbaptized from the “liberal establishment”
  • 14 were from a fellow contributor who seems to agree more with the traditional position but who was playing the role of “gadfly”

So—the comments display sustained argument within a small group with set convictions. While there was much discussion, I think there was little true give-and-take. I’m not about to change my position and neither were my interlocutors. On the whole, then, we may well have produced more heat than light in the comments.

A few thoughts on what I did see in the comments…

  1. Lack of Engagement. I didn’t see much engagement with the issues I was raising in the main body of the text. In particular, I think my main contribution to the debate was the notion of purpose, that “Discipleship, communal transformation into the Mind of Christ and love of God, is the fundamental pattern in the sacramental economy.” That’s not to say there was no engagement—Sara Miles and Donald Schell did address this topic albeit insufficiently to my mind. Far and away, though the conversation continually  returned to the notion of “inclusion”. Note this and note it well. What I take from this finding is that the center of the discussion about CWOB is not around sacramental theology. This is fundamentally not a debate about theology. If we continue to argue it as if it were a theological debate, we will go unheard and the majority of the church can and will be persuaded that CWOB is a good idea.
  2. The Proper Place of Inclusion.  I believe that most of the people arguing for CWOB believe that they are doing so for the right reasons, and I think that this movement is driven far more by identity issues than theology issues.  The Episcopal Church is branding itself as the welcoming church, the inclusive church. As this concept filters through the body, practices that appear to be unwelcoming or uninclusive are viewed by more and more as anti-Episcopal. I think that most people in our pews want to be nice and make people feel welcome. Too, they want to believe that their parish is the kind of place that makes people feel welcome and included (whether unbaptized people ever show up or not). One of the brief one-off comments encapsulates this view perfectly: “Perhaps giving communion to the unbaptized is the community welcoming the stranger?” This is the view that has and is taking root. Now—we don’t want to argue against inclusion for two reasons: 1) it really is part of the full Gospel message—that’s what the movement of grace to the gentiles is all about; 2) no argument is going to be won from a rhetorical perspective by being “anti-inclusion” or “anti-welcoming.” It’s just not going to fly (especially since it’s not what we really mean either). So—the discussion needs to be re-framed somehow. If, in a discussion around the topic of CWOB, you find yourself being portrayed as the “anti-” side in an argument for or against inclusion or welcoming, you got to take a step back and re-frame the debate. How—well, that’s the question, isn’t it? My current strategy is to move from Communion to Baptism. We are very inclusive when it comes to Baptism. We do want to welcome and include people at the altar and the way that we do that is by not only welcoming them to the altar but welcoming them to the font (first). Additional re-framing thoughts are welcome.
  3. What You Call It Matters. I noticed a new tack I hadn’t seen before in the comments: referring to Communion Before Baptism. I find this term very unhelpful because it elides away a major problem. One of the central problems of CWOB is that it does not take place within a communal sacramental framework that leads through Baptism to Discipleship. The use of “before” instead of “without” implies that Baptism will follow. And I simply don’t believe that the implication is true. I would be somewhat less concerned if I believed that follow-through were occurring and that those who communed out of ignorance or through misguided hospitality were directed from there to Baptism and discipleship—but that follow-through is fundamentally not on the radar for most places doing CWOB. And this may be one of the big differences between a place like St Gregory of Nyssa and other parishes. My sense is that St Gregory’s does do a better job at follow-through and, as a result, Donald Schell can point to people like Sara Miles who did come to discipleship through this process. But St Gregory’s is not the norm for places that offer CWOB.

Those are my thoughts—what are yours?

American Sarum: Sunday Morning

I apologize for the significant delay in getting this out—most of my meager online time this week has been spent in the discussions at the Cafe…

The main event of Sunday morning was, of course, Mass at Christ Church, Bronxville according to their Sarum Use.

The difficulties with logistics came home to roost on Sunday morning. The hotel for the conference was a good fifteen to twenty minutes away from the church. With the number of people at the hotel, one shuttle was not sufficient for the number of attendees without cars. As a result, M and I had to go on the shuttle’s second trip and arrived late to the mass, coming in at the end of the Gloria. We started out seated in a side-aisle behind a pillar where we had no view at all of the chancel area but we moved during the offertory hymn to a spot in the nave where we could see what was going on.

Canon Davies preached the sermon—I quite liked it and thought he did a nice job weaving questions of identity and naming in the beginning of John with the I Am statements of that Gospel; others found it wordy and a bit diffuse.

Three points before I continue to the ceremonial:

  1. It was Mass; I was there to worship. As a result, I didn’t take notes and can’t draw out any schematics. What I am relating is what I can remember seeing based on where I was sitting. Other attendees with better views and/or memories should feel free to offer corrections!
  2. Dr. Percy Dearmer—by way of The Parson’s Handbook—is the best known and most authoritative proponent of the English Use. And that’s the term he uses: English Use. While much of the practices and principles are drawn from Sarum books, his goal was a synthesis of the tradition for his times that would preserve both the English and catholic heritage of the Church of England to be used in strict accordance with the rubrics of the authorized Prayer Book. At one point he writes: ” A great deal of harm has been done by the thoughtless use of the word ‘Sarum’ when the statements of the Prayer Book should have led us to the only exact word ‘English'” (PH 6th ed., 38). That the church identifies its use as Sarum suggests that it is in contact with Blessed Percy and his sources, but also that they are not full exponents of his English Use.
  3. I won’t (and can’t) go into detail on the history of the parish. However, it seems from the rector’s talk later in the day that the church had some early Dearmerite influence at its beginnings, and an influential clergy team later who introduced some aspects of the English Use. There was quite a gap, though, and the rector identified a number of ceremonial changes that he had made to make things more like they were before. As a result, I don’t know how long they have been doing things in the manner that I saw—I can only relate what was done on Sunday.

The service was a Rite II Holy Eucharist from the BCP. They used the high altar, celebrating eastward, which was appointed with riddel posts and riddels. Interestingly, the two angels holding the candles were facing each other rather than outward. There were three vested sacred ministers—the celebrant, deacon, and subdeacon—and the crucifer and thurifer both wore tunicles as well. All five had appareled amices, but I saw no appareling on the albs.  (Alb appareling is present in some of the recent photos in the parish books, though.)

These are the differences that I noticed from my Fortecue Anglo-Catholic parish:

  • There were no genuflections. (Dearmer insists on this.)
  • There was less incense than usual. While I thought I saw the top of the thurifer’s head in the gospel procession, I didn’t hear the pause-clank-pause of censing the book. After the censing of the altar—which the celebrant did alone—he pivoted then censed the choir and congregation with three long swings. Then the thurifer took back the thurible and censed him with three doubles. There was censing at the elevations. (Dearmer reserved censing for things not people and IIRC was against the notion of “double swings”)
  • At the Sursum Corda when the celebrant turned westward to speak to the people, the deacon and subdeacon on their respective steps turned to face each other (and the celebrant) in the “open position.” (I’m told this is a Dearmerite position but it’s not in the directions of the 6th ed. of the Parson’s Handbook; it could be a later concept.)
  • When the deacon and subdeacon lined up with the celebrant, it was always at the middle of the altar. I don’t recall seeing them line up together at either horn of the altar.
  • There were a few textual deviations from the BCP such as the inclusion of Ps 34:8 (“taste and see…”) after “Behold the lamb of God…” at the conclusion of the canon.
  • There was no offertory procession
  • The procession moved in the usual order (crucifer, torches, choir, clergy, celebrant last) as opposed to Dearmer’s order where the clergy are right after the torches and before the choir.

So, by my reckoning, the ceremonial of the parish was definitely catholic and had a fair amount of influence from Dearmer but was not wholly or strictly English Use. The most noticeable influence of English/Sarum custom was in the ornaments and vestments. An anglo-catholic like myself could point out a number of differences from “standard,” the most notable being the lack of genuflections. To an uninformed participant it would probably have seemed like a typical idiosyncratic anglo-catholic Mass.

The thing that surprised me the most wasn’t in the chancel, though. It was watching the congregation (those who weren’t there for the conference). Very few of them made manual gestures during the service; most exited the pew to receive the Sacrament with neither a bow nor genuflection. While the chancel action seemed standard catholic fare, I didn’t see much evidence of catholic practice in the pews. I don’t know if this relates to discontinuity in liturgical practice between rectors or other factors but the spirituality of the ceremonial did not appear to be present in the gathered body.

American Sarum: Friday Night

M and I arrived at the conference late Friday afternoon and have been on the run until now. I’m stealing a moment between arriving for coffee and heading up to Morning Prayer. As a result, I’ll be putting out a few thoughts now that I may go back and fill in later. (Do let me know if there are specific points you’re interested in.)

The conferece is very well attended—indeed, I think that there are more participants than the organizers initially expected and there are moments when the logistics seem clearly scaled to a smaller crowd. There are about 100 participants; I’d guess that about two-thirds are musicians, the other third being clergy. Among the clergy there’s a nice group representing the Society of Catholic Priests.

The main activity of the night was a concert by the Trinity Wall Street choir singing medieval English music. The first half was music from the thirteenth century to the Eton Choirbook (c. 1500). The second half offered selections from composers during Queen Mary’s restoration of the Sarum Rite between Edward and Elizabeth. The music was glorious.

MP calls… More later.

Englishing Sarum

Time and leisure being what they are, this post will be far more a set of pointers than a properly-researched orderly exposition. I’ll loop back and hit Late Sarum later—I think it more important for the purposes of the coming American Sarum conference to consider a key step in the Sarum story: its leap to the modern day.

I choose the somewhat unwieldy “Englishing” quite deliberately because I want to highlight two of its sense, both of which are fully at play. The first is that, for the Sarum materials to have an impact on the England the America of the modern day, they had to leave the language of Latin and enter the tongue of English. This is the simplest meaning of the term.

However, something else is going on here as well. As a recent commenter pointed out in regard to another topic, you can never go back again. Bringing something forward from a past time into a present gives it a whole new set of meanings based on the new context, how the present context views the past, and the purposes and ideologies involved in selecting and reviving this particular slice of the past (and not others). There was a very deliberate program of “Englishing” at work in the 19th century revival of Sarum.

One of the key movements in 19th century, particularly Victorian, England was Gothic Revival. This was a confluence on romanticism, medievalism, and nationalism that found expression in a variety of ways. The term is most commonly associated with architecture, but it stands at the heart of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) and became a major cultural force.

Pause for a moment to consider King Arthur. Unless you’re a trained medievalist, your chief exposure to King Arthur and the Round Table is fundamentally rooted in Gothic Revival forms of romanticized medievalism lavishly illustrated by some of the great painters produced by the philosophy of the PRB. Tennyson’s Idylls of the King is a classic example of how these movements filtered into the broader English consciousness.

Catholic expressions of Anglicanism (i.e., Anglo-Catholics and other folks) typically trace themselves back to the Oxford Movement—and this is correct in a general theological way. The Oxford Movement was not Anglo-Catholic, though, and readers of the Tracts are often surprised at the amount of weight given to topics like bishops and the relationship between Church and State rather than ritual or ceremonial. The movement that had more impact on the daily practice and perception of the Church of England was the Cambridge Movement which birthed the Cambridge Camden Society which would become the Ecclesiological Society and exerted a disproportionate influence on how churches were built, decorated, and appointed. The Cambridge Camden Society, founded by Blessed John Mason Neale and comrades, was explicitly and fundamentally medievalist in orientation. The majority of Neale’s hymns are translations of medieval texts and even his original compositions—like Good King Wenceslaus—are medieval in character.

It’s within this context that a renewed interest in Sarum sources began. If you check back to the previous post on editions, you’ll note that the Victorian period—the second half of the 19th century—is when the publishing really took off. Because of the ideologies surrounding the revival, “Victorian Sarum” is both more and less than “historical Sarum.” Translations and syntheses of “Sarum” practice became an odd amalgamation of 1) historical sources, 2) contemporary Roman Catholic practice, and 3) the authors’ fancy. The balance of these three components varies by author and by work, some being more grounded, some being more fanciful.

Sarum becomes a cypher for a host of things. Sarum becomes directly equated with English. Thus other regional uses like Hereford, Lincoln, Exeter, and York were both plundered for raw material when there were Sarum gaps, and were downplayed in order to keep Sarum front and center. (Christopher, Pfaff’s chapter 14 is entitled “Regional Uses and local variety” and covers the English non-Sarum material quite well.)  When Sarum is equated to English then it was given a natural antithesis: Roman. Now, a more objective view will recognize that in the heyday of the Sarum Use there was no strictly “Roman Use.” The sense I get from what little I do know of late medieval Continental uses is that many of them had their own local customs and traditions. There was no monolithic “Roman” practice from which Sarum diverged, and it was probably as unique as its neighbors. My sense is that when Rome did move to standardize, it relied on the liturgical uses of the mendicant orders—particularly the Franciscans because the orders were already trans-regional (due to the whole “wandering” bit implied in “mendicant”).

Thus, if you wanted to espouse catholic practices but still keep a certain distance from Roman Catholicism and all that stood for in pre-Victorian and Victorian England, an appeal to “Sarum” was your key. It was both medieval and catholic but conceptually not Roman Catholic. It was native and English, and not a foreign imposition. Too, there’s the “Ornaments Rubric” which deserves a massive post of its own for the role it played—or was given to play—in grandfathering in Sarum appointments and ceremonial.

There’s quite a lot more to say here. Actually, there are probably several book-length studies that could written here. I don’t know if any have and would love to hear if you know of any…

In any case, given the current concerns, I want to point to just three resources. These are what I consider to be the three central works on Sarum/English ceremonial from the end of the 19th century and that have done the most to create what is referred to variable as the Sarum or English Use:

  • Vernon Staley’s Ceremonies of the English Church
  • W. H. Frere’s Principals of Religious Ceremonial
  • Percy Dearmer’s Parson’s Handbook

Each of these is available for download from Google Books and each deserves a post in their own right.

Formation and the Ecclesia Anglicana

One of the perennial Anglo-Catholic hobbies  is constructing and maintaining an acceptable myth of origins. That is to say, if you are going to argue that there is a historical and theological validity to the use of certain catholic principles, doctrines, and ceremonies—but not others—within Anglican churches, you need to have some reason to hand that accounts for it.

One of the classic favorites is the notion of the Ecclesia Anglicana. This is the concept that English Christianity is just a bit different from Roman Catholic Christianity—always has been, always will be—and that the Anglican Churches are simply the current expression of this separate but equal way of being. As a result, adherents of this view claim a certain freedom by identifying the differences between Roman and English practice.

I’ve always quite liked this notion in a big-picture kind of way, but have had all sorts of problems with it on a historical level. It’s one thing to assert it with a side-order of nostalgic Victorian nationalism, it’s another entirely to document it in a convincing fashion in the historical and liturgical record.

It’s with this background (a love for the concept but a weighty skepticism concerning its historical realities) that I surprised myself last night while washing dishes by coming up with a potential liturgical-historical argument in favor of it…

If you’re going to argue a difference between “English” and “Roman,” liturgical and historical evidence supports an approach that sees “Western” as a super-category made up of a number of related theological and liturgical traditions one of which is “English” and one (actually several that fuse into one) which becomes dominant as “Roman.” Part of the question, then, is in the matter of definitions: what’s “English” and what’s “Roman” and how are these situated in relation to what’s “Western”?

Then, once that’s been teased out, what are the things that can be identified as granting a fundamental theological distinction between them? (Understanding liturgy in its proper place as the kinetic side of the theological coin…)

One way to crack the nut is to point to the formative aspects of the liturgy, and I’d approach it this way. The Sarum strand is identifiably and recognizably English in locale granted that its roots straddle both French and earlier English practice. When you compare Sarum sources against Continental Western texts and the materials designated “Roman” by the Council of Trent, one of the differences that you find is the Mass Gospel Lectionary. If I recall correctly (and this came to me while washing dishes, mind you, and I haven’t consulted my tomes yet), there are differences at least in Advent, Epiphany, and in post-Pentecost.

What makes this difference major and important is not the Mass, however—it’s the Office. The Mass Gospel Lectionary appears in the third nocturn of the Night Office and determines the patristic homily found therein. A different Mass Gospel lectionary suggests that the nocturn lessons may be different with the possible result that the Sarum-using folk were being formed by reading different patristic texts at different times and were being formed and normed differently than their “Roman” brethren. If you are trying to argue for a theological and practical difference between the Ecclesia Anglicana and the Roman Church especially defined by its Tridentine liturgy, one of the best ways to do it would be a thorough audit of the nocturn texts.

Come to think of it, I recall that in Advent, at least, the second nocturn readings don’t quite cohere either. I seem to recall a Maximus of Turin text where the Tridentine/Roman sources have the Jerome text on Isaiah quoted below. The significance there is that the Sarum source seems to be drawing on an older “Western” strand as the Maximus likely is a hold-over from Paul the Deacon, the official Night Office collection from the Carolingian period.

So—to make a sustained and historically verifiable argument for a theologically distinct Ecclesia Anglicana one possible route could be a thorough comparison of the Night Office texts between the English and Continental sources. What you’d have to find in order to make a strong case is greater coherence between Sarum, Hereford, and York sources (perhaps Hyde Abbey as well?) than what you find in Continental sources, particularly those that feed into the Tridentine Breviary. Then, if you could further isolate a difference in perspective—so, a preponderance of a particular father or set of fathers over others—between “English” and “Roman” breviaries, then I’d be willing to give more credence to the notion of a theologically distinct Ecclesia Anglicana that contains demonstrable theological and formational tendencies from its Continental counterparts.

Brief Anglican Covenant Thought

Much ink, real and virtual, has been spilt over the Anglican Covenant. I’ve largely stopped commenting on the on-going inter-Anglican feuds but can’t resist just one little comment here…

The Archbishop of Canterbury is right: the Covenant has no ability to change what any one church does. It cannot make anybody do or not do anything. If we want to have either girl bishops or gay bishops, a Covenant will and can do absolutely nothing about it.

All the Covenant can do is more completely describe what other parties do about how one particular church acts.

A Covenant cannot and will not limit the actions of the Episcopal Church.

Take a look at the vote numbers from England’s General Synod for a second:

Bishops 39 for 0 against 1 abstention
Clergy 145 for 32 against 11 abstentions
Laity 147 for 25 against 8 abstentions

The passage of the motion for the Covenant to be sent to the dioceses for discussion and ratification was not half-hearted or narrow.

There are two ways to look at the Covenant: 1) a relatively province-neutral organizational scheme or 2) a referendum on North American actions. It seems that most of the rhetoric from the major players see it as the second. If this is true, then the English vote should be seen as a wake-up call to the Episcopal Church. Whether we’re doing the right things or not, our sister church has sent us a message—our actions will have consequences. Our response should be appropriate. That is, continued argument against the Covenant is, to my mind, pointless because it reads as a continuing argument for American exceptionalism, a statement that we don’t want to live up to the consequences of our actions.

A New Publishing Model?

I’ve got a couple of writing projects I’ve been working on that may be developing into books. Bits and pieces of these have appeared here on the blog in various forms. One is a practical guide to the liturgical year, the other is a text on liturgical/lectionary spirituality. I pitched the first to Church Publishing a little while back; they said that they were interested but that the timing wasn’t right. Of course, now we hear that there’s been a great deal of change at Church Publishing including a significant reduction of staff and therefore capability.

What does this bode for liturgical works for an Anglican audience? I don’t know for sure.

If I had to guess, however, it would indicate that the chance of being published through Church Publishing is shrinking. Furthermore, I’d imagine that they’re more likely to pick up works that are in line with the national church’s liturgical direction as exemplified by Enriching Our Worship. Material like mine with plenteous references to earlier times and other church traditions (e.g. the Missals…) may not be what they’ll be interested in publishing.

Where, then, to go? Will LTP start picking up the slack? Or is it time to look for a new model?

I’ve been following with interest the Simple English Propers Project as reported by Chant Cafe, NLM, and the CMAA. They just completed a fund-raising campaign which raised money for the completion of the project; the resulting work will, if I understand it rightly, be distributed freely on-line and for the cost of printing at Lulu. This was acheived through the use of digital micro-patronage–collections of $5, $10, $20 and, I’d assume, some larger donations that when pooled made it a viable project.

Now, there’s a certain cachet lacking in that it’s not produced by an official press. For the purpose of, say, a typical academic resume, a self-published work of this sort would have the credibility of—well—a blog posting. And the resulting work may lack something in not having the eye of an experienced editor looking it over. On the other hand…it works. It’s a means for circulating ideas, and particularly ideas that lack the financial viability need in the modern publishing market.

I’ve been thinking a bit about the patronage idea recently. I’d actually been considering making a standing announcement that I’d be willing to code a traditional calendar version of the breviary that would accept the use of pre/non-Vatican II lectionaries like the American or English ’28 versions or even the classical prayer book forms that don’t work with the current post-Vatican II scheme if I could get a patron, parish, or group of parishes to underwrite it. But that hadn’t bubbled to the putting-it-into-practice phase.

So here’s the thing: traditional print publishers are having a hard time. This is bad for niche writing and publishing. Nevertheless, there’s still interest in niche materials. Patronage, particularly in the form of digital micro-patronage, may represent a way forward for the production of work for which an author/editor deserves compensation but which can then be freely/cheaply circulated.

Thoughts?

 

SCP Meeting

I had a terrific time at the annual convention of the Society of Catholic Priests last week. My time there was regrettably short; since M is the eponymous “catholic priest” in the family, I stayed here with the kids, just popping up from Thursday evening and Friday morning while the in-laws came down to watch the girls. In any case, I got to meet people, some old friends, some blog readers I’ve known of for a while but never met in the flesh, and some new friends.

I think the presentation went quite well. I was speaking on Communion Without Baptism and my intention was to lay out the situation as I see it in order to foster a conversation. It worked as we had a spirited yet collegial discussion. And, yes, while most of the people at the conference were representing the traditional position, there were some who questioned it. I don’t know if any minds were changed but I think we all left with a better sense of where we were and where the the other arguments are located.

I had several requests for the text itself and I will be making it available once I get it filled in and smoothed out. So—I’m in the midst of finishing that off and preparing another presentation on letters of ascetic instruction comparing Jerome’s Letter 53 and Aelfric’s Letter to Sigeweard. Welcome to busy season…

St Clement’s Online

I received a note the other day from Paul Goings, frequent commenter, long-time friend of the blog, and one of the people I go to when I have questions on liturgy. There are now two blogs connected with events at St. Clement’s, Philly, the great bastion of Anglo-Papalism in the Episcopal Church.

The rector’s blog is www.reidandwrite.com and while liturgically traditionalist he takes a more liberal position on some of the questions of the day.

The other is the new S Clement’s Church Blog and so far has an assortment of passages from classic Anglo-Catholic authors and sermons from former rectors. I assume that it will follow a more Anglo-Papalist line on questions of the day.

I don’t know what will be in the offing there, but I’d love to see some discussions and descriptions of the usual liturgical goings-on. That is, what exactly does “Anglo-Papalist” look like there—both now and in former days—in terms of kalendars, schedules, ceremonial, etc.?

And Then There Were Two (Updated)

Anglo-Catholic parishes in the Episcopal Church in Baltimore…

This has been rumored for a while and I’d heard through unofficial channels but it is now officially announced: Mount Calvary is seeking to leave the Episcopal Church and join the Roman ex-Anglican Ordinariate. This comes as no surprise to those who know the church or the rector.

I’ve heard from off-line sources further rumors that they are in negotiations with the diocese to purchase the property. All I can say is, with the way that the Roman Church closes down low-attendance parishes, it would be a tragedy if they left and were able to buy the building only to have their new church close them down and consolidate them into some 1970’s space…

Update: The parish voted this weekend to join the Ordinariate. According to some sources, both votes (one for leaving, one for joining the Ordinariate) were about 85%. The upshot is that the remaining 15% have decided to remain within the Episcopal Church. Thus, the remaining congregation will be retaining the property. Legal difficulties will, no doubt, ensue.