Some of the happiest weeks in my life were spent ministering in the Episcopalian diocese of Glasgow. Mind you, the pleasure was diminished by the fact that the lovely little church I served - windows by Comper - had an empty and cobweb-filled Tabernacle, and the Mass vestments were all scrumpled up in a box under the table. I did wonder where it all was leading. As we all discern our futures, I do find myself hoping that there will be some valiant Pisky priests in an Ordinariate of Great Britain. But would they not be reneging on a proud history of Scottishness if they allowed themselves to be subsumed into an English Ordinariate? Well, let us take the great Patron Saint whose cult is integral to what it means to be Scottish. Because a careful look at his cultus suggests to me that there is something curiously unifying about him.
The Book of Common Prayer, which may provide propers for an optional new Anglican Use Missal to be authorised by the Holy See for the Anglican Ordinariates, gives, for the most part, the same Sunday Collects, Epistles, and Gospels as the Missal of S Pius V. But the Reading and Gospel for the Sunday Next Before Advent (taken, like most such Prayer Book material, from the medieval Sarum Rite) were, unlike the other Epistles and Gospels After Trinity, quite different from those in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. A few days ago I did a post on this ... with help from Abbot Rupert of Deutz.
The BCP Gospel not only contains the John 6 account of the Miraculous Feeding, so suitable as an eschatological meditation on the Messianic Banquet, but also gives prominence to S Andrew. I wondered if this is one reason why that pericope got selected; it was chosen at the time when the readings in the earliest Roman lectionaries for the 'Green' season often reflected the themes of adjacent great festivals: for this is the time of the year when we celebrate S Andrew. And S Andrew is, in the authentic ancient Roman Tradition, a very major solemnity; an all-night vigil was held and the 'Leonine Sacramentary' offered three Masses in addition to the Vigil Mass; possibly because of S Andrew's closeness to S Peter.
And the English Church, so laudably Roman in its early days, perpetuated this bias. The 'Leofric Missal', which, before it made its way to eleventh century Exeter and then, at the Reformation, to the Bodleian Library, started its life as the working book of the Archbishops of Canterbury; and, in its provision for the Consecration of Churches, seems to assume that S Andrew will have a lot of churches in his honour. And in fact, the percentage of Andreian churches in England is well above statistical expectation. After all, S Gregory the Great named his great monastery on the Caelian Hill (from which S Augustine and his fellows came) after S Andrew, and it was pretty certainly he who added S Andrew to the Libera nos [he is absent from the pre-Gregorian form found in Stowe].
What a shame that the modern Roman Rite has so little respect for this tradition. Not least because Andrew is not only the Patron of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, but the splendiferous, coruscating day on which Cardinal Pole reconciled this Kingdom to the Unity of Peter back in 1554. A day, surely, to line the bottles up; and to reread Eamon Duffy's account of Mary's and Pole's Counter-Reformation.
Everybody thinks that an British Ordinariate has to be named after Blessed John Henry Newman. I have no problem with that. How could I possibly? But "The Ordinariate of S Andrew" would, for the Englishman, have delightful resonances echoing through English Church history right back to the day when that little gaggle of Italian monks from S Andrew's monastery in Rome approached the King of Kent under the early summer sky. It would embody our continuities.
And, as a wonderful bonus, it would give Scottish members of an Ordinariate a sense, which they deserve, that the Ordinariate was just as much theirs too.
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How excellent it would be - The Ordinariate of Saint Andrew - and Newman would surely agree
The Luminarium Encyclopedia Project gives the following information concerning Cardinal Pole's reconciliation of England to the Catholic Church on Nov 30, 1554:
"Secretary Petre summoned the two houses of parliament to court to hear a declaration from the legate. Pole, despite a weak voice, delivered a long oration, in which he said he was come to restore the lost glory of the kingdom. On the feast of St. Andrew (30 Nov.) lords and commons presented a joint supplication to the king and queen, who thereupon publicly interceded with the legate to absolve them from their long schism and disobedience. Pole, who was seated, uttered a few words about the special grace shown by God to a repentant nation, then he rose and pronounced the words of absolution.
On 2 Dec., the first Sunday in Advent, he proceeded in state, at the invitation of the corporation, to St. Paul's. High mass was celebrated, and Bishop Gardiner preached from the text (Rom. xiii. 11), 'It is high time to awake out of sleep.' On Thursday following (6 Dec.) the two houses of convocation came before Pole at Lambeth, and, kneeling, received absolution 'for all their perjuries, schisms, and heresies.' The Act 1 & 2 Phil, and Mary, c. 8, for restoring the pope's supremacy, was passed in January 1555."
If we are to have Anglican Patrimony, it ought go without saying that the Scottish Liturgy (according to the 1929 BCP, not without some reference back to stronger forms in the 1764 Communion Office, and some few details from the otherwise inferior 1970 rite), as the most Catholic of all the Anglican liturgies, must be retained.
The essential mark, above all else, of this rite (in so many respects praiseworthy) is, not merely the restoration of the Prayer of Oblation after the Prayer of Consecration, but its very important relocation of the Prayer for the Church to follow both: since this and only this rightly expresses the Eucharist as a Sacrifice offered up for all intentions, as impetratory. While it makes for a long Canon, this tripartite structure is more faithfully expressive of the liturgical Anaphora than any other Anglican form, since it alone inserts copious intercession into the Eucharistic Prayer.
I would humbly suggest that, if there is to be a Scottish edition to parallel the Anglican Use Book of Divine Worship (itself hopefully to be redone, following more the 1928 and less the 1979 US BCP), the only major change the CDF and CDW would require would be to move the Scottish epiclesis from after to before the consecration - while of course the Eastern Rites all have it after the Verba Domini, it was indicated, during the postconciliar liturgical reforms, that the Roman Rite would use preconsecratory epicleses only.
All the Scottish rites (1929, 1970 and 1982) have the epiclesis after the Verba Domini. I have on numerous occasions witnessed priests celebrating these rites and genuflecting after the Verba Domini - and then, after that, going on to pray that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ; this seemed a bit strange to me!
JWH - when you were ministering in Scotland, which rite(s) did you use and at what point in the Canon(s) did you genuflect?
"the only major change the CDF and CDW would require would be to move the Scottish epiclesis from after to before the consecration - while of course the Eastern Rites all have it after the Verba Domini, it was indicated, during the postconciliar liturgical reforms, that the Roman Rite would use preconsecratory epicleses only."
I disagree strongly; I would rather see it not used at all, than chopped up so frivolously and unnecessarily.
From what I have read, it was Cardinal Vaggagini who scuppered the proposal that Eucharistic Prayer IV should be a more-or-less unaltered version of the Egyptian Anaphora of St. Basil (a "shorter" and seemingly earlier version of the long, third version -- there is a disused intermediate version preserved only in Armenian -- used today in Byzantine churches) on the grounds that a post-consecratory epiclesis would "confuse the people," and so instead Latin Catholics were saddled with those miserable EPs II, III and IV -- on which see Willis's splendid attack in the January 1971 issue of The Heythrop Journal.
The notion that Mrs. O'Higgins would be "confused" by a post-consecratory epiclesis, while she would take in stride Mass-facing-the-people, the use of nightclub-style music, ad-libbing priests and hand-waving "animateurs" verges on the absurd. And insofar as the Roman Rite has had anything like a functional equivalent (speaking loosely) of an epiclesis, it strikes me that the "Supplices te rogamus" fits the bill more closely than the "Quam oblationem."
I would rather see Dr. Cranmer's ambidextrous 1549 Prayer of Consecration used than the Scottish tradition treated with such inkhorn improvements; but this "rather" comes from me with reluctance, for I really don't want to see any prayer like that of 1549, the very formulation of which was a disparagement of the Roman Canon, used at all.
Rather than tinkering with later Scottish rites, would it not be preferable to use the eucharistic prayer of 1637, which has the epiclesis in the right place, and has the further patrimonial attraction of a Caroline provenance?
Surely size is no matter; the Scottish Church has never merged with England and Wales, even with Archbishop Laud, so why start now?
The 1929 (and 1912) are developed from the 1762, itself the product of much liturgical tinkering - basically, reordering the sequence of prayers. They are the classical Scottish rites; as is notorious, the stillborn 1637 was scarce used at all in the face of public uproar.
Indeed, the 1762 owes much to the Nonjurors' 1718 Communion Office.
The 1762 has a splendid epiclesis, made rather prolix in the 1929 (and lengthiest in the 1912); the 1637 epiclesis is not sufficiently Catholic, altho' it is "in the right place" - I am sorry to offend Mr Tighe, but I merely retailed what was said during the liturgical reforms, to the effect that postconsecratory epicleses were to be avoided in the Roman Rite.
I think "inkhorn" rather rude, frankly.
Certainly, it does seem odd to Westerners to genuflect and adore, then pray the bread and wine be changed into what one's actions indicate has already become present. The Scottish (and its daughter the American, albeit using the Cranmerian pseudo-epiclesis) are the two main Episcopalian bodies using such postconsecratory invocations; and it struck me that perhaps to return the epiclesis to its position in other classical Anglican rites would make for wider acceptance.
And yes, as Fr H. has said, there is a real question as to whether Cranmer's monkeying about with the Canon vitiates later versions of his prayers of consecration and oblation by a fatal ambiguity of meaning; but the Scottish I think comes closest to perfecting these forms.
Father,
St Andrew's Day will always linger in the affections of denizens of the County Palatine Of Durham.
It was on November 30, 1569, that Frs Peirson and Plumtree, clutching the Papal Document absolving the Bishopric from Schism and Heresy, celebrated High Mass in the Cathedral of Durham, the highlight of the Rising of the North so cruelly put down a month later.
The crowd was so great that the Cathedral was filled to bursting, spilling out on to Palace Green. Thousands knelt down to receive absolution, including the Cathedral Chapter and assorted clergy from the city and country.
The same clergy, after the defeat of the rebels, hurried to seek forgiveness from the Queen, and most were rewarded with preferment in the state church they had so recently disowned.
Joshua,
'I think "inkhorn" rather rude, frankly.'
I don't know whether it constitutes an attenuation or an exacerbation of my offense, but my "rudeness" was dirercted not at you but at the likes of Vagaggini, Bugnini and the other botchers and manglers of the Roman Canon in the late 60s. I mean, have you ever read Vagaggini's *The Canon of the Mass and Liturgical Reform* (1967) which really is little more than half-digested ignorant speculations about the Canon Romanus and its "evolution," and then on that basis making "inkhorn" proposals for its "reform?" One has but to compare such low-quality stuff with the writings of Anglicans like Ratcliff and Willis on the same subjects to see what ignorant rogues Paul VI allowed to deface the heart of the Roman Rite. I have always admired Paul VI for *Humanae Vitae* -- but in most other respects his actions and inactions as pope seem to show him up as a worthy emulator of Pope Honorius I.
Mr Tighe,
Yes, I see now that I took offence unnecessarily (I am stupidly prickly).
I have read Vaggagini's book, and found its main interest in the startlingly obvious yet little-known fact that his own beloved suggestions for liturgical reform, Canons A and B (if I remember his nomenclature) are pretty straightforwardly the "first drafts" of Eucharistic Prayers III and IV - and, if anything, his are better than what finally appeared in the Missal.
While I am a Traditionalist, and would prefer to always attend the Latin Mass, I have perforce to go most Sundays to the Ordinary Form for lack of other local options at present, and if our priest gives us E.P. III or IV (let alone the Roman Canon) instead of Pseudo-pseudo-Hippolytus (that dratted E.P. II, which is valid and licit and very mini), then I am glad.
(God willing, the Australian Ordinariate will provide me a nearby congregation to join for more reverent worship - hence my selfish interest in this project.)
I must remember to say a prayer for the soul of Dom Cipriano Vaggagini, whenever III or IV comes up at Mass - I am surprised to learn he was a Cardinal, are you certain? Perhaps "in pectore"...
Yes, sad to say "Pope Hamlet" was orthodox - and pretty much a disaster for the Church: he taught the truth, and mucked up the liturgy, and managed to annoy everybody. Paul VI as Honorius I? Oh dear, a comparison I'd not heard before but which fits too well! I read once, and winced with recognition, words to the effect that Honorius I "meant well" and was "more a pastoral bishop than a theologian"!
I am planning to blog at length (as I have formerly) on the topic of the Scottish Liturgy, since it seems the best of all the Anglican rites, not needing Roman interpolation (a practice that would produce a chimæra, a fabulous beast, a hybridized rite).
There is a deeper reason why it may be necessary to reject a postconsecratory epiclesis: found in the Nonjurors and their sympathizers and in Scottish Episcopalian divines of old is a theory whereby the bread and wine are first made antitypes of the Body and Blood, and still in their natural substances offered up as the Christian sacrifice, and only then in some manner consecrated as the Body and Blood: dynamic virtualism and all that.
Such a theory is particularly apparent in the American Prayer Book, where that would be a reasonable take on the words, first "This is my body... this is my blood", then "these thy holy gifts which we offer unto thee", then "that we receiving these gifts and creatures of bread and wine may be made partakers of Christ's body and blood" (I quote from memory).
To utterly avoid such a false theory, putting the epiclesis before the Verba Domini would serve to better state the Catholic doctrine of transsubstantiation.
No, Vagaggini wasn't a cardinal:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cipriano_Vagaggini
so I wonder where I got that idea.
The passing comments on consecration in the Orthodox liturgy fail to take into account that it a process not an instantaneous event. It starts with the prothesis before the liturgy proper, continues at the great entrance, through the words of institution to the epiclesis. At all stages honour is given to the elements. This is not always obvious. It is best seen where the liturgy is celebrated in a church without an iconostasis, usually Anglican!
I must correct a mistake - 'twas the 1764 Communion Office, not a supposed 1762 - and invite criticism: over at my blog I've put up two posts about refining the Anglican Use and the Scottish Liturgy as we may foresee them in the projected Ordinariates. Fools rush in and all that.
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