Prayer Book Anglican

JUNE - An American Anglican Calendar

2011-05-31T11:19:00.000-07:00

1. ROGATION WEDNESDAY - St. Nicomede, P.M. - White
2. ASCENSION DAY - White
5. ASCENSION SUNDAY - White
6. St. Boniface, B.M. d. 755 (Transfered) - White
9. St. Columba, Abbot of Iona, d. 597 - White
10. St. Margaret of Scotland, Queen, d. 1093 - White
11. SAINT BARNABAS, AP, M. - White
12. PENTECOST - Whitsunday - White
13. WHITMONDAY - White
14. WHITTUESDAY - White
15. EMBER WEDNESDAY IN PENTECOST - White
17. EMBER FRIDAY IN PENTECOST - White\
18. EMBER SATURDAY IN PENTECOST - White
19. TRINITY SUNDAY - White
20. Translation of Edward, King of the West Saxons, #nglish 1662, Red
St. Fillan, Abbot & Confessor, d. c. 750 Scots' 1929
22. St. Alban, M., d 202 - Red
24. NATIVITY OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST - White
25. St. Moluag, B of Lismore, C.d.c. 592 Scots - Blue
26. 1st SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY - Red
28. St Irenaeus, B of Lyons, Doctor, d. c. 202 - Green
29. SAINT PETER, APOSTLE & MARTYR - Red

The feasts and other days listed in all capital letters have propers in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. The other feasts are taken from the English and Scots' prayer books. The colors listed are those from the magisterial English Liturgical Colours by Sir William St. John Hope and E. G. Cuthbert F. Atchley and the Alcuin Club's Directory of Ceremonial, Vol. I. The use of any others - and those most likely to be used by those of us in the Continuum - will be those ordered in the 1570 missal of Pius V, the same bishop of Rome who excommunicated Elizabeth I. Those who do so believe themselves to be more Catholic than the rest of us almost precisely because they believe the Roman See to be the font of all things truly Catholic.

Unfortunately those who do so fail to realize that they are directly responsible for the current crisis in the Continuum in which the Australian primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion is attempting to lead Anglicans into the clutches of the Roman Church. They truly believe that their actions are simply a matter of taste, but the truth remains that the human animal is always learning something, be it good or bad, and in this case it is that things Roman are to be preferred over all things Anglican. They deny it, of course, but their actions over the years speak much larger and louder than their words.

If we in the Continuum truly value Anglicanism and the whole of the prayer book tradition over the faith and practice of the Roman Church, we are going to have to match our actions to our words. We are going to have to tell both our own people and others that we are not some sort of Romanism lite, but an authentic expression of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church with our faith firmly planted in Holy Scripture as interpreted by the earliest bishops and Catholic fathers, the three creeds and teachings of the earliest of the general and universally accepted Councils.

The Oldest Eucharistic Canon

2011-04-20T16:32:00.000-07:00

This is a post which I have long intended to make, but simply disthered because of the Latin, but after comparing my own translation to two which I found upon the web, I have decided that I can no longer delay with it. The reason I am doing this is so that ordinary Anglicans will gain a view of what we can know of the earliest Church.

When it comes to the the service of Holy Communion we know first what we find in the Bible, especially the New Testament. We have the gospel narratives and what St Paul has written about it. The next thing we have is what in the writings of St. Justin Martyr but even that narrative is very bare. Following that we have the liturgies which we now regard as historic, the liturgy of St James, St Basil and St. John Chysostom, Then there is the Roman canon which came to dominate the Latin liturgies of the West but whose theology is less that clear. The experts believe its origin to have been Syrian rather than Roman with the various paragraphs having been rearranged in an order modeled after that of Alexandria.

But what follows is the Verona fragment which is the oldest known liturgical canon. Some experts date it as early third century. But as the Right Reverend Walter Howard Frere, CR, pointed out in his study of it, phrases taken from it appeared in a number of later liturgies. It may seem strange to us in that it lacks a proper preface and the Sanctus. Those items entered the liturgy later. Consequently it is short, direct and sober.

Illi vere offerant diacones oblationem, quique imponens manus in eam cum omni presbyterio decat gratias agens

Dominus vobiscum.
.
Et omnes decant Et cum Spiritu tuo.

Sursum corda ;

Habemus ad dominam.

Gratias agamus domino ;

Dignum et justum est.

Et sic iam prosequatur,

Gratias tibi referimus, deus, per dilectum puerum tuum Jesum Christum Quem in ultimis temporibus Misisti nobis salvatorem et redemptorum et angelum voluntatis tuae : Qui est verbum tuum inseparabilem, per quem omnia fecisti, et bene placitum tibi fuit ; misisti de caelo in matricem virginis Quique in utero habitus incarnatus est, ex spiritu sancto et virgine natus ;

Qui volumtatem tuam complens, et populum sanctum tibi adquirens, extendit manus, cum pateretur, ut a passione liberaret eos qui in te crediderunt : Qui cumque traderetur uoluntariae passioni, ut mortem saluat , et vincula diaboli dirumpat, et infernum calcet, et justos illuminet, et terminum figat, et resurrectionem manifestet, accipiens,penem, gratias tibi agens, dixit; Accipite, manducate, Hoc est corpus
meum quod pro vobis confringetur : Similiter et calicem, dicens ; Hic est sanguis meus qui pro vobis effunditur quando hoc facitis, meam commemorationem facitis.

Memores igitur mortis et resurrectionis Eius, Offerimus tibi panem et calicem, gratias tibi agentes, quia nos dignos habuisti adstare coram te et tibi ministare, Et petimus ut mittas spiritum tuum sanctum in oblationem sanctae ecclesiae ; in unum congregans des omnibus qui percipiunt sanctis in repletionem spiritus sancti, ad confirmationem fidei in veritate, ut te laudemus et glorificemus ; per puerum tuum Iesum Christum, per quem tibe gloria et honor, patri et filio cum sancto spiritu, in sancta ecclesia tua, et nunc et in saecula saeculorum. Amen."

We return thanks to you, O God, through your beloved son, Jesus Christ, whom you have sent in these last days to be for us a savior and redeemer and a messenger of your will, who is your inseparable word, through whom you made all things and who was well pleasing to you. You sent him down from heaven into the womb of the virgin, and who, held in the womb, was incarnate and was shown to be a son to you, born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin. Who accomplishing your will and acquiring for you a holy people, he stretched out his hands when he was extended so that by his passion he liberated those who have believed in you. Who, when he was handed over to a voluntary passion so that he would dissolve death and shatter the chains of the devil, and (so that) he would trample hell and illuminate the righteous, and fix a boundary and manifest his ressurrection, taking bread and giving thanks he said - "take, eat, this is my body which is broken on your behalf." Likewise the cup, saying "This is my blood which is poured out on your behalf. As often as you do this, you do it in my commenoration."

Therefore mindful of his death and resurrection, we offer to you (this) bread and cup, giving thanks to you because you have held us worthy to stand before you and serve you.

And we ask that you would send your Holy Spirit into the offering of the holy church gathering as one; may you give to all who partake in these these sacred (mysteries) over into a filling up of the Holy Spirit for strengthing in the true faith so that we may praise you and glorify you through your son, Jesus Christ, through whom to you be glory and honor - to the Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit, in your holy church now and forever and ever. Amen."

What struck me when reading after many years was that it was as direct as the canon of the 1552 prayer book, a tradition which continued in the English books through that of 1662. It gives thanks, it offers and it invokes the Holy Spirit and that in almost the sparest language possible. Its theology of consecration is that of the Eastern canons which to become that first of the non-jurors and then the Scottish Episcopal Church before being incorporated into the American prayer book. The point which it should bring home to all of us who call ourselves Anglicans is that the purpose of the English Reformation, the restoration of the faith and practice of the Church of the apostles and the earliest bishops and fathers, has succeded in a manner greater than most of us have realized. That means that when we fully use the prayer book liturgy we are able to do what the Church in the book of Acts said it was doing, continuing "stedfastly in the Apostles doctrine and communion, the breaking of bread and prayers."

O CLAVIS DAVID

2010-12-19T17:45:00.000-08:00

After celebrating this morning and preaching I am more tired than I thought possible, but the Eucharist is like that sometimes in that it requires a huge amount of energy from us. That being the case, this is going to be very simple: the antiphon and its scriptural background. Maybe next year.

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel;
qui aperis, et nemo claudit;
claudis, et nemo aperit:
veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris,
sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Key of David, * and Sceptre of the house of Israel, that openest, and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth : Come and bring the prisoner out of the prison-house, and him that sitteth in darkness, and the shadow of death.
Isaiah had prophesied:

* "I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open." Isaiah 22:22
* "His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onwards and for evermore." Isaiah 9:7
* "...To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house."Isaiah 42:7.

O RADIX JESSE

2010-12-18T17:06:00.000-08:00

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,
super quem continebunt reges os suum,
quem Gentes deprecabuntur:
veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

One of the great themes of medieval art is the Jesse Tree. You will find variations of it all over Europe both in parish churches and great cathedrals. The point of these trees is our Lord's descent from the father of King David, but also of something else. In one of his conflicts with the pharisees Jesus asked them if the Messiah who was to come was David's son, why did David then say "The Lord said unto my Lord, set thou on my right hand until I make thy enemies thy footstool?" The only possible answer frightened and confused them. What it was intended to point out was that He who was and is to come was no ordinary king. It is something which in this day and time we need greatly to remember and this is where this one of the Great O's points us.

O Root of Jesse, *which standest for an ensign of the people, to whom kings shall shut their mouths, to whom the Gentiles seeK : Come and deliver us and tarry not.

The text again points to passages in the prophet Isaiah. "A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots." Isaiah 11:1
* "On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious." Isaiah 11:10 But Isaiah was not along. Micah also wrote that the Messiah would be of the house and lineage of David and even be born in David's own city. St Paul in his epistle to the Romans reminded the early Roman Christians and, by extension, all of us of this fact.

But the most interesting part of the antiphon for me is to be found in the last words, "and tarry not." He has promised to come and we are supposed to be anxious for his quick coming. But are we? If we are not ready, then this period of the Great O's is one in which we are reminded that we should and must be. We must be excited about it; we must stir up our hearts and the very best way of doing that is the worship of the church, the daily offices and the Eucharist which we have "until his coming again."

O ADONAI

2010-12-17T09:11:00.000-08:00

The antiphon for the Magnifict on 17th day of December in the Sarum rite was O Adonai. It is with a bit of embarrassment that I have to post the Latin version of this antiphon as sung by Roman Dominican students. I would much have preferred to be post the English equivalent as sung perhaps by the sisters of the Community of St Mary the Virgin at Wantage. After all it was from a book obtained from St Mary's Press that I first learned of the Great O's. That book contained the antiphons for the Magnificat and the Nunc dimittis throughout the Christian year according to the Anglican calendar. It was intended for use with The Sarum Psalter which was also published by St. Mary's Press. Later when Briggs and Frere published their plainchant psalter one of their announced aims was to make sure that it conformed to Palmer's work. Briggs and Frere is still available and every quire in the Continuum should have copies. They might also want to have copies of the Lancelot Andrewes Press' plainchant psalter. it has additional and very helpful material.

But the point here must remain on text of the antiphons themselves and their scriptural references which clarify and expand the the theme of the season of Advent. In O Adonai the most obvious are the events from Exodus 3:2 and 24:12. The title to the antiphon makes reference to Isaiah 33:22 which says :"For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our ruler, the Lord is our king; he will save us." And its point is taken from Isaiah 11:4-5 "[...] but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins."

O Adonay,* and Leader of the house of Israel, who appearest in the Bush to Moses in a flame of fire, and gavest him in the law in Sinai : Come and deliver us with an outstretched arm.

O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel,
qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti,
et ei in Sina legem dedisti:
veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.

St. Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr

2010-12-17T06:44:00.000-08:00

Technically, today is the feast of his translation, the return of his relics, what was left of his body after the lions in the Roman circus finished with him, to Antioch for burial. The relics were moved twice after that and now rest in a church in Rome. But the important thing for the Church is that we, as Anglicans, should realize the importance of this great saint not merely for the Catholic Church but for all those who call themselves Christians.

Ignatius who also called himself Theophorus (God bearer)was born in Syria around anno Domini 50 and died in the Roman circus sometime between 98 and 117. He was a disciple of St. John the Evangelist along with his friend and fellow martyr, Polycarp and succeeded St. Evodius as the bishop of Antioch. According to some early authorities he was appointed by St. Peter himself. In the ninth year of his reign, the emperor of Trajan ordered Christians to worship the gods with pagans with the penalty being death for those who refused. Ignatius was at the forefront of the effort to keep the Church together and strong in the face of organized persecution paying special attention to the weakest among the faithful. When his efforts came to the attention of the authorities, he was arrested and brought before the emperor who at that time was in Syria. He was condemned and sent to Rome to be fed to wild beasts in the circus.

During the course of that trip to Rome he wrote at least six letters to various churches and one to his fellow bishop Polycarp which have managed to survive down to this present day. These letters are very important for the Catholic and Anglican understanding of the Church. Indeed, it is one of these letters that the very word "catholic" (according to the whole) is used for the first time. Ignatius also first uses the word "Eucharist" for the service of Holy Communion as well as setting out the tripartite division of the Christian ministry as bishop, priests and deacons. And this relates directly to The Preface in our Anglican Ordinal which states that these orders have existed "from the Apostles' time." It from Ignatius, the disciple of St. John, that we first learn this.

There is also an Anglican involvement in these texts. The seven authentic letters in time were joined by six entirely fraudulent ones. Even the authentic letter became larded with material by latter writers who were attempting to use the saints name and reputation to forward their views on later theological issue. In the thirteenth century the scholarly bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grossteste, carefully edited the later material out in the most careful Latin translation of these works. In the seventeenth century Archbishop Ussher, the primate of Ireland discovered Grossteste's manuscript and published it in 1644.

Ignatius' writings like all of the apostolic fathers should be known to every Anglican in the Continuum. They, after the very apostles and evangelists themselves, are the real basis of the Anglican tradition.

O SAPIENTIA

2010-12-16T20:15:00.000-08:00

In the calendar of the English prayer book of 1662 December 16 has this cryptic entry. It is the opening two words for the antiphon for the Magnificat in the Sarum and other pre-Reformation orders of vespers. In the Roman rite this antiphon is found on 17 December but the sequence of antiphons follows the same order as that in the Sarum office with the exception that Sarum had an additional "Great O" not found in the continental rites. What most Anglicans don't know is that this antiphon and those following it go back to the fifth century. We know this because Boethius (480 - 524/5) makes a passing reference to same as if everyone reading him would understand the allusion. The question for prayer book Anglicans is why when so much of the ancient rites were suppressed that the calendar should contain this quite unexplained reference?

It is almost as if there were a secret wish for it to be revived and with the Oxford Movement and its aftermath this has occurred in the English Church. It began with the monastic revival and books like The Day Hours of the Church of England. These books were essentially translations of the Sarum office book which had received these antiphons as part of the common heritage of the Western Church. Further when the Rev'd G. H. Palmer translated the Sarum Diurnal for the use of the Community of St Mary the Virgin at Wantage, he also set the antiphons to their ancient music so even though the words were now in English the tune would be the same. Consequently for the days that the Great O's were sung, the Magnificat would be sung to the solemn version of tone II with the second ending. This is one of the most beautiful of the solemn tones which anciently were always used for both the Magnificat and the Benedictus. They are, as one might imagine, slightly more elaborate than the simple versions of the same tone.

There is another interesting thing about the Great O's. If one uses only the Roman version of them. reading backwards from the last to the first, a Latin phrase is formed, "ero cras" - tomorrow I will come. This is the essential promise of the Advent season and the thread that is woven from all of the biblical texts referenced in the words of the antiphons themselves. In the case of O Sapientia the following verses are evoked in the text: Isa. 11. 2,3; Isa. 28.29; Sirach 24.3; and Wisdom 8.1.

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti,
attingens a fine usque ad finem,
fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia:
veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Wisdom, * which camest out of the mouth of the most High, and reachest from one end to another, mightily and sweetly ordering all things : Come and teach us the way of prudence.

St. Lucy of Syracuse, Virgin and Martyr

2010-12-13T20:54:00.000-08:00

The American Church with its attempt to reconcile the traditions and prejudices of both high and low Anglicans failed to produce its own black letter calendar of feasts or to incorporate that of either of its mother churches. On the other hand it provided a proper for the feast of a saint other than those of the Red Letter days in its calendar and also lessons and proper psalms for evening and morning prayer for various types of saints for whom parishes or missions might be named. It thus, strangely, attempts to have things both ways to the satisfaction of neither party. Indeed, by so doing, it has created and sided with a party of its own and encouraged the very thing which St Paul has written that we should banish, i.e., the spirit of party itself. It has tried to pretend that it has no need for the celebration of the saints and thus of the doctrine of the communion of saints while celebrating the feasts of those disciples of our Lord listed in the New Testament as being his apostles. Unfortunately this has resulted in the very pattern of prayer book worship itself being violated and one of the most important of our Lord's commandments to his apostles and disciples being, for all practical purposes, rejected.

The prayer book intends that the historical pattern of Christian worship that existed from sub apostolic days until the Reformation should be continued. That meant that in any place where there was a church or chapel the priest or other minister in charge was to say daily the morning and evening offices of the Church with the Eucharist being celebrated on all Sundays and other holy days for which the prayer book provided propers, that is to say a collect, epistle and gospel or indicated by rubric that such celebration was appropriate. This provision is found by our low churchmen to be very offensive in that if they acted in obedience to the prayer book as they promised at their ordination, they would appear to be doing what ministers of the Roman Church do. It does not matter that this is what our Lord and his apostles and evangelists ordered and that the entirety of the Church did from Pentecost till the continental reformation (if it can be called that) for no other reason Romans, whatever their other failings, continue to do it. On that ground, you would also expect them to give up their belief that Jesus is "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God" and our savior simply because the Roman Church continues to believe that also.

So be it!

But there is a reason for some of these missing black letter days in they point us to those movable feasts and fast which still retain a place in the prayer book calendar such as the Ember Days. St Lucy's feast is one of those as it occurs on the 13th of December and the Advent Ember Days are ordered to be kept on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday after. The next question is will they have remember to announce these fast days and the reason for them on the Sunday previous and will they actually provide so much as a single communion service on any of the three days when we, the Church, are supposed to pray that God will send us a proper supply of men to be deacons, priests and bishops in the next generation. And if they, the deacons, priests and bishops in this day and time don't, will there be faithful lay men and women who will take up their prayer books and bibles and say the offices privately so that the Church's work may be done?

I would like to hear from those where it was done and also from those where the clergy neglected it.

The Glastonbury Thorn

2010-12-10T07:57:00.000-08:00

It is very sad to report that last night vandals cut down the Glastonbury Thorn. This tree, Middle Eastern in origin, has been a symbol of the earliest Christianity in Britain for centuries. As of yet there are no clues to the motive or to the identity of the vandals who destroyed it.

Saint Martin's Day - Again!

2010-11-11T04:00:00.000-08:00

It should be clear to anyone reading this blog that I have a devotion to Saint Martin of Tours. But then I am an American and his feast days fall upon two major American holidays, his translation on Independence Day and the celebration of his celestial birthday on Veteran's Day. Somehow, in my own mind that makes him an almost essential American saint although he was born in what is now Hungary and died in what is now France.

Not only do I think of him as being uniquely American, but also as being quite a representative of classical Anglicanism. After all, his fame and possibly some of his relics were carried to the British Isles well before it interested the Roman Church. St Ninian of Scotland was a disciple of his and dedicated his major missionary church to him and it was in a church dedicated to St Martin in Canterbury, that the first Roman mission set up practice. In short, his cult was carried to the British well before they fell victims to the papacy.

Since the 1928 American prayer book has no calendar of black letter holy days although it does have liturgical provision for "A Saint's Day," those of us in the Continuum who reject the pseudo-papalism of the missals must look to the calendars of the English and Scots' prayer books with perhaps a nod to that of the Welsh Church with its richness of Celtic and early British saints. We can also look to their revisions of the 28/29 period for propers appropriate to these days as being well within the prayer book and Anglican tradition. We could, of course, look backwards to the Sarum and other English missals, but as long as we have recourse to the British books, I think we need not look elsewhere. The important thing is to look to our own history and its heroes to inspire us to do what they did which was to seek God completely and embrace and live the Christian faith fully which means we are called to follow the example of the saints.

The Third Sunday Before Advent

2010-11-09T06:38:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday was not only the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity and the Sunday in the Octave of the Feast of All Saints, but it was also the Third Sunday Before Advent. As the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity, the prayer book rubrics requires that the collect, epistle and gospel shall be used at the celebration of Holy Communion. Because it was also the Sunday in the Octave of All Saints, the collect for that feast will be read at the communion service which will also be marked by the proper preface for that feast at the Sanctus. But what is required by it also being the Third Sunday before Advent?

Here reference must be made to pages xl and xli of the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. There you will find a series of proper psalms, and lessons for both Morning and Evening Prayer These are ordered for every day, morning and evening, from the Mattins of the Third Sunday before Advent through Evensong before Advent Sunday itself. These psalms and lessons reflect the theme of the approaching Advent season so that we will be better prepared for the season to come.

Now I know that most of the parishes in the Continuum do not have daily celebrations of the offices. Indeed Evensong is almost extinct among us. This is extremely unfortunate because anything less complete use of the prayer book where missions or parishes have their own buildings is something which harms all of us who call ourselves Anglicans. Now the public reading of the offices does not have to be done by the priest. He should be doing so but there are times when he cannot. That means that the lay people in the parish have a very important role here and should be taught how to properly and in accordance with the rubrics properly read the offices. This is a legitimate part of the priesthood of all believers.

But even in those places which don't have buildings or other permanent meeting places, the congregation can be taught and encouraged to read the offices either by themselves or in their families. This will make us all more familiar with Holy Scripture. In fact the two things which we all need to know better is the Bible and our Book of Common Prayer.

A Riposte on Puritans and Puritanism

2010-07-12T14:11:00.000-07:00

"The Puritan party from the days of Elizabeth to the present time have never honestly accepted the Prayer Book : its members have been too much of Churchmen to leave the Church, but too little of Churchmen to value its principles: They have remained in a false position, attempting to subvert the system to which they nominally conformed. It has been pointed out how openly the attempt was made in Elizabethan times; and, though it has in God's good Providence failed all along to win any substantial recognition, it has been able at times to establish an evasive and false tradition of Prayer Book interpretation which has practically popularized and sought even to justify a system of disloyalty to the Prayer Book. The party has had its conflicts with more loyal and wholehearted churchmanship, and the issues have hitherto not been finally decisive. The failure of the Elizabethan attempt to puritanize the Church inaugurated the period of loyalty of the early Stuart times: the success of this recovery was too rapid and too injudicious, and so the revenge came speedily; for a while sectarianism and even puritanism had their way, until a short experience of their results under the Commonwealth produced a fresh reaction. The failure of the Puritans at the Savoy inaugurated another period of loyalty under the later Stuarts, but, when Church life was systematically crushed in the 18th century by Whig politicians and Latitudinarian bishops, the reign of the false tradition and the evasive, disloyal or merely torpid attitude to the rules of the Church's worship again set in; and those who tried to be loyal to the Church system, whether early followers of Wesley, Clapham Evangelicals or Oxford Tractarians, were all alike in turn charged with innovation, disloyalty and even with Popery. The contest still survives; the Puritan party still works for a system, which is not the system of the Catholic Church or of the English Prayer Book, and defends its disregard of plain rubrics (e.g., as to fasting or daily services), and its want of sympathy with the system (e.g., as to the frequency and discipline of Communion by appealing to the evasive tradition, which in the dark days of the history it has been able to form, and would like to fasten permanently upon the Church. Thus there is no feature more marked in the history of the Prayer Book than this contest between the Church system of worship expressed in the Prayer Book and the false interpretation which has grown up through a continuous tradition of evasion and rebellion."

This quotation, taken from Proctor and Frere's New History of the Book of Common Prayer, is still as true as the day it was written and published. The Continuum has been repeatedly split by this fight which has been made the worse by those who should have been the best of Churchmen adopting and practicing a tradition equally at varience with the Prayer Book and the Church, i.e., an imitation of the very worse of what even Roman authorities have labeled as "Roman bad taste." The result is that those who know and actually practice the Anglican tradition seem to have become fewer every year. But it is that tradition, the way of the classical Prayer Book Catholic, which this blog has embraced and will continue to do our best to set before all those who call themselves Anglicans and the world at large.

The above was originally posted in my first year and I am putting it back up now because of recent opinions on other Anglican sites, I think this long quotation from Proctor and Frere needs to be revisited. In both the English and American churches men who had no loyalty to the doctrine, discipline and worship to be found and still found in all of the classical prayer books stood for orders and accepted ordination to an office which they didn't accept or believe in precisely for the reason of destroying first the Church of England and now all of Anglicanism. The purpose of this blog is to support Anglicanism according to the one official document of the Church which is the Book of Common Prayer.

Independence Day

2010-07-03T19:33:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is Independence Day and its propers will replace those for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity. on pages xlii and xliii of the American Book of Common Prayer you will find the psalms and lessons for Morning and Evening Prayer. Strangely, it does not rate a first evensong. That may be because it is not entirely a feast of the Church although the Church does give it great importance as well it should.

Why? Because the American struggle for independence, for liberty was a struggle born from the very teaching of the prayer book tradition itself just as the revolt against King John which led to the Magna Carta was likewise a struggle born in the Gospel's vision for all men. Most of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence and who wrote the Constitution of the United States were Churchmen. Consequently it is no wonder that the ideals upon which this nation was founded and built sprang straight from the Old Testament and the New.

As we celebrate our independence tomorrow appropriately in attendance at Morning Prayer and Holy Communion let us remember all those who have given their lives both to make and keep us free. And let us also renew our faith in the Faith which inspired them, the faith which every day reminded them that there is a God in "whose service is perfect freedom."

The Feast of the Visitation

2010-07-01T17:42:00.000-07:00

This is the first evensong of the feast of the Visitation. It was instituted by Urban VI in 1389 and celebrates the occasion of the Magnificat. It is found in the black letter calendars of the English book of 1662 and the deposited book as well as those of Scotland and Canada. It was also to be found in the calendar of Sarum and the rest of English Uses.

G. H. Palmer's Antiphons upon Magnificat and Nunc Dittis provides antiphons for both the first and second evensong. According to this the tone of the first is solemn version of the sixth and the second the solemn of the fourth with the second ending. The text of the first antiphon is as follows:

To an instrument * of ten strings singeth the Royal maiden, magnifying the Lord her Savior who hath wrought in her so wondrously : Who putteth down the mighty from their seat, in righteousness, and exalteth the humble in his loving kindness.

The Collect in The English Liturgy is as follows:

Almighty God, who for their mutual comfort, didst cause the Blessed Virgin, mother of thine only Son, to visit Saint Elizabeth; Mercifully grant that we, being sheltered by thy defense from all adversaries may ever be comforted by his continual visitation, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

At the Altar of Incense

2010-06-24T04:47:00.000-07:00

Sorry, this one is personal. But surrounded as I am both by little groups and mega churches which claim to be 'Biblical' I always find myself asking those who adhere to them how often they use incense. The answer is always "never!" And for me that ends the argument because it is my firm belief that in order to understand something of the mind of God, you have to be open to the continual use of incense in the services of the Church. This is both the teaching of the Book of Common Prayer and of Holy Scripture, however much we, both as individuals and as Churchmen, tend to ignore it. But on the feast of the Nativity of Saint John Baptist we should find it especially hard to do.

Why? Because it was when John's father, the priest Zacharias, was at the altar of incense in the temple that the angel Gabriel announced to him John's birth and told him what the child was to be called. That place and time have, as the sainted Dr. William Howard Frere, C.R., wrote in his revision of Procter's A New History of the Book of Common Prayer always bothered 'Protestants' because it seemed to close to the ceremonial law of Israel which they have rejected. I suspect they are also bothered by the fact that one of the magi's gifts was frankincense as well. It speaks to strongly of the fact that Christianity is a "yon side religion" with just too many things beyond the bare rationalism of Reformation fundamentalism.

The Book of Common Prayer never specifically orders the use of incense in the services of the Church, but from Elizabeth I's prayer book of 1559 the Act of Uniformity has ordered; "Such Ornaments of the Church and of the Ministers thereof, shall be retained, and be in use, as was in this Church of England by the Authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward the sixth . . ." Certainly thuribles and incense boats were among them and we know by the complaints of Elizabeth's bishops to their friends in Zurich that incense was used. Bosher in his book The Restoration of the Church of England pointed out by quotes from the period that prayer book services in the chapels in France during the Commonwealth astonished the French by their copes, profound bows, and clouds of incense. And incense continued to be used in the cathedrals of England until a canon of Ely brought to an end in 1770 by complaining that it caused him headache. Rationalism and the beginning of secular humanism had set in.

But the prayer book reminds us of its scriptural intent and importance with the Sentences as the beginning of Morning and Evening Prayer. "From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my Name shall be great among the Gentiles: and in every place incense shall be offered unto my Name, and a pure offering: for my Name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts. Mal. i, 11." "Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the incense; and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice. Psalm cxli. 2."

And then there is the Book of Revelations with its description of the worship in heaven. Hard core Evangelicals and 'Protestants' of all varieties just might as well consign themselves to hell because you know they are not going be be comfortable with all those bowls of incense burning before the throne of God. And that is why every oratory, mission, parish or cathedral in the Continuum ought to be preparing its people for heaven by the regular use of incense because if Holy Scripture teaches us nothing else, there is no way that we can escape the fact that God likes it, likes it a lot and "the Bible tells us so!" It even gives us his own recipe as to how it is supposed to be mixed.

So if we as Anglicans are going to be good Biblical and New Testament Christians, we need to make sure that we imitate the worship of heaven as it is revealed in Holy Scripture. And that means that we are going to have to use incense both at the offices, in processions and at the celebration of Holy Communion. After all, we have he words of Jesus in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, "They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them." We read them as well, but it is only too plain that we frequently don't hear what they say, what they order. We are so stuck in our own defense against the very word of God that we can not hear it and certainly don't want to obey it. In things great and very small, it is time for that to change.

An Interesting Bit of Verse

2010-06-12T15:15:00.000-07:00

'For this, Seditious Spirits in disguise
Swarm in the Church, tho' they that Church despise:
Loudly they boast her Ancient rights and Fame,
Whilst underhand they play a Popish Game.
The Seed of Loyola with Artful Pains
First fixt this High-Church Poyson in our Veins,
Infecting too, too many of our Youth,
Who, blindly led, fell from the Cause of Truth.

Does that read like an attack upon the Tractarians, the early ritualists or even the late nineteenth century Anglo-Catholics? If you thought so you would be wrong. It was written and published in 1708, more than a century before the beginning of the Tractarian Movement. Those lines came from a poem titled: The Seditious Insects: or, the Levelers assembled in Convocation. I present it as evidence that as Frere wrote in the early twentieth century, the Church has always had its enemies who were in his words "too little of Churchmen to obey her, but too much of Churchmen to leave her."

And so the battle persists. Those of us who think of ourselves as Prayer Book Anglicans or Prayer Book Catholics and who believe that real high churchmen value the Church and express that by a full and complete obedience to our own version of the Book of Common Prayer, must remain aware that the Church still contains those whose real loyalties remain outside "the doctrines, discipline and worship . . . .of the church" as expressed in her classical formularies.

The Geneva Bible of 1559

2010-04-24T19:43:00.000-07:00

One of the advertisements which I receive regularly on the internet is for the Geneva Bible of 1559. It is touted as the version of the Bible brought to America by the Puritans and consequently as the Bible not only of the Reformation but also of the American Revolution. It is a clever sales idea, but as an Anglican one that I must reject. Why? Because one of the things which an American child is quite unlikely to learn in the government schools is that the major leaders of the American revolution and the writing of the Constitution were not members of the denominations, but Anglicans. And that would make the real Bible of the American Revolution and the American founding precisely The Authorized Version of 1611, commonly called the King James version.

Since most American know very little of English history even as most Britons know very little of American history, it is probably time that we run through the facts. One of the great myths of American history is that the Pilgrims who came to what is now Massachusetts in 1620 were coming to this country for purposes of religious freedom. Absolutely nothing could be farther from the truth. For some period of time these folk had been living in Amsterdam and not in England, and in the Dutch states they had every bit of religious liberty which they could have desired. They didn't like it. Why? Because the freedom of Amsterdam threatened the absolutist ideas of this little group. They were afraid that in the middle of all that freedom their children would wander away from their version of the "True Faith." Hence their choice to come to America where they could set up their own little version of a religiously totalitarian state which allowed of no freedom of religion to anyone whose views or faith differed from their own. We face a similar situation today in that the very political and ideological heirs of the Puritans have done their best to control the levers of public opinion and admit no orthodoxy except their own.

A few years later with the Cromwellian revolution and the overthrow of both the monarchy and the Church of England, the same experiment was tried in England. It did not take very long for the majority of the English to decide that they didn't like it and the king returned from exile in 1660 and both the monarchy and the Church were restored. That meant a return to the services of the English Book of Common Prayer and the use of the King James version of the English Bible. And it was this version of both prayer book and Bible that a clear majority of the leaders of the American Revolution were raised on. The result was that when the Declaration of Independence was adopted two thirds of those who signed it were Anglicans. And the convention in Philadelphia which wrote the American Constitution was comprised of fifty per cent Anglicans plus one. There was another nominal Anglican but he was one of the two delegates to that convention who were deists.

One of the great American myths generally told by persons of a certain political persuasion is that the framers of the American system of government were deists and not Christians. These are the people who in fact hate the Church and hate Christianity, because the faith of English Christians has always led them to demand greater freedom for ordinary people. Take that first great document of liberty, the Magna Carta. The leader of the Baron's revolt against King John was none other than the archbishop of Canterbury and the place where it is easiest to see an original copy of that great document is at Salisbury Cathedral. By modern standards it was not much, but it contained that magical phrase, "the Church of England shall be free." John Lackland had attempted to sell it to the papacy.

One of the features of the Geneva Bible is the included commentaries. Rather than giving the reader the freedom to "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest" the text of Holy Scripture, these commentaries told the reader what the Scriptures meant and what he was to believe. And of course it was an interpretation heavily slanted from a continental Calvinist view. Among the reasons that King James authorized a new translation of the Bible based upon the best available Hebrew and Greek manuscripts was precisely the political and religious slant of these commentaries. He and the Church of England wanted a text that was the most faithful to the meaning of the original without the inclusion of later opinions.

In modern America we have a like situation in that we have people telling us what the Constitution means which is frequently almost the precise opposite of what the text actually says.

The point of this, if there is one, is that the English Church and her daughters who have been and remain true to the faith of the Bible and the prayer book as we have received it, that is to the 'doctrine, discipline and worship' of the Catholic and Christian church as Jesus handed it over to the apostles and they in turn to the sub apostolic Church is the greatest guarantor of human freedom and dignity which the world has ever know. Those who strike out at the faith and practice of the prayer book are also striking out at the very dignity and freedom of every man. One of the doctrines of the framers of the American Constitution and government was that we receive our rights, not from government but from God. And that is a doctrine which they learned both from the Bible, the Authorized Version, and from the Book of Common Prayer.

The Feast of St George, Martyr

2010-04-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

Today is the feast of St. George, the patron not only of England but of a very large number of countries, cities and provinces besides. It was made a feast day of the English church in the Synod of Oxford in 1222. But its importance in England increased when Edward III made him the patron of the Order of the Garter in 1348. The British war cry of "England and St George" began with the Hundred Years War as Edward III began his attempt to achieve the French crown, a claim based upon his descent from his mother, the French princess Isabella.

The prayer book collect: Almighty God, by whose grace and power thy holy Martyr George triumphed over suffering, and despised death : Grant, we beseech thee, that enduring hardness, and waxing valiant in fight, we may with the noble army of martyrs receive the crown of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Blessed George Selwyn

2010-04-12T08:11:00.000-07:00

George Augustus Selwyn (5 April 1809 - 11 April 1878) was the first missionary bishop of New Zealand under the title of Bishop of Auckland and subsequently its first primate. Afterward he was the 90th bishop of Litchfield and died in that office.

O God, the light of the faithful and Shepherd of souls, who didst set blessed George Selwyn to be a bishop in the Church that he might feed thy sheep by his word and guide them by his example : Grant us, we pray thee, to keep the faith which he taught and to follow in his footsteps, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Scottish Book of Common Prayer

Elizabeth I, March 24, 1603, R.I.P.

2010-03-24T16:23:00.000-07:00

As she came into the world on the eve of the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, so Elizabeth I died on the eve of the feast of the Annunciation in 16o3. Without her and her own vision of the Christian faith and the Church, there would be no Anglicanism. With what her half sister Mary had done in terms of her Spanish marriage with the introduction into England of the Spanish inquisition, any lingering sentiment for the Roman See and the Roman faith was largely vanished. But without Elizabeth's policy of re-introducing the Book of Common Prayer and supporting the English Church, it would have been overwhelmed by the doctrine of either Geneva or Zurich. Instead she returned it as close as it was humanly possible to the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Church as she herself put it of "the earliest bishops and Catholic fathers."

There have been many who have attempted to portray her as a person largely without religious faith. If that had been true it would have been much easier for her to have retained the Roman religion in England. But her actions, and chiefly those kept from the scrutiny of the world, reveal her as a person of deep faith. She attended daily morning and evening prayer in her own chapel. And there the Eucharist was celebrated with her bishops, largely against their will, acting as priest, deacon and subdeacon (to quote one of them) "in the golden vestments of the papacy" with music provided by Byrd and Tallis. In addition it was her practice to read a chapter of the New Testament in Greek and a chapter of the Old Testament in Hebrew every single day while the book in which she wrote prayers of her own composition remained a secret until her death.

Many Anglicans know of the quote which once graced the newletter of the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen and has appeared in many Anglican blogs including this one, But let me conclude this post with another. "There is one thing higher than Royalty: and that is religion, which causes us to leave the world, and seek God." Elizabeth could not leave the world because she saw her rule as an act of service to her people, but in her very first interview with the Spanish ambassador after she became queen she told him that her colours were black and white, those of a vowed religious. I doubt if he understood but he reported everything she said faithfully to Philip, his master. And we, from the long view of history, have a much better chance of knowing that she meant every word so that in the end, she, more than any other, deserved the title of "Defender of the Faith."

Some Verses to Consider

2010-03-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

As we near the end of Lent, and indeed we are already in Passiontide, I would like to give those who read this blog three verses from the New Testament to consider prayerfully. We all know them, but how often to we isolate them and apply ourselves to them and them to our own lives as Christians and Churchmen. I am not going to do more than give you book, chapter and verse so that you have to look them up yourselves.

The first is Matthew 18:3.

The second Luke 9:24.

The third Luke 17:10.

These should be your preparation for Holy Week and your Easter communion - if you dare.

Blessings.

An Anglican Passiontide

2010-03-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

Passiontide begins with tonight's evensong. Because of that I though I should post what the second edition of the second volume of the Alcuin Club's Directory of Ceremonial has to say about its observance. This is important in that we, in the Continuum, need to let people know that we are neither Papists nor Episcopalians, but that we are indeed the old Church believing in the old Religion and keeping it in the old ways. As the Council of Nicea said, "let the ancient customs prevail."

PASSIONTIDE

Passiontide begins with the first Evensong of the fifth Sunday in Lent. The altar frontals should be changed to red, and red vestments are worn. The remainder of the Lenten array continues as before. The red need not be dull or dark (the symbolism is, of course, the precious blood of our Saviour), but the materials should be simple, e.g. linen, with apparels of blue or black.

Red-letter days falling between Passion Sunday and Palm Sunday are celebrated as usual, but those occuring in Holy Week are transferred to the week after Low Sunday. Black-letter days fallin in Holy Week are omitted altogether for that year. If, however a black-letter saint is the patron of the place, the day is treated as a red-letter day, and transferred to the first free day after Low Sunday, but this cannot be earlier than Tuesday if the feast is to have a first Evensong, since the second Evensong of Low Sunday must not be displaced.

While in recent years, there are some who have adopted the custom of using the dalmatic and tunicle even during these period, in ancient times that would not have been done. Instead the dalmatic of the deacon and the tunicles of the sub-deacon and clerk would have been given up for the more ancient use of the folded chasuble. According to the rules of Sarum, Wells and Exeter, these would have been used daily until Maundy Thursday while York and Hereford wore them on only the Sundays in Lent and Passiontide. Maundy Thursday would have been kept in dalmatic and tunicle as would have been the case on Holy Saturday. Good Friday would have been kept in albs only. As one who believes that the chasubles proper to the Ornaments Rubric were the ancient conical ones as the surviving example from the Elizabeth I's Chapel Royal was before being cut down, it would seem appropriate for the same to be used during this period.

The most important thing to remember is that until all of the services appointed for this period in the Book of Common Prayer are used, it is very inappropriate to do anything else liturgically. The prayer book services must come first.

Saint Kessog's Day

2010-03-10T17:03:00.000-08:00

Saint Kessog was an Irish missionary of the mid-sixth century active in the Lennox area and southern Perthshire. Kessog was Scotland's patron saint before Saint Andrew, and his name was used as a battle cry by the Scots. Son of the king of Cashel in Ireland, Kessog is said to have worked miracles, even as a child. He left Ireland and became a missionary bishop in Scotland. Using Monks' Island in Loch Lomond as his headquarters, he evangelized the surrounding area until he was martyred, supposedly at Bandry, where a heap of stones was known as St Kessog's Cairn. Kessog was killed in 520 AD.

The St McKessog's church in Luss on the banks of Loch Lomond is named after Kessog and in the church resides his effigy. Kessog is claimed to have brought Christianity to the area around Luss in 510AD and 1500 years of continuous Christian presence in the area will be celebrated in 2010AD.

Those of us who have Celtic or Scots' ancestry should regard this as a great day. Indeed, as the patron saint of Scotland before Rome saw that he was replaced by St Andrew as evidence of the native church's submission to Rome. It should be especially important to American Anglicans in that we received the apostolic succession from the Catholic remnant of the ancient Church of Scotland.

An Anglican Lent

2010-03-08T08:48:00.000-08:00

We are already too late in Lent with next Sunday being the fourth, Mothering Sunday, but I hope to make up for my failures by posting just a bit about how the true prayer book Anglican approaches the fast. First, we should all know that Lent was originally the period in which people were prepared for the sacrament of baptism. While they were previously allowed into the Church for the first part of the Eucharist, but were expelled before the prayers of the people. When they determined that they were ready to make the step of becoming Christians they were invited to give in their names on Septuragesima Sunday. On Sexagesima Sunday they were given what they pretty much already knew, the bad news about just what might happen to them if they were actually Christians. This was in those days 'Exhortation Sunday,' as even with the bad news they were exhorted to make good in their intent to be baptized. Quinquigesima Sunday was 'Commencement Sunday,' and the process of their training as Christians would begin.

That should tell us that what we who are already baptized should be doing with Lent is engaging in the process of re-newing our own Christian commitment, reminding ourselves of what we are supposed to know, believe and do not only as Anglicans, but as classic Catholic Christians because in this world we need constantly to be renewing our own baptismal vows. The first and best way of doing this is pointed out in the collect for the second Sunday in Advent in which we are urged to "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest" the Scriptures themselves. That means that we not only need to attentively hear them in the offices of the Church and in the Communion Service, but to actively meditate upon what we have heard in our private prayers. It is there that we need to apply them to our own lives, own failings and falling from grace, our own need for grace and salvation in Jesus.

Lent is also a period in which we are expected to fast with the two most important fast days being Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. But after that the Book of Common Prayer also reminds us that "The Forty Days of Lent" are all fast days with the Ember days which occured on the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday following the First Sunday in Lent. Now the Church does not tell you what you must do in terms of fasting because it does not believe that any Christian should injure their health by extemes of austerity, but this is a matter which each of us need to be reminded should be worked out either with our parish priest or spiritual director and adviser.
We should also remember that the money we have saved by fasting should be used for purposes of charity either through the church or of our own choosing.

There is also another thing which we should know and expect as Anglicans. And that is what the Ornaments of the Church and of its ministers are supposed to look like. Most of us know that in the Roman Church Lent is marked by the use of purple. The altar frontal is purple as are the vestments of the priest and attendant ministers. But this was not the case with the English church or indeed most of the Church in Northern Europe prior to the Reformation and the Counter Reformation in Trent. Then things were different. Rather than attempt to list them myself, I am going to give you what the Alcuin Club's Directory of Ceremonial has to say about was done and should be continued in Lent.

LENT

During Lent is is desirable to express the spirit of the season by as complete a transformation of the interior of the Church as possible. This can be achieved by adopting a practice at one time widely prevalent on the Continent and which in England survived in some places until the nineteenth century. The custom was to cover all crosses, pictures, statues, and other decorative work with veils of whitish linen or light holland, and the effect was to make these objects sink, as it were, into the background of th church's whitened walls. These veils were often marked with crosses or emblems of the Passion or other symbols relating to the object covered, in red or blue. In addition the leaves of triptychs were kept closed. This gives the church a quiet devotional aspect suitable to a pentitential season, while avoiding the gloom produced by purple or black hangings.

The colour prescribed by the older English Cathedral sequences was usually red, but in practice in parish churches the altar-frontal and vestments were universally of the same material and colour as the veils, up to Passion Sunday, when in fact the red came into use for vestments and frontals. It is desirable to emphasize the change of teaching between Lent and Passiontide by some such outward sign as this.

This whole arrangement is often referred to as the 'Lenten Array.' A special processional cross of wood, painted red, was often reserved for use in Lent and Passiontide. Three silver nails were sometimes painted on this processional cross.

To mark this season albes may be worn unapparelled. Deacon, Subdeacon and Clerk will dispense with dalmatic or tunicle, though maiples will be worn and the stole by the Deacon.

In addition it is an old and wholesome custom that unaccompanied singing should, so far as possible, be the rule during Lent, except on Refreshment Sunday, Palm Sunday (during the Procession only), and at the Eucharist on Maunday Thursday, and on any festivals (such as the Annunciation or a Patronal festival) which may occur during the season.

For those who would like to see what this looks like, I would ask readers to Google "Lenten Array," and follow the wonderful photographs which they are going to find on sites featuring medieval church art and on Flikr. You will find a beauty which is now particularly Anglican and which should be part of the tradition of any parish or mission which calls itself Anglican.

Mardi Gras or Shrove Tuesday?

2010-02-15T19:43:00.000-08:00

I find it very interesting that we live in a culture in which "Fat Tuesday," the outrageous party with all of its excesses, has come to replace our good Anglican Shrove Tuesday. Of course, given the failure of bishops and priests to teach "doctrine, discipline and worship" of the Church over the past half century it should come as little surprise that so many don't know the meaning of that name or the practice which it recommends. Or being more Episcopalian that Anglican, they don't understand that the practice of confession and absolution is part of our Anglican heritage.

Let me quote part of The Exhortations which the English prayer directs to be read when the priest gives warning for the celebration of Holy Communion:"if there be any of you, who by this means cannot quiet his own conscience herein, let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned Minister of God's Word, and open his grief; that by the ministry of God's holy word he may receive the benefit of absolution, together with ghostly counsel and advice, to the quieting of his conscience, and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness."

Further in The Visitation of the Sick there is provided a form for the sick person to say before listing the sins of which he is repenting. And that is followed by one of the most beautiful sentences in the whole of the English prayer book, one that I very much wish had been retained in our American version but which is used, I believe, by good priests through out Anglicanism when absolving sinners.

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee thine offences : And by his authority committed to me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."

It is a formula I have heard a good deal because I was lucky enough to be well instructed in the teaching of the faith as set forth in the traditional and classical prayer books in my teens. One of my fondest memories was of setting on the steps of my parish church with my university pals as we each waited for our turn to go in and confess our sins and be absolved. We were unusually happy sinners because we had discovered that the simple practice of acknowledging the particularity of our sins and receiving the absolution of the Church made it easier to grow in grace and charity. It was a way of saying to ourselves and to our Lord that we were serious about our faith and our commitment to live as Christians. I think it was also comforting to know that we were not alone in our habit.

Indeed, I have had other incidents which has ever reminded me that no matter how high or low one's station in life, there are times when noting will quite do the job like confession. First there was a sermon by Michael Ramsay when he was archbishop of Canterbury. He pounded the pulpit as only he could and told us that the best assurance of God's forgiveness of all our sins was auricular confession. And then thee was the time when I found my bishop standing in the center of the quire in the glory of his scarlet rochet and chimere. He called me by name and sent me to fetch the rector, saying, "Tell him that I have come to make my confession."

We live in a world that likes to party and Fat Tuesday as it is celebrated in New Orleans or Mobile is certainly partying at its wildest. But for true Christians there is certainly no better party in this world or the next than the wedding feast of the Lamb. And the best way to go there is in the spotless wedding garment that a good confession provides. It is a good way to start Lent and an even better way to prepare for Easter. And it is certainly not to late to get on your kness and ask God to help you prepare a true bill of your sins, large and small, and then arrange with your priest to come and make your confession.

Dearmer - Again!

2010-01-31T20:50:00.000-08:00

In the bloging world you sometimes come upon a quote that is so good that you just can't leave it where it was. This is one of them. I became a fan of Deamer's when I was yet a teenager in the very far ago fifties. It was one of those periods when a number of influences seemed to be warring for my intention. I was reading all of the Henry Bradshaw Society volumes the university library possessed and the works of as many Russian Orthodox theologians which I could find. And then I came upon the Parson's Handbook. It had a beauty and a logic that seemed to pull a good deal of the rest together. Anyway, this is a quote from a book of his of which I have never been able to find a copy, but like what it says so much that I think it belongs here. Hopefully those of you who appreciate the classical Anglican prayer book tradition will as well.

“The English Church happens to base herself in a special manner upon history–she appeals to the Scriptures and primitive antiquity for her theology, [* Articles VI., VIII., etc.] to the ancient Fathers for her ritual, [* The Preface Concerning the Service of the Church, Article XXIV., etc.] to Catholic tradition for her ceremonial; [* The Preface Of Ceremonies, Canon 30 (1603), Canon & (1640), etc.] she refers us to the second year of Edward VI for her ornaments, [* The Ornaments Rubric] and to the later middle ages for the arrangement of her chancels. [* "And the chancels shall remain as they have done in times past." (First inserted in 1552.)] [24/25] Her formularies, therefore, cannot be understood without a good deal of historical knowledge. Some people may object to this, and may ask–Why should they be bound by documents that are two or three hundred years old? But the fact remains that they are so bound, whether they like it or not; and that the whole intention of the Reformers, as shown from end to end of the Prayer Book, Articles, and Canons, was to bind them to principles that are nearer two thousand than two hundred years of age. Nor will they be released from this bondage to historic continuity till the same authority that imposed it shall have removed it,–which will not be for a long time to come. The attempts that have been hitherto made at throwing off this light yoke have not been so conspicuously successful in their results as to encourage us to proceed. Therefore I ask Churchmen to renounce those futile experiments of private judgment, and to throw themselves into the task of realising in its entirety that sound Catholic ideal which the defenders of the English Church preserved for us through the most troublous period of her history. “– Dearmer, Loyalty to the Prayer Book

Words From A Strange Place

2010-01-15T10:13:00.000-08:00

Sometimes in reading things far from either scripture or the Fathers of the Church we find words which reinforce our view of what Anglicanism means to us. At the moment I am reading Brian D'Amato's In The Courts Of The Sun where I found the following couple of sentences which express exactly what I feel and thing about the current status of classical, prayer book Anglicanism.

"And now I was finally drawing a bead on the little gray personal demons I'd been swatting at for my whole glam-ass life. I wanted the books back. I wanted my beaten, maimed, raped, infected, abandoned, and all-but-deceased culture back, and I wanted it right the hell now."

When I read that, my reaction was "Yes, yes, damn yes!" I realize that there are probably very few outside of those who watched the radical leftists and others who had infiltrated and taken over one after another of the churches of the Anglican establishment and turned them into less than unitarian, universalist camps of pseudo-Christians obsessed by the insanity of the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-and Transsexual agenda.
Instead they seem to think, to believe that we who are the inheritors of the great tradition of the very best of Western, Christian civilization are the strange ones.

But when I turn to the altar, and uncover the bread and the cup to begin those marvelous words at the beginning of all the greater Anglican canons, I feel and know that the doors of eternity are opening and that i stand so close to the wounded feet of the blessed one that I would only have to incline myself only the slightest bit more to actually kiss them. But I have an even greater task to accomplish, that of actually obeying His commandment to "Do this . . ." In that moment and until the ablutions are finished after the blessing, all of my culture and civilization are present - and not to me only.

Am I alone in understanding and wanting this with every atom of my being? I think not; indeed I know not. Our 'Amens' are alleluias and affirmations of the existence of the eternal even here in the midst of unpleasant present. I, and all who worship with me; all those in the very words of that canon "shall be partakers of this Holy Communion . . ." are saying, "yes, Lord; here I am, send me."

Short and Sweet!

2009-12-27T14:43:00.000-08:00

As above, but almost marvelous beyond even the words into which it was put. I found it in the comment section of a blog where the person offering it said that he found it in a mailing list. Now that is a list that I would like to be on.

"ANGLICANISM: Offering personal ordinariates for disaffected Roman Catholic since 1549."

Priceless!

Boxing Day Boxed In

2009-12-26T11:23:00.000-08:00

Today is the feast of Stephen and on it as on the feast of Christmas itself we are house bound by snow and ice. That means that the liturgy is and has been the office since getting out on the roads would be all but impossible if not crazy suicidal. But that does not mean that we will not remember and celebrate the feast of the first martyr, the deacon Stephan, whose preaching of the gospel brought him death by stoning. However, let us be clear, in spite of the temptation we will not get stoned. A glass of wine with the pot roast and carrots, perhaps, but no more than that.

On the other hand, we do have memories and regrets. Among them is that we have never had the opportunity to "deacon" on this the feast of the first deacon martyr. Somehow on all of those occasions on which we have been where there could be a celebration of this feast, we have always had to be the celebrant. Having received the order of deacon on an Ember Saturday in December, it had been my hope to arrange for just the smallest of celebrations of this feast so that I could read the gospel with the diaconal stole on my left shoulder. No such luck! A big winter storm blew in from the Pacific and by the time it was over, the feast and such opportunity had passed. And by the bishop's order I was priested on the Ember Saturday in Whitsuntide and sang my first Eucharist on Trinity Sunday.

But it would be nice to find a place and time where one could slip back into the servant role, knowing that even as a priest one is also and always a deacon as well, to be able to as humbly as possible don not the cope and chasuble of the priest, but even the meanest of old red dalmatics and be the deacon on this feast. Next year, the feast will fall on a Sunday and with out the chance of the visit of another priest who might be persuaded to celebrate, I probably won't get the chance then either. So it may never happen but in my dreams. And yet I remember the time of the Cromwellian Interregnum in England when the use of the Book of Common Prayer was forbidden and made criminal and even under those circumstances true Anglicans took the risks and celebrated Holy Communion on all the Sundays and Holy Days of the year. There is even a legend that small groups would enter St Paul's in London and find a cornor where they would not be observed so that they might maintain the tradition of a daily celebration in that place until the king and the Church returned. And this is what we have to do as well. We have to find a building, however small and mean, where an altar can be erected and the offices and the Eucharist celebrated in complete conformity to our own Book of Common Prayer. After all the ancient Romans did so in the catacombs underneath the city where the dead were buried and the ancient Celts did so in clearings in the forest. Again, according to legend, the first church at Glastonbury was made of waddle, sticks interwoven and plastered with mud.

Given the circumstances of our Lord's birth and the place where he instituted the Eucharist, we should all recognize that those who will only attend the offices and Holy Communion in a grand stone building with a magnificent pipe organ are less Christians than we would like them to be. We all want things to be the best that we can offer, our own poor equivalent of the shepherd's gifts as well as the gold, frankincense and myrrh of the Magi, but what is most important is that we give ourselves, "our souls and bodies," to follow and worship our Lord wherever we must. If we can not do that, the grandest of cathedrals are monuments erected to ourselves and not to Him.

This is Stephen's day; he gave his life to preach the gospel. What have we done; what are we doing to measure up him?

Honest to God . . .and to ourselves!

2009-12-13T02:03:00.000-08:00

There is a group of Anglicans who greatly admire what we call the religious life and which do their best to promote monasticism among us. They seem to place a very high value on other people living lives under rule and practicing the vowed virtues of "chastity, poverty and obedience." The truth is that these are virtues that belong to all who call themselves Christians and are equally attractive when practiced in the course of our daily lives.

But what is necessary is the old fashioned virtue of keeping your word, simply doing what you said that you would do. Here I am writing of the vows which are taken and made at the ordination of bishops, priests and deacons according to the Ordinal which now forms part of the Book of Common Prayer. When you take orders as an Anglican you ought to do so in obedience to the rite by which you received them and with the intention of using that rite appropriately. Unfortunately, right from the reign of Elizabeth I there have been far too many who have wanted office in the Church but when ordained refused to do what they promised they would do so. This has given us three parties in the Church whose chief charactoristic is their refusal to do what the Church has ordered in the way the Church has ordered it. They are the so-called 'evangelical' or low church party, the broad church party and finally the Anglo-papalist party who does most of what is required but chooses to do so with the ornaments and ceremonial of a foreign church. The result is that many both inside and outside the Church have any idea who we, as Anglicans, are or were intended to be. Consequently, this is another plea for all Anglicans, lay and clergy, to do what the prayer book orders in the way in which the rubrics in the prayer book tradition intended it to be done. And to that point I have chosen to quote two books, both of which I think are very much to the point.

The first is one of those books which every Anglican lay or clerical really ought to know. It is Proctor and Frere's A New History of the Book of Common Prayer. "The Puritan party from the days of Elizabeth to the present time have never honestly accepted the Prayer Book: its members have been too much of churchmen to leave the Church, but too little of churchmen to value its principles: they have remained in a false position, attempting to subvert the system to which they nominally conformed. It has been pointed out how openly the attempt was made in Elizabethan times; and, though it has in God's good providence failed all along to win any substanial recognition, it has been able at times to establish an evasive and false tradition of Prayer Book interpretation which has practically popularized and sought even to justify a system of disloyalty to the Prayer Book. The party has had its conflicts with the loyal and more wholehearted churchmanship, and the issues have hitherto not been finally decisive. The failure of the Elizabethan attempt to puritanise the Church inaugurated the period of loyalty of the early Stuart times: the success of this recovery was too rapid and too injudicious, and so the revenge came speedily; for a while sectarianism and puritanism had their way, until a short experience of their results under the Commonwealth produced a fresh reaction. The failure of the Puritans at the Savoy inaugurated another period of loyalty under the later Stuarts, but, when Church life was systematically crushed in the 18th century by Whig politicians and latitudinarian bishops, the reign of the false tradition and the evasive, disloyal or merely torpid attitude to the rules of Church worship again set in; and those who tried to be loyal system, whether early followers of Wesley, Clapham Evangelicals or Oxford Tractarians, were all alike in turn charged with innovation, disloyalty, and even with Popery. The contest still survives: the Puritan party still works for a system which is not the system of the Catholic Church or of the English Prayer Book, and defends its disregard of plain rubrics (e.g., as to fasting or daily services) and its want of sympathy with the system (e.g., as to the frequency and discipline of Communion) by appealing to the evasive tradition, which in the dark days of its history it has been able to form, and would like to fasten permanently upon the Church. Thus there is no feature more marked in the history of the Prayer Book than this contest between the Church system of worship expressed in the Prayer Book and the false interpretation which has grown up through a continous tradition of evasion and rebellion"

The other quotation if from the Reverend Canon J. C. L. Dart's The Old Religion. "This Protestant fifth column is still with us. Declarations are constantly being made that the Church of England comprehends many points of view and that all of them have an equal right to exist within its borders. We are told that extreme "Evangelical" Churches are as much "Church of England" as "Anglo-Catholic" ones, perhaps even more so. But this is simply not true. This is proved by the one authoritiative document which the Church of England has issued -the Book of Common Prayer. Doctrines which are contrary to it are disloyal. Churches which do not obey its directions represent disloyal and rebellious elements."

There you have it: the question of honesty and obedience, not set away in an enclosed community, but in the totality of the Church itself. Is it right that we should not only expect it but require it of all who have made these promises to the Church and to God?

The Conceptionof the Blessed Virgin

2009-12-08T09:04:00.000-08:00

This feast is in the calendar of the of the English book of 1662 and the 'Deposted Book' of 1928. It is also in the prayer book of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church of Scotland. It was also in the calendar of the Sarum Use. Acoording to Liturgy and Worship the "date was deduced from that of the Nativity on Sept. 8. The Festival has been though to have originated in England before 1066. Abolished at Canterbury by Lanfranc, it was reintroduced into England in the twelfth century." This feast has been in the English prayer book calendar since 1559 and is indicative of the Catholic intention of the Settlement of Religion under Elizabeth I. As a black letter holy day it was not provided with a proper collect, epistle and gospel. But the reasons for that were not religious but economic.

Lambreth Conference of 1867

2009-11-30T11:43:00.000-08:00

I found this quote in F. W. Puller's The Continuity of the Church of England Before and After It's Reformation in the 16th Century. London, Longman's, Green and Co., 1913. Since I very much agree with it because it sets for the classical Anglican position, I thought it worthwhile to pass it on.

"We do here solemnly record our conviction that unity will be most effectually promoted by maintaining the faith in its purity and integrity, as taught in the Holy Scriptures, held by the primitive Church, summed up in the Creeds, and afirmed by the undisputed General Councils."

Would it not be a great thing if the current Archbishop of Canterbury, establishment Anglicanism, and all those who call themselves Anglican were equally of that opinion. Instead we have folks who have another faith and attempting to cause us to believe that It is Anglicanism and Christian.

Advent Comes Again!

2009-11-28T21:35:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the Advent Sunday and in accordance with the old usage we will be blue again. That will take us away from those to whom Ritual Notes is the authority for Catholicity, and will set us apart from even those who think themselves Anglicans but would never bother to consider obeying the Ornaments Rubric. They now that they have compromised their principles by using stoles over their surplices almost universally do so with the Roman colours.

Advent is one of those strange seasons which I long ago decided that essentially eluded the comprehension of those who gave us our prayer book. I know that some of their reasoning was based upon economics. England had been made poor by a hundred years of civil war and needed to get back to work. The liturgical system of the medieval church was beyond the comprehension of what we would think of as "the man in the pew" because it was in a language which he didn't understand and about a subject that was open to him only by the pictures painted on the church's walls. And the climax of the season was the feast of Christmas which seemed to be about the nativity of Jesus - until you started reading the appointed scriptural lessons and the prayers which accompanied the service.

That is not to say that the Sarum liturgy or those of Lincoln, York or Bangor were not beautiful. As one who spent too much of my late teen years reading through the volumes of the Henry Bradshaw Society how marvelous, how incredibly beautiful they were and were intended to be. But be cause of the language issue they were open and understood only by an intellectual and educated elite while the ordinary Christian knelt on the floor of his or her parish church and said their beads. They had been present at mass; there duty had been done but they were really at a closed door.

The first Book of Common Prayer opened that door for them. I am not sure that they appreciated it. Kneeling there and saying their paters and aves was easier. Now they were being assaulted by a load of Scripture that was almost more than they could take in and digest. The psalms, the Old Testament lessons, the Gospels and more; and then there were the clerical fights over just how it was to be done and how much they would be allowed to actually participate. The change was too quick and too radical for most of them to comprehend or make their personal piece with. Indeed we have seen the same thing with the Roman Church when they switched their liturgy from the old Latin rite of Pius V for the Novus Ordo of Paul VI. They went from full churches to ones almost as empty as those of the Episcopal Church after thirty years of their version of the new Roman liturgy.

And us? Well, we have more than four hundred years of it now and we still can't seem to get it right. High and crazy; low and lazy, broad and hazy with each insisting that they are the real Anglicans. And then we enter the occasional church which seems to be praying of itself. When the services begin the majority of the people seem to know what they are doing and refer only to the service sheet for the number of the hymns. They know where they are and what they are doing and do it well. They do not seem to be noticing each other but are all focused on something, somewhere beyond themselves and the present moment. If it were not for the sense of joy and peace which prevails we might think to be frightened.

And so it begins again, the new liturgical year replacing the one just past. We have said or sung the same songs, the same canticles and heard the same prayers, the same lessons and the same gospels for all of our Christian and Anglican lives - and yet it is always new, taking us almost by surprise. What we once said in our innocence is now said with tingling anticipation it has become so intense, so quietly thrilling. Are these not in the most the same people who have always been here, but how has it become greater, sharper than the last time that we were here and saying these words. Didn't we understand then; do we now? And when will we know? And why is our body responding so strangely? Is it because we know that He is coming and that we must be ready?

What do you think?

INCENSE: A Word from Dearmer

2009-11-25T07:37:00.000-08:00

When I first read the Introduction to Dearmer's Parson's Handbook, I was very strongly struck by the following passage. It seemed to me that those who claimed to be Bible Christians should immediately be asked about their use of incense in church services. When they admit, as they will have to do, that it is not used among them, then one is free to ask if they have actually read and understood the Bible. Personally I have always felt that those who were uncomfortable about the use of incense probably didn't really believe there was a God or that Jesus was divine. There is something about waving a censor at an altar that makes you aware that you couldn't or wouldn't do it if you didn't believe in God. It would be just too embarassing.

The use of incense is a good test as to the continuance of ceremonial under the New Covenant; because it is now regarded, even by some Bishops, as a mark of extreme ritualism. Its use is mentioned in the last prophetic book of the Old Testament[4] as [9] one of the signs of the New Covenant. The birth of the Fore-runner was announced to his father when ‘his lot was to burn incense,’[5] a singularly inopportune moment from the Puritan point of view. One of the three significant gifts offered to our Lord at His birth was incense.[6] In the Revelation an account is given of the ideal worship of the redeemed, by one who, more than any other man, had opportunities of knowing our Lord’s mind upon the subject. Now the worship he describes is again ritualistic; and the use of no less than twenty-eight ‘bowls’ of incense is mentioned.[7] It is mentioned again three chapters further on[8] in a manner that is significant; for it is then used ceremonially at the altar. The angel stands ‘at (or over) the altar, having a golden censer,’ he is given ‘much incense,’ to ‘add it unto the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar.’ ‘And the smoke of the incense, with (or for) the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand.’ The Sarum Missal itself hardly gives a more complete description of the ceremonial use of incense.

"THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY"

2009-11-20T04:53:00.000-08:00

This posting is going to be extremely simple. It will consist of a few paragraphs of wisdom from Percy Dearmer's introduction to Illustrations of the Liturgy. I am putting them up because they seem especially appropriate at the present moment. What is left of orthodox prayer book Anglicanism is being assaulted by the Roman Church and even its strongest theological defenders have been seduced by the missals and by Roman ornaments not invented until well after the English Reformation and religious settlement under Elizabeth I. The result is a chaos but it also presents an opportunity if we are only wise enough to seize it.

"The curse of the English Church, and indeed of the whole Anglican Communion, has been the individualism of its members. They have been a law unto themselves; and yet this individualism has seldom had the justification of originality: sometimes it has been Geneva that was copied, sometimes Rome. The result has been that our church has failed to make itself recognizable : foreigners know almost nothing about her, have no idea what she is like, would not recognize her when they saw her."

"You cannot enforce a system of worship. Even the iron-bound system of Rome has failed here. Since she has attempted to dictate uniformity, she has found herself obliged to follow the last popular fashion, however puerile or however effeminate, far more than in the comparative freedom of the late middle ages.

"What then can you do? Just what is done in literature, in art, in science, in politics, in every branch of human activity. You can educate. You can search out the facts, you can spread knowledge, you can establish principles. You can show men the beauty of the right way. You can also remove the remnants of autocratic ignorance which still unhappily linger among some of our bishops, or at least you can secure that the young men who are now learning shall know and understand when some of them come to such positions of authority; and you can spread the spirity of loyalty among clergy and layfolk alike, if only on this ground - that the spirit of individualism has proved a failure

"Antimony has been tried and has failed in every form. Every man has done what was right in his own eyes; with the result that every man has done wrong. This was disastrous; but if every man will now be content to learn, to think, and to carry out his appointed duty, if every priest will use the great opportunity which the Prayer Book offers, and if every bishop - true to that "sound learning" which Bishop Creighton described as the keynote of our part of the Church Catholic, and which is as necessary in public worship as in public speech - if every bishop will wisely lead, using the crook of a shepherd and not the driver's whip which disperses and does not direct, then we may in the future be true to ourselves, and of service to a world which is much distracted by the follies of Christians and their moral failures."

There is more to be added, but I shall not do so now. Some of this is best taken slowly and thought through bit by bit. It has taken us a long time to get ourselves into our present mess and we shall not be out of it quickly. We must learn to want to be what we are supposed to be. It may not be as exciting as adopting the role of another, but it will not make us play either false or the fool.

The Service of the Church

2009-11-19T08:31:00.000-08:00

"The Order for Holy Communion, the Order for Morning Prayer, the Order for Evening Prayer, and the Litany, as set forth in this Book , are the regular Services appointed for Public Worship in this Church, and shall be used accordingly;" except this has not been the case in the American Church and most of the other national churches in Anglicanism, either in the establishment communion or the parishes of the Continuum. If one were to ask why, the answer is not a difficult one. Up until the beginning of the Tractarian Movement the normal Sunday worship in an Anglican Church was one very long service of Morning Prayer, Litany, and Ante-communion followed by a sermon. English cathedrals and some very rare parish churches obeyed the rubric and actually proceeded to a celebration of Holy Communion every Sunday and Holy Day for which their Book of Common Prayer provided a proper. The others for reason which most of us will probably never be able to really understand felt that while the Book of Common Prayer devotes most of its pages to the Holy Communion service did not really intend that the sacrament should be offered to their parishioners every Sunday and Holy day. They seemed to believe that the purpose of Christian worship was to hear the Scriptures read and then explicated by a long and hopefully learned sermon.

With the beginning of the Tractarian or Oxford Movement, old fashioned high churchmen began to celebrate the Holy Communion service every Sunday. When these celebrations began to be celebrated in the vestments ordered in the Ornaments Rubric, low and broad churchmen responded by dropping the reading of the Litany and ante-communion service and placing the sermon directly at the end of Morning Prayer. This meant that a secondary service was given preference over that ordered by our Lord and considered central to the Church for its first fifteen hundred years. But low and broad churchmen seemed to believe that looking and acting in a way that reflected their view of the Reformation was much more important that actually keeping the obligation which they took freely when they were ordained. This meant that the Church became divided by parties which were specifically forbidden by St. Paul.

The major purpose of this blog (too long neglected, I know) is to urge all churchmen to keep the whole of the Book of Common Prayer in the manner in which it was intended. That means doing it in accordance with the English or Anglican usage and with pre-Reformation ceremonial. That will have the effect of making Anglicanism recognizable in a manner in which it is not now.

Truth and Beauty; Beauty and Truth!

2009-09-02T09:11:00.000-07:00

It has gotten that every time I face this blank page I am consumed with both anger and dispair. Why? Because I miss the austere beauty of the full Anglican rite augmented with the musical tradition of the English church at its best which seems no longer to found anywhere. Instead we have folks who call themselves Anglican who are either lusting after the Roman Novus Ordo, the Puritan Morning Prayer with Sermon or the 'Back to Baroque' Anglican or English missal service with nary a hint of the offices anywhere except for the occasional service of Evening Prayer as a prelude to Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament

In the local area we have four groups calling themselves Anglican. The first is connected to the Anglican Province of Christ the King which falls into the last category. The 1928 American Book of Common Prayer may be in the pew but the services would never be recognized as coming from same. The canon used is that of the English prayer book of 1662 so that the celebrant can actually recite the rest of the old Roman canon in Latin. The second is a parish of the Reformed Episcopal Church which varies between emasculated versions of the English 1662 and the American 1928. The third is a parish of the rising Anglican Church in North America which uses the TEO liturgy of 1979 with the exception of a personal re-write of the Nicene Creed by the rector and his curate. The fourth is a classical American prayer book group that seems much too small to ever grow and endure, but which alone represents the 'doctrine, discipline and worship' of classical and orthodox prayer book Anglicanism.

Yep! Mine!

And yet in the middle of such great deprivation, I also am full of hope. Why? because it is the last alone which may claim the fullness of the truth and beauty. And it is because of this truth of beauty and beauty of truth that I am sure that real Anglicanism will survive not only in the United States, but also in all the English speaking world.

Lo! How the Mighty Have Fallen

2009-05-02T10:03:00.000-07:00

I just read in the Christian History blog that a Greek Orthodox couple in Los Angeles have endowed a center for the study of the early church at Wheaton College. In the announcement mention was made of the Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, but there was no mention of Anglicans at all. I was hurt.

You see, in the nineteenth and twentieth century it was Anglican scholars who were the great and consistent students of the earliest Church. Indeed, it was the basis for who we were and what we believed and taught. But now through the treason of the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada and the way in which the Anglican Church in the British Isles have followed them in their heresies and embrace of immorality, it as if we have disappeared from the whole of the Christian world. Indeed, we have become a laughingstock, an embarrassment where once we were stupor mundi.

The worst of it is that we in the Continuum don't know who we are. Our parishes and missions, such as they are, reflect either the opinions of those who would have destroyed Anglicanism after the assession of Elizabeth I by their refusal to obey the Book of Common Prayer or those who decided that the only way to be either Anglican or Catholic was to substitute the use of missals and customs based upon the post-Tridentine liturgy of the Roman Church for that of the traditional Book of Common Prayer and the ceremonial and uses which the best liturgical scholars of the last two hundred years have determined was proper to it.

And that leaves me with a further question: do we really want to be Anglicans or are we just playing with religion because once the faith and practice of Anglicanism was that of the social and intellectual elite of the English speaking world? I am, let me admit it, a very high churchman who loves the fullness of English use. The language, the music, the vestments and ceremonial all move me, reminding me of the richness of the worship which God commanded for Himself in the Old Testament and for the protection of same which drove our Lord to violently drive the money changers from the temple. But I am equally made aware of the majesty of our Creator when I recite Morning Prayer and the Litany by myself on a cold morning without vestments, music or incense. Consequently, when I read something like the post in Christian History where Anglicans and Anglicanism is left out, what I hear ripping through my heart and soul is our Lord's cry from the cross: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?

A Sermon For Maunday Thursday

2009-04-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

"Greater love hath no man tha this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you" -- St John xv. 13,14.

There is no occasion in the whole Christian year on which it is a greater joy to a parish priest to address his people, than on the occasion of the annual address in preparation for the Easter Communion, The joy consists specially in this--that he has before him a conregation of genuine Christian people. For what is the meaning of the words 'a genuine Christian?'--One who is living in conxcious obedience to all the known commands of Jesus Christ--One who is living in conscious obedience to all the known comands of Jesus Christ--One whose great aim in life is to know the will of Christ; and who, when he knows it, and so far as he knows it, deliberately sets to work to do that will of Christ. On other occasions the congregations which assemble in this church, as a rule, contain many who live in habitual disregard of one of the greatest and most solemn commands of Jesus Christ--His dying command concerning the reception of the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. It is not unfair or hard to say, that no one is a genuine Christian, or possesses any claim to be considered a genuine Christian, who, being of age, is not a communicant. I am not, for the moment, thinking of the disastrous loss which those who never come to the Holy Table suffer in their own souls. I am not thinking, for the moment, of our Lord's solemn warning, "Verily, verily, I say unto your, Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you." But I am merely thinking of the impossibility of being a good Christian, whilst habitually disobeying our Lord's command, "This do in remembrance of me." I have in mind the words of Jesus Christ, in which He addresses those who so neglect and disregard His gracious commandment. "Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" It is our Lord Jesus Christ who, in speaking of the Holy Communion, said quite plainly, so that none can possibly mistake His meaning, "Take, eat; this is my Body; Drink ye all of it; for this is my Blood. This do in remembrance of me."

We meet then as, in a peculiar sense, the friends of Jesus Christ. He has honoured us who are communicants with this honoured title of "friends." He has disclosed to us the conditions upon which we may rightly claim His gracious friendship, saying, "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." And we know that, amongst other things, He has commanded, "This do in remembrance of me." There is but one test of friendship to Jesus Christ--not words, not feelings; but simple obedience. We prove our friendship to Jesus by obeying Him, when He spreads the Holy Feast of the Communion, and invites us to draw near and eat His sacred Flesh and drink His precious Blood.

And think, Friends of Jesus Christ, what joy it must bring to His sacred human heart as He sits at the right hand of the eternal Father in the heavenly places, that we should be assembled to consider how best we may receive the most comfortable Sacrament of His Body and Blood,--how best we may obey His dying command,--when the glad Easter Day dawns. What joy it must be to Him to see, that whilst the world forgets Him in His Passion, and even crucifies Him afresh by its sins, a little flock, such as we are, should be giving testimony to our love to Him by our obedience. For He Himself said, "If ye love me, keep my commandments." And this is His own special commandment, at this time in particular, "This do in remembrance of me."

I ask you to open your Prayer Books at the Epistle for the Thursday before Easter, which is written in I Cor. xi. 17 etc., which I will proceed to read, making some comments thereon. After referring to the irreverence of certain Corinthians, St. Paul says:
"For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you." St. Paul the speaker was not present in the upper room when our Lord instituted the Eucharist; hence he did not know, as the other apostles knew, what there took place. He received a special revelation directly from our Lord Himself concerning this matter, as he declares.

"That the Lord Jesus, the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread. . . ." The instttitution was almost the last act of Jesus before He was taken prisoner. Unless He had instituted the Holy Sacrament then, He could not have done so later. It certainly does give immense importance to the Holy Communion to remember that it was almost the last thing He did whilst He was free.

"And when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, Take, eat; this is my Body, which is broken for your." It is these words of our Lord which form the ground of the Church's belief in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Communion. He is present in the consecrated elements really, and not figuratively. The consecrated elements are not merely signs of His Body and Blood: they are, as the Catechism plainly declares, verily and indeed the Body and Blood of Christ, present under the outward forms of bread and wine in a way which passes our understanding. Jesus Christ is present in the Sacrament, not merely because we recall Him to our minds by an act of memory; but because by His own wonderful act He communicates Himself to us in the way which He has ordained.

"Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, . . ." The more we feel our unworthiness the more sure we may be that we shall receive the Sacrament worthily.

May our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all in preparing to come to your Easter Communion. May He make known to you, one by one, on Good Friday the greatness of His love. May His love attract you and constrain you, as you enter more deeply into the meaning of His words with which we commenced,--

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Vernon Staley, Provost of the Cathedral Church of Saint Andrew in Inverness.

The Lenten Array by the Very Reverend A. S. Duncan Jones, B.D.

2009-03-28T10:06:00.000-07:00

While the time for the Lenten Array is past, I recently discovered that the Warham Guild Tract by the Dean of Chichester Cathedral is apparently completely unavailable. Copies are not to be found on any of the used book outlets nor does it seem to be posted anywhere on the Internet. As this site is dedicated to the Anglican Use, it seemed to me a very necessary thing that the text (and perhaps later, the illustrations) of this important piece of Anglicana be made available and that as quickly as possible. So here it is!

Since early days the season of Lent has had a special character as a time of preparation for Easter. The length of the period has varied. Originally Lent seems to have been no more than a week before Easter. But by the beginning of the fourth century the period of forty days was establishing itself. The lengthening process can be traced in the letter which S. Athanasius each year wrote to his suffragans informing them of the date of Easter. The underlying conception of the observance also changed as time went on. Originally teaching was the prominent feature. Lent was the time when catechumens wee prepared for the great baptismal service, which took place on Easter Eve. Then it came to be thought of as a time in hich penitents prepared themselves for the absolution which would admit them to Communion at Easter. From this the idea developed that Lent was a time of pentitential retreat for ordinary Christians. Thus it was natural that an increasing stress was laid on fasting. Teaching and fasting became the essentials of Lenten discipline. It is a period of spiritual instruction and refreshment, in which many pleasures and diversions are deduced or put away, not at all because they are necessarily bad, but because they interfere with the concentration and the recollection that the soul needs, if it is to progress on the road to heaven.

In the fast of Lent penitence undoubtedly has its place though the day before Lent begins, Shrove Tuesday, is especially the day which invites to this discipline. Lent itself should be dominated more by the thought of what is coming than by dwelling on the past. Easter with its assurance of God's triumph sheds its radiance increasingly over Lent the cleansing of mind and heart and will are under taken in response to the promise of newness of life. Viewed in this way, Lent is not a period of gloom or brooding, but of fresh vigour. Its effect should be bracing not enervating. The spirit that it should call out is that of the athlete who goes into training that he may run his race with greater success.

The spiritual idea implicit in the Lenten observance are of importance, because they largely determine the owtward symbols which convey to the worshipper the meaning of what he is doing. When the mediaeval Christian in Western Europe entered his parish church a sight met his eyes which at once brought home to him in striking fashion the special character of Lent. Every image and picture was shrouded in linen cloths. The gleaming reredoses were closed or covered up. The very altar itself was shielded from gaze by a long curtain which separated the presbytery from the choir. Behind that veil the Eucharist was celebrated with a mystery that savoured more of East than of West. So far as the veiling of the altar was concerned, it was, in fact, a reversion to earlier custom, and recalled the days when curtains completely surrounded the altar, suspended from the ciborium or roof supported by four pillars which enshrined it. When it is remembered how large a part in mediaeval devotion was played by vivid picture and bright imagery, it will be seen that the impression made on the simplest peasant must have been profound. He had entered on a holy time--forty days of austerity. 'All things,' says an old writer, 'that make to the adornment of the church are either laid aside or else covered, to put us in remembrance that we ought now to lament and mourn for our souls dead in sin and continually to watch, fast, pray, and give alms.'

The impression of austerity was increased by the nature of the material used and by its colour. The veils were for the most part of white linen, and the effect was doubtless, much that which the visitor to a great house experiences when--in the absence of the family--he passes through spacious saloons in which the rich silks and brocades are protected from sun and dust by linen coverings. What gives special interest to the practice is the fact that the use of white linen for altars and so forth contradicted the rules that were supposed to govern the colour assigned to Lent, which was, for example, red at Sarum and black at Westminster. From the covering of altars and images the use of white linen spread to the vesture of the clergy. Thus in 1472 we read of a lady who gave to Salisbury two altar cloths of linen powdered with purple crosses and 'a chasuble with all the apparel to the same belonging'; and at about the same time at Westminster it is recorded that the chapel of our Lady had an old chasuble of white for Lent. By the middle of the fourteenth century indeed white linen had become the well-nigh universal custom throughout England. Examples of white linen vestments and frontals throughout a period of two centuries before the Reformation can be gathered from every English diocese, save one--and that the remote Diocese of Carlisle, for which no information is available. The use is found in cathedral, religous house, and parish church alike. The custom is not merely English. A parallel can be found in France, where ash colour continued to be the Lenten use right down to the eighteeenth century at Lyon, Paris, Chartres, Bourges, Frejus, and Poitiers, and even into the nineteenth century at Meaux, Versailles, Pamiers, and Autun.

The inventories made in the reign of King Edward VI, when his government impounded everything of value in the churches to pay for the huge debt that they had accumulated, tell their own tale. We read of the great curtain of linen used in Lent in Exeter Cathedral; and in the parish churches throughout the land we find such entries as the veil, the covering for the rood, the canopy of cloth, vestments of white fustian and white bustian, and Lenten cloths. There can be no doubt what was the custom in England in that second year of the reign of King Edward VI to which our Ornaments Rubric points as a guide.

In modern times the Lenten array of white linen has grown steadily in favour. It has been recognized that this old custom has a teaching value that specially meets the need of today better than the sombre violet and black that gradually spread over the Church in Europe from the sixteenth century onwards. The white linen betokens an austerity which is not without cheerfulness, the spirit of Him Who said, 'When ye fast, be not of a sad countenance.' It typifies clean Lent; the time when the spirit rejoices because it is freeing itself from the encumbrances of luxury, the enervation of solf living. The Lenten array is, as it has been said, like a light fall of snow which brightens the hard earth; it is significant of expectation, of the time when once more the glory of colour and carving will break out in salutation of the Risen Lord. It sorts well with the spring of the year with its promise of flower and fruit.

It is usual to place on the linen that shrouds the altar some sign of its dedication. The symbol of the mystery or saint light worked or painted contains a hint of what lies behind and thus adds to the sense of expectancy. It is possible to overdo this aspect of the Lenten array, so that what results is merely another piece of magnificence that draws attention to itself, instead of directing the mind away from the seen to the unseen glory of God. Some will feel that possibly in certain of the examples here shown, the natural instinct of the artist to enrich has prevailed over the effort to subdue adornment. Certainly sobriety in the use of symbol sorts best with the purpose of Lent, even if the symbols be those of the Passion itself. Too much detail detracts from the desired starkness.

Opinions are divided about the veiling of the rood--if there be one--or the cross onthe altar. To some it will seem appropriate that objects which are in themselves works of art shoud for this season be shrouded. We are assuming, of course, that they are works of art, which unfortunately, is not always true. Others would maintain that Lent is just the time when the symbol of redemption should stand out with special clearness by contrast with the hiding of every other ornament. There can be no question, at any rate, that, when a large sheet hangs before the rood, with a plain red cross displayed upon it, the worshipper is lead to concentrate on the inner meaning of the Passion in its severity, just for those weeks when it is right that the price of man's salvation should be placarded before the eyes of the worshipper.

To turn to the practical aspect of the array, the following materials may well be used.

White-toned linens, not too fine, either plain or figured, are the most suitable materials for the hangings, and for covering pictures and other ornaments. If the frontal, dorsal, or covers are to be stencilled, it is advisable to use the plain linen. The frontal and dorsal can be treated in several ways, either stencilled in red, or in red, grey and black, with symbols of the Passion, powdered with roses or crosses, or with an emblem of the saint in whose honour the church is dedicated--so long as this be done with restraint. The frontal can be made quite plain with a red flax fringe, or orphreys of red braid can be used effectively. The dorsal and riddels hung full from red cords re simple and effective, or the can be made full on an open hem. Another method is to have a plain dorsal with a cross in the center of each end.

It is advisable that stencilling should not be attempted by amateurs; the whole effect is spoiled if there be not a proper balance in the design.

It is useful to have plain wooden candlesticks with can be painted red in place of the metal or ornamental wood ornaments. The altar cross can be covered with a linen veil or removed altogether.

During the last two weeks in Lent the frontal may be removed and one made of a dull red linen, quite plain or with black orphreys, be put in its place, to mark Passiontide.

The great point of the traditional Lenten array is that it enforces the lessons of the season better than any alternative method. The shrouded altars speak of renunciation and expectation; the colour and quality of the material, plain, but bright, strengthen the appeal, to concentrate devotion on the plea for the creation of a new and contrite heart: 'Make me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.'

Stolen Goods

2009-02-16T09:08:00.000-08:00

This piece has been appropriated from the most excellent Anglican blog, The Continuum. The Reverend Robert Hart found and posted it. It is too good to just leave there when we can "taddle it" for Prayer Book Anglican. And we do so because it reflects precisely what we believe about the classical Anglicanism which we believe and endorse.

All Glory be to God.

Reverend Brother,

THE time of Lent now approaching, which has been anciently and very Christianly set apart, for penitential humiliation of Soul and Body, for Fasting and Weeping and Praying, all which you know are very frequently inculcated in Holy Scripture, as the most effectual means we can use, to avert those Judgments our sins have deservÍd; I thought it most agreeable to that Character which, unworthy as I am, I sustain, to call you and all my Brethren of the Clergy to mourning; to mourning for your own sins, and to mourning for the sins of the Nation.

In making such an address to you as this, I follow the example of St. Cyprian, that blessed Bishop and Martyr, who from his retirement wrote an excellent Epistle to his Clergy, most worthy of your serious perusal, exhorting them, by publick Prayers and Tears to appease the Anger of God, which they then actually felt, and which we may justly fear.

Remember that to keep such a Fast as God has chosen, it is not enough for you to afflict your own soul, but you must also according to your ability, deal your bread to the Hungry: and the rather, because we have not onely Usual [1/2] objects of Charity to relieve, but many poor Protestant Strangers are now fled hither for Sanctuary, whom as Brethren, as members of Christ, we should take in and Cherish.

That you may perform the office of publick Intercessour the more assiduously, I beg of you to say daily in your Closet, or in your Family, or rather in both, all this time of Abstinence, the 51st Psalm, and the other Prayers which follow it in the Commination. I could wish also that you would frequently read and meditate on the Lamentations of Jeremy, which Holy Gregory Nazianzen was wont to doe, and the reading of which melted him into the like Lamentations, as affected the Prophet himself when he PenÍd them.

But your greatest Zeal must be spent for the Public Prayers, in the constant devout use of which, the Publick Safety both of Church and State is highly concernÍd: be sure then to offer up to God every day the Morning and Evening Prayer; offer it up in your Family at least, or rather as far as your circumstances may possibly permit, offer it up in the Church, especially if you live in a great Town, and say over the Litany every Morning during the whole Lent. This I might enjoyn you to doe, on your Canonical Obedience, but for LoveÍs sake I rather beseech you, and I cannot recommend to you a more devout and comprehensive Form, of penitent and publick Intercession than that, or more proper for the Season. [2/3]

Be not discouragÍd if but few come to the Solemn Assemblies, but go to the House of Prayer, where God is well known for a sure Refuge: Go, though you go alone, or but with one besides your self; and there as you are GodÍs Remembrancer, keep not silence, and give Him no rest, till He establish, till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

The first sacred Council of Nice, for which the Christian world has always had a great and just veneration, ordains a Provincial Synod to be held before Lent, that all Dissensions being taken away a pure oblation might be offerÍd up to God, namely of Prayers and Fasting and Alms, and Tears, which might produce a comfortable Communion at the following Easter: and that in this Diocese, we may in some degree imitate so Primitive a practice, I exhort you to endeavour all you can, to reconcile differences, to reduce those that go astray, to promote universal Charity towards all that dissent from you, and to put on as the Elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving one another, even as Christ forgave you.

I passionately beseech you to reade over daily your Ordination Vows, to examine yourself how you observe them; and in the Prayers that are in that Office, fervently to importune God for the assistance of His good Spirit, that you may conscientiously perform them. [3/4] Teach publickly, and from house to house, and warn every one night and day with Tears; warn them to repent, to fast and to pray, and to give Alms, and to bring forth fruits meet for repentance, warn them to continue stedfast in that faith once delivered to the Saints, in which they were baptizÍd, to keep the word of GodÍs Patience, that God may keep them in the hour of Temptation; warn them against the sins and errours of the age; warn them to deprecate publick judgments, and to mourn for publick provocations.

No one can reade GodÍs holy Word but he will see, that the greatest Saints have been the greatest Mourners: David wept whole Rivers; Jeremy wept sore, and his Eyes ran down in secret places day and night like a Fountain; Daniel mourned three full weeks, and did eat no pleasant bread, and sought God by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth and ashes; St. Paul was humbled and bewailed and wept for the sins of others; and our Lord himself when He beheld the City wept over it. Learn then of these great Saints, learn of our most compassionate Saviour, to weep for the publick, and weeping to pray, that we may know in this our day, the things that belong to our peace, lest they be hid from our eyes.

To mourn for National Guilt, in which all share, is a duty incumbent upon all, but especially on Priests, who are particularly commanded to weep and to say, Spare Thy people, O Lord, and give not Thine Heritage to reproach, that God may repent of the evil, and become jealous for His Land, and pity His people. [4/5]

Be assurÍd that none are more tenderly regarded by God than such Mourners as these; there is a mark set by Him on all that sigh and cry for the abominations of the Land, the destroying Angel is forbid to hurt any of them, they are all GodÍs peculiar care, and shall all have either present deliverance, or such supports and consolations, as shall abundantly endear their Calamity.

Now the God of all Grace, who hath called you unto His eternal Glory by Christ Jesus, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you in the true Catholic and Apostolick Faith professÍd in the Church of England, and enable you to adorn that Apostolick Faith with an Apostolick Example and Zeal, and give all our whole Church that timely repentance, those broken and contrite hearts, that both Priests and People may all plentifully sow in Tears, and in GodÍs good time may all plentifully reap in Joy.

From the Palace in Wells,

Febr. 17. 1687.

Your affectionate
Friend and Brother,

Tho. Bath and Wells.

The Offices

2009-01-30T16:26:00.000-08:00

Mattins and Evensong are the services appointed to be said "daily throughout the year": their public recitation in church is the most obvious of the parson's duties, it is declared to be such over and over again in the Prayer Book. These offices end with the Third Collect, after which is an anthem, with certain prayers, which are either optional or occasional. The priest may use those which are optional, he must use those which are occasional at the appointed times. These are: At Mattins on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday--Prayer for All Conditions, At Mattins or Evensong (or at both) through Ember Week (Sunday to Saturday) - Ember Collect. During Session of Parliament (presumably each day) - Prayer for Parliament.

The Prayer for All Conditions is probably intended only for morning use. At Evensong it is a good practice to use instead the General Thanksgiving, the occasions for which are not fixed. The Prayer of S. Chrysostom and the Grace must be said after the occasional prayers, and therefore conveniently used to conclude Mattins and Evensong on all occasions when the Litany is not appointed to be said.

On Sunday, however, as on Wednesday and Friday, Mattins must end at the Third Collect, because the Litany is "appointed to be said." The Ember Prayer and the Prayer for Parliament are on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday, incorporated in the Litany before the Prayer of S. Chrysostom and the Grace.

The Litany must be said on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday, and after Mattins, which strictly means before the Holy Communion; (for the intention of the Prayer Book certainly is that Mattins should be said before the Eucharist at "the beginning of this day" and not late in the morning. The inference is that Wednesday and Friday (not Tuesday and Thursday) are the proper days for additional Eucharists in churches where there is a celebration on three days in the week, an inference which is borne out by the First Prayer Book and older Missals. There is much spiritual loss when the Litany is misplaced from its position as a preparation for Communion, and some inconvenience results from such dislocation of the services.

Any clerk may read the Litany as far as the Lord's Prayer, when the priest's part begins. No position is assigned for the reader of this office: the processional use--beautiful though it be--is probably only convenient for a minority of churches as yet. In parish churches where it is not sung in procession, it is best to treat the Litany as a short and quiet prepartory devotion, saying it without note at a reading-desk in the nave.

The above instructions for the offices taken form the Alcuin Club's Illustrations of the Liturgy: Being Thirteen Drawings of the Celebration of the Holy Communion in a Parish Church are based upon the rubrics of the English Prayer Book of 1662 which is one of the traditional Anglican documents which the proposed new Anglican province in North America considers as one of the bases of its theology. Needless to say, you are most unlikely to find anything like this in the practice of any of their dioceses or parishes considering their continual use of the alternative service book of 1979 rather than one of the classical, orthodox Prayer Books. Indeed, such usage will also be rare in the Continuum because they have been lured from any real obedience to the Prayer Book tradition by one party or the other which has never seen fit to give the Book of Common Prayer the obedience they promised at their ordination.

This blog is devoted to the idea of full obedience to the appropriate classical Book of Common prayer and the fullness of the Prayer Book tradition. We believe that only that can truly be called Anglican. We know that many in the Continuum are unable to meet this standard because of a lack of education on the part of both priest and people as well as a lack of a building or space which the parish or mission fully controls.

Red and White

2009-01-27T08:47:00.000-08:00

I engaged the Reverend Robert Hart in a recent post on The Continuum on our Lord's colour. He had asserted that it was white in that all of the great feasts of Our Lord, Christmas, Annuciation, Easter and Transfiguration are celebrated in white vestments. While that is true, the Bible from one end to the other mysticly describes our Lord's colour as being red. Let me give an example from Genesis 49: 10-11. "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of his people be. Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes."

This prophetic verse is reflected in the lesson from Isaiah used for the epistle in Monday of Holy Week. "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat? I have treaden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me; for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment." Isaiah lxiii. 1.

In The Revelation of John we find the following passage describing our Lord: "And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name writen, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood; and his name is called the Word of God." Rev. xix. 11-13.

From these passages it would seem that Holy Scripture makes red our Lord's colour. At the same time Revelation tells us that the four and twenty elders round the throne in heaven were "clothed in white raiment" just as the armies which followed the Lord on white horses, were "cloth in fine linen, white and clean."

I run through all of this because in the use of Sarum which was the last legal use in England before the first prayer book, red and white were the usual colours for the vesture of the altar and the ministers on Sundays. Red was used for the Sundays after Epiphany and Trinity with a darker red being used from Passion Sunday until Easter with the exception of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. White was used from Easter until the octave of Trinity with the exception of the feast of the Invention of the Holy Cross while a toned white was also used for the first four weeks of Lent. In short, the greater part of the Christian year was in one of these two colours leaving only Advent and the 'Gesima weeks to be keep in another colour.

On the other hand, the two most frequent uses of green in the Old Testament are in conjunction with the burning of incense unto idols under the green trees and to the use of harlots under the same. If you think not, use the Gateway Bible Concordance and search "green."

The point of all this is that prayer book usage was intended to be that of Sarum, the only English Rite and Use which had reached international status and which preceded that of the Missal of Pius V by a fair number of years. Unfortunately for prayer book churchmen in the nineteenth century, the reaction to extreme disobedience of the rubrics of the English Book of Common Prayer by Evangelicals and the low church party in general was the copying of what the Roman Church did on the continent under the belief that if communion with the Roman See had not been broken, this is what Catholic churchmen would be doing in England and in all places where Anglicanism had spread. The irony regarding this position is that the use of Sarum has a great attraction for certain Romans to this day. You will find that especially upon those attracted to what they call The New Liturgical Movement which devoutly prays for a restoration of the Tridentine mass in Latin. This would mean that those who attended these services would probably not understand more than a few words of what the priest and other ministers said exactly as had been the case for hundreds of years.

The Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

2008-12-08T05:38:00.000-08:00

While the American prayer book has no black letter holy days, the English and Scots books abound in them. Elizabeth's Latin prayer book almost had one for every free day in the year. And while that might be just a little excessive, it is good to have them as they remind us of our history and that others before us have succeeded in the path which we attempt to follow.

But today is a little and maybe a great deal more of that. The red letter feast days of our Lady in the prayer book, the Purification and Annunciation, are really feasts of our Lord, but the black letter holy days are as uniquely hers as possible. Today, the feast of her conception, according to some liturgical scholars originated with the English in the eighth century. True or not, it has remained in the English calendar since the reign of Elizabeth I. I am particularly fond of it because of a story regarding my first real mentor and spiritual director in the faith. She found the feast delightful because in the Sarum missal the gospel for this day is the genealogies from St Matthew. It was wonderful, she thought, that God saw fit to have his divine son's human descent be from such a list of scoundrels. I share her view.

But in modern times, the feast has another point. It reminds us that the Church has always regarded life to have begun with conception and this is one of the two feasts in the calendar which point this out. If as Christians we are intended to choose life over death, then we must choose it for the truly innocent as well and regard all abortion not only as a sin but as a crime. The Christian life, the Biblical life demands sexual purity both in and outside of marriage. The very institution has as its end the protection of the children which are one of its major intentions. Civilization fall when they forget or ignore this. Ours, such as it is, may be on its way. Remembering the purpose of this feast and celebrating it just may be a step in preventing that.

"BIBLE SUNDAY"

2008-12-07T13:28:00.000-08:00

"The Canon of Scripture is perfect, and most abundantly of itself is sufficient for all things." St Vincent of Lerins

I am not now and never have been a big fan of "Bible Sunday." It has always been my conviction that the two parts of the historic liturgy most misunderstood of the reformers were the season of Advent and the Ember Days. That being said, it becomes apparent that classical Anglicans like all truly orthodox Christians can in no way under estimate their importance for keeping us individually and as tradition and Church from wandering off like lost sheep. Consequently I find myself turning to something which I wrote almost twenty years ago for the tiny Anglican Rite Jurisdiction of the Americas parish for which I was ordered deacon and priest. I have made some tiny edits, but it is essentially just what I wrote out one Sunday morning to go inside the bulletin for the purpose of deepening our folks appreciation of just who they were by baptism and how they were supposed to respond.

"Since the Scripture being of itself so deep and profound, all men do not understand it in one and the same sense, but divers men, diversely, this man and that man, this way and that way, expound and interpret the sayings thereof so that one's thinking, so many men, so many opinions almost may be gathered out of them . . . for the avoiding of error, the prophets and apostles must be expounded according to the rule of the ecclesiastical and catholic sense." Against Heresy, chapter ii.

"Within the Catholic Church, we hold that which hath been believed everywhere, always and of all men: for that is truly and properly Catholic, which comprehendeth all things in general after an universal manner. And that we shall do if we follow Universality, Antiquity, Consent.

"Universality shall we follow thus, if we profess that One Faith to be true which the whole Church throughout the world acknowledgeth and confesseth.

"Antiquity shall we follow, if we part not any whit from those senses which it is plain that our holy elders and fathers generally held.

"Consent shall we likewise follow, if in this very Antiquity itself, we hold the definitions and opinions of all, or at any rate almost all, the Priests and Doctors together." Against Heresy. chapter ii.

The above passages from Against Heresy by st Vincent of Lerins are critical for understanding the true Anglican approach to the Catholic Faith. The English or Anglican Reformation, unlike that of the Continent, was essentially conservative. It was an attempt to do that thing which we are currently told in so many ways can not be done - to turn back the clock. The point of the Anglican Reformation was to return to the faith and practise of the earliest Church and not to invent a new faith, even one based upon a modern (to them) reading of the Holy Scriptures themselves. This can be seen in the Book of Common Prayer which, while it might have been compiled by Cranmer and his famous committee, was essentially a collection and translation as well as simplification of the same worship that had gone on in English parishes, cathedrals and monasteries from the time of the arrival of the earliest Christian in Britain.

John Jewel, the famous bishop of Salisbury in the reign of Elizabeth I, took largely the same tack in his defense of the Church of England. In a sermon preached at St. Paul's Cross on 26 November 1559 he stated that "if any learned man of our adversaries be able to bring any one sufficient sentence out of any old doctor or father, or out of any old general council, or out of the Holy Scripture, or any one example out of the primitive church for the space of six hundred years after Christ, in proof of the specifically Romish doctrines and practices, I will go over to him." This was the basis for his opus, the Apologia pro Ecclesia Anglicanae which achieved a theological status almost on a par with the Thirty Nine Articles. Archbishop Parker endorse a proposal for binding the Apology with the Catechism and the Articles and authorized as authoritative.

Queen Elizabeth I herself wrote and spoke in a similar manner. When writing to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand in reply to his letter thanking her for seeing to the safety and comfort of Queen Mary's bishops , she put her position plainly: "We and our people - thanks be to God - follow no novel and strange religion, but that very religion which is ordained by Christ, sanctioned by the primitive and Catholic Church and approved by the consentient mind and voice of the most early Fathers."

The similar opinion and expression can be found in almost all of the lights of the Anglican Reformation. Hooker, Andrewes, Laud all reflect a view that is directly related to the teaching of St Vincent as to the nature and content of the Catholic faith. And what they believed, we should also believe and allow our thinking processes to be shaped by it. Certainly that Anglican giant of the twentieth century, C. S. Lewis, did so. His introduction to St Athanasius's 'de Incarnatione' is a model of the same type of thinking. If we are going to be truly christian or truly Anglican, we must work ourselves around until we have the same habits of mind that we find in St Vincent seeking the ancient faith rather than modern error.

Our Fifth Columns

2008-11-24T15:27:00.001-08:00

"This Protestant fifth column is still with us. Declarations are constantly being made that the Church of England comprehends many points of view and that all of them have an equal right to exist within its borders. We are told that extreme "Evangelical" Churches are as much "Church of England" as "Anglo-Catholic" ones, perhaps even more so. But this is simply not true. This is proved by the one authoritiative document which the Church of England has issued -- the Book of Common Prayer. Doctrines which are contrary to it are disloyal. Churches which do not obey its directions represent disloyal and rebellious elements."
J. C. L. Dart, The Old Religion

But it is equally true that churches, priests and bishops who imitate the Church of Rome either in doctrine or ceremonial are equally disloyal. I am in the process of reading The Very Rev'd Vernon Staley's Studies in Ceremonial and he made it very clear that most of what those who call themselves Anglo-Catholics are not only being disloyal to the basic Anglican position, but to that of the whole Western Church before the Council of Trent. Look to see some of his work on this blog.

St Martin of Tours, Bishop & Wonderworker

2008-11-11T12:53:00.000-08:00

The following material about St Martin is tattled from Celtic Saints. It is or should be important to Anglicans in that the Church which St Augustine used in Canterbury was that of St Martin just as the Church which St Ninian built in Whithorn was also dedicated to St Martin.
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Born in Sabaria in Upper Pannonia (Hungary), c. 316; died November 8,
397.

Most mortals only have to deal with a collective devil (or so they
think)--the devil of communities and families, the occult force which
appeals to the lowest parts of our nature, the dark god of the city at
night. To have a personal devil seems to be a "privilege" reserved for
saints. The greatness of a saint is measured by the greatness of the
temptation he has to overcome because the life of the saint stands out
in contrast with the work of the devil.

Martin was the son of a pagan army officer who moved with his family to
his father's new post in Pavia, Italy. Martin had placed himself in the
catechumenate at the age of 10 against his parents' will. He took
lessons at the local church and, by the time he was 12, his love of God
was so ardent that he wanted to retire to become a hermit. At 15, as the
son of an army veteran, he was compelled to join the army against his
will. Although Martin had not formally become a Christian, he had lived
more the life of a monk than a soldier for several years.

While stationed at Amiens in France in 337, a semi-naked beggar
approached him in bitterly cold weather. Martin's name became immortal
at that moment, for he sliced his military cloak in two and gave half of
it to the starving man. That night in a dream he saw Jesus wrapped in
the half of the cloak that he had given away. Jesus said to him,
"Martin, yet a catechumen, has covered me with this garment." Following
this dream, he "flew to be baptized," according to his biographer.

When he was about 20, barbarians invaded Gaul. He was presented to
Julian Caesar with his companions to receive a donative, but Martin
refused it saying, "I have served you as a soldier; let me now serve
Christ. Give the bounty to these others who are going to fight, but I am
a soldier of Christ and it is not lawful for me to fight."

Irritated by this stance, Julian accused him of cowardice. Martin
replied that he was willing to go into battle unarmed and stand between
the opposing parties in the name of Christ. He was thrown into prison,
but that night the barbarians demanded and obtained an armistice. Martin
sought and received his discharge c. 339.

Thereafter he lived for some time in Italy and Dalmatia before he went
to Poitiers, and Bishop Saint Hilary took him as a disciple. Martin
sought him out knowing that in serving this holy man he would be serving
God. Hilary recognised Martin's extraordinary merit and would have
ordained Martin a deacon, but he could not overcome Martin's humility.

To keep Martin in his diocese, Hilary assigned him the duties of
exorcism--so it was in that official capacity that Martin first made the
acquaintance of the devil. It was still only the general devil, for he
did not yet have his own private one. Martin, however, learned how to
ward off evil spells and parry thrusts from the devil's horns, a lesson
that would always be useful.

Martin had a dream that called him home, and he returned to Pannonia,
converting his mother and others, including a group of bandits who would
have killed him, during the visit. Shortly thereafter the devil appeared
to him in human form and told him that no matter where he went or what
he did, the devil would oppose him.

In Illyricum his vocal opposition to the Arians led to his being
publicly scourged and exiled by Auxentius, the Arian bishop. Returning
to Italy, Martin found that Hilary had been exiled. He retreated to a
place near the walls of Milan, where he entered the monastic life.
Auxentius, when he seized the see of Milan, caught up with Martin and
drove him from the diocese. Martin then joined company with a virtuous
priest. The duo retired to the deserted island of Gallinaria in the gulf
of Genoa where he lived as a recluse until 360, when the banished Saint
Hilary was allowed to return to Poitiers.

It was true for Martin as for most saints that the more Martin grew in
holiness, the more his private devil became differentiated from the
collective devil. More and more the devil clung on to his soul, forcing
him to be ceaselessly on his guard. It was like the scientific principle
of communicating vessels: as Martin rose like mercury towards
saintliness, the devil hastened to fill the empty space behind him.

One day while he was still living in seclusion on the island, Martin ate
a poisonous plant that almost killed him. The chronicles call this plant
'hellebore' which is doubtless a mistake, since hellebore is no more
fatal than it is a cure for madness, and, according to herbalists,
contains nothing worse than a drastic purgative.

Perhaps the plant wasn't there by chance? There is a variety of
hellebore called 'Christmas rose' that is a mandrake. Nevertheless, when
Martin felt the poison at work, he began to pray--which proves that he
realised that there was nothing natural about his sickness--and God
cured him.

Martin's devil was capable of transforming himself into many different
shapes. He was particularly fond of taking the form of the gods and
goddesses of mythology, appearing sometimes as Jupiter, sometimes as
Mercury. But though Martin was always alarmed by Mercury, he dismissed
Jupiter as 'a stupid animal' and 'a fool.'

The devil also liked to disguise himself in the form of women. One day
he appeared as Venus, the next as Minerva, always exuding a strong smell
of sulphur and always being put to flight by the sign of the cross.

After learning that Hilary was returning to Poitiers, Martin travelled
to Rome to meet him en route and accompany him back to his see. As
Martin wished to live as a solitary, Hilary gave him some land, now
called Liguge, where he was joined by other hermits--and thus the first
monastic community in Gaul was founded. It was a famous monastery until
1607, and was revived in 1852 by the Solesmes Benedictines. He lived
there for 10 years, preaching and reputedly performing miracles in the
area, including raising a catechumen and a hanged slave back to life.

Soon matters with the devil began to get worse. One day while the saint
was at prayer in his cell the devil came in without knocking, holding in
his hand a horn covered with blood. "I've just killed one of your
people," he told the saint, and in fact the monastery's carrier had just
been gored by a bull. Thereupon Martin resolved to fight the surrounding
devils by destroying all the pagan temples in the district. He was soon
given the gift of perceiving devils, and this enabled him to keep out of
the way of his own devil.

Around 371, Tours chose him as its third bishop. He was unwilling to
take the office; the people tricked him into visiting a sick person in
the city and then took him to the church. His poor appearance did not
impress the bishops who had come to assist at the election, but the
people overruled their objections and Martin was consecrated on July 3,
371.

He lived in a cell by the church but soon retreated from the city and
its distractions to a place that would become an abbey at Marmoutier,
which became another great monastic centre. It was a desert, with a
steep cliff on one side and a river on the other. Before long, eighty
monks had joined him. The hermit monks engaged in no art or business.
The older ones were engaged solely in prayer, while the younger ones
were deputed to write. Many bishops were chosen out of this monastery
because every city wanted a pastor who had been bred under the
discipline of Saint Martin.

Here Martin lived privately as a monk, while publicly he devoted himself
with burning zeal to the discharge of his episcopal duties. Every year
he visited each of his parishes in rural regions, travelling by foot, by
donkey, or by boat. He was an innovator in that he worked to convert
rural regions, to which he introduced an incipient parochial system.
Previously, Christians had been confined primarily to urban areas.

His biographer and friend, Sulpicius Severus--reported that he extended
his apostolate from Touraine to Chartres, Paris, Autun, Sens, and
Vienne. Although he is said to have ruthlessly destroyed pagan temples,
his reputed miracles did much to aid his progress: he cured Saint
Paulinus of Nola of an eye disease, healed lepers, and raised a dead man
to life. Martin experienced visions and revelations and was gifted with
the ability to prophesy. As an exorcist, Martin did not threaten the
demons, rather he would prostrate himself on the ground and subdue them
by prayer.

He was one of the greatest pioneers of Western monasticism based on the
models of Eastern monasteries in the Holy Land and Egypt and Syria, and
in this manner he came to have an effect upon the type of monasticism
which was established in Ireland, Scotland and Wales This was before
Benedict--who had a particular veneration for him.

During this time, Priscillian, the leader of a Gnostic-Manichean sect,
was attacked by Ithacius, the bishop of Ossanova, who accused him of
sorcery and urged the emperor to put him to death.

Martin, together with Pope Saint Siricius and Saint Ambrose, stood
against the capital punishment of Priscillian and other heterodox
Spaniards by the civil authorities including Ithacius and Emperor
Maximus. He believed that the state should not intervene in an
ecclesiastical matter. Martin pleaded with Maximus not to execute the
heretics but to simply allow them to be excommunicated.

Ithacius then accused Martin of heresy. Maximus told Martin that he
would execute no one, but after Martin left him in Trier, Maximus was
prevailed upon to remand the case of the sect to the Prefect Evodius.
The sect was found guilty and the members were beheaded, marking this as
the first judicial death sentence for heresy. Both Maximus and Itacius
were censured by Pope Siricius for their roles in the affair.

Martin encountered a good deal of opposition in his later years, one of
his chief critics being the firebrand Saint Brice, who succeeded him as
bishop. But his awe-inspiring spiritual power was too much for the
'unspeakably bloody ferocity' of Count Avitian, who refrained from
intended barbarities in Tours.

He became ill at rural Candes in Touraine. As he lay dying, stretched
out on his bed of ashes, ready to draw his last painful breath, while
the bells were already tolling to mark his passing, he asked his
disciples, "Leave me, my brothers, so that I may fix my eyes on heaven
rather than on earth and set my soul on the path which leads to the
Lord."

But the devil was waiting at the bedside of his old enemy. He knew only
too well the subtle workings of the death agony. He knew just where to
put his hand at that last moment when the soul, white-hot with the heat
and effort to tear itself away from the body, has become as soft and
malleable as molten glass; and the devil was waiting to seize the soul
at that moment and carry it off to the fires of hell. He was much too
busy to talk, and besides he had long ago used up his stock of wiles.
And so, heavy, black, and watchful, he worked in silence on the body of
the dying man.

Then Saint Martin, rousing himself from his death throes, confronted the
monster with these words: "What are you doing here, savage beast? You'll
find nothing in me that belongs to you, accursed one, for I shall soon
be in the bosom of Abraham!"

And having exorcised the demon from his body, Martin turned his face to
the wall and gave up his soul to God. Such, since the beginnings of the
world, have been the relations between the saints and the devil.

Martin is buried at Tours. His successor Saint Brice built a chapel over
his grave, and it was later replaced with a basilica. He was one of the
most popular saints of the Middle Ages, and his shrine was and still is
a great site of pilgrimage where many miracles are wrought.

As an evangelizer of rural Gaul and the father of monasticism in France,
Saint Martin of Tours was a figure of great importance. His fame spread
from Ireland to Africa and east. In England, Saint Martin's Summer is a
spell of fine weather that sometimes occurs around the time of the
feast. Many churches in England were dedicated in his honour, including
Saint Martin's at Canterbury and Saint Martin-in-the- Fields in London.

Although the saint longed to be a hermit, the church forced him to lead
the life of a loving, energetic Bishop of Tours (Attwater, Benedictines,
Bentley, Delaney, Encyclopaedia, Husenbeth, Monceaux, Severus, Walsh,
Watkin, White).

Saint Martin is most generally portrayed as a young soldier on horseback
dividing his cloak with a beggar, but sometimes he is shown as a bishop
with a beggar at his feet or near him, or in armour, with episcopal
symbols. His emblems are a globe of fire over his head as he says Mass,
or a goose, whose migration often coincides with his feast (Roeder).

Saint Martin is venerated at Tours. He serves as patron of armorers,
beggars, cavalry, coopers, domestic animals, France, geese, girdlers,
glovers, horses and horsemen, infantrymen, millers, innkeepers,
soldiers, tailors, wine growers and wine merchants (because his feast
falls just after the vendange), and wool-weavers (because he divided his
cloak) (Roeder). He is invoked against drunkenness, storms, and ulcers
(Roeder).

Webpage of our friend Jean-Michel
Several picture of Tours cathedral, the abbey, icons,
reliquaries and tomb of Saint Martin
(Scroll down the page about one third)
http://www.amdg. be/sankt/ nov11.html

Also the complete Septimus Severius writings on Saint Martin, in French.

"Martin of Tours: The Shaping of Celtic Christianity"
Christopher Donaldson, Canterbury Press, 1997
ISBN 1-85311-157- 0

A rather special icon of Saint Martin:
http://www.forum- orthodoxe. com/images/ stmartindetours. jpg
Painted in the monastery opf Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai in the 12th
century. It represents three Saints venerated in the Patriarchate of
Jerusalem - Saint Paul, Saint James the brother of the Lord, Saint Stephen
the Protomartyr. And another three Saints of the West - Saint Laurence the
Archdeacon who was born in Spain and martyred in Rome, Saint Martin the
Merciful of Tours and Saint Leonard a hermit of Noblat in the Haute-Vienne
(also known as the Liberator)

Icons of Saint Martin:
http://www.allmerci fulsavior. com/icons/ Icons-Martin. htm##1
http://htmadmin. phpwebhosting. com/images/ a-194.jpg

Lives kindly supplied by:
For All the Saints:
http://www.saintpat rickdc.org/ ss/ss-index. htm

ST MARTIN'S LENT

2008-11-08T14:39:00.000-08:00

With this Sunday, the third before Advent, being two days before the feast of the great St Martin of Tours, we begin St Martin's Lent. Generally the weather is strangely Spring like just before the advent, the coming, of the coldest part of Fall and Winter, and in the medieval period, as St Martin's feast generally came at the beginning of it, it received his name. For American Anglicans it should have another significance. The last revision of the reactionary of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer added propers for the three weeks before Advent Sunday which serve as a restoration of the old extended Advent of the Gallican and Celtic Churches. This allows us to work are way in to the thematic material of Advent before it actually arrives. And they are wonderful lections indeed, a real treat for those who read the daily offices. You will find them on page li and lii of the American Book of Common Prayer.

"The Curse of the English Church,

2008-11-07T12:25:00.000-08:00

and indeed of the whole Anglican Communion has been the individualism of its members. They have been a law unto themselves; and yet this individualism has seldom had the justification of originality: sometimes it has been Geneva that was copied, and sometimes Rome. The result has been that our Church has failed to make herself recognizable: foreigners know almost nothing about her, have no idea what she is like, would not recognize her when they saw her."

Percy Dearmer, The Present Opportunity

The above quotation from the works of Percy Dearmer may have been written some time ago but is yet particularly appropriate to the situation of the Anglican Continuum and the controversies of the moment. We should all be aware of the struggles with the Church since the Accession of Elizabeth I between those who were willing to obey the Church's rules and those who wished to substitute for them those of Geneva. These latter folk were joined in the late nineteenth century by a new party, growing out of the Church revival generally known as the Oxford Movement which wished to substitute the rules of the Church of Rome for those of historic Anglicanism and Churches of the British Isles. The result was the mass confusion satirized by the saying: "High and crazy, Broad and hazy, Low and lazy" used to characterize the three parties which the Church seemed to contain in an abnormal tension.

But there were not three prayer books or three sets of rules to be followed so which of them represented real obedience to the rules of the Church to be found in the Book of Common Prayer, the Canons and the Thirty-Nine Articles? Each party, of course, insisted that it was itself. And how do we find the answer? They cannot all be right.

The answer is right in front of us. Indeed, right in our hands for it is the Book of Common Prayer itself even if it is not always immediately obvious to the questioner. A party that is at war with the prayerbook itself, either in terms of Geneva or Rome, simply cannot represent the intent of the Church which gave us the Book of Common Prayer. To be ordained deacon or priest, one must promise 'conformity to the Doctrine, Discipline and Worship of the . . . Church: and where are they to be found if not in the prayer book itself. And not just in our 1928 American prayer book but also the English prayer book of 1662 which was used by American Anglicans before our Revolution and without which the rubrics of the American book are sometime not quite understandable.

The question then is what sort of practise recognizably conforms to what we find in the text of our prayer book and the English books which preceded it? Is it one which habitually uses language that is at variance with that of the Book of Common Prayer? Is it one which constantly provides services which are not to be found in the prayer book, i.e., Morning Prayer and Sermon, or which fails generally to provide those services ordered to be daily, i.e., "Daily Morning and Evening Prayer?" I could offer my opinion and in a way am doing so. But more importantly, the priests and deacons of the Continuum as well as the wider Anglican Communion are making their own answer in what they do day by day and week by week. The question is whether by the example of their actions they are teaching what is in the Book of Common Prayer or that which is grounded in another set of assumptions? When you "read the priest" you should find nothing but what you would find in the Book of Common Prayer and in the greater prayer book tradition.

READING THE RUBRICS

2008-11-03T05:24:00.000-08:00

Speaking of reading the Rubrics of the prayer book, most people, and that includes most priests and even bishops, don't. By not doing so they miss a great deal of the positive teaching of the Book of Common Prayer for the Rubrics are not just for telling us how to perform the service, a task for which they are insufficent, but they are also to tell us what the service is about and what the teaching of the Church is in various areas. Read the Rubric at the top of page 321. It tells us a great deal of what the Church expects of us in terms of regular receiving of the Lord's Supper and how, in time of sickness, we are expected to notify the priest so that the priest may bring the sacrament to us, either by celebrating in our homes or by carrying the reserved sacrament to us from the regular service of the Church.

Likewise, it is a rubric on page 313 in the Visiation of the Sick that reminds us that arricular confession is a regular part of the teaching and practise of the Church.

Therefore we should know, that just as we are not intended to read only portions of our Bibles, we ought also to read all of the Book of Common Prayer so that we can know the teaching therein. And knowing the teaching of the prayer book, we should hold it as the standard against the performance and teaching of our priests and bishops. They have promised "conformity" - and in the case of the bishops, "obedience" - to it. If they don't give that in the fullest, without any mental reservation or evasion, then you have good reason to question their faith and their performance. If they try to twist it into something which it is not, you have even better reason to question their honesty. The Book of Common Prayer is a minimum standard and most of us, honestly, don't make that minimum standard. Churches and missions in the Anglican Continuum from a lack of their own buildings are generallyincapable of offering publicly the DAILY offices. They also fail in their ability to celebrate the communion office on all those ocassions for which the prayer book provides propers or implies by ribric that it should be celebrated. But we make no secret of the fact that we know that we are falling short and that more, much more, ought to be done to keep the faith and practise of the Book of Common Prayer.

Godparents in the baptismal office are asked to promise that the child will learn the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments as well as "all other things which a Christian ought to know and believe to his soul's health". Other than the whole of the Bible, where are we to find those things save in a large and particular knowledge of the Book of Common Prayer? Consequently we ought to read the Rubrics of the prayer book, but not just them. It is all of the prayer book which we ought to know and use to our soul's health.

How well do YOU know the Book of Common Prayer?

English Use is the Real Anglican Use

2008-10-31T23:08:00.000-07:00

First we must use the services of the Prayer Book, obeying its rubrics. Among the latter is the Ornaments Rubric, which refers us to the church arrangements and ceremonial adjuncts of the older tradition, as they were used either on the eve of the introduction of the First Prayer Book or immediately after it had been introduced. Then we must find out what that tradition was, and follow it, except where it is inconsistent with the later and living authority of the Prayer Book. For this tradition, the Sarum books are the principal, though not the only source. That is the English Use.
Francis C Eeles, "Prayer Book Revision and Christian Reunion"

Old School Ties - Someone Else's

2008-10-24T06:43:00.000-07:00

The English have a charming custom of creating school and regimental ties which serve as signals to those who have attended the same school or served in the same regiment. It is pretty much the equivalent of the sports paraphernalia of which Americans are so fond, but much more discrete and elegant. You don't have to wear your own school or regimental ties, but you are really not supposed to wear the tie of a school or regiment of which you were never apart. It is considered very bad form, rather like pretending that you were a veteran of service in Korea or Vietnam when you were never in the military.
I have a habit, probably sinful, of surfing the web looking at photos of famous Anglican churches, especially those of famous Anglican architects such as John Ninian Comper, my very favorite. But I also go back and look for the websites of churches I once attended or had to which I had other connections. This can be very bad for you especially when you find how far from grace they have fallen. For instance there is one in London of which I was very fond and which still advertises itself as being in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, but whose new assistant (I am not going to call her a priest) is Mother Mary Elizabeth. Bishop Gore is probably spinning in his grave.
But the one which caught my eye recently was the New York parish whose one time rector became the bishop of Springfield and the chief bishop at the Denver consecrations. Needless to say, its present condition would be a shock to Bishop Chambers as it has taken on the full burden of late Baroque Roman bad taste." Yes, they have taken to the wearing of fiddlebacks and very skimpy ones at that. And worse, the albs are now of lace and the cottas of the servers lace trimmed. In Chamber's day lace albs were never used and the lace cottas we had at that time were only used when the very wealthy woman who donated them decided to show for a very ocassional Sunday service. And that would have been like one every two years or so.

I know that these "Latin" vestments are supposed to be the very highest proof of Anglo=Catholicism because they were what Roman churches came to use from the late Renaissance through the Baroque right up to the modern age when suddenly they realized that they were dead ugly. Indeed, the last few popes seemed never to have touched them, but here was one more formerly Anglican church of good reputation wearing the discards of another and lesser tradition. This is especially galling as that church has already abandoned them. Oh, Rome will still wear the lace albs and the rochets and cottas dripping with lace, but the tablard imitations of real chasubles, dalmatics and tunicles is almost completely a thing of the past which is something which Rome's greatest liturgists would certainly have applauded.

So why do some who think themselves Anglicans keep it up? Frankly, I don't have a real answer, but I think it has to do with the spirit of rebellion that infused the most leftist, effeminate, pinko wing of Anglican high churchmanship in the early twentieth century. Among those who entered the priesthood in England and the North Eastern United states there was a spirit of rebellion against the establishment by those who were the most visible sons of same. It was as if they would and did do anything which would embarrass their families and their class while pretending (and maybe even believing) they were more Christian than the rest of us. And while some of them were quite saintly indeed, many of them helped to make both the Episcopal Church and the Church of England into much the moral and sexual cesspools which they became in the last century.

The greats of the Tractarian Movement were not ritualists. They believed that it was more important to preach, teach and practise the faith rather than make a show of it. Even the very blessed Dr Pusey only begin to wear the traditional eucharistic vestments at the end of his life and then only in the chapel of the religious community which he was instrumental in founding. The classical prayer book tradition by means of the Ornaments Rubric requires them and so all who are ordained should wear them. But, and this is a very big one, they should be worn in the Anglican tradition which is and should be one of "antiquity, antiquity, antiquity." We should not be imitating the debased traditions of the Church of Rome. What we should do and have done, is to teach even Rome what is right. Our liturgical tradition in vestments and ceremonial should be based upon that of the English Church just before the first prayer book and that would mean upon the tradition of the Use of the great church of Sarum as all of the other English uses had been suppressed in 1541 in its favour. If we do so we will have an Anglicanism which is everywhere instantly recognizeable and vastly attractive while shedding the false tradition which lost the moral high ground in Anglicanism all over the world in favour of the too sweet smell of lavender and old lace.

Elizabeth I: Protestant or Catholic?

2008-10-20T15:22:00.000-07:00

David Loades in the latest edition of BBC History Magazine has this to say about Elizabeth I: "She was clearly a Protestant theologically; there is no doubt about that at all." However, even though the former professor at the University of Wales, Bangor has written a biography of Elizabeth, one is entitled to question his judgment. Elizabeth herself wrote to the Emperor Frederick "“We and our people-Thanks be to God-follow no novel and strange religions, but that very religion which is ordained by Christ, sanctioned by the primitive and Catholic Church and approved by the consistent mind and voice of the early Fathers." That letter was written 1563 and expressed a view of what the queen intended the English Church to be and teach. In 1571 the canons passed by the Convocations of Canterbury and York and approved by the queen express the same view when it said "See to it that you teach nothing. . .which you would have religiously held and believed by the people, save what is agreeable to the teaching of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from this self-same doctrine." This doesn't sound like the doctrine of either Zwingli or Calvin. In fact it sounds a good deal more like what the whole Church, East and West, believed and taught for the first five centuries. And, that I believe, was real Catholicism.

NO TRUCK WITH TRENT

2008-10-11T20:14:00.000-07:00

A comment made by Matthew Nelson to a previous post made me go looking for something by The Rev'd Dr Claude Beaufort Moss, D.D., who was one of the most perceptive and loyal Anglican theologians of the last century. I found it in an address which Moss gave to The Anglican Society which he entitled "English Catholicism." In it Moss sat forth the position of those Anglicans who were entirely loyal to the English Book of Common Prayer as written and had no desire to pretend to be either Papists or Presbyterians but merely Anglicans and unashamed. This, of course, seems a very difficult thing for many Anglicans to do. They are either attempting to pretend that the text and the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer or simply not there so they can do exactly as they please which is to skirt as closely to the ideas and ideals of Calvin, Luther and Zwingli as they think possible or they try to act as if Pius V had never excommunicated Elizabeth I and the English Church while acting as if they and we are bound by papal authority and the Council of Trent.

It is a very old division and basically dishonest to the core. But you have to take only the shortest trips on the Internet to see that one party or the other represents the largest portions of Anglicanism to the non-Anglican public. And then they wonder why we are unable to bring in the numbers which they (and I) feel should be ours.

But let me allow Dr Moss to explain it all.

We of the Anglican Society stand, first of all, for the Catholic Religion. We are Catholics, not only in the strict sense, in which all members of the Church of England are Catholics, but also in the popular or party sense. We accept the Creeds, we obey the laws, we use the sacraments, of the Church Universal, and of the Anglican Communion in particular. We are trying to live the Catholic life as it is everywhere understood. For instance, we believe ourselves bound to assist in the offering of the Holy Eucharist on all Sundays and chief Holy Days: and though we do not want to enforce our practice on our fellow Churchmen, we do, ourselves, make our confession to a priest. We hold that the Church's marriage law is of Divine command. We keep the feast and fast days, and the other rules of the Church. If anyone can claim the title of Catholic, we can.

This is where our position differs from that of the "Westminster Group." There is no opposition between us and that party; some of us, probably, are members of it. But the Westminster Group is composed, and is intended to be composed, of people of different views, agreeing to put "Church before party." We are not a combination of people of different views. We are agreed about our "views," and we are out to propagate them. Also, the Westminster Group is a party, with its own candidates for the Church Assembly. Our work does not lie in that field. We are not out to promote any special legislation, but to promote a particular outlook, a particular way of carrying out the existing laws. That is another difference between us and the Westminster Group. We are not the same kind of society.

But if we are Anglo-Catholics, why are we not content with the other Anglo-Catholic Organizations, the Church Union, S.Y.A., C.B.S., and so on. Why form a new society?

Because we think that there is a great deal in the Anglo-Catholic Movement which is neither Catholic nor "Anglo." We are inside the Anglo-Catholic Movement, not outside, and our aim is to maintain and to propagate its true principles, and to fight against, and if possible destroy, certain errors which have been foisted into it.

To explain clearly what I mean, I must go back into history four hundred and twenty years.

At that period, the eve of the Reformation, Western Christendom (let me beg you, incidentally, never to allow the phrase, "the Western Church" to pass unchallenged; there is not, there never has been, one Western Church: there is one Catholic Church, and there are local churches, some of which may be called Western)--Western Christendom, I say, was admittedly in a very bad condition. All men of good will were demanding "reform of the Church in head and members." And there were three ways in which that reform was carried out, three ways incompatible with one another, because starting from different principles.

There was the way of Luther, which was Revolution. The existing Church was done away with, the new national or sectarian bodies, without any claim to historic connexion with the old Church, were set up in its place. The standard of doctrine was the Bible as interpreted by each individual: which meant, in practice, by the great Reformers and their successors.

There was the way of Loyola, which was Counter-Reformation. The most scandalous of the abuses were removed; the existing doctrinal system, with its medieval additions to the original faith, was re-affirmed and declared irreformable: the standard of faith was asserted to be Scripture and Tradition, interpreted by the Pope: the central authority of Rome was enormously strengthened, and at the same time purified; great efforts were made to educate the clergy, to raise their spiritual level, and to identify the Catholic and Roman religion with the best learning of the time. At the same time, intellectual and political freedom were severely restrained, and the Church became identified with obscurantism and autocracy, with all that is associated in our minds with the Pope, the Jesuits and the Inquisition.

All over Europe, these two camps faced one another, as they do still, Luther and Loyola, Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the Bible and the Mass. We believe that both were wrong; that though each produced great saints, and though there is still much to be learned from both, both were one-sided, and therefore false, and that the lamentable state of Christendom to-day is chiefly due to these two great aberrations from the primitive faith.

But there is a third way, which the Church of England, half-consciously, with much stumbling and inconsistency, pursued in isolation. Here the ancient Church remained, with many of the ancient abuses: but there was no irreformable Council, and no bolstering up of medieval accretions. The standard of faith was the Bible, as interpreted, not by the individual, but by the ancient undivided Church, and, within those limits, by the Church of England. Hindered by all kinds of obstacles of which her isolation was not the least, and by the presence in her midst, and even among her rulers, of many who did not accept, or did not even understand her principles, the English Church, by the special providence of God, preserved for the modern world the Catholic Faith without medieval accretions or irreformable decrees; the Mass and the open Bible; the sacramental system with intellectual freedom.

The Oxford Movement was the late breaking into flower and fruit of what the English Church had always been meant to be, but had been hindered by too close connexion with the increasingly secular modern State.

Now it is this that we stand for: the principles, the outlook of Anglicanism, as it was developed by the Caroline Divines, as it reached its full development in the Oxford Movement, as it cams to terms with the modern world in the "Lux Mundi" group. We stand for the inheritance of Andrewes and Laud, of Bramhall and Ken, of Keble and Pusey, of Church and Moberly and Scott Holland: and our principles may be summed up thus:--

1. The supremacy in matters of faith of Holy Scripture as interpreted by the Councils of the Undivided Church.

2. The right and duty of the Church to accommodate its teaching to modern knowledge, within the limits of the Catholic Faith.

3. The right of national churches to govern themselves, and to decide, for their own members, all questions of doctrine and discipline, without interference, within the limits set by Holy Scripture, the doctrinal decrees of the Councils based upon it, and the necessity of preserving the validity, or universal recognition, of Sacraments.

In saying this, we do not ignore the faults of our Church: of which the gravest is, that she has lost the English people. Historically, that loss was the consequence of the 18th century, not of the 16th: the result, not of Anglican principles, but of the fact that the Church has never had a fair chance to develop those principles on a large scale, and with freedom from political control.

The Oxford Movement is the starting point of Anglican Church life as we know it. What was the Oxford Movement? James Anthony Froude, M. Thureau-Dangin, and Mr. Spencer Jones alike assure us, that it was the belated appearance in England of the Counter-Reformation. The best authorities, however, from Dean Church to Canon Ollard, have shown clearly that the Oxford Movement had nothing to do with the Counter-Reformation, but was based on completely different principles. And what we are here to fight, by every means in our power, is the invasion of the Anglican Churches by the influence of the Counter-Reformation, founded as it is on the Council of Trent.

That Council is the basis of nearly all we call Romanism as distinct from Catholicism. It introduced a new principle, contrary to the teaching of the Fathers, when it set Tradition, as an independent source of dogma, alongside Holy Scripture, and gave Rome the right to decide what is true tradition. On this foundation it proceeded to make a number of new dogmas necessary to salvation, none of which can be proved from Scripture, and some of which are contrary to Scripture: and to settle questions of discipline irreformably, so as to limit the liberty of local churches and of individuals. It declared itself infallible, and consequently has been ever since an insuperable barrier to re-union. Our three principles which I mentioned before are all contrary to the decrees of Trent: for it has

1. set Tradition alongside Scripture as an additional source of dogma;

2. given the Pope the power to limit intellectual freedom, a power used by Pius IX in the Syllabus Errorum (1864), which declared war on all modern thought, and by Pius X in the anti-Modernist Oath, which enforced Fundamentalism in the Roman Communion;

3. made all local churches and hierarchies the slaves of Rome, so that all their affairs, even to the minutest details, are controlled from the centre.

Gallicanism became confined to the maintenance of special privileges for national churches in certain countries, and so was a mere survival after Trent, and was only kept in being by the power of the Kings of France; it was finally destroyed by the Vatican Council. The Infallibility and Universal Episcopate of the Pope, decreed by the Vatican Council, are the logical corollaries of Trent; the Old Catholics, when they rejected them, were compelled to reject the authority of Trent too, and this alone is what has made re-union between them and us possible.

Therefore, if I wanted to give you a slogan, in the best General Election manner it would be

NO TRUCK WITH TRENT.

Our repudiation of Trent, and of Tridentine principles, methods, and atmosphere, in doctrine, discipline, and devotion, must have an outward and visible sign. This we find in the English Use.

Let me be quite clear about this. We are not medievalists. We do not advocate all the ceremonial used in Salisbury Cathedral in the 14th century, still less the re-introduction of the Sarum Rite.

I have the greatest respect for the ancient and illustrious Church of Sarum in whose cathedral, I am happy to say, the vestments are worn and the altars are all arranged according to the English Use: but it is Sarum of the 20th, not the 14th century!

The English Use is the Book of Common Prayer, with such ornaments and ceremonies as were in use in England when it was first made, and are capable of being used with it. We ardently maintain the right of the English Church to develop her rites, ceremonies and ornaments, as she chooses, and for that and other reasons most of us welcome the Liturgy of 1928: but we insist that the point at which to begin is the point which our development had reached when it was interrupted by Calvinism, namely 1549, and not any later developments in the Churches of the Counter-Reformation.

The reason that we insist on the English Use is not only that it is our duty as Catholics to obey our lawful superiors, who are in our case the Synods of Canterbury and York, or other Anglican provinces: nor only because it is far more beautiful, as well as on the whole more practical, than the ill-fitting ceremonies and ornaments borrowed from foreign models; (some of which even Father Adrian Fortescue calls "eighteenth century bad taste," and which the most intelligent Roman ritualists are trying to get rid of); but also, because the English Use is the outward and visible sign of our principles. When I see an "English Altar" with riddels and two candles on the mensa, my thought is not, "This is correct," or even "This is beautiful," but "Here they evidently believe in the principles of the Oxford Movement and not in those of the Counter-Reformation."

Is this insular, or schismatical? Only if you believe, as I fear great numbers of Anglo-Catholics do believe subconsciously, that Romanism is "the real thing," and that outside the English-speaking world all Christians worth mentioning are Romanists.

I do not want to bring re-union into our domestic controversies, but we who have friends and fellow-workers in the cause of re-union in every country from Sweden to Syria can hardly be called insular in our outlook or schismatic in our aims.

This is the way of looking at things which I think we should be propagating; and it is very different from a great deal that can be read in Anglo-Catholic literature. We have got a difficult task before us, because our opponents have got a long start; and yet I believe we are really in a majority, but the majority is unorganised, whereas the other side is highly organized and enthusiastic.

I will conclude with a few suggestions as to the lines on which we should work.

First, I think we should not lay too much emphasis on aesthetics. If people get to think we are "arty," they will never take us seriously; and if we are just a set of people who want to substitute albs for cottas and riddels for retables, we shall be justly accused of fiddling while Rome is burning. The times arc far too serious for folly of that sort. No one is keener on the English Use than I am, or more certain that we need an outward sign, a banner as it were: but we must recognise that those who hold our principles and will fight for them are on our side, even if they have six candles, yes, even if they wear birettas!

Secondly, we must fight on the field of psychology, not merely of reason. Our arguments seem to us unanswerable, yet they don't always convince; because people are very seldom convinced by argument. We have got to create an atmosphere for our arguments, and to bear in mind the psychology of the particular persons we want to convert.

Thus it is generally useless to appeal to Anglo-Catholics on the ground of obedience to rubrics. English people in general have no great love for law, except when it is a safeguard for their own liberty, or a means of restraining somebody else! In particular the Anglo-Catholic Movement, ever since the P.W.R. Act, has had in it a large revolutionary element. The men who have had most influence in it, Stanton, Holland, Bishop Weston, have been men of strongly radical outlook. Therefore, most Anglo-Catholics, unlike foreign Catholics, are progressives, if not revolutionaries, and we must not try to convince them on grounds which only appeal to conservatives.

Neither Anglo-Catholics nor Romanists carry on their propaganda by addressing the reason. It is the imagination and the herd instinct by which people are caught. We must be constantly teaching, positively not controversially, the greatness and the splendour of the Anglican position, the romance of Anglican history; we must never suffer the contempt of anything as only Anglican, which is only too common; we must use the word Catholic to mean that which is primitive, Eastern, and Anglican, and not Tridentine, in opposition not only to what is Puritan but to what is Romanist. We must be always suggesting that our principles and our practice are both Catholic and up-to-date. It is really rather Late Victorian to have six candles on the altar, and to fill your sanctuary with knick-knacks, like those in a French church, the ecclesiastical analogues of the antimacasser and the aspidistra!

We have got to make it "the thing" to follow the English Use, and to suggest that anything else is not so much disloyal or heretical, as ridiculous and rather dowdy.

Thirdly, we must take steps to meet our opponents in a region where hitherto they have had all their own way. There is a large number of people whose interest in religion is not doctrinal but devotional and mystical. These people have very little to satisfy their needs but what is Roman or pseudo-Roman. The use of foreign devotional books, even more than foreign ceremonial, gives people a Counter-Reformation background. I have, for instance, read an otherwise admirable book on mental prayer, written by a member of an Anglican Religious Order. The author's whole mind and doctrinal background was entirely Romanist: of the books which he recommended, and said every priest should possess, about eighty-five per cent, were post-Tridentine Roman, to about eight per cent. pre-Reformation, and seven per cent. Anglican. Great numbers of our more devout people are given, or buy for themselves, devotional books which are either frankly Roman, or if Anglican, teach Roman doctrine. One most popular book, with a circulation of hundreds of thousands, teaches explicitly the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which is not only quite meaningless to the modern theologian, but which our Eastern and Old Catholic friends condemn as formally heretical.

We have got to do something to fight this flood of foreign devotion, which we can only do by providing something better. This is where our Russian friends can help us: there is, I believe, an enormous devotional literature in Russian, which we must get translated. If we do use Roman devotions, we must adapt them, as the Tractarians did. Now-a-days, as is well known, the older Roman devotional books are not Roman enough for some Anglican publishers! We must study the mystical side of our religion in order ultimately to produce mystical literature free from the doctrinal errors, and the often obscurantist outlook, of the Roman books studied in our parishes and still more in our convents.

Fourthly, if we have any doubt that in doing this work we are really working for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, and not merely propagating our own opinions, let us remember that we are fighting for God's Truth: truth revealed in Holy Scripture; truth more fully shown to us in modern discovery; and for the liberty of the sons of God; liberty ecclesiastical, political, intellectual. The Anglican Communion, and the Anglo-Catholic Movement which is its spearhead, its only consistent manifestation, are the only hope for the re-union of Christendom and the reconciliation of the modern world to Christianity. Roman propaganda, both inside and outside the Church, is an effort to pervert and ultimately to destroy that movement. I have avoided making accusations, but I cannot but warn you, that there are very sinister elements in what we are fighting against. If there is a "Protestant underworld," as we are sometimes told, there is also an Anglo-Catholic underworld, and a very queer region it is. The use that is being made of the confessional and of the retreat movement in certain quarters, may lead to very disastrous results; and some of our smaller religious communities need watching carefully. Again, I am sure that not only the lawlessness, but the frivolity, the contempt for other Christians, and the love of intrigue, which are to be found in certain quarters, would have horrified the saints in any age of the Church. We don't want timidity, moderation, or laxity of principle, but we do need more of the seriousness, the self-control and the common-sense which were characteristic of the great Evangelicals and the great Tractarians as well as of the great Catholic saints in all ages.

Finally, I think we must always bear in mind that the principles for which we are fighting, if they are true, are true universally. We are not out to propagate a specially English version of the Faith, our principles are as true at Rome or at Geneva as they are at Canterbury. We do not want to make the whole world Anglican, or to impose the English Use on other countries: the same principle which maintains the English Use in England would welcome an Indian liturgical Use in India. But we do want to make the whole world Catholic, as we understand Catholicism, Catholic and not Tridentine, and we believe that such Catholicism is what the world needs. If then we make our boast of the Anglican name, it is not out of any Jingoistic spirit, but because we believe that the Anglican Churches, in spite of all their faults and defects, have been given, with others, the task of propagating that which the world needs. And it is in this spirit that we venture to use the lines of George Herbert on the British Church:--

"But dearest Mother, what these miss,
The mean Thy praise and glory is,
And long may be.
Blessed be God, Whose love it was
To double-moat thee with His grace,
And none but thee."

Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, 1235-1253

2008-10-09T18:49:00.000-07:00

Today is the anniversary of the death of Robert Grosseteste, reforming bishop of the diocese of Lincoln and probable forerunner of the English reformation. Rather than relate the whole of his history I am going to refer readers to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Grosseteste where they can get something of a more complete picture of the stature of this great English bishop and possible saint. The reason that I am doing this is because the very good bishop had a very great influence in my own life and I am going to attempt to bore you with the story.

Many, many years ago when I was at university we had a new professor of philosophy arrive from Hungary of all places. He was selected to teach a course in medieval philosophy and I rushed to be among the first who signed up. At the first class meeting I noticed the resemblance between he and my fencing master who was also an Hungarian. They looked alike and had much the same way of speaking - something like sabre slashes. It did not take him very long before he had developed a great disdain for our lack of intellectual preparation and he was not silent about it. When he assigned papers on certain medieval philosophical works, he got a complain that there were no English translations and that they were all in Latin. His response: "So, learn Latin, but make sure that you get your papers in on time." Strangely, most of us did. On another ocassions he was railing on about our general ignorance of European and even English history which led to an agonized cry that he was sure that no one in the class had the slightest idea of who Robert Grosseteste was or his importance.

That led me to raise my hand. When permitted to speak this fledgling Anglican told he and the class that Grosseteste was a thirteenth century bishop of Lincoln and probably the greatest intellectual of his time. I carried on about the diversity of his scientific writings, his conflicts with Henry III and support for Simon Montfort and the reforms which he brought to the diocese of Lincoln. I even went on about his eventual conflict with the pope over the provision of livings for Italian clerics who never showed to do the work. I guess I just went on and on.

When I finished the professor looked at me and said, "Get out; you've got your A." I replied, "I am not leaving a class where the professor knows about Grosseteste." And I didn't.

The Episcopal Church now counts him as a saint as his own diocese did for fifty years after his death. He never made it into the official Roman calendar of saints, probably for his challenging of the papacy on their corruption and the corruption which they were inflicting upon the English Church. So he was left to be forgotten, but how can you forget the man who is probably the father of the scientific method and the English intellectual tradition?

How Can You Claim

2008-10-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

To be a classical prayer book Anglican when your parish's schedule of services says otherwise? Anyone who reads the rubrics and other directions in any of the classical prayer books knows that those who put them together intended that every parish would have daily services of Morning and Evening Prayer. In addition the English prayer books direct that the Litany should be used on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday while they also provide propers for the celebration of Holy Communion on every Sunday of the year as well as a series of saints and fast days. This means that what you should find in a parish or mission loyal to the prayer book on a Sunday is the reading of Morning Prayer followed by the Litany and Holy Communion. In late afternoon Evening Prayer would be read or sung. When you don't find this in a parish or mission then it doesn't matter what they say about being loyal to doctrine, discipline and worship of the Church because their actions or lack of same speak far more loudly and powerfully than their words.

I have recently been surfing the web for parishes which claim to be orthodox Anglican. I have also not a very large number of churches which claim to be traditionally 'Anglo-Catholic' and they as well as the others show by their published schedules that they don't accept or practise what the Book of Common Prayer teaches. And the amazing thing is that this schedule is simply that of the Catholic Church in England as evidenced by Walter Langland's Vision of Piers the Plowman.

Some Catholics; some prayer book loyalists!

St Honorius of Canterbury, Archbishop

2008-09-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

Born in Rome, Italy; died at Canterbury, England, on September 30, 653.
Saint Gregory the Great (f.d. September 3) chose the monk Honorius to
evangelize England because of his great virtue and learning. Honorius
succeeded Saint Justus (f.d. November 10) as archbishop of Canterbury,
was consecrated at Lincoln by Bishop Saint Paulinus (f.d. October 10).
He received the pallium sent from Rome by Pope Honorius I, together with
a letter by the Pope's hand stating that whenever the sees of York or
Canterbury became vacant, the surviving archbishop should consecrate
the duly selected successor of the other.

During Honorius's episcopacy, the faith spread throughout the island and
took root in many hearts. He carefully selected and trained his clergy
to ensure their commitment to the Gospel (Bonniwell, Husenbeth).

Having missed the feast of St Michael and All Angels - the 'all angels' being an addition suggested by Bishop Cosin at the time of 1662 revision - it seemed fitting to remind all that there are many saints of the English Church and of Anglicanism in general that are not in the calendars of any of the classical prayer books. Should we forget these worthys? Certainly not. But a calendar can get over stuffed with saints days and there are many things more important than remembering them at the altar, the more especially when many of our churches are unable to provide the daily services, the daily offerings of Morning and Evening Prayer.

So what are we supposed to do? First, after the most important task of teaching Holy Scripture, we need to teach the history of the Church. Both we and our children and our children's children need to know what happened when and who did what. They and we need to know who occupied the important sees and which of those occupants were saints and why. And we need the example of the saints to encourage ourselves and others to seek a like path of holiness. Many of us seeing the example of Jesus in the scriptures know that we could never be him, but we can all aspire to follow the example of the saints in being His servant and soldier until our lives end.

St Marks, Regents Park, London

2008-09-26T05:49:00.000-07:00

One of my very bad Internet habits is going to various church sites to look at the architecture and decoration. Among my particular favorites are those churches designed or refurbished by Sir John Ninian Comper. They have a beauty which is almost breath taking. St Mark's, Regents Park is one of those. Both the high altar and the Lady altar were designed by Comper who also did a number of the stained glass windows. If you want to see what it is like go to www.stmarksregentspark.org.uk and enjoy.

However the point of this particular post is to object to a desecration of Comper's marvelous design for the high altar. It is reported in the parish history, also on their site thus: "Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the congregation grew – by 1977 the membership was over one hundred. The Vicar continued to make all sorts of improvements to the church to enhance the worship. The two candlesticks on the high altar (a number favoured by Comper) were increased to the traditional six, a thurible was made for the incense, new altar rails were installed and further candlesticks commissioned to replace those stolen from the All Saints’ Chapel. It was in the early 1970s that the sad decision was first taken to keep the church locked when unattended."

My objection is to the phrase "the traditional six" because they are not traditional. Rather it is two candles which are traditional as Comper knew from extensive studies in medieval illuminations. The six candles are taken from Roman usage coming from the use of Pius V. So you have the choice between Anglican usage which reflects the tradition of the centuries as against a Roman innovation of the 16th century. In short, the choice is between something which is really Catholic, according to the whole, as against something which is merely Roman and a relatively recent innovation.

Please go to St Mark's website and enjoy the pictures of the stained glass windows and the various altars. Simply don't accept the idea that things particularly Roman are Catholic.

The Struggle

2008-09-25T05:39:00.000-07:00

"The Puritan party from the days of Elizabeth to the present time have never honestly accepted the Prayer Book : its members have been too much of Churchmen to leave the Church, but too little of Churchmen to value its principles: They have remained in a false position, attempting to subvert the system to which they nominally conformed. It has been pointed out how openly the attempt was made in Elizabethan times; and, though it has in God's good Providence failed all along to win any substantial recognition, it has been able at times to establish an evasive and false tradition of Prayer Book interpretation which has practically popularized and sought even to justify a system of disloyalty to the Prayer Book. The party has had its conflicts with more loyal and wholehearted churchmanship, and the issues have hitherto not been finally decisive. The failure of the Elizabethan attempt to puritanize the Church inaugurated the period of loyalty of the early Stuart times: the success of this recovery was too rapid and too injudicious, and so the revenge came speedily; for a while sectarianism and even puritanism had their way, until a short experience of their results under the Commonwealth produced a fresh reaction. The failure of the Puritans at the Savoy inaugurated another period of loyalty under the later Stuarts, but, when Church life was systematically crushed in the 18th century by Whig politicians and Latitudinarian bishops, the reign of the false tradition and the evasive, disloyal or merely torpid attitude to the rules of the Church's worship again set in; and those who tried to be loyal to the Church system, whether early followers of Wesley, Clapham Evangelicals or Oxford Tractarians, were all alike in turn charged with innovation, disloyalty and even with Popery. The contest still survives; the Puritan party still works for a system, which is not the system of the Catholic Church or of the English Prayer Book, and defends its disregard of plain rubrics (e.g., as to fasting or daily services), and its want of sympathy with the system (e.g., as to the frequency and discipline of Communion by appealing to the evasive tradition, which in the dark days of the history it has been able to form, and would like to fasten permanently upon the Church. Thus there is no feature more marked in the history of the Prayer Book than this contest between the Church system of worship expressed in the Prayer Book and the false interpretation which has grown up through a continuous tradition of evasion and rebellion."

This quotation, taken from Proctor and Frere's New History of the Book of Common Prayer, is still as true as the day it was written and published. The Continuum has been repeatedly split by this fight which has been made the worse by those who should have been the best of Churchmen adopting and practising a tradition equally at varience with the Prayer Book and the Church, i.e., an imitation of the very worse of what even Roman authorities have labeled as "Roman bad taste." The result is that those who know and actually practise the Anglican tradition seem to have become fewer every year. But it is that tradition, the way of the classical Prayer Book Catholic, which this blog has embraced and will continue to do our best to set before all those who call themselves Anglicans and the world at large.

St Matthew, Apostle, Evangelist, Martyr

2008-09-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

St Matthew is one of my patron saints. The twist here is that I did not choose him; he chose me. Very important things in my life began happening on his feast day or in and around churches and other places named for him and thus under his patronage. In a way I suppose that I ought to feel honoured, but most what I feel is a bit scared. This is the twenty-first century and things like this are not supposed to happen and continue to happen.

Nonetheless I am happy that this year his feast fell upon a Sunday. That means that I can pay a little more attention to it and celebrate it with a little more splendour than normal. The ancient custom of the feasts of the greater saints as well as the feasts of dedication and title displacing the proper of the Sunday during lesser liturgical seasons seems a more than fitting way of celebrating what Jesus the Annointed can do in the lives of quite ordinary people when they fully surrender and commit themselves to Him.

Unfortunately the number of us doing that for St Matthew and those other of the apostles whose feast fell upon a Sunday this year is going to be a great deal fewer that in past years and centuries. Why? Because the modern liturgical movement, rejecting tradition instead of explicating it. This means that those still in TEC and in the new Anglican lite groups who fail to understand that the 1979 book is heretical will be doing a Sunday after Trinity - excuse me, a Sunday after Pentecost - as they have broken with the ancient tradition of the English Church and classical and orthodox prayer book Anglicanism for something invented almost yesterday. This is not only a denial of Anglicanism; it is a rejection of Biblical principle which tells us to keep to the old paths, the ancient ways.

St Matthew wrote his gospel for the Jewish people and quoted extensively from the Old Testament so that they would know that it was all about the Messiah, his coming and his mission. Eusebius says that he wrote his gospel originally in Hebrew before translating it into Greek. He wanted the Jews, his people, to know that Jesus was the Lord for whom they waited and that he had come at last to same them and us from our sins. And this, above all things, is the reason that we should honour him this day because in honouring him we actually honour the one who was his Lord and Saviour and, hopefully by his gospel, ours as well.

English Use

2008-09-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

WHAT IS IT?

It is a term used to denote obedience to the living rules of the English Church. In other words, it is the 'administration of the Sacraments and other rites and ceremonies of the Church according to the Use of the Church of England.' It involves the straightforward fulfilment of a contract solemnly made--not exactly like a business contract in which unforseen risks may have to be faced, but a contract in which all the evenualities are clearly stated and accepted at one of the most solemn moments of a priest's life, namely his ordination.

In essence, the term 'English Use' has no geographic significance, but is a reference to the title-page of every Prayer-Book. It is not merely the preserving of insular eccentricities, a sort of archaeological craze, but a deliberate desire to carry out the directions in force in that part of the Lord's vineyard in which our lot is cast. In other words, to do what we are told instead of what we like. In the Catholic outlook obedience has spiritual value because of its sacrificial character. It is indeed entering the mind of Him Who said, 'I am come to do Thy will, O Lord.'

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND CREATES BISHOPS, PRIESTS, AND DEACONS

1. If the Church of England has power to make a priest, it has power also to tell him what kind of service to perform; how exactly, for instance, he shall celebrate the Holy Eucharist.
2. It has power also to say what feasts and fasts are to be observed, how its churches are to be furnished, and what clothes its minsters shall wear during public worship.

HOW ARE THESE POWERS EMBODIED?

The are embodied in the Book of Common Prayer.
For instance, an individual clergyman might be quite right in supposing a certain order of prayers at the Consecration of the Eucharist to be more beautiful than that which is prescribed by the Church that made him a priest. He is entitled to think that, but if eh follows his own preferences when he is celebrating the Eucharist, he is not celebrating according to the English Use--which he has sworn to do.
So the services, exactly as set down in the Book of Common Prayer, or within the variations allowed by the Revised Book of 1928, words and rubrics, are the English Use, the living rite, and to speak of the ceremonial rising out of it as 'the old English Use', or as 'Sarum Use' is to misunderstand the very foundation on which the term rests.

PARTICULAR DIRECTIONS

Instead of making a list and description of all the permissible 'ornaments' (which means things worn and used in worship), the Church of England gives a clear but broad pointer in a date when the ornaments of a church and its ministers set the desired standard. That pointer is the 'Ornaments Rubric', and the date to which it points is 1549.
That was an age when the word 'catholic' was still prized, but when the word 'primitive' was weaving a new spell, when scholarship was respected, intelligibility craved, and liturgical adventure not shirked. It was also an age of intolerance, and it is a lasting tribute to the divines of the Church in England that they drew their definitions skilfully and widely enough to achieve a simplification yet to leave room for variety of style and of elaboration.
It is thus possible for an extremely simple celebration of the Holy Communion to be as compatible with our Ornaments Rubric as a much fuller ceremonial with the three 'Sacred Ministers', clerk, taperers, and incense.
The other directions of the Book are clear, but generally they are not minute or exhaustive. When they were compiled, they were sometimes designed to correct the then current practice; but in the absence of direction, the old familiar ceremonial background might be assumed. (It is to this extent that Sarum customs--as one might say, the 'English' customs of that day--have a claim on our serious attention.) What could not have been assumed, and should not be now, is ceremonial behaviour incongruous with the rite itself.

SOME OUTWARD MARKS:

WHAT YOU MAY HEAR AND SEE IN 'ENGLISH USE' CHURCHES

1. You will hear the whole of the Communion service. No part of it is secret; all the prayer belong to the people and it is not according to the mind of the English Church that any of them should be inaudible (see the Communion rubrics, 1928) : the faithful must be 'praying with the Church'. Certainly, too, the Prayer Book does not require an elevation, or a bell, or incense, during the Prayer of Consecration.
2. Vesture. Our rubric gives us the chasuble, dalmatic, tunicle, and cope. It points to a period when vestments were still dignified and ample. The 'cotta' was not known at that time; then, assistants round the altar wore either albe, or surplice, or rochet. If one could bear the inadequacy of the short cotta one might argue that it is cheaper, or easier to wash than the longer rochet or surplice. That may be so, but that is not the point: our directions indicate something else. Mercifully our rubric comes from an age of beauty, and the graceful folds of an ample garment are ours by right.
3. The Altar Upon its surface may stand two lights and perhaps a cross. The desire to multiply ornaments on the altar is contrary to age-long tradition and the precise number of six candles is purely a papal direction. Other lights may strand around. Sometimes the altar is surrounded at its ends by enshrining curtains (perhaps suspended between columns which may or may not bear tapers), or surmounted by a canopy, both features reminiscent of the shrouded altar of the undivided Church.
The front of the altar is covered by an altar cloth (that is, a 'frontal').
Many of these features are in themselves aesthetically attractive and intrinsically beautiful, and it is interesting to notice how many of them are being adopted or revived in the Roman Communion under the influence of the Liturgical Movement. But in themselves, though they are according to the English Use, they do not constitute the English Use.
We come back to the starting point: the English Use is the Book of Common Prayer in its wholeness, and the keynote is obedience to the spiritual authority of the Church of England, which 'hath power to decree Rites and Ceremonies'.

HOW CAN WE FOLLOW THE ENGLISH USE?

It is not necessary to be elaborate: the sternest simplicity may be within the term. But whether the plain or the rich be desired, it will rest upon the principle, not of individual preference, but of honest obedience, from whence is born, perhaps almost unexpectedly, fruit of great beauty and joy.

The above is taken from a series of Alcuin Leaflets published as Liturgy in the Parish. What is in the above called 'English Use' should now be called 'Anglican Use' because its principles extend beyound the Church of England to the whole of classical Anglicanism. Those who take their Anglicanism and the classical prayer books seriously must choose how they look, how their services look and even how they sound if they and we are going to be taken seriously and regain the reputation and credibility which Anglicanism once had and which for the good of all 'who call themselves Christians' it needs to regain.

Some Reminders of What Anglicanism Means

2008-09-15T11:43:00.000-07:00

“We and our people-Thanks be to God-follow no novel and strange religions, but that very religion which is ordained by Christ, sanctioned by the primitive and Catholic Church and approved by the consistent mind and voice of the early Fathers." Queen Elizabeth I, 1563 A.D.

"See to it that you teach nothing. . .which you would have religiously held and believed by the people, save what is agreeable to the teaching of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from this self-same doctrine." The Canons of the Church of England, 1571

"Protestant and Reformed according to the principles of the ancient Catholic Church." Bishop John Cosin (d. 1672)

I die in the holy catholic and apostolic faith, professed by the whole church before the division of East and West; more particularly I die in the communion of the Church of England, as it stands distinguished from all papal and puritan innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the cross." Bishop Thomas Ken, 1711

[A]ntiquity [is] the true exponent of doctrines of Christianity and the basis of the Church of England. John Henry Newman, 1947

We have no doctrine of our own. . .We only possesses the Catholic doctrine of the Catholic Church enshrined in the Catholic Creeds, and these Creeds we hold without addition or diminution. We stand firm on that Rock. Geoffrey Francis Fisher Archbishop of Canterbury 1945-1961

Happy Birthday, Queen Elizabeth . . .The First, That Is.

2008-09-07T18:04:00.000-07:00

Yes, today, the seventh of September, is the birthday of Elizabeth Tudor who upon the death of her half sister Mary became the queen of England. Having survived her sister's reign, she set about also restoring the Book of Common Prayer which she saw amended in a Catholic fashion from the changes made not by Church and parliament, but by her brother's Council to the book of 1549. Historians, not understanding the religious questions of the time, call her a Protestant, but she thought of herself as being "as good a Catholic prince as any in Europe." Without her what we think of as classical prayer book Anglicanism would only be a very small footnote to the history of England. Because of her the world was remade and political freedom and science was given a new birth.

So, a very happy birthday, Your Majesty! May you and the faith and practise of the classic Anglican prayer books have many happy returns of this day.

What Lambeth Once Taught!

2008-08-18T22:13:00.000-07:00

"We do here solemnly record our conviction that unity will be most effectually promoted by maintaining the faith in its purity and integrity, as taught in the Holy Scriptures, held by the primitive Church, summed up in the Creeds, and affirmed by the undisputed General councils."

At least this is what they said at the Lambeth Conference of 1867. It would be wonderful if they could have reaffirmed this at the one just ended. St Luke's version of it, recorded in Acts 2:42 goes "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer." But this is the teaching and the practise of the classical prayer books when followed closely and exactly, both in the letter and in the spirit which is why the evil one so seeks to destroy us.

One Use

2008-08-13T13:40:00.000-07:00

And where hertofore there hath been greate diversitie, in saying, and singyng in churches within thys realme, some folowing Salisburye use, some Herford use, some the use of Bangor, some of Yorke, and some of Lincolne: now from hence furth, all the whole realme, shall have but one use. Preface, 1559 prayer book.

And although the kepyng or omitting of a Ceremonye (in it selfe considered) is but a small thyng : yet the wilfull and contempteous transgression, and breakyng of a common ordre, and discipline : is no small offence before God. " Of Ceremonies, 1559 prayer book.

¶ The Morning and Evening praier shalbe used in the accustomed place of the churche, chapel, or Chauncell, except it shalbe otherwise determined by the ordinary of the place: and the chauncels shall remain, as they have done in tymes past.

And here is to be noted, that the Minister at the time of the communion, and at all other tymes in hys ministracion, shall use suche ornamentes in the church, as wer in use by aucthoritie of parliament in the second yere of the reygne of king Edward the .VI. according to the acte of parliament set in the beginning of thys booke." The Order for Morning Prayer, 1559 prayer book.

And (to the ende the people maye the better heare) in suche places where they do synge, there shall the lessons be songe in a plaine tune after the maner of distinct readinge: and likewise the Epystle and gospell.

The above extracts and rubrics from the restored Book of Common Prayer of Elizabeth I are here quoted to show the Church of England's intent in what the Church and services were intended to look and sound like.
The purpose of this blog was to both inform and persuade. First it was to inform Anglicans and those thinking of becoming Anglicans about what it actually meant to be a classical prayer book and Biblical Anglican. Actually, I don't believe that there are truly any other kind. The others, high, low or broad, are not to my mind really Anglicans but folks who have infiltrated the Church for the purpose of subverting its faith and practise and using it for their own ends. That means that they feel very little and possibly even not the slightest obligation to believe what the Catholic Church (there really isn't any other) teaches in terms of Holy Scripture as interpreted by the creeds, the general councils and the writings of the fathers or to obediently participate in the worship of the Church as set forth in the classical Books of Common Prayer.

It was our purpose to persuade those who wanted to be know as Anglicans that they had to look Anglican, smell Anglican and sing Anglican. It short, it is the old duct test, i.e., if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it's a duck. But Anglicans have always had a great deal of difficulty of understanding that. A great deal of the problem was, as Bishop Cosin wrote, "those who came back from Geneva." They may have wanted positions in the Church of England under Elizabeth I and been willing to accept them, but what they did not want and did their best not to do was to look, walk and sound like an Anglican. Instead, while taking the Church of England's bread, they wanted to remake said Church in the image of Calvin and his Geneva. And in spite of those who would attempt to persuade us that the Church of England was greatly influenced and intellectually, spiritually and morally in debt to certain of the continental "reformers," what was ordered in Elizabeth's Book of Common Prayer was a great deal different from the type of church they wanted to create. The result was a running battle with Elizabeth and those who served her and the Church of England for the entire duration of her reign. Unfortunately Elizabeth never entirely won the day and the battle spilled over into the reigns of James and Charles where it finally resulted in the English Civil War. The Puritans and their allies won, the Church of England was abolished, the prayer book outlawed while outright Calvinist congregationalists intruded themselves into the ancient parishes of England and Wales.
It was fortunately not a victory that lasted forever because Charles II was called back to the British throne in 1660 and the Church and the prayer book returned with him. But the recovery was not complete because the destruction done during the days of the Cromwellian interregnum was never going to be erased and has not been to this day. Yes, the prayer book (slightly revised) was restored, the intruders in the parishes forced either to conform or to go their way, but there were rubrics in the prayer book that would never be enforced again by the bishops and only partially come to be obeyed after the beginning of the Church revival that we know as the Oxford Movement. Part of the reason was that the king, Charles II, was financially beholden to the French king who had hopes of him converting to the Roman Church and bringing the Church of England back under the rule of the bishops of Rome. And Charles did convert, but only upon his death bed. Having no legitimate heirs the throne went to his younger brother, James, who had already become a papist who only too soon made the people realize the danger to their liberties of a papist king. The bishops revolted and went to the tower only to have James back down and free them. However when his second wife gave birth to a male heir, the whole country rose up and James, wife and baby fled to France while Parliament called his eldest daughter and her Dutch husband William to the throne.
This in its own way was another disaster for the Church. William who outwardly conformed to the church was actually a Calvinist. The result was the best bishops and the best clerics in the country were not able to deny that they had taken an oath to James II and that such an oath precluded them not taking one to William (and Mary). The result was that they were forced from their sees and benefices which were given over to political place seekers while the Church of Scotland was entirely dis-established and Presbyterianism made the established church in that country. William tried to have the prayer book entirely rewritten in such a latitudinarian direction that it offended no one and everyone but the lower houses of convocation rejected it. Eventually William also died and Mary's sister Anne came to the throne. She tried as best she could to undo the harm that first James and then William had done to the Church. But she had too little time and when she too died without a direct heir, Parliament called George I from Hanover rather than accept another descendant of James II. That gave the English the four Georges and Victoria plus time and reason for the American colonies to declare their independence and secure it by war.

That independence left the American church in a terrible place. It had been the established state church in a number of the colonies and where it was it was disestablished. That generally meant that it was left without income and the clergy departed, some for England and some for Canada. But they were gone and could not be replaced because the English Church had never appointed bishops for the American Colonies and now, because of the matter of allegiance to King George and the British throne, it would be illegal to ordain deacons and priests for the new American states or consecrate bishops for them. So without clergy some of the churches sat empty or were claimed by others where one merely had to proclaim oneself a preacher. This was what happened to the parish church where my Virginia ancestors worshiped.

The recovery began with the consecration of the Rt Reverend Samuel Seabury by the bishops of the non-juroring Church of Scotland, but it is not finished yet. Nor will it be until those who are ordained to minister to Anglicans and in the Anglican manner consistently and obediently use the Book of Common Prayer as it was intended and give up all practises that would set either papal or puritan innovations above the directions of the Church.

"Just what is the Book of Common Prayer"

2008-08-13T05:52:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when you are bouncing around the Internet you find something so excellent that you simply want to bring it to the attention of everyone possible. This is the case with "Just what is the Book of Common Prayer" which I found on the anglicancontinuum.blogspot.com under the heading of BCP(2). It is the work of Father Robert Hart who is in my opinion one of the star theologians of the Continuum. Please go there and read it and the comments as well. It is a superb piece which I thing should be brought to the attention of every sound Anglican churchman. It is a priviledge to comment it to anyone and everyone.

The Other Book

2008-08-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

I found this in an old note book of mine. It was something which I said in a sermon about the first step in converting our neighbors and the world was in being as completely open as we were able to ourselves being converted to the fullness of the Christian faith.

"The Book of Common Prayer is a real school of Practical Christianity: it teaches the Catholic Faith, provides Orthodox Worship, contains Apostolic Order and it is true Evangelical Witness."

It is as simple as that and as complex and mystical. It embodies the via media. Like the Benedictine Rule it is neither too severe nor too lax, but it always - if we will but permit it - leads us to Jesus as Risen Saviour and Lord.

Why Christians Sing

2008-08-03T16:00:00.000-07:00

In doing the previous blog I forgot to include two details which I believe to be very important in terms of why Christians and especially Anglicans are intended to sing. Beyond the joy and the emotions which music adds to the tone of worship, there are some things which I suspect primitive peoples knew almost instinctively but which we moderns have had a tendency to forget. The first of these is that anything which we either sing or hear sung we tend to remember when other things will be forgotten. That is why that tune from the thirties which was playing when you confessed your love for the four year old next door still haunts you without giving you a clue as to why. Advertisers know this which is why they set their silly jingles to music so whether you want to or not, you will remember them. Consequently when we sing the creeds either to a monotone or to the ancient tune, we set them in our memories like concrete, hard wired into our brains forever.

The second is that when we sing or our attentively listening to singing is the only time that both sides of our brain are working at the same time. In the case of anything else it is either left brain or right brain with the electrical stuff flashing at speed beyond our ordinary comprehension. But when we are singing both sides of the brain light up on the neurologists machines. Who knew?

Beyond this, we need to understand that when we stand singing or simply listening to others sing, we begin to breath in unison with the singers which tends to lengthen our breath intervals. This cuts off oxygen to the brain and creates a very mild form of oxygen starvation known as nitrogen narcosis. It is something also experience by deep sea divers where it can be far more serious and dangerous. But for those singing the psalms to either Gregorian or Anglican chant, it is simply the brain creating its own natural high. It allows the brain to focus on what is being sung and cut out distracting events and information which I think is a good thing.

Of course these things are among the reason why some folk, such as my late mother-in-law hate and fear music. It overwhelms their rational minds and frees parts of them which they would rather keep under control, enslaved perhaps. But they also allow the serious worshipper to focus on God and come one step closer to the true purpose of worship, an offering of ourselves in all of our parts to God.

QUIRES and places where they sing . . . .

2008-07-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

The title is the beginning of a rubric from the 1559 prayer book of Elizabeth I. It required that in places with a sung service the lessons in morning and evening prayer as well as the epistle and gospel of the communion service should be sung. While this may seem very strange to many present day Anglicans, it represents a continuation of a practise which goes back to the days of our Lord when Holy Scripture was deemed to holy to simply be read and should be sung instead. This applied not merely to Scripture in services but also those occasions when an individual was reading scripture privately. He was required by tradition to "sing" it if for no other reason to remind him of its holiness.
In an age where we do little to remind ourselves or anyone else of the holiness of God or the reverence with which we should approach him, the ancient ideal of singing the lessons be it in the offices or at the Eucharist is one to which we should give much thought. I agree that to most Americans, even to most American Anglicans the idea is one that strikes us as strange. We are a culture where read means "read" and not "sing." We are used to singing hymns, the canticles, but have difficulty with the psalms, the creeds, the 'our father' and prayers. And, yet, a close reading of what Cranmer did with having Merbecke prepare "A Prayer Book Noted," the development of Anglican chant and what the rubric in Elizabeth's first prayer book required indicates that the ancient ideal of the full sung service was not rejected by the English Church at the time of its reformation.
And still we as Anglicans and Christians find singing difficult for us. Why?
When I first came upon an Anglican Church it was one that sang and sang passionately. The psalms in particular were sung to a wide number of Anglican chants at which the congregation never balked. Instead they managed them with an ease that astounded as they never had chant books and sang them with as much strength as others I knew sang common hymns. They also sang the Venite, the canticles, the vesicles, the creeds, the Our Father and the 'Amens' to the sung prayers. It was a revelation and one which has stuck with me especially as this was in a small town in Oklahoma in a church that was hardly as large as a side chapel in your average small cathedral.
Later when I was at university, the Canterbury Club was responsible for Sunday evensong. When we began it was merely read, but as we went along we gained access to the organ and began singing the versicle's, the canticles, the creed, the Our Father and the collects. A short time later, with the aid of the Sarum Psalter, we pointed the psalms and with a little practise, added those to what we sang. Finally we reached the point where two of us with much fear and trepidation sang the two lessons. As we went from a very simple read service to more and more singing the congregation climbed from a core of about twenty regulars to an every Sunday ninety to one hundred or more. And this was done without any publicity at all as we were much afraid that the rector or the vestry would shut us down. High church and all that sort of thing, you know. We occasionally had speakers, priests from the diocese and others, and they were always surprised both at our numbers and at our singing, I think the more so because their was no priest pushing us to do what we were doing.
After I was out of school, married and with children, we always attended a parish where the Eucharist was sung, including the epistle and gospel. Unfortunately in those parishes the offices were generally a dead letter and never read publicly, but sometimes on very great occasions, evensong was sung. Looking back that always seemed very strange because it was such an isolated addition to the worship of the parish. We were sometimes urged to read the offices on our own but a public common office was outside the normal worship of the parish. Of course, there were also those parishes where the Sunday worship was normally Morning Prayer with sermon and the solemn elevation of the offertory basins. But they didn't keep the daily offices either. A full prayer book Anglicanism seemed only available at cathedrals such as St John the Divine's in New York City or Grace in San Francisco. There may have been others but they never came to my notice.
So what actually am I saying? I believe it is that the worship which the framers of the prayer book intended and as pointed to by the rubrics of the books such as Elizabeth I's prayer book seems to have disappeared almost entirely among those who call themselves Anglicans. We have Anglo-papists who relish doing things more Romano which means something as close to a Tridentine high mass as they can manage on Sundays and major holy days but who almost never read much less sing the office publicly. And we also have the low-churchmen who also fail in replicating the prayer book pattern, but they do so by elevating the office of Sunday instead of Daily Morning Prayer to a place it was never intended to have while celebrating the Eucharist either very early on Sundays or on a once a month or quarterly basis as the main worship of the congregation. In neither tradition is the Book of Common Prayer presented as it was intended to me or the prayer book pattern given incarnational status. Real Anglicanism is simply absent from us. What we have, with the exception of some very rare parishes and missions, is two made up religions, neither of which begins to express the "doctrine, discipline and worship . . .of the Church" as intended by any of the classical prayer books from 1559 through 1929. We may occasionally be singing, it is not the Lord's song in way in which the prayer book intended. We have to do better than this.

The Nativity of St John Baptist

2008-06-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

Today's feast was the occasion of the first celebration of the Eucharist according to the prayer book rite in what is now the continental United States. The celebrant was the chaplain of Sir Francis Drake's ship, the Golden Hind and the celebration occurred while the Golden Hind was being prepared for a trip across the Pacific and around the tip of Africa to avoid the Spanish fleets.

It used to be believed that the place of this celebration was at Drake's Bay just North of San Francisco and the Golden Gate, but historians now seem to believe that the latitude which Drake posted was more nearly correct and that would place Drake's landing in the Oregon-Washington coast range. But the place is not important while the fact of the celebration is. Even as Drake claimed the territory around his landing for Elizabeth I and the English throne, the Eucharist claimed it for English and Anglican Catholicism.

In learning about the history of our country, we forget - or rather, we are not reminded, not taught - about the Anglican settlements of Virginia, about Roanoke and Jamestown because for political reasons beyond my taking time to explain here or now, the emphasis in American history is now on Plymouth and the Puritan dissenting settlement there. We are not taught about the Anglican majorities that signed the Declaration of Independence and wrote the Constitution of the United States. It is not pointed out to us that the form of government we find in our constitution was first to found in the government of the provinces of the English Church from the eighth century onward, that is to say a legislature consisting of a lower and upper house with an executive and a judiciary. In the case of the Church it was the archbishop with the house of clergy and the house of bishops which gave us the president with the House of Representatives and the Senate. No matter! It is all there for us to find out and to enjoy. The important thing to realize, to know is that where the prayer book tradition is strong, the tradition of ordered freedom with a value on the rights of every human being is also strong. Indeed, with the exception of Switzerland, the five nations with the greatest freedom are all those with a strong Anglican tradition in their history.

St John Baptist died as the result of his protest against vice and tyranny. That protest sprang from his faith and obedience to God which should be the fountain of all our actions as well. Let us remember his feast and keep it that way.

St Alban, Protomartyr of England

2008-06-21T18:14:00.000-07:00

Sunday may be the Fifth after Trinity and those are the propers which I as an obedient prayer book churchman will use at the altar, but I will not forget that it is also the feast of the first British martyr. Alban was a Roman soldier who took the place of a priest fleeing the authorities during one of the times when Rome decided to persecute the Christian Church. The priest escaped and his name is forgotten to the Church, but when Alban was killed in his stead, he became by that single act famous and honored by true Christians forever.

I especially have cause to honour him in that it was in dedicated to him that I first became aware of the Anglican faith and the Book of Common Prayer. The priest was the Reverend Herbert Conley and I will to my dying day remember how he looked when he opened the door to this inquirer. He was one of those who followed prayer book usage when most of the rest of the diocese, high church or low, were devoutly more Romano.

I have also been in St Alban's in England and while not impressed with the cathedral in comparison to others was very much impressed with the holiness of the place. I hope that the churches and cathedrals which we in the continuum have and will build will have such a sense of perpetual prayer and holiness in the centuries to come. I only wish that Tony Blair and Englands Labour government had not descecrated it so by the appointment of its present dean. Neither it nor any other church deserses that and certainly not this ancient and holy shrine.

A Poem by Elizabeth I

2008-05-30T08:09:00.000-07:00

Those who think of Anglicanism as the creation of Thomas Cranmer forget that without the prompting of Henry VIII who was originally trained for the Church we would never have had the English reforms. They also seem to forget that everything that was done in the reign of Edward VI was done away with on the ascession of Mary and that if Elizabth I had assented to Mary's death bed request to maintain the "Roman faith" prayer book Anglicanism would never have had another chance. But Elizabeth looked backwards to the reforms which her father desired and set the limits of the Book of Common Prayer fairly much at his limits. And she fought for obedience and conformity to the prayer book throughout her own reign.

But what of her personal faith? What did she herself believe? We have, of course, access to her personal prayers written out in her own hand but unknown to her contemporaries. Many of them are to be found in Elizabeth I, Collected Works edited by Marcus, Mueller and Rose for the University of Chicago Press, 2000. It is a work which Anglicans should know because without Elizabeth's action and support the prayer book would be an historical footnote instead of the basis of a living faith. It covers things which she wrote and spoke over the length of her life and reveal the depth of her own faith. But among the many excellencies, the poem which follows has particular charm for me because, although early, it marks the path she set for herself and the Church.

"'Twas Christ the Word that spake it.
The same took bread and brake it,
And as the Word did make it,
So I believe and take it."

The question it raises for us all is whether we believe that the Word which created and sustains the world is able to make the bread and wine of the eucharist His own sacramental body and blood. Do you believe and take it?

English or Roman Use?

2008-05-25T19:33:00.000-07:00

by E. G. P. Wyatt, MA

[A. R. Mowbray and Co. Ltd. London;
Milwaukee, U.S.A.: The Young Churchman Co., 1913]

I am posting this little pamphlet from The Canterbury Project because it is the best treatment I know of the issue of pseudo-Roman use vs. authentic Anglican ceremonial. It is long for a blog piece but very important for any real Anglican future.
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"While you stick to the old Church of England ways you are respectable—it is going by a sort of tradition ; when you profess to return to lost Church of England ways you are rational ;—but when you invent a new ceremonial which never was, when you copy the Roman or other foreign rituals, you are neither respectable nor rational. It is sectarian."—J. H. Newman to Henry Wilberforce. Life of J. H. Cardinal Newman, by W. Ward. 1912. I. 235.

"THE English Use" is a convenient title to express I what is aimed at by those who desire loyally to follow the directions given or implied by our Church in the Prayer Book in respect of Church Ornaments and Ceremonial. It will scarcely be denied that the Church of England has a right to a ceremonial law of its own, and beyond question the Prayer Book contains at least a certain number of explicit directions. The upholders of "The English Use," then, desire to take for their guiding principle the appeal to authority and to set aside any personal preference for this system or that, whether in whole or in part. It might have been expected that this would be accepted as a matter of course, but in practice it has not been so. There are a considerable number who looked for guidance to the books and the practice of the Roman Catholic Church of the present day, and this not merely by way of supplementing, but sometimes of superseding the directions of the Prayer Book. This seems to have come about in the following way.

When the Church Revival started on its way in the last our English traditions as to the conduct of century, own b Divine Worship and Ceremonial had been to a large extent forgotten. When it was desired to carry out the directions of the Prayer Book more exactly, and still more, when it was found necessary to supplement them owing to their giving insufficient guidance, it was thought that the easiest way to ascertain the pre-Reformation customs of the English Church was to imitate what was done in the Roman Church of the present day, as it was assumed that they must be, more or less, identical.

The habit of consulting the custom of the Roman Church seems to have grown, and to have resulted, in many cases, not merely in supplementing the directions of the Prayer Book where necessary, but in adopting the Roman customs as a whole, and adapting the Prayer Book services to them as far as possible, in some cases directly overriding the rubrics in the Prayer Book.

This state of things still prevails largely in certain quarters,—although the base on which it existed has been removed by the researches and study of the last half-century, and other reasons are now put forward to justify the resort to Roman customs, which is also continued, in many instances, simply through a sort of conservatism, which does not care to look beyond a tradition that has existed in this or that parish church for, perhaps, thirty or forty years. But, after all, Churchmen are all “men under authority,” and we ought to be able to justify our customs in public worship by such an appeal to authority as is consistent with the character which we ought to possess as loyal and rational members of the Church. The appeal to the directions of the Prayer Book is unimpeachable as far as it goes, but it is not complete.

Mr. Wakeman, in his History of the Church of England, says:—

"The most superficial examination of the rules and directions for the celebration of public worship in the Prayer Book of 1549 is sufficient to show that they certainly were never intended to form a complete code of instructions."

"The fact is that the book is unintelligible except on the theory that it presupposed the existence of a well-known system, and only gave such directions as were necessary to carry out and explain the changes which had been made.”’[1]

Nor is this view a more modern invention. The writer of the Notes on the Prayer Book ascribed to Bishop Cosin (1st series), states

"It is to be noted that the book does not everywhere enjoin and prescribe every little order, what should be said or done, but takes it for granted that people are acquainted with such common . . . things, . . . and let ancient customs prevail, the thing which our Church chiefly intended in the review of the service.” [2]

As a commentary on the phrase Let ancient customs prevail, the answer of the bishops at the Savoy Conference in 1661 may be quoted

"If we do not observe that golden rule of the venerable Council of Nice, ‘Let ancient customs prevail,’ till reason plainly requires the contrary, we shall give offence to sober Christians by a causeless departure from Catholic usage, and a greater advantage to enemies of our Church than our brethren, I hope, would willingly grant. [3]

It may be noted that the scanty and incomplete nature of the rubrics in the Prayer Book simply followed the universal practice which had previously obtained in all service books, such as breviaries and missals. For complete directions as to the method in which services were to be performed, reference had to be made elsewhere, e.g., to the Ordinale or Directorium.

Dr. Frere also tells us

"In approaching the rubrics of the Prayer Book the past history of rubrics will necessarily lead us to expect something incomplete rather than something finished, something that rests to a large extent on tradition rather than something that is self-sufficient. Such expectations will be amply justified so far as the First Prayer Book is concerned.” The incompleteness of these provisions is evident; they are insufficient ritually as well as ceremonially. They could only suffice on the ground that there was behind them a well-known traditional order which the priest would be expected to follow wherever he was not commanded otherwise. A careful examination will confirm this impression; and it is to be noticed, first, that the rubrics themselves continually appeal to this tradition; and secondly, that, of the rubrics that are given, almost all are intended to call attention to something unusual, either in the way of novelty or in contradiction of the familiar ways; in other words, they exist in order to be either supplementary or corrective." [4]

The Elizabethan Prayer Book made a further appeal to tradition and custom by the insertion of the rubric ordering that the ornaments of the period of the first compilation of the Prayer Book should be used, and that the chancels should remain as they were "in times past."

In the Revision of the Prayer Book at the Restoration considerable additions were made to the rubrics, no doubt partly, at least, because of the breach in Church tradition made by the Great Rebellion. The additional rubrics mostly consisted in definitely prescribing some of the traditional ceremonies which had grown up in supplement to the rubrics since the first introduction of the Prayer Book.

But, in spite of all these additions, the rubrics of the revised book of 1662 remain very far from being a complete guide to the conduct of public worship. Can there be any doubt that the principle of obedience to authority binds us to supplement these incomplete directions where necessary by a resort to authoritative traditions and customs?

Yet there are some who do not accept this view. They continue, or extend, the resort to Roman customs, which grew up in the last century from lack of liturgical knowledge. And for this they give several reasons, none of which were the cause of their original adoption in the last century. It is not necessary to go into these reasons, as they are all (whether consciously or not) based on the assumption that the Church of England at the present day has no authoritative ceremonial of her own, and that consequently all may do as they please.

There is one reason, however, commonly given which has a considerable influence, and therefore demands some attention; it is that the resort to Roman Catholic customs furthers the cause of Reunion. But when one considers what are the causes which have produced the present state of disunion in the Catholic Church, this plea seems almost ludicrous.

In the first place the cause which really divides us from the Roman Church, and would continue to divide us if all other causes were removed, is the Papal Supremacy. The ideal, then, which is really implied must be that of Reunion by acceptance of the Papal Supremacy, for no amount of uniform and exact performance of Roman Catholic customs would be taken as a substitute for submission to the Pope.

In the second place the plea assumes that for inter-communion it is necessary to have one uniform rite and ceremonial. But, apart from the fact that in the Undivided Church there existed a great many national uses, and the fact that in the Western Church itself down to the Reformation there existed both national and diocesan uses (they were in fact the normal state of things) without any breach of communion, there is more than one rite in use in the churches of the Roman obedience today. There is, for instance, the Ambrosian Rite in the Province of Milan; many of the religious communities have their own rites and ceremonies, and so do the Uniat Churches of the East.

This supposed necessity for a uniform rite seems to be one motive, at least, for the practice of interpolating the Prayer Book Communion Service with extracts from the Roman Canon. In order to justify this, it has been maintained that the Prayer Book was meant simply to be a paroissien, and that the English Eucharist was intended only as an office for giving Communion. In fact the wish to interpolate has actually led some people to argue that the Prayer Book prayer of oblation was meant to be merely a thanksgiving—a sacrifice of thanksgiving and of ourselves being intended, and no more—and that therefore it ought to remain in its present place, apparently to prevent any obstacle to the interpolations from the Roman Mass.

But why should we take the Roman Mass as the ideal to which to turn for the improvement of our present service? It is one thing for those who have used it for centuries to desire to keep to it, in spite of its obscurities and its clumsy arrangement, which its latest Roman Catholic historian describes in the following terms—"its abrupt transitions, reduplications, and harsh constructions"; but it would be quite another matter to adopt it afresh after having had our present service for three centuries and a half. Yet it seems to be with this ideal in view that we are told that for the sake of reunion we must adopt the Roman ceremonial which is found in the official books set forth for parochial use. It has even been asserted that, if the Church of England had not been more or less moribund for three hundred years (!), this is the ceremonial which we should now have been using at the present day—a large assumption, indeed, which among other things takes for granted that English Churchmen in such circumstances would be more Ultramontane and less conservative than Frenchmen or Spaniards, who have kept up many of their old customs to the present day.

Thirdly, the plea practically ignores the existence of the Eastern Churches. The adoption of Roman Catholic customs would certainly not help on Reunion with them; on the contrary, it might be a serious hindrance. And Reunion without the East would not be Reunion at all.

The English Use, then, stands above all for the great principle of obedience to authority. Its upholders main–tain that the Church of England has a living rite of its own, the ceremonial of which is to be found explicitly in the Prayer Book and in the Canons of 1603, and implicitly in other post-Reformation authoritative customs, and those of the time of the first compilation of the Prayer Book. It is necessary to deal with the objections which are most commonly brought forward against it.

Objection 1.—The reproach is made against the upholders of the English Use that they have "divided the Catholic camp" by breaking in upon a tradition which had been held by all within that "camp" for half a century. But this does not agree with the facts. There can be no doubt that those who first accepted Roman usages in the early days of the Church Revival did so in the belief that these were identical with those that prevailed in the English Church before the Reformation, and when the progress of liturgical and ecclesiological learning showed that this belief was mistaken, some, at least, sought a remedy by resorting wholesale to Sarum usages, or what were thought to be such, thirty years ago, or more.

Objection 2.—Then we are told that a "living" use ought to be preferred to a "dead" one. This idea seems to spring from a misunderstanding of what is implied by the English Use. It does not consist in reviving a rite which has passed out of use and become obsolete. On the contrary, it is the living rite of the Prayer Book, and if reference is made on any particular point to a custom which has been disused, it may be, for a very long time, there is no meaning in calling it a "dead" custom. At one time Ascension Day seems to have completely passed out of observance in England: would it have been any answer to those who wished to revive its observance to say that it was "dead" and therefore could not be revived?

Objection 3.—The English Use is "antiquarian" and has its origin in the "British Museum." If these phrases have any meaning they are really complimentary, and not the reverse, for they imply that the English Use is based on sound learning. Those who repeat this little jest seem to be unaware that the British Museum is not a collection of Mediaeval Church antiquities, but is the home of scholars because it contains the largest library in the world. Like everything else in religion, the English Use has its roots in the past, and is based on precedent. Can the secret of the objectors’ reverence for the Papal Congregation of Sacred Rites be that its decisions are thought to be "up-to-date," and based on "common sense" only, and to have nothing to do with either learning or precedent?

Objection 4.—The English Use is "artificial." This apparently means that it starts from the directions in the Prayer Book as a basis, and merely supplements them by the authoritative customs to which the Prayer Book explicitly or implicitly refers us, instead of adopting a whole system bodily from another rite, and omitting only so much of it as is necessitated by the fact of the rite being different from our own.

Objection 5.—The English Use is "uncertain." This sometimes takes the form of asking which of the old English rites abolished by the Prayer Book, Sarum, York, etc., we are to adopt. But the English Use does not imply the wholesale adoption of any rite but that of the Prayer Book. Sometimes, however, the objection is made that there is no certain knowledge about the former customs to which we are referred, contrasting this method with the easy resort to a ready-made system, which every one can find for himself in the Roman books. But, as a matter of fact, owing to the researches of the "antiquarians" in the available records, there is no difficulty at all in getting any information that is necessary with regard to the old customs in question, and wonderfully little difference of opinion about them. And among the English churches that are supposed to follow the Roman Use, is there one that follows it exactly, or any two that are alike?

Objection 6.—It is objected that the English Use sets up "national" against "Catholic" customs. But this has no meaning in the mouth of anybody, but an Ultramontane. It is true that for some centuries the Papacy has, in Western Europe, been endeavouring to abolish national rites and in other ways to introduce a rigid uniformity in rites and ceremonies. But it has never completely succeeded, and even in Roman Catholic countries a good many of the old national customs exist, and of course the Uniat Churches of the East have their own rites. The Eastern Churches have always been national. But formerly in the West there were diocesan rites and ceremonies as well, and there still are at Milan.

Objection 7.—The English Use is "insular"; and it is further objected that the old English customs were themselves foreign in origin. For this objection to have any relevance, it would have to be shown that it was in old times open to any parish priest in England to introduce into a parish church on his own authority any ceremonial that struck his fancy, if he happened to travel abroad. But the whole objection is based on a misunderstanding. The English use is not advocated because it is "English" and not "foreign," but because it is authoritative.

We may add, by the way, that the word "insular," as applied to things English, has long been out of date; it is precisely English customs and men and the English language which are found all over the world; and the Anglican Communion has its bishops, priests, and congregations, using many languages, spread far and wide over the globe.

In view of this charge of insularity which is brought against the English Use, it may be worth while to quote the following passage, translated from a review in the Revue Benedictine, [5] of Fifty Pictures of Gothic Altars, edited by Dr. Dearmer for the Alcuin Club.

"The altar, in fact, is the principal symbol of Christ, who there comes into contact with the earth. Next to the Holy Sacrament there is nothing among things visible more august than the altar. The English terminology in this matter vindicates this character of the altar, since it esteems it as the living Christ, and describes it as such. The altar has a front and a back the ante–pendium (a word which tells us nothing) is called in English the frontal, and the border of the altar-covering is the frontlet; the curtain at the back is the dorsal; lastly, the retable (restabulum, something fixed—another commonplace word) is called in English reredos, from an old French word, imported from Normandy like so many others.

"How completely is all this symbolism absent from the altar, as conceived by us, since the Renaissance! No longer any mystery, any curtains, any ciborium, seldom even a frontal! The altar is exposed unveiled to the common gaze, and the extravagant development of the reredos which surmounts it has reduced it to the obscure and humiliating function of a mere base (soubassement). Happily the conscientious study of ancient and mediaeval Christian customs is making more and more clear the deviations which have led us to the poor results of the present day. Doubts are beginning to be felt: soon there will be a reaction. A few more publications like that of Dr. Dearmer, especially if they defend our admirable Christian traditions with the fervour of conviction, and we shall again see the surroundings of the altar conspiring as of old to attract the attention and devotion of the faithful towards that which has never ceased to be the soul, the central point, the hearth (foyer), the focus of the Church. The expression again is Dr. Dearmer's. The above extract, coming from a member of the most learned body of Roman Catholic monks, speaks for itself, and may be commended to the notice of those who reject the principles put forward by the supporters of the English Use.

The fact is that, to those whose ideals are identical with those of the Papacy of the present day, the aspect of the whole Catholic Church, while yet undivided, must have appeared "insular" and "national." It was the normal, and really only healthy, state of things for each particular Church to have its own ceremonial. This did not hinder the catholicity of the whole body. Indeed it may fairly be argued that it promoted that catholicity, by setting into clearer relief the real unity which existed in essential matters, coupled with variety and liberty in things not essential.

The accompanying of Catholic faith and practice with a ceremonial which is national in its character is really the only practicable course for us at the present day, in view of the fact that each priest, when he is commissioned, promises to carry out the directions of the Prayer Book and none other, and that we are, after all, Englishmen, and not Frenchmen or Italians or Spaniards. This is the course that is being increasingly followed, and is the only one that can bring peace to our Church and avoid discreditable agitations, or that can induce intelligent Roman Catholics and others to regard us with respect instead of contempt.

Our Church, while being Catholic in all essential matters, has a character of its own, a worship and service book of its own; is it not reasonable that this should be recognizable to the outward eye? A mere copy of something else is not recognized, and commands no respect. At best it can only deceive, by pretending to be something which it is not; and what motive can we have for any pretence whatever in such a matter?

Moreover, imitation is so often unintelligent. Like the rationalizing or infidel writers of our day, who try to popularize in England the speculations of German writers, just when the latter are beginning themselves to abandon them for something fresh, so do our imitators of Rome set up their debased Renaissance altars just when Roman Catholics are beginning to see their defects, and are in many cases returning to mediaeval models; or they lay stress on the elevation at the Eucharist, when an Ultramontane writer like Dr. Fortescue can say, “We must teach our people that the essence of the Mass is not the elevation, but consecration and communion"; or they insist on interpolating an intercession from the Roman Canon into the English Rite between the Sanctus and the Consecration just when Roman Catholic writers have made it practically certain that the Intercession here is an interpolation in the Roman Canon, and that it formerly had its place, as in the Gallican Liturgies and in the Prayer Book, before the Preface, a place which Mgr. Duchesne says "may seem the more natural one"; or they read the Epistle away from the people, a practice which Dr. Fortescue terms "anomalous," since "he is reading to the people."

The whole question is very commonly looked at from too narrow a point of view, as if the ideal were to be the unmolested existence among us of an unlimited amount of ceremonial in a limited number of our churches. This is mere congregationalism, and not Catholicism at all. The problem before us is a much wider one. It is the setting forth and fostering of a sound ideal of ceremonial and order and reverence for authority throughout the whole of our Church. Those who advocate the adoption of Roman usages surely either put no such ideal before themselves, or else cannot realize how little chance there is for them of influencing the Church of England as a whole. They cannot seriously expect that it will accept the authority and guidance of the Papal Congregation of Sacred Rites—for that is the necessary consequence of the system which they advocate. In other words, theirs is practically a counsel of despair.

[1] Wakeman, Introduction to the History of the Church of England, pp. 279, 280.

[2] Cosin’s Works, “Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology.” V. 65.

[3] Cardwell’s Conferences p. 34.

[4] Frere, Principles of Religious Ceremonial, pp. 204, 207.

[5] October, 1912, pp. 536-37

A Liturgical Book List for Would be Anglicans

2008-05-17T17:40:00.000-07:00

The collect for the second Sunday in Advent says "read, mark,learn, and inwardly digest" which makes reading the first step towards learning almost anything. Actually we learn through what we see the fastest but short of transporting everyone to an almost mythical classical Anglican prayer book parish, reading will have to do. But what should be read? Certainly not Ritual Notes or even Fortescue and O'Connell. If a priest wants to know enough to produce a classical Anglican prayer book service that would meet the expectation of Elizabeth I, what does he need to know?

The priest who began my education in the more practical aspects of Anglicanism gave me a copy of the American prayer book and told me to read it (every word) from cover to cover. And when I had finished, he told me to go back and do it again. That taught me to very carefully read each of the Books of Common Prayer beginning with that of 1549 right up through those of the present day. It is an exercise I would recommend to all.

What I am going to set out now is a list taken from Francis C. Eeles' Prayer Book Revision and Christian Reunion, Some Essentials Discussed in the Light of Liturgical Facts and Principles. It was published by the University Press at Cambridge in 1923. There may be a few book published since which should be added to it, but they would not be many.

THE PRAYER BOOK

Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer (Macmillian). The best general history.
Brightman, F. E., The English Rite (Rivington, 1915). Contains the full text of 1549, 1442, present P.B. 1662 with originals in parallel columns.
A shorter and more popular book is Everyman's History of the Prayer Book by Dr Percy Dearmer.
A Prayer Book Dictionary contains much useful matter but is uneven.
The English Liturgy (Rivington), a book for use on the altar, is important because it contains a number of proper collects, epistles and gospel which have the authority of several bishops. Up to the present it is the best book for its purpose.

CEREMONIAL; HISTORIAL

For the history of English ceremonial, including the arrangement of churches and the like, see Some Principles and Services of the Prayer Book, historically considered; ed. J. Wickham Legg (Rivington, 1899), Ecclesiological Essays (1905), Essays in Ceremonial (1905), English Liturgical Colours by Hope and Atchley (S.P.C.K. 1918) For a shorter book, much more suitable for the ordinary reader, see An Introduction to English Liturgical Colours, by Hope and Atchley (S.P.C.K. 1920).
For ceremonial after the Reformation, see Hierurgia Anglicana 3 Vols., ed. Vernon Staley (De la More Press, 1902-4) and English Church Life from the Restoration to the Tractarian Movement, by the late Dr J. Wickham Legg (1914).
For general principles of ceremonial, see Frere, Principles of Ceremonial (Longmans 1906).

CEREMONIAL : PRACTICAL

The Parson's Handbook, by Dr Percy Dearmer, is a most able summary of the work of our best liturgical scholars, revised by several of them, and forms a guide for practical use in church. It might be unnecessary to add that its contents are in no sense Dr Dearmer's own inventions.
A Directory of Ceremonial (Alcuin Club. Tract XII) is a much shorter guide to carrying out the services upon the same lines.
Illustrations of the Liturgy; drawings illustrating ceremonial, by C. O. Skilbeck (Alcuin Club, Collection XIX).

THE RESERVATION OF THE EUCHARIST

The Sacrament Reserved, by the late Fr. Freestone (Alcuin Club, Collection XXi, 1917) is the standard work on the subject from the earlier times to the mediaeval period.

INCENSE

Fully dealt with in A History of the Use of Incense, by Dr E. G. Cuthbert F. Atchley (Alcuin Club, Collection XIII, 1909). The standard book on the subject.

There it is! If a priest or parish wants to really be Anglican these are the authorities which will teach them how to do it. The one place that they fall short is in the appropriate music for the rite. And that, in itself, would take volumes. Whether we have experienced it or not, the Anglican rite is intended to be sung much as that of the Orthodox churches. We don't have it happen often but when you do experience it - wow! We will take that issue up later. Look for it.
Labels: books, ceremonial

"The Old Religion"

2008-05-15T17:21:00.000-07:00

This is the title of a wonderful book on the prayer book faith by the Reverend Canon Dart. It examines the teaching of the prayer book and the articles from the viewpoint of whether they reflect the teaching of the earliest and historic Church or that of the continental 'reformers' I write 'reformers' but I think of what they thought and did and what we have from their successors as deformation rather than reformation. They may have believed that they recovered the ancient 'Biblical' faith, but under their hand and tutelage the ancient pattern of the Church disappeared to be replaced by a new invention for which - despite all their protestations - there is no certain warrant of Scripture. Instead of "the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and the breaking of bread and prayers" (Acts 2:42) they substituted a new invention of a few hymns, a sermon and a collection.

I approach this issue because of a quote offered by a bishop of the Church of England aimed at denigrating the faith and practise of the Church revival which we generally call the Oxford Movement in one of the yahoo groups. The quote for me raised the issue of whether obedience, especially the obedience to which one had to swear in order to be ordained, is more Christian than the deliberate disobedience of the Anglican low church who seem to become complete functional illiterates when it comes to rubrics of the classical prayer books from 1559 onwards. They seem to believe that they were included in the prayer book for no purpose because they certainly give them neither obedience or respect while thinking themselves the better Christians and Anglicans for it.

What I am discussing, of course, is the infamous Ornaments Rubric which was first placed in the Book of Common Prayer in 1559. It was intended to occupy an entire page of that book by itself but the printers (probably low church protestants) had other ideas and it got tucked in as if it were any other rubric in the book. This tended to diminish its importance and helped, with the bishops' lack of enforcement, it to be overlooked and unacknowledged until after the beginning of the Oxford Movement in 1834. Then, with the rest of the prayer book, it came to be noticed, acknowledged and finally tentatively obeyed.

So what does the rubric actually say?

"And here it is to be noted that, such ornaments of the church and of the Ministers thereof, in all times of their ministration shall be retained and be in use as were in this Church of England, by the authority of Parliament, in the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth."

And here, may I note, that the first Book of Common Prayer was not approved and did not come into use until the the third year of the reign of King Edward VI. So the rubric plainly orders that churches shall look like and the ministers dress like they did before the first Book of Common Prayer became the official liturgy of the Church of England. There have been some who have disputed this, saying that what was intended was merely a continuance of what was ordered in the first prayer book of Edward VI, but given the very explicitness of the language the argument is unacceptable. We are left with the reality that a correct and proper use of the prayer book liturgy involves clothing it in the ancient vestments of the Western church in accordance with the Use of Sarum which had been the only legal Use in the Church of England from 1541 when the Convocations of Canterbury and York had suppressed all of the others. This would also mean that the liturgical colours which we as Anglicans should be using are those of Sarum and of England generally as set forth in the Directory of Ceremonial, Vol. 1 as published by the Alcuin Club and not those of the Tridentine Missal of Pius V which was published by the Roman Church in the same year in which Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth I.

But the use of the prayer book vestments and the prayer book colours is not the most important thing although they do set out in the most graphic and recognizable way that the church is and intends to be Catholic. The most important thing is that the Holy Communion service is the main service of every Sunday and holy day. It should be preceded by Morning Prayer (and the Litany) with The sermon being preached at the proper place in it. And Evening Prayer should follow at the proper time. The prayer book gives no authority at all for a service of Morning Prayer, Sermon with the Solemn Elevation of the Alms basins and its use is an indication that the priest and the congregation have no understanding of the Book of Common Prayer or of what classical Anglicanism intends and demands.

But the point of everything I have written is not that every parishioner should know and recognize all of the vestments and other ornaments of the church. While that would be nice, it has never been necessary. But what is necessary is that every priest and deacon recognize what they implicitly and explicitly promise at their ordination and stand ready to actually do what they have promised. And that not just to the letter but in the spirit. They should know and rejoice in what is Anglican from the cut of their cassocks to fullness of their surplices and albs. They should recognize that all of these are part of livery of our Lord and His Church, being glad that they have been called to be His servants. I was very lucky in my youth to have lived in a parish where the priest wore cassock, gown, tippet and square cap when he went about the community. Our town was overwhelmingly Baptist, but we knew that our priest was not ashamed of being either a priest or of being Anglican. And he was not the only priest in our diocese who did so. They were all incarnations of the true "old religion" and made us proud of being so.

April is the cruelist month . . .

2008-04-26T12:47:00.000-07:00

It is perhaps not fair to quote one of modern Anglicanism's glories, the poet T. S. Eliot, but when he has given us such an opening - then we must use it. To refuse it would be to ignore the contribution he made to Anglicanism in the last century. And not just in the last century but for all time to come.

April is here: the first flowers have come and fled. We have watched petal fall of the Bartlett Pears and thought of all the wonderful Japanese "cut'um up" movies we loved for years and years with their wonderful photography and their yearnings for the mythical Japan of the warriors and warlords past. We, of course, have the same sort of thing in the Western canon but we have never come quite so close in giving it the cinematic magnificance as have the Japanese. We have the legends of Authur and all of the high middle ages but the movies which we made of them have not come anywhere near those of modern Japan.

On the other hand our homage to those legends of our own past, our Anglican and Britianic past, have created another sort of magnificance which mostly we now come to ignore. I am thinking of the glorious church buildings created by that Anglican renaissance which we call the Church Revival or the Oxford Movement. And yet, even as I write this, I am reminded of a church close to the Welsh border which was built in the year before Keble preached his sermon. When I walked around it and into it I was convinced that it was clearly medieval so much that it was one with the greatest examples of that period in the near neighborhood. Its building was not spurred by the theological movement that was to begin in the following year. It was built because the people in the vicinity needed a church and they built one that reminded them of the churches nearby. Their architect looked at them and chose the best of each building to put into the one which he designed and the people built.

This was somewhat like the advice which Gregory the Great gave St Augustine after he had sent him to England. He told him in liturgical matters to choose the best that he found. And essentially and for their times that is what the framers of the classical prayer books did. They chose the best they could find that met their goals of restoring the English Church to something as close as they could come to the sub-apostolic church. Their goal was to give to their people a liturgy that was profoundly Biblical and Catholic in the sense of the Greek words behind that word, according to the whole. And for the time between 1559 when Elizabeth I's prayer book restored the English reformation to the people until the present, that liturgy and its orthodox daughters has been Stupor Mundi.

Now, of course, it is under attack from almost all sides. Anglicanism in the English speaking nations has become increasingly heretical with the exception of those who to retain the faith and practise of the classical prayer books have had to sever themselves from establishment Anglicanism. Consequently the beauties of the historical Anglican liturgy seem almost doomed to disappear from the planet. But then almost all things beautiful seem equally doomed. Music has become noise and our children have returned to scarring and defacing their bodies like the barbarians of old.

April is the cruelist month. In the acts of nature it reminds us that all things, countries, histories and peoples, both flower and fade. We have short moments of beauty which decays so quickly that we are almost never sure that they were really there. But it was there and it yet remains. It may not have the great cathedral buildings anymore, but in smaller and newer churches the ancient liturgy of the English Church and classical Anglicanism remains. It is just a little harder to find.

"doctrine, discipline and worship. . . .of the church"

2008-03-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

One of the hallmarks of the traditional prayer books is the phrase, "doctrine, discipline and worship." Most of us think we know what the Church taught or at least what it intended to teach before the current crisis. Why? Well, we found it in Holy Scripture which we either heard it as read in the offices or the lessons at the eucharist in Church or read it in the Bible; we said it the creeds and (mostly) from the pulpit. But now there are many of us who hardly know what to believe or what the standards of the Church really are. So where do we find and what is the authoritative source of the doctrine of the Church and of the Book of Common Prayer? Is it in the prayer book itself or the Articles or the Homilies? What do we tell people who ask?

My answer has always been a very simple one and one that I was surprised to find was incorporated into the English canons. I would point out that the Church taught what the Bible said as interpreted by those most likely to understand the meaning of disputed passages. The first Queen Elizabeth put it this way: "We and our people-Thanks be to God-follow no novel and strange religions, but that very religion which is ordained by Christ, sanctioned by the primitive and Catholic Church and approved by the consistent mind and voice of the early Fathers." Since we in the American Church express our believe in the Catholic Church in our recitation of the Apostles and Nicene creeds, we should not be surprised that we are supposed to hold and believe what the Catholic Church teaches and has always taught. Nor should we be surprised that the English Church incorporated this into her canons in 1571 ordering preachers to "See to it that you teach nothing. . .which you would have religiously held and believed by the people, save what is agreeable to the teaching of the Old or New Testament, and what the Catholic fathers and ancient bishops have collected from this self-same doctrine."

Now this is all well and good for those of us who have always seen the English Church and its daughter churches as the Catholic Church of the English speaking countries, but we must also be aware that there are and have been many of our co-religionists who despite what the prayer book requires us to say in the offices and in Holy Communion believe that they and the Anglican churches are essentially "protestant" in the same sense that Lutheran and Presbyterian Churches are "protestant." Indeed, when the priest who is rector or vicar of a parish or mission he tends to see it that the services of the Church are presented in a fashion that violates the plain teaching of the prayer book tradition by making the service of Morning Prayer with offretory and sermon the most prominent Sunday offering of the Church. As things now stand he may flip that service with Holy Communion on an every other Sunday schedule, but in the past one was lucky to find Holy Communion as the main service on more than one Sunday in the month. And these priests and their followers were much more likely to find the church's teachings in the writings of Calvin or Luther rather than in Holy Scripture as interpreted by the fathers, the creeds and the theological decrees of the universally accepted general councils. In fact, they were just as willing to attempt to pass off the writings of the latest non-Anglican theologian as what the Church "really meant."

So what do we do?

Rather than attempt to re-invent the wheel, I thought it would be a good idea to publish my list of books which I think offer the best summary of what the Church teaches and that we should believe. They may not be "high theology," but they are good theology for those who need the Church's teaching clearly stated. I do this because, unlike the time when I was growing up and going to college, the books which one is most likely to find on the shelves of your local book seller will not be written by orthodox Anglicans or even by Biblical Christians. And that means that is one wants a true Christian education one must haunt the used book stores or deal with folks like abebooks.com.

The List:

Lewis, Clive Staples, Mere Christianity

Sayers, Dorothy The Mind of the Maker

The Man Born to be King

Bicknell A Theological Introduction to the Thirty Nine Articles

Moss, The Christian Faith

Mascall, E. L. Opera. (Latin for 'works' which would mean anything Mascall wrote)

Mere Anglicanism

2008-03-15T13:36:00.000-07:00

And, yes, I really should be addressing much higher topics at this point near the end of Lent and the beginning of Holy Week. But the real possibility exists that I am almost all "churched" out. This is not the fault of the "one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church," but of the horrible and petty doings of those yet in TEC who suffer under the illusion that they are still Anglicans and even Christians. And it is not entirely TEC either, for one of the renegade bishops of the official established Anglican Church in Canada has taken it upon himself to depose an internationally know Anglican theologian, Dr J. I. Parker. What must said bishop be thinking? Or is he even capable of doing so? Of course, I am not capable of answering such questions but I do know where I stand and that is with the good Doctor Parker who although I have certain disagreements with same I know to be man who wants to be the best Christian possible and that by the standards of Holy Scripture and not by those of this current age.

So this is not a pleasant time. When we, as Anglicans and Christians, should be paying attention to our prayers and the condition of our souls, we are besieged by the nastiness of church politics forced upon us all by those who though they may be in the Church are not of the Church, being instead pretty plainly servants of the dark lord. We need to be paying attention to Jesus, but instead find ourselves distracted by heretics and heresies.

So what is to be done? Well, we can not answer the question in the terms of the world, the flesh and the devil. We are forbidden by the New Testament to take our matters to the courts so what is left to us.

The answer, my answer, is a simple one. We must follow Jesus. With Him, we must reject the allurements of Satan and the paths of the world, the flesh and the devil. And if worst comes to worse, we must throw ourselves upon the floor and wait until the temptation to answer evil with evil leaves us. Then we must get up and return to our prayers. And this, I believe, is the path of classical prayer book Anglicanism. We do what we can, when we can, but the most important thing which we can do in a crisis is to be faithful in the celebration of the office and the Eucharist. There are millions of souls out there on the dark sea of life counting on us to be truly faithful Christians although they, also, may be unaware of it.

There is a story in the life of St Francis of Assissi in which his brothers were bringing him back from having received the stigmata. Because of these new wounds walking was difficult for him so they borrowed a horse for him to ride and it was being led by its owner. All seemed to be going well until the horse's owner turned to Francis and fell on his knees, begging that Francis would be "real." The world is begging for us to be real yet the most visible part of what was once the American Church has proved false. That leaves it to us, the part of the visible church which is little, unknown and hidden to make good on the promise of Christ's Church. We must be true and keep the offices and prayers of the Book of Common Prayer as we promised. The world is watching although they know it not: can we for Christ be true?

Passion Sunday and Passiontide

2008-03-05T17:38:00.000-08:00

For those of us who remain classical prayer book Anglicans this coming Sunday is Passion Sunday. The unbleached white of the Lenten Array will be put away and the altar and the vestments of the clergy will again be red, but this time the dark red of dried blood. Of course, those among us who follow the usage of Pius V - you remember him, the fellow who excommunicated Elizabeth I - will still be using violet as good Pius legislated when he introduced his 'reformed' Tridentine version of the Roman liturgy. That is to show everyone what good 'catholics' they are when a really good Catholic is known for following the rules of the liturgy to which he was ordained. And that, of course, presumes that they know them or even know that they exist.

The marvelous thing about the English or Anglican colour usage is that like most things truly Anglican it is scripturally based. That of the Roman rite can make, as far as I can see, no such claim. The two major Anglican colours are white and red with a festal and ferial version of both. More accurately white is the festal colour being used for the major feasts of our Lord and the virgin Mary while the brighter version of red is used for the Sundays after Epiphany and those after Trinity. But then we also have the toned white of the Lenten Array for the first four Sundays in Lent and the ferias following while the darker version of red is used from Passion Sunday through the first part of the Easter Vigil save for the white of the Maundy eucharist and the black of Good Friday. Now I should think that we all understand the Scriptural basis of the use of white, but just how many Anglicans or others know where in Holy Scripture and on what day in the ancient lectionary system our Lord claims red for his very own colour? And, yes, it is in the Book of Common Prayer.

A Small Personal Adventure

2008-03-03T16:16:00.000-08:00

Saturday was a day which I had set aside for prayer. A day of quiet and retreat was being given at an Anglican parish under Archbishop Venebles and I, knowing the person giving the meditations, had offered to keep the time when she was doing so in prayer.

Afterwards I had some shopping to do and had hopes of getting the haircut for which I am way past due. But when I went out of the house to clear some trash from the car I discovered that I had a grass fire. I got the hose and connected it and was sure that I had put it completely out at least two times, but it kept starting over and I called for the fire department. It seems they had trouble figuring out just where I was and which fire department to send so I was left to fight the fire alone for over an hour and a half. I suffered two falls, several punctures by thorns and whatever and broke my watch, but at last the firemen arrived and made short shrift of what had now spread quite beyond the reach of my garden hoses.

My cats were sitting on the front porch and the one thought that kept piercing my panic attempts at putting out and controlling the fire was that they would panic and run. But the didn't; they just sat on the front porch and watched the whole thing as if it were some new spectacle that I had arranged for their entertainment. When it was over and done they were very cuddle-some.

And now we have had thunderstorms and snow.

St David of Wales, Bishop

2008-03-01T20:38:00.000-08:00

Today is the feast of St David of Wales and should serve as a reminder to all historically minded Anglicans that the Catholic Church was in the British Isles long before Gregory the Great thought to send Augustine to what was going to become England and eventually the United Kingdom. Why? Because St David's floriat was the sixth century which had all but ended when Augustine arrived in Kent. Nor should St David be the lone reminder. Any fairly complete book on the lives of the saints will be filled with the names of generally Celtic saints who preached the gospel, founded churches and monasteries, sang the offices and celebrated the eucharist long before the Roman mission arrived.

Why should this be important to us? Because it is another in the evidence that the claims of the See of Rome are utter nonsense. Real Catholic Christianity had reached the British Isles very early with some of the earliest fathers claiming that St Paul himself preached there. It was founded and it persisted but Gregory the Great knew nothing about it. But when the Venerable Bede came to write his classical book on English church history, he at least knew enough and cared enough about what actually happened to paint a fairly unflattering picture of the man whom Gregory had sent.

Rome eventually came to lord it over the English Church, but the British churchmen had adequate reminders of a day when the Church in the British Isles had not been subject to Rome. Indeed the greatest of them had an unfortunate habit of finding the behaviour of their Roman brethern intolerable. One need only read William Langland's The Vision of Piers the Plowman to know just how much this was so. Consequently the discarding of the Roman yoke was all but inevitable with the beginning of printing and a wider knowledge of Holy Scripture and the history of the Church.

I Remember Mama

2008-02-28T13:30:00.000-08:00

This coming Sunday, the fourth in Lent, is Mothering Sunday. To some it is Refreshment Sunay or Midlenting Sunday, but I prefer the title of Mothering Sunday. I am told and have read that in medieval England it was the custom to go back to the Church of your baptism on this Sunday with the reference being to 'our mother, the church." That would make it also a day on which we went back to our mother's house. This title would appear to come from the epistle which is taken from Galatians, "But Jerusalem, which is above is free, which is the mother of us all." Paul's reference is to the heavenly Jerusalem as in the previous sentence he states that the "Jerusalem which now is" is "in bondage with her children." And the Jerusalem of his time was indeed in bondage to Rome.

So what we are interested in is the Jerusalem "which is above," the heavenly Jerusalem. This always brings back memories of a talk by Dom Anthony James, OSB, given in San Francisco many, many long years ago. In it he referenced a book by the French Benedictine, Dom Jean LeClercq, part of whose thesis was that the Benedictines of the middle ages intended to make their monastaries a little incarnation of the heavenly Jerusalem by the liturgy, the keeping of the rule and by their life in common. To Dom Anthony this had some as bit of surprise because he had always believed that Benedictines had no special purpose as he felt the case was with the later monastic orders of the middle ages. Fortunately, I had read LeClercq's book, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, when I was a teenager and always felt that this purpose was always carried over into the faithful Anglican prayer book parish. In a church or mission where the offices of daily morning and evening prayer were recited and the eucharist was celebrated on all those days for which the prayer book provided propers or indicated in the rubrics that a celebration was appropriate, it seems that there is indeed a sacramental touch of the heavenly Jerusalem.

In such a setting the chief way in which Holy Scripture touches us and in which we touch Holy Scripture is in the readings from the liturgy as in Anglican liturgy is indicated by the collect for the second Sunday in Advent. There the phrase "hear them" which comes before the much more remembered "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest" should remind us that our liturgy was introduced into a world in which books were rare and the ability to read and write far from usual. The result was that the average Englishman heard and understood the Bible first from having it read to him long before he was able to read it for himself. But, having heard it and in a language which he understood, the desire, indeed, the necessity of being able to read it for himself was born and nurtured. And it came with a revolutionary excitement which we, in our age, can hardly understand and appreciate. We, I think, have nothing which is its equivalent with the possible exception of the exchange of information which we find in the internet.

On the other hand, it must be admitted that the Benedictine liturgy does have an advantage over common usage among Anglicans in that their liturgy is generally sung rather than merely said. Given what we now know about the human brain that anything which is sung goes much deeper into the memory and is much more likely to be remembered, the ancient practise of the sung office has a great deal to recommend it. But I was extremely fortunate in my first parish, the parish of my 'baptism' into Anglicanism - if you will - in that the daily seclection from the psalms was always sung during the Sunday liturgy to Anglican chant. Up until that time it had never occured to me that the psalms could be sung and especially not by an average congregation. But there, smack dab in almost the very middle of the country, what seemed a very ordinary gathering of Americans was singing the psalter as if it was the most ordinary and unexceptional thing a Christian could and should be expected to do. And for us then, it was!

The result was that we actually learned the psalter without even noticing. At the point at which we were doing it, we were much more concerned with singing it properly, hardly paying attention to the words which we sang. But the content went deep into our hearts and memory. I first realized this when as an Air Force cadet one of our pilot instructers told a class that he had been forced to park his airplane "out where God left his shoes." I knew immediately he was an Anglican from the reference to the psalter. And he was.

If we can with Jesus cry "Abba," Daddy to the eternal other which is God, then we should be able to remember our holy mother the church with the same familiarity. We are not a set of public school educated English aristocrats who refer to their parents with the Latin formality of "Mater" and "Pater," but prayer book Anglicans who with "full homely divinity' find not only in the parish church of our baptism, of our being brought into the full mystery of Catholic Christianity, but also in whole church universal a mother at whose knee we have learned our faith and begun to practise it. And having given us in the fullness of prayer book Anglicanism an adult Christianity, she has made us free. Further she has made the countries which at one time fully embraced their Anglican faith the freest countries in the world as an extenstion of their bringing this "Jerusalem which is above" into their lives by their worship.

So this Sunday I will remember just how I came to be what I am, remembering the parish and the Church which by use of the prayer book made me so. I will also remember sadly what that parish has forgotten and destroyed by the embrace of something which is not the old religion of the prayer book and classical Anglicanism. And in doing so with great fondness, I will remember Mama.

All My New Springs Are in Thee

2008-02-18T18:33:00.000-08:00

That phrase occured in the reading of the psalms last Sunday. It is one of those memorable phrases which almost spring from the page as you are reciting (or singing) the psalter. From my teen years I have always appreciated such phrases and have spent a good deal of time meditating upon them. I write them down; they show up in my doodles and they become central to my short prayers from the heart which I have attempted to learn from the desert fathers.

In reard to this particular phrase, it occurs to me that it is our only path back to orthodox Anglicanism, to orthodox Christianity. We can not put our faith in the writers and theologians of the past and what we might learn from them if we do not first put our faith in Him, the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob and hopefully of ourselves. That, to me, means that we should not so much attach ourselves to the writings and theology of Luther and Calvin neither of whom are Anglicans or in their lives and writings the inspiration of anything like the spiritual life which the classical Anglican prayer books set forth, as we should to Holy Scripture itself. How can we know the God who revealed himself to the patriarchs and prophets and finally to us in the person of Jesus, if we do not know the texts of the Old Testament and the New. Even the writings of the earliest bishops and Catholic fathers, as important as they were to the framers of the prayer book tradition, should be less important to us than the Bible itself. And I write this as one greatly influenced by those writers. But as much as I have been influenced by them, the words that have become central to my personal prayers are those taken from Holy Scripture itself.

In this time when we find classical prayer book Anglicanism almost destroyed by the very bishops, priests and deacons to which we have entrusted it, the large question which faces every Anglican is how do we recover the tradition? My answer is a simple and straight forward one: by useing it faithfully in accordance with its own presuppositions. The Preface of the first American prayer book, that of 1789, states of the book itself, "In which it will also appear that this Church is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship; or futher than local circumstances require." To me, this requires that we know and follow the English prayer book tradition as it is to found in the rubrics and prescriptions of the books of 1559 and 1662. These were omited from the American book as they have been omited from Peter Toon's recent 'translation' because of their reference to England's royal history and the American church's reaction to their recent independence from England and the English Church. But when they, as we, had to answer the question of who they were and what they believed and why, they had to turn back to the English Church and the prayer book tradition. And this is what we are going to have to do as well.

This does not mean that we should look to the current Church of England and what it is doing at the moment. Instead, we should attach ourselves to the heart of the prayer book tradition itself and to its most faithful adherents and practitioners. In short, we must become faithful Anglican Christians who are neither low church 'Evangelicals' or Roman imitating Anglo-papists. We must look to the last authentic and legitimate American prayer book as illuminated by the English prayer books of 1559, 1662 and 1928 as well as the Scots' books descending from the non-juroring tradition of liturgical scholarship. This means that our bishops, priests and deacons must recite the daily office as it is found in the American prayer book and make every attempt to celebrate the eucharist on all those occassions for which it provides propers or in its rubrics indicate a celebration is appropriate. That will be very difficult, but it is better than pretending in one form or another to be something which we are not.

And then we must wait on God! And we must do so with faith - not in ourselves or even in our tradition, but in Him.

Back To The Future

2008-02-09T13:41:00.000-08:00

This is not only the title of a famous movie, but it is also the way in which both societies and the Church seem to function best. It is what the framers of our American Constitution intended. That is, they built the future of this country on an idealized version of the Roman and Greek past. They looked to the ancient democracies of both Rome and Athens for the principles which they wrote into the American constitution. I wonder, since the majority of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia were Anglicans, if they realized just how great the contribution of historical Anglicanism was to the manner in which they framed the Consitution of the United States. As strange as it may seem, the Constitution of this country has as its foundation what was the constitution of the English Church from the eighth century to almost modern times.

But the real point of this posting as we approach another meeting of the Lambreth Conference later in this year is to quote from another Lambreth Conference over a century ago. I found the quote in The Rev'd F. W. Puller's The Continuity of the Church of England Before and After its Reformation in the 16th Century. The Conference in 1867 said,

"We do here solemnly record our conviction that unity will be most effectually promoted by maintaining the faith in its purity and integrity, as taught in the Holy Scriptures, held by the primitive Church, summed up in the Creeds, and affirmed by the undisputed General Councils."

Now it seems to me that this is wonderfully close to what Elizabeth I said in her famous letter to the Emperor Frederick and what was ordered in the English canons of 1571. Unfortunately, it is only what a very few of us find in the actions and words of the archbishops and bishops of establishment Anglicanism in the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and, of course, the United States. Instead various of the prelates of these great countries seem more to be applying to be accepted by Unitarian Universalists than expressing their belief and conformity to the formularies of classical prayer book Anglicanism - and this in a time when American evangelicals are beginning to look to the past, to the faith and practise of the primitive Church as a cure for their own ills.

So what is to be done? How do we address this present crisis?

The answer, it seems to me, is the same as always: we go back to the future! This is what the Church of England did at the time of its reformation. It went both to Holy Scripture and to the writings of the "earliest bishops and Catholic fathers" to find a way to navigate the intellectual revolution of that time. And, surprise, it worked! Oh, not without difficulties as there were many in England and without that would have prefered that England choose the path of the Continental "deformers" who chose a path much closer to Islam than to the traditional practise of any part of the historic Church, but it did work. Not only did it work for 17th and 18th centuries, but it proved itself capable of continous self reform and also of being carried into countries and civilizations far from that of its English origins and adapting itself to them without losing or diluting the central principles to which it adhered.

And now it appears that we are going to have to do it all over again. Cleanse, renew, revive! With our precious Lord we are going to have to drive the money changers out of the temple to make sure that it - and we - remain a house of prayer. We are also going to have to remember that it is and will remain impossible to substitute secular politics for the Gospel of our Lord and have any claim left for the Church.

And this is the perfect time to begin, and begin and begin. Lent. The perfect time for a little 'Spring cleaning' not only of our households but of our souls. And how should we begin? By reading, of course, as if there were any other course open to those who are people of The Book. We must read and re-read the Bible as if it were entirely new to us. And to this we need to add the fathers and the other works of the earliest Church. We desperately need to have, as C. S. Lewis wrote in his introduction to Sister Penelope's translation of St Athanasius's work on the incarnation, "the wind of the ages" blowing through our brains. We need to test the thinking of our own age on the gospel and the Church with and against the thinking of the saints of the Church's springtime. We need to hear them more than Rowan Williams or N. T. Wright - or even minus Katherine Jefferts Schori.

So let us take this Lent and read the offices, Daily Morning and Evening Prayer as we find them in the traditional prayer books with their offerings of the Psalms, Holy Scripture and the Canticles. And let us add to them some serious reading of the earliest fathers, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr and Polycarp while turning off the radio, the TV and what passes for polular music. Let us make a little room for quiet in our lives and in our prayers and see if what we have that passes for the Church can not make it back to the future.

Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday

2008-02-05T18:24:00.000-08:00

Yes, I should have prepared posts for both of these days, but the sad truth is that this is just when old priests are the busiest. So no can do; no have done.

But let me as briefly as possible acknowledge that true Christians, even Anglicans should remember that they have sins to confess and that confession to a priest is truly Anglican and prayer book. Simply look at 1662. We will take this up again.

And Ask Wednesday is one of the two major fasts of the Christian year. And, yes, I know that fasting has gone out of fashion and even that old fogies such as myself are supposed to watch that we don't over do it. But this is a major fast and we must find some way to honour that.

But Lent is beginning and has begun. And the real purpose of Lent is that we find our way to a closer walk with Jesus. And that, not just with words but in reality. And the truth of that is that there is no way that you will ever know Jesus without coming to know Holy Scripture better and beliving and living it more completely. Read your bible and make it count in your life. Now; you may not have tomorrow.

Commencement Sunday - 2008

2008-02-03T13:29:00.000-08:00

One of the great advangages of being a prayer book Anglican is that you continue to use one of the historic Books of Common Prayer. That fact alone keeps you in touch with over a thoushand years of Christian history and liturgy. Today was Quinquagesima, the last Sunday in the pre-Lenten season, which was abolished by the Roman Church and her worshipers a number of years ago. But if you are a prayer book Anglican and worship in a prayer book Anglican parish the ancient collect and its set of lessons were still read to you this Sunday, the last of the three pre-Lenten Sundays.

The first of these was Septuagesima or Invitation Sunday. After the peace of the Church when it was no longer illegal to be a Christian in the Roman empire this was the Sunday on which the "hearers" - those who attended services but who had yet to be baptized - were invited to put in their name as potential candidates for baptism. On the next Sunday, Sexagesima or Exhortation Sunday, they were quite forceably reminded of the dangers of being a Christian and what they might yet be called upon to do or bear if they proceeded through the Lenten training and were actually approved to be baptized upon Easter Even. And, finally on Commencement Sunday, the class and rituals which accompanied the journey to baptism would actually begin.

In time, as the world had seemingly become totally Christian, Lent became a period in which we re-evaluated the state of our commitment to Jesus and his Church and made a pentitential preparation for our Easter communion. There were seemingly no more pagans to be converted to the Christian and Catholic faith so that part of it gradually receded into the background. Not so now! There are now hordes of our neighbors who desparately need to be converted to real Christianity, the kind left us by the apostles and their immediate successors and not the kind invented in the sixteenth century or since then. Unfortunately we have largely forgotten how to do so and have been terrorized by modern secularism into being embarassed about asking others if they are real Christians or not. For that, I have no answers except that we must screw up our courage and again talk to our neighbors about Christianity and what it really is and means. I remember how easy it was to do it when I was a teenager and first in college; I just wonder what has happened to me and others in the long interval between then and now.

So what we really need Lent for at the present is to go back and ask our Lord what he expects of us as Christians in the present age as well as for the grace and strength do actually do what he has commanded. None of this giving up chocolate or whiskey; instead we must forswear the world, the flesh and the devil and get about converting others to the faith once delivered to the saints - and to us!

Quinquagesima Sunday, 2008.

How Do We Begin?

2008-02-02T11:10:00.000-08:00

This blog will consist of the ravings of a prayer book Anglican who believes that that the prayer book was made to be obeyed and that those who attempt to twist Anglicanism into something other than a strict (or fairly strict) use of the classical prayer books just might be happier as something other than Anglican. I, for one, would be much happier if they would identify themselves as something other than Anglican.

First, I don't believe that an Anglican as a Biblical Christian has a choice in being either high church or low church. To do so is to identify yourself with a party and St Paul was fairly clear that parties were forbidden in the Church. You signed on and that means that you intended to obey the rules and not make them up for yourself. After all, you don't play football (European or American) according to the rules of baseball or crikket. And if you don't know the rules, you take the time to learn them before you begin playing.

I also believe in "wearing the uniform." When you put on the clerical habit, you wear that appropriate to who you actually are. If you are an Anglican, you don't wear a soutane; you wear the classical double breasted Anglican cassock along with the other gear that instantly identifies you as who you are. After all, we all get our first and most important opinion from our visual images, from what we see as do others. Consequently we should want to tell the truth about ourselves in the way in which we present ourselves to the world. This, again, was the point of the Ornaments Rubric included in every English prayer book from Elizabeth I. If you want to appear to the world to be either a Presbyterian or a Roman Catholic, maybe you should really join the appropriate Church. (Why is it that Anglican priests and bishops so rarely want to appear as if they were Eastern Orthodox or Armenian clerics? Is it something about the beards?)

Actually, given the terrible state of 'official' or 'establishment' Anglicanism, I am terribly surprised than anyone wants to be Anglican at all. You would think that between Rowan Williams and Katherine Jefferts Shori there would be no sane person in the entire world willing to be identified as "one of them." But then neither of the two nor many of their followers have touched a real prayer book in years, maybe decades. They use very funny books instead which will only too shortly have in them even stranger rites for the blessing of things and persons which Holy Scripture quite rightly condemns. Why at this stage of things they even bother trying to pass themselves off as Christians I can't quite understand. It makes it really difficult for the folk whose good manners make it inappropriate to titter in their faces - or openly do so behind their backs.

But those of us who value and continue to use the classical prayer books do so because they bring us spiritual stability and a sense of history and continuity in a world where those very things seem to be rapidly disappearing. After all, in a world where the Roman Church, the curia and the pope can't quite decide how they are supposed to be worshipping, switching rapidly between Latin and the local language, there have to be a few of us in the Western world, especially in the English speaking world with a taste for old things, old services and the old religion. In my case, for good or for ill, I happen to be one of them.