I Like Organix

I once attended a Patristix Conference with an 'Asterix' badge reading "I Like Dogmatix". "Organix" sounds pretty Kosher too. A friend suggests to me that calling the Tridentine Mass The Organic Mass would also indicate its propensity to grow on people.

Last week, I said the 1662 Cranmer Mass, interpolating a silent recitation of the Canon Romanus, of course, just as the Tractarians used to (a mixture authorised by Rome for the American 'Anglican Use' parishes), with a worshipper who commented " My goodness, how refreshing that was!" as she prepared to sally forth into the snow. That was Monday; on Tuesday, with a different parishioner, I said the form standardised by that admirable (well, he did excommunicate Elizabeth Tudor) pontiff Pius V. Then, off to Ascot for our Retreat, where our worship was Novus Ordo: but very Reform of the Reform (you know what the Apostolic Administrator is like), with the unabbreviated Canon Romanus, and versus Orientem and chanting and baroque vestments; everything very well done.

Of those three forms, or "usages", of the Roman Rite, I know which I find by far the most comfortable. The Organic form strikes me as so much more adult than the Novus Ordo, which somehow seems always to be inviting us to experiment or learn, as if we were kiddies. With Dr Cranmer's texts, one recalls their author's own heterodoxy, however much that is covered and burnished by the 450 years in which his words have been the sanctification of so many good and holy people.

Some extracts from Gregory Dix's most famous purple passage:
Was ever another command so obeyed? ... the eucharistic action became inextricably woven into the public history of the Western world. The thought of it is inseparable from its great turning points also. ... Alfred wandering defeated by the Danes staying his soul on this, while medieval England struggled to be born; and Charles I also, on that morning of his execution when medieval England came to its final end. ... This very morning I 'did this' with a set of texts which has not changed by more than a few syllables since Augustine used those very words at Canterbury on the third Sunday of Easter in the summer after he landed. Yet 'this' can still take hold of a man's life and work with it.

I can say the same about this week's Masses: in each of those three usages of the Roman Rite, the unforgettable words of the Canon Romanus, the invariable Eucharistic Prayer of the Church of England for two thirds of her history, were at the heart of it. God bless its cotton sox.