Category Archives: Anglican

Breviary Hymns

I’ve had some thoughts on breviary hymns running around in my head the past few days. I’m teaching a class on the Church Year right now, so these issues are towards the front of my brain…

Anciently, hymns were something that appeared in the Daily Office—not in the Mass. Therefore they had a different dynamic than how we currently experience them. In our current church practice we would be shocked if a hymn that we had sung earlier in the season reappeared in that same season unless, perhaps, a hymn paraphrase were being used to replace a standard part of the liturgy like the Gloria. So—repetition is not a big part of our current understanding of hymns. Classically, however, repetition was the name of the game. The Little Hours of the Office—Prime, Terce, Sext, None, and Compline—use the same hymns every day. (The exception is Compline—in some Benedictine systems there was a different Compline hymn for the Winter and Summer halves of the year.) The hymns of the major hours—Vigils, Lauds, and Vespers—changed to fit the season or the observance.

At Lauds and Vespers in particular, the hymn was the largest primary element that changed with the season. Overall, the structure of the Office doesn’t change with the change of seasons as the Mass does; we don’t drop out elements of the Office in the way that the Mass drops the Gloria or formerly moved to a Tract instead of a Gradual. Thus, the hymn became the central element in the Office that gave depth and character to the season. In fact, it’s a discursive transitional point that moves us into the depth of the season. Remember, the traditional Roman patterns for Lauds and Vespers begin with the same essential structure:

  1. opening versicles,
  2. psalmody—typically five psalms although that can get calculated in a variety of ways,
  3. the little chapter—a verse or two usually from Scripture that also changes with the season,
  4. the hymn with an attendant versicle and response, and
  5. the gospel canticle—the Benedictus (Song of Zechariah) at Lauds and the Magnificat (Song of Mary) at Vespers.

In terms of flow, these hours begin with the Old Testament prophecy (as the Church understands the Psalms) that repeats weekly through the year. Then, the little chapter gives you a passage to focus on that relates integrally to the season. Then the hymn clarifies what the little chapter has only hinted at. The text of the hymn lays out a tapestry of biblical citations, allusions, images, and doctrinal understandings to give you a big-picture view of the themes and concepts of the season. As you sing through it, the hymn invites you to discover the presence of these themes and concepts in the psalms that you’ve just completed. As the hymn draws to a close, you now have a body of prophecy experienced through a particular hermeneutical lens that has highlighted certain theological facets that lay latent in the psalms until they were brought to your attention by the direction of the hymn. Now moving into the Gospel Canticle—the hour’s major turn into the New Testament—the newly highlighted prophecies from the Old Testament give a depth and context for the canticles’ discussion of God’s faithful fulfillment of his promises.

Thus, the hymns operated as the hermeneutical lenses par excellence for the season. They taught the themes and concepts, identified key doctrines and more than that helped these images, themes, and doctrines become apparent in Holy Scripture. Because of their daily repetition, the whole Psalter was scanned with these liturgical lenses multiple times, enabling the praise of God to lead into contemplation of the mysteries of redemption hidden in the Scriptures.

One of the praiseworthy features of the ’82 Hymnal is that it has retained many of these classical breviary hymns. Many, in fact, appear twice using the same translation set to two different melodies: a plainchant tune and a later musical form. In our recovery of the Daily Office, these hymns are an invaluable asset to growing deeper into the meaning of the seasons.

The placement of the hymn in the Office has changed—following the rubrics of the ’79 BCP, the hymn now goes at the end of the Office. The prayers separate it from the psalmody and from the two lessons. As a result, using the hymn as a hermeneutical lens for finding the seasonally-connected mysteries of redemption in the Scriptures has to be a more self-conscious process—not impossible, of course, but just not as natural as in the past. It is, however, a process that we would do well to cultivate. As we head towards a new liturgical year and its seasons, I’d encourage you to look into the breviary hymns for the upcoming seasons and, even if you don’t use them daily, at least keep them within your Office rotation to keep contact with the classical meanings of our seasons.

A simplified listing of the breviary hymns from the post-Tridentine era can be found on the second page of this document (Anglo-Catholic Style Daily Office), including numbers for hymns that appear in the ’82 Hymnal. A tenth-century English Benedictine list appears here. At some point in the future I may consolidate these for ease of reference (perhaps in connection with scanning the Office Hymns used by the Order of Julian of Norwich) but time currently does not permit.

Liturgy at the Cafe

There’s a post up on The Lead at the Cafe on liturgy. It follows the general thesis that anything traditional must therefore be inhospitable. I disagree…

Hospitality is essential but there any many ways of embodying hospitality. I believe that it is far more hospitable to invite someone to get to know your true self than than to dissemble or disguise. Speaking liturgically, this means that traditional liturgy need not be dispensed with simply because it is unfamiliar. It sends a strong theological message if we dispense with various elements of the liturgy for the sake of convenience—and the message sent is not a positive one…

Note on African statement

No, this isn’t what you think it is.

Rather, I’m drawing attention to the statement from the Anglican Peace and Justice Network.

Note these lines from the recent ACNS email about the communique:

A primary recommendation noted “our firm conviction that the Anglican Communion increase its presence in the regions and countries in conflict, and to be in solidarity with the affected local Anglican provinces and jurisdictions.

“This “increased solidarity” is especially needed, the communiqué says, with the Anglican provinces in the Great Lakes region of eastern Africa.The Great Lakes region includes countries surrounding Lake Kivu, Lake Tanganyika, and Lake Victoria. Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda have a combined population of 107 million people.

The whole Friedman-style flat earth thing is our reality; it has an enormous effect on our worldwide communions—Anglican and otherwise. What I keep discovering, though, is that I am constantly tripping over my massive ignorance about what has and is going on in other parts of the world.

Case in point—the reference in the above statement to the African Great Lakes region. How many of us know where that is? How many of us know what has happened there over the last few decades? While most of know know about the Rwandan Genocide, how many of us know anything about the Second Congo War, aka the Great War of Africa?

One of the pieces that bothers me here is that this war officially ended in 2003. I was a functioning literate adult the whole time it was going on but had no sense that it was happening.

New–and Better–Materials at OJN

Independently Fr John-Julian and Jonathan have both pointed me to new materials up at the Order of Julian of Norwich’s download page. Posted there are both the full chant offices and the Psalter broken into two parts (which doesn’t have the repeated pg. 50 error that mine does…). These files are not scans and are from the source documents and so are much cleaner than the ones I posted.

No More

More news . . . the retired bishop of Newark has decided to send a calculatedly insulting letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The incessant politicking, posturing, and rhetoric will only escalate from here.

I will be posting no more material on the current Anglican Unpleasantness until Martinmas at the earliest. There are plenty of voices of sanity and credibility out there to whom one should listen for such news—just don’t expect any here.

My time and energy will be much better spent in the 10th century. . .

Three More Bishops…

Rwanda’s Anglican Church has just elected three more Americans to be bishops. They are the Rev. Terrell Glenn, the Rev. Philip Jones and the Rev. John Miller. [h/t Thinking Anglicans]

I don’t know any of these folks–but you know who they’re not?

the Reverend William Ilgenfritz

Does that name ring a bell? No? He was the candidate that Forward in Faith put forward to become a bishop by some cooperative foreign Anglican body back in 2002 along with Fr. David Moyer. The call was re-iterated in 2007 when five years later Fr. Ilgenfritz was still not consecrated… (Fr. Moyer was consecrated a while ago by the Traditional Anglican Communion, a group not in communion with Canterbury.)

So—however many American bishops later and Fr. Ilgenfritz has not received the nod. I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t seem to bode well for the place of FiF and traditional Anglo-Catholics in the coming realignment.

[To clarify the confused, I know members of FiFNA and the SSC, have cordidal relationships with them, have learned much from them, but do not agree with them concerning the ordination of women.]

The “New” Hermeneutic

At Mass a bit ago I leaned over to M and asked: “When did this new hermeneutic happen? When did inclusion vs. exclusion become the chief means for interpreting Jesus’ healing miracles–and most other narratives in the Bible–even when it does considerable violence to the text itself?”

I was reminded by this by a number of bloggers’ links to a new review of +Spong’s latest publication where he seems (by their reports) to be quite heavy-handed with this approach. Yes, inclusion is part of the Christian message–but it’s not the whole message. Not by a long shot.

(A Few of) My Issues with the ’79 BCP

Inspired by Christopher’s musings, here are some of my thoughts on the American ’79 BCP. Yes, it is a product of the immediately post-Vatican II liturgical culture. Yes, many of the things that they did were good. Yes, it is time to re-examine their efforts. No, we have not had enough to to “live into” these liturgies and to think critically about them before doing another prayer book revision.

Certainly we can circulate trial liturgies like EOW and have discussions, but in my estimation, the time is not yet ripe for change.

I’ll lift up today three major issues to continue the conversation that Christopher started. I’ll confess up front, most of my thoughts here will revolve around the Office and its materials. There is more to be said about the Mass liturgies and the other occasional liturgies, but I’m not prepared to comment on them at this time. Too, I’m going to try and keep these more to bullet-points than fully-fleshed out arguments. (But some rambling will inevitably occur…)

1. The Psalter. I don’t have any huge substantive issues with the translation or poetry of the psalter that currently appears in the BCP. (I do have some minor ones, like that Ps 51:7 must, must begin with an adversitive conjunction! “But” works; “for” does not!) The problem that I do have has to do with the fact that a) there is only one and b) that it is fundamentally a Hebrew psalter.

In regard to a), the lack of a traditional language psalter means that a Rite I service cannot be prayed consistently from this book. Thus, my Rite I Daily Office must necessarily include a Rite II psalter unless I want to book juggle—which I don’t.This lack of a psalter and therefore the lack of a full traditional language rite underscores the fact that Rite I is set up as a transitional rite—it’s a sop thrown to those who prefer traditional language (and structure–and therefore the theology encoded in that structure) and will be disappearing with the next revision.

In regard to b), I’ll need to jump into some history of Bible translation to justify my point. The Bible of the Early Church was the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Old Testament with some additions made in Alexandria in the closing centuries of the time before Christ. The writers of the NT worked with the LXX—sometimes referring to either Hebrew or Aramaic if it better communicated their point—but the grand majority of Scripture citations in the NT are from the LXX. The Greek-speaking Eastern churches continued to use it, as they do to this day.

In the West, various people made translations as they were able. And most weren’t very good. Augustine complained about this; Jerome did something about it. In doing his translation work, though, Jerome made a large and decisive break from Church tradition: he decided to translate according to the Hebraica veritas (what would become the Masoretic text [MT]) rather than the LXX. Augustine didn’t like this decision at all, and correspondence survives where they go around on this issue.

Basically, Augustine argues that the Holy Spirit had been at work in the writing of the LXX and that its differences from the MT were because of the Spirit’s unfolding revelation, not corruption or mistranslation. (Jerome disagreed.) I think Augustine may have been unduly influenced by the Letter of Aristeas (which we now believe to be a marketing ploy to increase use and circulation of the LXX above competing versions), but I think that his logic is important to consider from the standpoint of Christian ecclesiology and pneumatology. That is, if the Spirit works through the Church, if the Church is who the Church is because it has struggled with common texts (both of which I believe), then should we use those texts instead of making up an eclectic text or going back to an earlier “unsullied” version? And thus I support on-going study and use of the textus receptus, the KJV, the Vulgate, the Douay-Rheims, even if I disagree on important points with most of the other people who also support them…

So, wait—what does this have to do with the BCP’s psalter? This: Jerome translated the OT of the Vulgate from the Hebrew. But he did the Psalter three different times and the one that stuck was his translation of the LXX. That’s why the psalm numbering of the LXX and the Vulgate disagree with the MT/KJV/RSV/NRSV/etc. Now–enter the Anglicans. When David Myles Coverdale translated his Bible in 1535, he translated it from the Vulgate. Thus, the Psalter in the first BCP was Coverdale’s translation of the Latin which was Jerome’s translation of the Greek. And we’ve been using it ever since…until now. The Psalter of the ’79 prayer book is a break with an almost 2,000 year Christian tradition of using the LXX Psalter in Christian worship. Western (and Eastern!) liturgy and theology flow from the Psalter as much or more than any other book of Scripture. By changing what we use in worship we are alienating ourselves and our liturgical texts from a classic vocabulary which has been continuously shaping catholic Christians of the British Isles from the beginning.

(Ok, that went on longer than I expected…)

2. Variation in the Offices. The major change between the Office in ’79 Book and its predecessors is the amount of tolerable variation. This occurs most notably in the canticles of Morning Prayer. Classically, we have used the Te Deum, the Benedicite, and the Benedictus. These texts are still present, but are occasional rather than constant. I have a real problem with this because of the formative power of these canticles, especially the Benedictus. The pattern and texture of this canticle has deeply formed Anglicans for centuries. Is there a suitable rationale for watering it down to become one option of several? I’ll give you two for-instances to back me here.

a) Take a look at the General Thanksgiving at the end of the Offices. do you see that phrase “holiness and righteousness” embedded in there? Guess where it’s from… And the more you look for that phrase, the more you’ll find it scattered throughout our prayer book. This is no accident—it’s formation.

b) I was reading a Harry Turtledove sci-fi book a while ago. It was an alternate history work–what if the South had won the Civil War? At the end was a speech from a politician. Turtledove, Jewish–not Anglican, had adapted an actual period speech to fit the circumstances of his novel. I caught my breath when reading it because as it unfolded its form followed, alluded to ,and even directly quoted portions of the Benedictus. It was clear even with Turtledove’s changes that the author had been an Anglican, formed by that text.

3. The Elephant in the Middle of the Liturgy. The greatest failure of the 79 BCP in my estimation is its failure to address the single biggest and most important change to liturgy for centuries. It’s a failure held in common between the Catholic and liturgical Protestant churches; how we address it–whether we address it–will speak volumes for the on-going tale of the liturgy as a vehicle for Christian formation. I speak, of course, of the three-year lectionary.

The heart of the Western one-year lectionary in place up until Vatican II can be traced as far back as our sources will go. One of the earliest surviving lectionaries, the Comes of Murbach, stands as a clear witness to the continuity from the late patristic/early medieval period up until the 1960’s. The Western understanding of the Church Year coalesced around that lectionary. Through centuries, the Church refined the year, its readings, its practices, its ethos, to make it a comprehensive tool for Christian formation. Now–it didn’t teach it well, or make it very accessible to the non-monastic/clerical crowd, but by the end of the early medieval period, this form existed to give incarnate expression to the doctrine of the creeds and the primary religious affections of the Christian life.

Key points of unity which often drew everything together—especially in the festal and fasting seasons–were the collects. That is, language and images from the appointed Gospel or Epistle often make an appearance, helping to bring everything together. I’ll argue that as Anglicanism developed, collects became even more important. If the BCP is the source of our unity and theology, the doctrine and ethos expressed by the collects have a central role in determining how we fill out the theology of the creeds.

But now we have a one-year cycle of collects and a three-year cycle of readings. We are faced with a choice. On one hand, we can let go of the old vision of the unifying power of the liturgical year and choose to move in new directions. On the other, we can adapt the theological and formational logic of the old year to the new system and study and work at introducing a three-year cycle of collects that will once again connect with the Mass lectionary. We have these choices—and I hope and pray that we actually think about them, pray about them, and consciously make a choice one way or the other instead of losing our classical understanding of Christian Time by default.

There’s more to say about these topics—and more topics to raise—but that’s it for now. Thoughts?