Slowly Reviving

I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things after General Convention. Family vacation began just as Convention ended so that’s giving me time away to think on things—and to not think on them as well. I’ll begin posting more on post-convention reflections in a bit. However, given that Great Cloud of Witnesses is to be made available and Weekday Eucharistic Propers  has been authorized, it now falls to me to get them pulled together and sent off to Church Publishing. That, in addition to all of the usual stuff, will occupy me for as while…

As will a new writing project that I’ll talk about in a bit; Liturgical Press and I have signed a deal on a follow-up project to my most recent book, Reading Matthew with Monks.  It’s not a direct follow-on—I’ll be going a bit further back than the Anglo-Saxon period, but Ælfric and his friends will probably make a least a cameo appearance or two. More on this later.

In the meantime, I’ve discovered that with the format change and general shifting around at the Episcopal Cafe, many of the pieces I wrote over there have since disappeared. For some of them, that’s no great loss; others I would like to have around in some form so I’ll likely repost here material that first appeared a while ago over there.

Reflections on CWOB

I’ve been thinking, writing, and talking to groups around the church for a while on the topic of Communion Without Baptism (CWOB). With the persistence of the topic at this year’s General Convention, I’m gathering some of my key thoughts about it here in a concise form.

  • We’re not engaging the real question. First, there tend to be two rather starkly drawn positions: “You’re exclusive, but thank God I’m not” and “You’ve got bad theology, but thank God I don’t.” Neither is particuarly conducive for discussion as to the real issues on the table. The central position in favor of CWOB is actually built around identity—Is the Episcopal Church the welcoming, inclusive body that it claims to be?—that sometimes manifests as anxiety—If we don’t let visitors commune will they be offended, feel excluded, and not come back? The central position against CWOB is built around a traditional understanding of sacramental theology. It has impeccible grounding in Scripture and Tradition. However, it functions best as a system of thought; too often it seems incapable of wrestling with or satisfying questions that come from the perspective of human needs and hungers—and, very frequently, wounds from the hands of other church bodies. To complicate things further, I think we frequently try to address a host of different issues and concerns under one label and would do ourselves a favor if we separate them out a bit to have greater clarity about what we’re really struggling with. So—if these aren’t the real questions, what is it? Here’s my take on the bigger question that we’re all trying to answer as best we can: How can the Episcopal Church be a welcoming and inclusive community with clear practices of hospitality that enact a coherent and compelling sacramental theology?
  • We’re dealing with several different levels of engagement: we need to discuss like with like. We have a canon in place throughout the Episcopal Church that says that the reception of communion is only for the Baptized. The central point of argument especially for the pro-CWOB position narrows the focus to a signle moment: when a priest is distributing communion and comes to a visitor with their hands out. Thus, the question is usually constructed along these lines: Should the canon be overturned for the sake of the pastoral act? Again, this is the wrong question because its an imprecise question that skips over important considerations. It’s far better to break this into at least two big questions with attendent discussions beside. These are the two big questions: What are the practices of hospitality in our worship gatherings? and How does the church understand the relationship between the sacraments with regard to discipleship and the broader life of faith?
  • We are not clear on our practices of hospitality. I do not believe for an instant that anyone on either side of the discussion wants people to feel excluded, rejected, or inadequate. To assume, imply, or assert that this is the position of “the opposite side” is a poor rhetorical ploy. Typically, the argument for CWOB is directly connected to its “missional” character. That is, CWOB is understood by some as a means of sacramental evangelism. The logic is that properly welcoming a stranger into our midst means allowing them to participate in every activity that everyone else does. I’m not sure this is actually the case and gets into the broader question of our confusion and uncomfortability with boundaries—when they are appropriate and when they are not, where they are helpful and where they are harmful. As a community that—in theory—is willing and—hopefully—eager to welcome strangers in, how do we do that properly? And are we doing it consistently? Do we welcome all to the table in the chancel yet give guests the cold shoulder at coffee hour?
  • The role of host must be performed intentionally with regard for the guest. When it comes to hospitality and welcoming the stranger there are two fundamental roles here, guest and host. The stranger who comes in among us (known or not, invited or not, Episcopal or not, baptized or not) is the guest. We, the church community generally and the priest particularly as the leader of the liturgy, have an obligation to be a good host. The role of the host is to welcome the guest and, formally or not, lay down expectations for how things should proceed. (This is becoming especially important as there are more and more visitors who may have never been in a church before and have no clue what we do or why we do it and that specific actions have meanings.) The role of the guest—and yes, being a guest is a role with its own demands as well—is to be welcomed and to observe the expectations as possible and appropriate. There are “good” hosts and “good” guests; there are “bad” hosts and “bad” guests. The way that boundaries are constructed and negotiated relates directly to how these roles are played. For instance, when I go to a Roman Catholic Mass, I do not receive the Eucharist. Do I feel in my heart that I am able to receive that Eucharist? Absolutely! But to do so would be to transgress my role as guest. I (personally) don’t feel excluded because I know perfectly well going into it that my host—the Roman Catholic Church and the people who represent it—reserve the Eucharist for Roman Catholics. They are being a good host if they remind me of that, and I am being a good guest when I respect it irrespective of whether or not I believe they are correct in that practice. On the flip-side, they would be bad hosts if they don’t make it clear who is welcome and who is not; likewise, I would be a bad guest if I disregarded a clear direction and received anyway. Of course, they would be an even better host if they made it clear that I was welcome to come up and receive a blessing with clear directions around what I should do—because that gives me clarity as a guest and helps me join in with those around me even if I am not receiving the Eucharist. (The most uncomfortable I’ve ever felt in a Roman church was when I joined the queue, came up to the priest with my arms crossed over my chest to indicate that I wanted a blessing, and he just stared at me in utter uncomprehension…) In our role as host, are we being clear with our guests?
  • Choosing to be a bad host is the wrong answer. My fear is that, in some places, we choose to be bad hosts because it is the easier option. If no announcement is made, if the practice of the church is simply skipped over, no-one has to feel excluded or uncomfortable. CWOB becomes the default because the host is not willing to speak up. The real problem here is that it sabotages the agency of the guest. Those who are baptized, who are the leaders in the church, are robbing the guest of even knowing that there is a choice to be made. They are imposing their own sense of propriety (and sometimes their own anxieties) upon a guest who may not share them at all. If a declaration is made along these lines: “All are welcome to come to the altar. Baptized Christians are welcome to receive the Eucharist—put out your hands as the priest comes by; If you wish to receive a blessing—cross your arms over your chest,” it fully fulfills the hostly role. The guest is presented with the choice—they are allowed to have their own agency. If you are baptized you have the choice to receive or not receive. If you are not baptized you have the same two choices. At this point, the host goes with whichever action the guest makes.
  • How much of this is really about us, how we perceive ourselves, and how we want to be perceived, rather than about the guest? Here’s a thought experiment for you… If you went to a service at a Hindu temple with a friend and, at one point, your friend turned to you and said, “This part here is only done by sworn devotees of this deity,” would you feel offended and excluded and insist that you had a right to participate? For myself, I wouldn’t because to do so would be to disrespect my friend’s culture and beliefs and sense of what is holy and sacred. Why do we assume that letting visitors know that Eucharist is for the baptized would make them feel offended and excluded? The bald fact of the matter is that we do not have hordes of unbaptized people clamoring at our doors for an opportunity to receive the Eucharist. Very often a “wide welcome” is put out for the benefit of the people already in the pews—to reassure us about what kind of people we are (welcoming and hospitable [whether we actually are, in truth, or not]) and about what kind of church we belong to (a welcoming and inclusive one [not like those other ones—perhaps especially the one we might have left]). A pro-CWOB stance helps us feel a certain way about our self and our church regardless of that feeling’s basis in fact.
  • Sacraments are part of a larger pattern of being and doing. When the discussion about CWOB is focused on and condensed around that single moment—the priest coming up to a stranger with outstreched hands—we lose sight of the larger scope of the issue. In some of the rhetoric in favor of CWOB, the Eucharist is presented as a generic sign of God’s love, affection, and grace. To withhold it, then, is seen as ecclesiastical control and therefore denial of God’s love, affection, and grace to the unbaptized. This is both false and a misconstrual of what the church teaches about both Baptism and Eucharist. I’ve already written at some length on this point so I’ll refer you to that discussion if you want to see the logic, but the prayer book clarifies that the grace channeled to us from God in the Eucharist is grace to better inhabit and more fully embody the covenant relationship created in Baptism. Apart from that relationship it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense! The sacraments were given to the church for a reason. Through them, we enter into the reconciliation offered to us by God through Christ mediated by the Holy Spirit. They are a means of helping us live more fully and share more deeply the life of God, which—on our end—looks like a life of discipleship chiefly oriented around following Jesus on the way of the cross. To offer the Eucharist apart from Baptism renders our sacramental theology incoherent. This relates directly to the issue of altering the canon. If we simply remove our church-wide canon against the unbaptized receiving the Eucharist, we will be establishing a policy of incoherency. This is fundamentally different from the pastoral question of whether an unbaptized stranger can or has been moved by a form of prevenient grace that has inspired them to broach the obligations of hospitality and receive the Eucharist. Can this form of extraordinary, prevenient grace occur? That seems to be the testimony of some, including the oft-cited Sara Miles. But it would be just that—an extraordinary operation of grace. Jesus is the victim, the food, and the host of the Eucharistic meal; however, the Church is the steward of the mysteries. The Eucharist didn’t just appear in the middle of a sidewalk somewhere; it was given by Christ to the Church to administer in keeping with the Gospel message. The ordinary channel and means of grace taught in Scripture, Tradition and—yes—centuries of Experience moves from Baptism to Eucharist. That’s not to deny that it doesn’t sometimes occasionally work the other way around, but that is not what has been handed over to us. CWOB as a policy undercuts the importance of Baptism and—in particular—undercuts the theological foundation of the ’79 Book of Common Prayer which places a particular importance on Baptism, the baptismal covenant, and the concept of a baptismal ecclesiology.
  • Don’t underestimate the Eucharist. When I said up there that we needed a coherent and compelling sacramental theology, I meant “compelling” in a quite literal sense. When I was doing a presentation on a variety of prayer book topics in the Atlanta area in the Spring, I met up with some friends. In the course of our discussion I mentioned that I would be talking about CWOB and one of them asked, rather urgently, what I was going to say about it. I responded that I didn’t think it was a good idea. “Good!” she said, “Because not being able to take communion was what made me a Christian!” My friend was Jewish and, on going to an Episcopal church with friends, became intrigued about what she was not allowed to do.  What was so special that it was reserved in such a way? Answering that question led her to Baptism. “If I had been allowed to take it, I probably wouldn’t have thought much of it,” she told me. Do we believe that the Eucharist is something special, something sacred? And if so, do our practices demonstrate that? There is a perception—often in the name of inclusion—that boundaries are exclusive by nature. I would suggest that the boundary around the Eucharist is not one put in place for the purpose of excluding but for the purpose of demarcation in order to preserve the logic and intention of the sacramental life of discipleship. What is exclusive, therefore, is not the fact of a boundary, but the practices of hospitality around it—do we indicate its reason and purpose in a way that invites the stranger to investigate and understand what we find so compelling about it, or are we simply refusing themmin a truly excluding way, or are we abdicating our hostly responsibility because it feels nicer, gratifies our self-image, and absolves us of the need to do the engagement of evangelism?
  • We need respect, solid theology, and good practices. As I said at the outset, I don’t think we’re actually wrestling with the right question. We need to do so. Doing that will help us frame our discussions in a far better way. We need to respect and listen to one another. A key component of this debate is that it frequently touches on places of deep woundedness. People have been deeply hurt by churches—often, usually, the churches in which they were raised. Sometimes it was because of ways that those churches deliberately excluded them because of their gender, sexual orientation, or marital status. Sometimes it was because of ways that they felt the church had betrayed them by altering their teachings. The first is more common than the second and, in my experience, many of the people who advocate for CWOB do so because of these wounds. On one hand, those arguing against CWOB—like me—need to be attentive to this fact and consider practices of hospitality that do not trigeer or replicate this pain in others. On the other hand, personal feelings do not absolve us as a church of the need to do solid theology and to enact it in good practices.

Sacramental Theology 101: Baptism and Eucharist

[Note: This is a piece I wrote and posted on the Episcopal Cafe in advance of the 77th General Convention in 2012 in relation to a resolution in favor of communing the unbaptized.]

The Episcopal Church is a big-tent organization when it comes to theology. This is often a good thing as it allows a whole bunch of us who don’t necessarily agree on everything to come together, worship, and proclaim Jesus together in the world. On the other hand, when we do need to sit down and sort something out theologically, we’re sometimes at a loss for how to do it because of a fundamental lack of agreement about terms. This has been my experience around the “Communion without Baptism” debate. I come to the table from a Prayer Book Catholic perspective; certain words, terms, and ideas mean certain things to me and those with whom I live and worship. But when I talk with other Episcopalians, I sometimes get the sense that we’re talking past one another due to a lack of shared conceptual framework.

The “big tent” brings us together despite our differences; but can it help us understand each other? Actually—I think it can…

The prime mechanism of the “big tent” is the Book of Common Prayer—this is what we use together and what does give us a set of shared expressions (even if we don’t always entirely agree on what those expressions mean!). Likewise, it contains a variety of materials that I think can assist us when we try to talk God with one another.

Towards the back of the prayer book is a catechism (pp. 845-62). It’s a brief little thing, just under twenty pages, but it provides a basic outline of the faith that is fundamental enough that all Episcopalians—no matter their party affiliation—can get behind it.

Working solely from the catechism, I’d like to explore what the prayer book says that Episcopalians believe about the sacraments—particularly Baptism and Eucharist—and see if these can help us get a better sense of the issues surrounding a church policy that programmatically ignores Baptism when it comes to eucharistic distribution.

First, a quick word about the catechism: we must note what it is, and what it isn’t. The brief introduction on p. 844 clarifies this for us: “It is a commentary on the creeds, but is not meant to be a complete statement of belief and practices; rather, it is a point of departure for the teacher…” It’s not intended to be comprehensive and there are important parts of Christian theology that it either glosses or skips over entirely. Nevertheless, being yoked to the creeds, it touches on essential points and gives us the best possible opportunity for broad buy-in.

We have to start at the very beginning and go from there:

Q. What are we by nature?

A. We are part of God’s creation, made in the image of God.

Q. What does it mean to be created in the image of God?

A. It means that we are free to make choices: to love, to create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation and with God.

Q. Why then do we live apart from God and out of harmony with creation?

A. From the beginning, human beings have misused their freedom and made wrong choices. (p. 845)

So—all humanity is created in the image of God. God loves us all. Period. Full stop. Furthermore, God wants us to “live in harmony with creation and with God.” God is attempting to reconcile us all to himself and, through that reconciliation, to the whole created order. God calls to us in a variety of ways and through a variety of means. Despite this, we find through the pages of the Old Testament that there is one particular method that God continually chooses to use in the task of reconciling humanity back to himself: the covenant.

Q. What is meant by a covenant with God?

A. A covenant is a relationship initiated by God, to which a body of people responds in faith. (p. 846)

God calls us both individually and collectively, but in particular God likes to make covenants wherein a whole body of people respond in faith. There are a number of important covenants in Scripture: God’s covenant with Noah and all flesh, the covenant with Abraham and all his descendants, the covenant with Moses and all Israel, the covenant with David.

God’s ultimate act of covenant-making, however, was a covenant made in and through the blood of Jesus and his victory over the grave:

Q. How can we share in [Jesus’s] victory over sin, suffering, and death?

A. We share in his victory when we are baptized into the New Covenant and become living members of Christ.

Q. What is the New Covenant?

A. The New Covenant is the new relationship with God given by Jesus Christ, the Messiah, to the apostles; and, through them, to all who believe in him.

Q. What did the Messiah promise in the New Covenant?

A. Christ promised to bring us into the kingdom of God and give life in all its fullness.

Q. What response did Christ require?

A. Christ commanded us to believe in him and to keep his commandments. (pp. 850-1)

Many of the early covenant communities were something that you had to be born into; the New Covenant through Jesus is different. We enter into it through Baptism.

Now—stop for a second. Look back up the page. We said at the outset of our catechism crawl that God made us all in his image, that he loves us all, and that he is seeking our full reconciliation back to him. None of that has changed here. No one is saying that God only loves the baptized. What the catechism is saying is that Baptism ushers us into a particular covenant community. As such, it is a particular community who has chosen to acknowledge a certain kind of relationship with God that both claims a specific promise from God (“a new relationship”, “coming into the kingdom of God”, “life in all its fullness”)and that in response the community takes upon itself certain obligations (“believe in [Christ]”, “keep his commandments”). Baptism, therefore, is a deliberate and public change of our relationship with God by entering into a specific covenant community.

In case there’s any question we’ll pick up this one just to connect all the dots:

Q. What is the Church?

A. The Church is the community of the New Covenant. (p. 854)

No surprise there!

Since we’re getting pretty deep into Baptism, it’s time to focus on the sacraments themselves:

Q. What are the sacraments?

A. The sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.

Q. What is grace?

A. Grace is God’s favor toward us, unearned and undeserved; by grace God forgives our sins, enlightens our minds, stirs our hearts, and strengthens our wills.

Q. What are the two great sacraments of the Gospel?

A. The two great sacraments given by Christ to his Church are Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. (p. 858)

Ok, we need to be quite careful here about exactly what is and isn’t said—this is where some major confusion can come in. First, it’s worth repeating this line again: “Grace is God’s favor toward us, unearned and undeserved; by grace God forgives our sins, enlightens our minds, stirs our hearts, and strengthens our wills.” (The former Lutheran in me loves this line!) Second—and this is really important—note carefully this wording: “The sacraments are…given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.” The key words are “sure and certain means.” What we never ever say here or intend here is that the sacraments are the only or the sole means by which God dispenses grace. To say that is truly to put God in a little box! God is free to dispense his free, unearned and undeserved gifts of grace in any way that he sees fit. It’s not our job to oversee this. What it is our job to do, however, is to “believe in him and to keep his commandments.”

What is particular about sacramental grace is that it is a “sure and certain means of grace.” We don’t know all of the ways and means and methods through which God dispenses grace—however we do know for sure that the sacraments are channels that God has given to us as a covenant community to convey his own grace. We don’t own it, but it has been promised to us, it has been given to the Church—the covenant community—that we might be stewards of it according to God’s commands.

Q. What is Holy Baptism?

A. Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children and makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.

. . .

Q. What is the inward and spiritual grace in Baptism?

A. The inward and spiritual grace in Baptism is union with Christ in his death and resurrection, birth into God’s family the Church, forgiveness of sins, and new life in the Holy Spirit. (p. 858)

Baptism’s grace brings us into a particular instantiation of God’s family, the Church, among other things. This family is not a generic group that includes all the created but is a specific grouping of the covenant community as made clear in the identification of the communion of the saints which shares with the previous point the terminology of God’s family:

Q. What is the communion of saints?

A. The communion of saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise. (p. 862)

What distinguishes this family is precisely the bond with Christ through “sacrament” (pre-eminently Baptism) as well as “prayer, and praise.”

The Eucharist, then, is described thusly:

Q. What is the Holy Eucharist?

A. The Holy Eucharist is the sacrament commanded by Christ for the continual remembrance of his life, death, and resurrection, until his coming again.

. . .

Q. What is the inward and spiritual grace given in the Eucharist?

A. The inward and spiritual grace in the Holy Communion is the Body and Blood of Christ given to his people, and received by faith.

Q. What are the benefits which we receive in the Lord’s Supper?

A. The benefits we receive are the forgiveness of our sins, the strengthening of our union with Christ and one another, and the foretaste of the heavenly banquet which is our nourishment in eternal life. (pp. 859-60)

The language here is the language of building on something previous. The Eucharist is the gift to Christ’s people who are best understood not as “everybody” or “those whom Christ loves” (which is, again, “everybody”) but more specifically those “[united] with Christ in his death and resurrection, [born] into God’s family the Church” (p. 858)—i.e., the baptized. Following on the language of union in Baptism is the statement that the Eucharist is a “strengthening of our union with Christ and one another” (p. 860); what was begun in Baptism is nourished and nurtured in the Eucharist. The language here concerning the Eucharist assumes Baptism in both the identification of the community and the benefits of the specific Eucharistic graces.

I would be remiss if I did not include one more section on the Eucharist:

Q. What is required of us when we come to the Eucharist?

A. It is required that we should examine our lives, repent of our sins, and be in love and charity with all people. (p. 860)

On one hand, I know that some will point out that “being baptized” is not included in this list; that’s true. However, the items on this list are not a set of ecclesial pre-conditions, but rather a set of spiritual dispositions. (Indeed, they were pretty much taken directly from the Exhortation to confession on p. 330 which itself was taken directly from earlier prayer books that explicitly required Confirmation before receiving the Eucharist.) On the other hand, while Baptism is not mentioned explicitly, we must ask ourselves if the casual un-churched attendee has had the time and opportunity for the examination and repentance directed here. Repentance for sin in particular is largely a spiritual discipline of the Church.

This having been said, I believe that we can construct from the catechism a set of basic principles around our use and practice of the sacraments that all Anglicans can agree on. I’ll number them for ease of reference:

1. God loves all who were created in his image—period.

2. God calls us to reconciliation with himself and with creation.

3. Historically, God’s preeminent channels for calling humanity to reconciliation are covenants through which covenant communities are created.

4. A covenant community is a deliberate body that has taken upon itself obligations as part of recognizing a particular relationship with God has initiated and that the community has both recognized and accepted.

5. The Church generally and the Episcopal Church specifically is a covenant community the entrance into which is Baptism.

6. Baptism is not a sign that God loves the baptized more than other people, nor is it a denial that God loves those who are not baptized.

7. Baptism is both a sign and an agent of a changed relationship with God wherein the baptized community recognizes a particular relationship with the Triune God through Baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus and takes on the obligations that Jesus laid upon us (preeminently, to love God and love our neighbor and to keep his commandments—see p. 851)

8. Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ that itself points back to the Body of Christ entered into through Baptism.

9. There are sacramental graces conferred through Baptism and Eucharist that aid us in living deeper into the covenant relationship established with the Triune God through Baptism into Jesus and the on-going reception of his Body and Blood in the Eucharist.

10. Sacramental grace is not the only kind of grace there is, but is a sure and certain means of grace given to a particular covenant community for the strengthening of the bonds of that covenant.

11. Reception of the Eucharist occurs within the covenant community and within the context of the spiritual disciplines of the covenant community.

Now, as a self-professed Anglo-Catholic, there’s a whole lot more that I’d want to say and add in—but I won’t; I’m not trying to lay out an Anglo-Catholic theology of the Sacraments but a broadly Episcopal one which I can live with as can my Evangelical and Broad-Church friends.

That having been said, I can’t and won’t resist the temptation to throw out these few points:

A. The Church is the covenant community entered into through Baptism.

B. Apart from the covenant in Baptism, receiving the Eucharist just doesn’t make much sense! Why would anyone want to be strengthened in a very specific kind of relationship that they have not chosen to be a part of?

C. The call for Communion Without Baptism fundamentally confuses our understanding of both God’s love and God’s grace. People don’t need Baptism or the Eucharist to be loved by God—God already does that. Nor is the grace given in the Sacrament some kind of generic “divine good favor.” Rather, Sacramental grace is grace to better inhabit and more fully embody the covenant relationship created in Baptism.

D. I don’t control God’s grace distribution; he does that as he pleases. However the sure and certain grace in the sacrament is given to and embodied within a particular covenant community. We don’t possess it, per se, but we are stewards of it. We dispense it as we have received it—within the covenant community.

E. What we are called to do—one of those pesky commandments of Christ, in fact—is to invite people into the covenant community so that they can share in this particular relationship with God and be nurtured into reconciliation with God as we know and grasp the Triune God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus: “Go therefore and 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 I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20a).

 

Calendar Update

The resolution on “A Great Cloud of Witnesses” came before the House of Deputies yesterday. It passed, but with a very interesting amendment.

Rather than being “authorized”, convention will now “make [GCW] available for publication and distribution by individuals and in congregations and other church groups for devotional or catechetical use, or use in public worship subject to the provision for optional commemorations on page 18 of the Book of Common Prayer.

As I read this, GCW will then have the same force as “Daily Prayer for All Seasons”. Which is to say—not a whole lot. Essentially, it will be an entirely optional supplementary book. Any one concerned about its “criteria for inclusion” no longer needs to be concerned because it is not actually official this way.

This will mean some revision to the text of the document; part of the premise of GCW was that the official sanctoral calendar of the Episcopal Church would be formally established as the Holy Days as designated in sections 1-3 of the Calndar section of the BCP. If GCW is available, then it has no legislative force and references to this designation will need to be removed.

I must say—this is a very interesting development! It raises some questions which will have to be both thought through carefully and interpreted.

1. This means that Lesser Feasts & Fasts 2006 still remains the official sanctoral document of the Episcopal Church. It is now back on the digital shelves of Church Publishing in hardcover form; we need a digital form as well.

2. The official criteria for sanctity in the Episcopal Church are the criteria listed on 491-3 in LFF2006. Page 492 includes the line: “Baptism is, therefore, a necessary prerequisite for inclusion in the Calendar.”

3. As the resolution currently stands, GCW is “made available” but Weekday Eucharistic Propers 2015 is still “authorize[d] for trial use.” So one-half of the two-part work is authorized, the other simply made available. Interesting… Will WEP2015 make sense as a standalone work? I suppose we’ll see.

4. The big question from where I sit is what happens to the related resolutions, i.e., those pertaining to the revised collects and to the Big List of Additions. Are they still directed towards GCW only? If so, what are the implications of those if they are only being “made available”?

5. In line with the “made available” designation, I’m now not entirely sure what we will have to report back to GC79 as directed in the last few resolves. It seems to me that this may now be as simple as “yes, it’s available…”

We’ll see how things proceed from here. Since it has been amended, this resolution will need to go back to the House of Bishops and be voted upon again. Of course, if that doesn’t happen—if it doesn’t get re-consented—then the discussion is done and LFF2006 remains our official sanctoral resource with no further direction for the SCLM to do anything with the structure of the Calendar. (Which would not be a bad thing in my book.)

Quick Thought on Eucharist, Communion, and A044

Joseph Jungmann’s The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development is an indisputable classic in the field of liturgy and is one of the great works that defines the thought of the Liturgical Renewal Movement which triumphed in the Roman Catholic liturgies that came forth from Vatican II as well as our own Episcopal 1979 Book of Common Prayer.  As readers know, one of my favorite times and places is the Early Medieval West. Suffice it to say, it wan’t one of Jungmann’s favorites. Indeed, it’s precisely the time and place where he sees the Mass losing part of its original character and converting into something contrary to the experience of the Last Supper. He writes in regard to the situation after the debates between Radbertus and Ratramnus:

Forgotten is the relationship between the sacramental Body—the “mystical” Body, as it was then often termed—and the Body of Christ which is the Church. The same is true if the connection between the Sacrament and the death of Christ. And so, too, the conscious participation of the community in the oblation of Christ is lost sight of, and with it that approach of the community towards God to which the Sacrament in its fulness is a summons or invitation. Instead, the Mass becomes all the more the mystery of God’s comin to man, a mystery one must adoringly wonder at and contemplate from afar. The approach to the Holy Table of the Lord in Communion is no longer the rule even on feast days; already the Eucharist had not been our daily bread for a long time. (Jungmann, Mass of the Roman Rite, 1.84)

For Jungmann the spectacle (in the most literal of terms…) of the early medieval Eucharist was a deformation of the rite because it placed the notion of the whole community’s corporate celebration in jeapordy. Instaed, the Eucharist became something that only a priest would do and receive by himself; the only job of the community was to observe and that wasn’t even necessary.

One of the items up before the Episcopal Church’s General Convention is A044. As it was originally proposed, it asked that provisions be made so that lay people can distribute preconcecrated bread in the absence of a priest on a continual and habitual basis. The resolution has since been altered by the House of Bishops (for which I am quite pleased) so this text is not up for a vote. However, I feel compelled to make the observation that the same thing is going on here that Jungmann complained about: one particualr portion of the Church’s Eucharist has been seized upon without reference to the meaning of the rite as a whole.

Just as the early medieval Eucharist devolved into a spectacle, an act of observation, the theology (whether formulated or not—probably not) informing the original text of A044 reduced it simply to an act of feeding.  It may be Communion, but what would be lost is precisely “Eucharist”: the communal celebration which joins us into Christ’s own self-offering to the Father.

Talking Saints with The Collect Call

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to chat with Brendan O’Sullivan-Hale, one of the hosts of “The Collect Call” podcast about “Great Cloud of Witnesses” and the Episcopal Church’s multiple perspectives on sanctity. As I’ve said before, I love the way Brendan and Holli engage the collects of the prayer book in a warm and practical way; if you’re looking for discussion starters for Christian Education or Adult Forums, this podcast would be a great choice.

We had a great chat although I hardly let Brendan get a word in edge-wise for all my ranting and rambling. It lays out much of what was going through my mind as the Calendar subcommittee was working on the transition from Holy Women Holy Men towards A Great Cloud of Witnesses.

Of course, I’ll be interested to see what happens with GCW; I believe they will (or may already have by the time you read this…) be taking up GCW this morning in legislative committee. I have no idea what will come out of that process. (But I’m keeping on top of things by following Bishop Dan Martins [@BishSpringfield] on Twitter as he’s live-tweeting the meetings!) I’ll say again as I’ve said before, I think Great Cloud of Witnesses is the best way forward given what we had and parameters we were given to work with. Is it my vision of a satisfactory sanctoral resource for the church? No. But the only way to accomplish what we truly need to do is to go back to the drawing board and the Baptismal Covenant and the sacraments and go from there—not putting a band-aid on a bolted-on addition to Lesser Feasts & Fasts…

But—without further ado, caveats, or framing—here’s the interview!: A Great Cloud of Holy Women, Holy Men

Thoughts on Marriage

Even though I haven’t been writing here, I have been pretty busy over the last few weeks. One of the things I’ve been working on is now up at the Fully Alive site. If you’ve not been following along, a group of four authors—all of whom are regular writers at the Covenant blog run by The Living Church—released a position paper called “Marriage in Creation and Covenant” that was highly critical of the work of the Task Force on Marriage.

Essentially, they’re trying to appeal to the “Augustinian tradition” to argue against same-sex marriages in the Episcopal Church. Unfortunately, there are several rather glaring issues with it that I point out.

Now—I have to admit that I haven’t read the new material out there on the marriage issue. As you can imagine, the polemics of recent years have been bolstered by a number of books on both sides; I haven’t read any of them. As a result, I’m coming to this discussion in the position of a layman who doesn’t know the marriage literature but does have a certain amount of experience with biblical and patristic texts so that’s where I focus.

I am fully committed to our use of Scripture and the Church Fathers as we try to be faithful Christians in the 21st. But part of being faithful means recognizing the cultural distance between us and the Fathers, between us and the Scriptural text, and working through what those differences mean. MCC failed to do that; I try to point out why that’s problematic.

Give it a read and let me know what you think…

 

The Dorchester Chaplains

Susan Snook mentioned the Dorchester Chaplains below; I didn’t address it in the comments because this issue does deserve a full-on post of its own to sort through what we’re working with here.

For those unaware, the commemoration of the Dorchester Chaplains kicked off one of the biggest focused arguments around Holy Women, Holy Men (HWHM). You can see the commemoration here. I see a lot of different pieces to this commemoration and the controversy around it. Let’s call them out one by one…

1. The inclusion of an unbaptized person on the calendar. Of the four people listed in the commemoration, one of them is Rabbi Alexander D. Goode. Obviously, Rabbi Goode was not baptized. For those of us with a higher theology of sanctity, this presents a problem. We define “saints” as—among other things—Christians who witness to the particular character of God in Christ through their life and works. Therefore, having an unbaptized saint is a non-starter; it contradicts the definition. However…

2. There is a lack of consensus in the Episcopal Church on the definition of the term “saint.” People’s Exhibit A here is the (in)famous Dancing Saints mural at St. Gregory of Nyssa, San Francisco. Exhibit B would be the exchange that Donald Schell (part 1, part 2)  and I (full thing) had at the Episcopal Cafe on saints and sainthood sparked by his writing on the mural. Exhibit C is the comment section for Lent Madness each year. I fear that the broad middle regards sainthood and sanctity in terms borrowed more from Moralistic Therapeutic Deism than it does from classical Christianity. That is, linking MTD’s points 2 and 5, I think the default definition is “good, nice, fair people who went to heaven when they died.” The additions that came in with HWHM also left some asking if the new criteria could be simply summed up as “proto-progressives.” What’s tricky here too is RC theologian Karl Rahner’s notion of “anonymous Christians” which, as far as I’m concerned is like throwing the back-door open wide and laying out a welcome mat for MTD theology.  Because there is no formal definition, those who see saints as (minimally) baptized have nothing substantive to appeal to against those who counter that a given person was “really good.”

3. Unbaptized martyrs. To complicate matters, there was one class of unbaptized persons who could make it into the rolls of the saints in classical Christianity: martyrs. This was a necessary situation because of the persecutions of the pre-Constantinian period. You would have catechumens and such who were seized by the authorities and killed for their faith without ever formally having been baptized. As a result, the church came up with the idea of a baptism with blood which lays down the principle that those who desired baptism but were killed before receiving it did get a de-facto baptism with their own blood and could, therefore be honored as sainted martyrs. The most famous examples on our calendar are Perpetua and Felicity.

It was absolutely axiomatic in the early church that martyrs were saints. The first saint of the church was Stephen and he provides the foundational account: he followed Jesus and imitated him so perfectly that he died a death like his—killed on account of his testimony concerning Jesus, condemned despite his innocence of any real crime, and forgiving his killers, even praying on their behalf with the result that one of them—Saul—was himself converted. Once we hit the Constantinian period and the opportunity to die at the hands of the state decreased, the church had to start thinking about other criteria and other forms of martyrdom. Fast forward to the present day and we see that the concept of martyrdom has become a little murky.

The 1988 4th edition of LFF first includes “Constance, Nun, and her Companions” with the subtitle “Commonly known as ‘The Martyrs of Memphis.'” What killed them was not a hostile government but a mosquito-bourne illness; they were not killed because they refused to recant or burn a pinch of incense to the emperor. Rather, they died because of their commitment to their mission of helping the sick and poor who could not or were not able to flee the diseased city. I think we can see why this is referred to as “martyrdom”; their deaths were due to their commitments to Christian principles. In this case, we can see how dying for a principle is linked to dying for Christ. But is all death on behalf of principles death, on behalf of Christ? Do we need to draw any lines—and if so, where? Since we already mentioned St. Gregory of Nyssa, how would we assess one of their choices, Iqbal Masih? Here’s how Donald described his witness in part 1 linked to above:

He was a Pakistani Christian child sold into indentured servitude at age four. At ten he escaped from crippling work as a rug-knotter, and fearlessly told his story to the world, offering his voice and experience to support the Bonded Labor Liberation Front that was freeing thousands of child-slaves like him and teaching rug buyers around the world to ask who was making their hand-tied rugs, how the workers were being treated and whether they were being paid fairly. In 1995, when Iqbal Masih was twelve, he testified before the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. That Easter he went home to his village to go to church, and that afternoon was shot dead, martyred in the street for helping other children find freedom.

Is this martyrdom? On what criteria do we make a judgement yea or nay?

Then, of course, we return to the original subjects, the Dorchester Chaplains. They gave away their life-vests to other men. They died on behalf of their principles. Is this martyrdom—and to what do we appeal to ground our answer?

Then, to complete the step, is any martyrdom a baptism in blood; why or why not?

(The flip side of this is a controversy over the definition of marytrdom reflected in the Revised Edition of LFF. Typically martyrs were identified by assigning a person the propers for a martyr and/or the preface for Holy Week. But Christians killed by Christians–like Cranmer, Ridley, Tyndale, et al. receive the preface for a saint rather than those for a martyr. Someone judged that a death was not a martyrdom in the case of Christian-on-Chrstian violence. Do we agree or not? If not, why not?)

4. The Long Shadow of anti-Judaism/anti-Semitism. This is one that both sides in the controversy have to be very careful about. There are those who suggest that we can keep the commemoration, but just drop Rabbi Goode from it. There are a couple of reasons why this doesn’t fly including some I’ll hold until my next point. Suffice it to say that this approach would smack of continued Christian anti-Judaism/anti-Semitism. We have a history of saying and doing very bad things to Jewish people in the name of Christianity; we don’t want to perpetuate this in any way or form. But we’re in danger of doing it in two different forms here. One is the approach that seeks to lift up the Christians and dispense with “the Jew.” That’s a complete non-starter for me. The other is to say that we welcome his presence and accept that his faithful witness to God is identical or certainly equal to that of his Christian brother chaplains. He was being very Christian, but maybe didn’t realize it… But is there a way to do this without passing him in as an “anonymous Christian”? How do we do this without the spectre of supercessionism raising its ugly head? Again—in the face of the pervasive presence of MTD and its philosophy in our culture, how do we properly differentiate Christian virtue from a more generic “being excellent to each other”?

5. There are politics involved. One of the factors that makes this commemoration more complex than others is its source. If you notice, there are actually no Episcopalians in the quartet; there was the rabbi, a Roman Catholic priest, a Methodist minister, and a Dutch Reformed minister. So, where did this come from and why? This commemoration was passed to the SCLM by the office of the Episcopal Church that deals with both military and hospital chaplaincies, an office overseen by an Episcopal bishop. One of the reasons why this particular commemoration was offered was because it underscores and celebrates the ecumencial character of chaplaincy work. Its interdenominational and interfaith character is a feature, not a bug.  The other key reason why removing Rabbi Goode from the commemoration (in addition to the appearance of anti-semitism) is that it would undercut one of the key purposes of the observance in the first place. It is politically more complex for the SCLM to refuse a commemoration that we asked for from an official body with a bishop behind it.

6. Memorable/Important/Significant vs. Holy. One of my great liturgical heroes and a person I look up to quite a lot is Walter H. Frere. An English bishop who did a lot of work in late medieval Sarum sources and a correspondent of Evelyn Underhill, Frere did some important work in thinking through incorporating classical catholicity into the process of modern prayer book revision and was one of the architects of the failed English 1928 effort. One of the topics he wrote about was how to do a responsible Anglican sanctoral calendar, and his approach was widely followed in prayer book revision processes across the Anglican Communion throughout the 20th century. But I think he failed in one very important and significant way. He entirely avoids any discussion of the miraculous or the holy. Instead, he takes what I’d consider a rationalist approach to the saints, portraying them chiefly as historically significant individuals.

This is the place where our processes diverge the most from—say—the Roman Catholic approach. As is well known, Roman Catholic saints must “prove” their sanctity through two well-documented miracles. Largely we tend to consider this to be wierd and a hold-over of medieval superstition. But what we don’t do is consider why this factor is important to begin with… Miracles and holiness functioned for medievals and continue to function for modern Roman Catholics as proof of the eschatological character of the saints—that they were hooked into the life of God in an extraordinary way by virtue of their devotion and manner of life.

Following Frere, we don’t go there. No Anglican commemoration process looks at or asks about miracles. Instead we focus around notions of memorability, importance, and significance. I think we lose something important here. I stand behind what I said in the post I linked to above: “I understand perfectly well the banality of modern life. What I ask of my saints is the capacity to crack open reality and reveal to me the numinous life of God hid within it.”

Where is the numinous here? As we amass a collection of “good, nice, and fair” progressive people, are we considering elements of the numinous and mystical as part of their witness—that weird connection into the life of God that is part of eschatological experience? That’s actually something that jumped out at me in the materials submitted for Hiram Hisanori Kano; he had that.

Final Thoughts

The SCLM did recommend some commemorations to remove from the calendar; this was not one of them. I support that precisely because of the shift away from the liturgical/sanctoral model of HWHM to the catechetical/family history model of GCW. Because GCW is not intended to be a sanctoral calendar, I can see this commemoration catching the outside of the plate in terms of people and events who are significant and important for how the Episcopal Church sees and understands itself moving into the 21st century.

I do think that Rabbi Goode—or at least what little I know of him—shows a good and noble character. But that’s not all there is to a saint. We should fully believe in and celebrate good and noble people without feeling the need to either force them into our vocabulary or to warp our vocabulary to accomodate them. Saints are models of Christian maturity, mirrors of the virtues of Christ, present intercessors on our behalf, and signs of who the Church is. Rabbi Goode can’t be that for us on several levels but that doesn’t make him any less of a person.

As an analog, in addition to the necrology model I mentioned in the previous post, I am reminded of Jerome’s On Illustrious Men. This work was a collection of Jerome’s thoughts and opinions on early writers who were important and significant for the Christian Church. Chiefly, he is identifying authors and the books they wrote that ought to be read by Christian readers. Generally, it serves as a catalog of the orthodox Christian Fathers of the Church and an ennumeration of the books they wrote. However, amongst the people you’d expect are a number of interesting choices: the Jewish philosopher and exegete Philo Judaeus, the Jewish historian Josephus, and the Roman Stoic Lucius Annaeus Seneca whom he includes on the technicality of some apocryphal works (which I’m pretty sure Jerome knew were spurious). Jerome performs a little CYA here:

Lucius Annaeus Seneca of Cordova, disciple of the Stoic Sotion and uncle of Lucan the Poet, was a man of most continent life, whom I should not place in the category of saints were it not that those Epistles of Paul to Seneca and Seneca to Paul, which are read by many, provoke me. In these, written when he was tutor of Nero and the most powerful man of that time, he says that he would like to hold such a place among his countrymen as Paul held among Christians. He was put to death by Nero two years before Peter and Paul were crowned with martyrdom.

Jerome’s list isn’t really a sanctoral list. Properly, it’s a list of authors who were important and significant—which is what GCW is too. If Jerome can include a few outliers like Philo and Seneca, I think GCW can survive an occasional exception like Rabbi Goode.

That having been said, I do think that we need a much better and clearer agreement on what saints are. For me, this is directly tied to the sacraments and to seeing Christian discipleship as intimately tied to the living of a sacramental life that begins with Baptism and is nourished by Eucharist, Confession, and the rest. We need to cultivate our appreciation for the numinous and to explore it as an important part of our faith, not to flee from it as some kind of superstitious embarrassment.

 

Responding on the Saints

Scott Gunn posted on the three sanctoral resolutions coming out of the Standing Commission on Liturgy & Music’s (SCLM) work for General Convention this summer. I’ve found his whole series on the General Convention resolutions for this year (Tangled Up in Blue) to be a good starting place to think things through. I know there’s been some criticism of this effort, but—speaking as someone who has been privy to the discussions and the drafting of the resolutions—I’ve found it helpful to see how a “regular person” who hasn’t been privy to the conversations reads things.

Why legislation is presented a certain way is not always clear. In some cases, it seems that an unnecessarily tortorous route was taken for no good reason. Some suggestions from outside observers can appear like easy fixes if you don’t know the history behind the situation. Others seem like good ideas but have hidden gotchas buried in them. Others are untenable due to political fights within the church or within the committee. Sometimes a tortorous route really is the best solution to a problem because it will present the greatest good to the greatest number in the most pastoral way; sometimes it reflects a lack of will to make hard decisions and piss some people off…

As I read Scott’s reflections on the three sanctoral resolutions, I come with the history/baggage of knowing why certain easy options wouldn’t work or why we chose to go in a certain route. Thus, I want to make some corrections, some clarifications, and present some answers about why things look the way they look.

Scott starts with some general comments around the “Holy Women, Holy Men” (HWHM) process. Brief background—this revision of the Calendar was kicked off in 2003 by then Presiding Bishop and SCLM member Frank Griswold with the intention of expanded the calendar and remedying some historical imbalances in the demographics of the calendar with special reference to lay/clergy, white/people-of-color, men/women, and Anglican/non-Anglican levels. The SCLM came back in 2009 with a bit of an expansion: here is my graphical breakdown of what it accomplished in terms of numbers of additions and how it affected some of the identified areas of concern. Now, here are Scott’s thoughts:

…my concerns can be summarized thusly:

  • SCLM seems to want to do too much, too soon, which results in less than their finest possible work.

  • They confuse “extraordinary or even heroic human being” with “exemplar of Christian discipleship.”

  • They set out excellent criteria for inclusion in the calendar, and then proceed to ignore their own work.

  • They don’t seem to listen to feedback, unless what they’re hearing is very different from what I’m seeing. If so, I’d love to see a report on the feedback that’s been received.

I’d agree that the first three are issues—and, because of that, we’ve tried to address them in the resolutions that we offered. On the fourth, there was feedback given publicly on the blog that we did look at, and in my own work submitted to the SCLM, discussed in meetings, and posted here on my own blog, I took the criticisms of HWHM into account as much as possible. In particular, I identified six major centers of energy around HWHM that we needed to factor into our work. So—yes, I did listen; the degree to which it was enacted, well, I think we had varying amounts of success as we attempt to balance different needs and concerns against one another.

The other major issue that Scott raises in his beginning section is the definition of a saint:

However, we must also note that WEP sows theological confusion. An example:

There are a variety of views concerning who and what a saint is: some would identify a saint as any Christian who has struggled to lead a faithful life; others reserve the title for those who have demonstrated heroic virtue on account of their depth of union with Christ and who now participate in the nearer presence of God.

Well, no. Actually, the scriptures and the church’s tradition are quite clear on who the saints are. Anyone who is baptized is a saint. The New Testament is crystal clear on sainthood, and sainthood is the property of all Christians. Go ahead and look it up. I’ll wait. Except for the SCLM, I just don’t think anyone is confused by this.

Actually—Scott’s wrong here. The church has traditionally used the term saint in two ways. One is the Pauline general sense, but since the third or fourth century it has also had a specific referrent to those people who have heroic lived out their baptismal calling. All Christians are created equal. All Christians are equal in the eyes of God. But not all Christians are equal in their fervor, devotion, and witness to who Christ is. Not only that, the church has historically said that holiness isn’t just about ethics but about humans serving as channels for eschatoogical power and grace that manifest miraculously in connection with certain Christian persons living and dead. Yes, 21st century Christians tend to get squeamish when we start talking about miracles and holiness—but its part of our tradition that we have to work with.

Yeah, sure, under the general sense of the term both your grandma and Francis of Assisi are saints. But—no offense to granny—Francis has a far greater impact on our common life as a community because of the way that he inspires a full-bodied living of the Christian message, serves as an icon of Christian maturity, and helps draw the whole Church towards its end in Christ through his life, work, witness, and on-going prayers. He deserves the specific use of the term in a way that granny just doesn’t.

So—moving from generalities to specific resolutions now…

A055: Revise Liturgical Commemorations.

Here we recommend some deletions, recommend some additions, and introduce some revised collects.

I agree with Scott that both the additions and the deletions could use some additional information about them. To be fair, though, this is the form in which additions and deletions have been made since there was a process to do so. Information has not historically been provided. Ruth Meyers has already requested some information on the deletions to be drafted; it would probably be a good idea to do the same on the additions.

On the additions, most of these were submitted by dioceses or provinces. Hiram Hisanori Kano, in particular, was put forward quite strongly by two geographically separated dioceses who already commemorate him in their local calendars, so there is evidence for pre-existing commemoration on-the-ground for some of these.

As far as I’m concerned, the centerpoint of this resolution is the revised collects. We received a lot of feedback on the poor state of the collects for HWHM; this is an attempt to answer it. I wrote many of these collects, but other members of the subcommittee also took part. The goal here was to move away from the “biographical ‘collect'” and to produce true collects that were grounded in baptismal virtues and charisms. Too, these collects should be far more singable than the former versions. There are still some collects out there that probably should have been redone; there are doubtless many things that could be tinkered with to improve the new collects—but forward progress has been made to address the issues raised about them.

A056: Authorize New Liturgical Resources: A Great Cloud of Witnesses; Weekday Eucharistic Propers.

My main critique here is that Scott has missed the chief point of A Great Cloud of Witnesses (GCW). Here are the big things to know about GCW:

  • It would clarify that the official Sanctoral Calendar of the Episcopal Church consists of the Major Feasts already identified within the ’79 Book of Common Prayer. Lesser Feasts & Fasts never said if it was a sanctoral calendar and never called the people in it “saints”; HWHM made some pretentions in this direction and did use the word saints; GCW is clear that it is not a sanctoral calendar—GCW is definitely for the idea of saints, but is not going to try to tell you who they are.
  • It makes a clear and decisive break from the idea that the SCLM is a canonization committee. No longer are we operating with a curial model of a central committee naming saints that everyone else has to live with. Instead, it emphasizes the classic Christian model: local communities identify and celebrate saints.
  • GCW is primarily a catechetical resource that offers pointers towards liturgical resources if the local community decides that they wish to celebrate a certain person within it as a saint.

Because GCW is a catechetical rather than a liturgical resource, Weekday Eucharistic Propers 2015 (WEP) is a liturgical resource to help local communities think through what propers to use for Eucharists that fall outside of Sundays or Feasts provided for in the BCP.

Here’s the key thing to know about WEP:

  • Its three main divisions reflect the three major options for celebrating weekday Eucharists:
    • It provides weekday readings for the Temporal cycle
    • It provides the Commons of the Saints
    • It provides the Propers for Various Occasions
  • It reinforces what the prayer book has always said about the entirely optional character of the people in LFF, HWHM, or GCW. They’re all optional; they always have been. HWHM did not take away any ferial days. There was a perception of a loss of ferial days on the part of those who perceive the “lesser feasts” as mandatory—but they’re not: they’re entirely optional.

In particular, I’d like to see greater use of the Propers for Various Occasions (votive masses). Of the suggestions for liturgical commemoration listed in GCW, you’ll note that usually roughly half of them are from the Commons of Saints while the other half are from the Propers for Various Occasions. What’s happening here is that a community might decide that it wants to celebrate the life and work of someone who they don’t feel was a saint but who brought attention to a specific issue, cause, or doctrine. In that case, a votive proper for that issue/cause/doctrine could be used to supply the propers of the day and the devotional collect could be used to conclude the Prayers of the People: this way a particular cause or concept is honored without the person being celebrated as a saint.

Ok—the other thing to note here is to loop back to the cathecetical vs. liturgical distinction and to reflect on the new purpose of GCW. What is this thing? From my perspective, the book has shifted from being a martyrology to being a necrology. Let me clarify the terminology here… A martyrology was a community’s “book of saints.” Usually at the Office of Chapter—kind of like a daily monastic staff meeting—the martyrology would be read so that everybody would be clear on which saints they would be celebrating on the next liturgical day (which might start at sundown if it happened to be a feast).  A necrology was a community’s “book of the dead.” Classically in the Christian West, a dead person who was a significant part of an ecclesial community (church, cathedral, monastery, whatever) got a requiem on a set of anniversaries: 3 days after their death (in token of the resurrection), 7 days (the week anniversary), 30 days (the month anniversary), then yearly after that. And when I say “significant part” there are a variety of ways a person could get included, the two most obvious being members of the community and benefactors. That is, monks got listed in their community necrologies as did people who give financial gifts and support. Too, one of the ways that relationships between different monasteries was maintained was in a mutual sharing of necrologies. (I.e., we show that we’re connected to you by praying for and remembering your dead in the same way we do our own—and vice-versa.) The necrology was where this community list was maintained through the decades and even centuries. (We often see necrological entries in sanctoral calendars within community books—the distinction between feasted saints and the local dead is usually pretty obvious based on the way the dead were written into the margin of the kalendars. I don’t have any good examples of hand but I should definitely run some down for you…)

[As an aside, the practice of a fulsome necrology gve our spiritual ancestors a much better sense of a baptismal ecclesiology than our current practice does—we have a tendency to neglect our dead… But that’s a discussion for another post.]

GCW is a necrology for the Episcopal Church. It lets us know when certain people who are of on-going importance to our community died, and helps inform our current community about who they were and why they matter to us. The key, then, is importance and significance not necessarily or inherently holiness. Now, local communities may well decide that some of the communal dead are indeed the blessed dead who are not just part of our historical past but are part of our eschatological present and are working alongside us and praying for us now—but GCW is not that list!

As a result, this changes what we’re doing here and how we think about both the number of names and who we include. That, therefore, bring us to the last sanctoral resolution:

A057: Create Additional Liturgical Commemorations.

Scott seems to be un-thrilled by this one…:

My answer to this one can be served up on a plate. It’s a NO sandwich as a side of NO. For dessert, we’ll have the NO cream sundae with a NO-berry on top. Seriously. What the…?

Yes, the proposal is to add 55 new people to GCW. And, yes, they’re all women.

The impetus here should be fairly straightforward. Since 1982, General Convention has told the SLC/SCLM to produce a set of commemorations that is more balanced with respect to gender. The 1980 edition of LFF had 90% men and 10% women so you can see why this would be an issue. Again in 2003, the call was given for a more gender balanced list. And, you can see why as the numbers and only twitched despite the 1982 legislation; in 2003 the balance was 86% men and 14% women. HWHM, that paragon of inclusivity which was going to solve this problem through the addition of a hundred plus names, provided only another little twitch: the count is currently at 81% men and 19% women. Which is why my co-chair tends to refer to it as “Holy Men, Holy Men.”

Part of the mandate for this triennium was to actually make some progress in this area: try to get the commemorations to better reflect what the church actually looks like. Now, there are only strategies that can be used in order to change a percentage: take away some of one group or add more to the other group. Too, these strategies can be used in combination. And that’s what my first attempt tried to do. I initially floated the idea of reducing the calendar significantly and putting the other people into an historical almanac. Thus, I both removed men and added women. But this solution was rejected.  The message was loud and clear: you can’t remove men already on the calendar to make the numbers work. Therefore there was only one other option left—add more women. And that’s what this resolution does.

As far as a list of women goes, I think it’s a good one. It does skew modern in the range of who is included, but it could have been much worse; I think we have a good selection of women who represent a wide variety of Christian vocations. I.e., it’s not all modern “social justice warriors.” Some of them clearly make the list, but we also have a solid variety from the patristic and medieval periods as well as the last century and a balance of actives and contemplatives.

I don’t know if this resolution will pass or not. I think a lot of people will have the same reaction that Scott did. One of the consistent criticisms of HWHM was the number of people on it; recommending more does seem to be ignoring that feedback. On the other hand, we are trying to address something that has been mandated by General Convention and has not been sufficiently acted on for over 30 years despite reminders in the interim to do something about it.

One more time since it seems not to have sunk in: adding more names is not the same as adding more saints. We’re not adding saints, we’re expanding the scope of who we remember as part of our community, some of whom we may actually want to celebrate as saints, others of whom we won’t.

Parting Thoughts

Scott had a few more parting thoughts, one of which was this question:

A bonus challenge: I’d like to hear from any lay or clergy leader in a congregation who celebrates Holy Eucharist daily (that’s all seven days, every week). Do you find this sanctoral calendar expansion, as envisaged by the SCLM, helpful in your corporate worship life? Why or why not?

Now—I’m not in such a congregation. But I try to pray the Office daily and include the saints within the Office. My own perspective too is shaped by the fact that I’m a medievalist. I have no issues at all with having a whole pile of people being remembered on one day. In fact, many of the historic calendars did just that. It’s pretty simple—you have a principal figure of the day and you commemorate the rest. What does this acheive? That’s easy—it helps us get a better sense of what baptismal ecclesiology really is and what it actually means: we are a community spread through time, united in the eternal present moment of Jesus Christ. I do believe that some (probably most) of our dead are presently “go[ing] from strength to strength in the life of perfect service in [God’s] heavenly kingdom” (BCP, 488) while others presently cheering us on so that “encouraged by their examples, aided by their prayers, and strengthened by their fellowship, we also may be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light” (BCP, 489).

Churn below the Surface

I told myself that I’d start writing things here more…

Yeah—well. That hasn’t happened recently the way I’d like it to. That’ll change!

I’m hip-deep in a response to the MCC/Fully Alive proposal responding to the work of the Marriage Taskforce, and it’s taking up all of my free cycles at the moment. Additionally, school is winding down which means the girls will be underfoot once again in an increasing amount!

However, I do have some things I need to get written here in fairly short order. At the top of the list is a response to Scott Gunn’s posts  (Liturgy and Music I and Liturgy and Music II) on the SCLM resolutions for General Convention. Look for these to appear later this week!