7 September 2021

The Tridentine Rite and the Anglican Patrimony (5)

In conclusion, I would like to make a few remarks about principle.

I have heard it argued ... I think, by Cardinal Wuerl ... that the Extraordinary Form is not part of the Anglican Patrimony. I find this difficult to understand, and, if you have read the first four parts of this piece, so will you. Of course, the Extraordinary Form was never officially authorised in the Church of England or the American and Australian branches of the Anglican Communion. But, then, neither was the Ordinary Form. Certainly, in England, the Anglo-Papalist movement which is our own much loved ecclesial background did use the Tridentine Rite, used it and loved it, and suffered persecution for that use and for that love. The Missale Romanum was the gold standard, with the English Missal providing, over half a century, an intermediate stage in the journey towards its full adoption. That is the place we have come from.

In any case, the Magisterium has solved the matter.  Anglicanorum coetibus makes clear (Paragraph III) that Ordinariate clergy may use the Roman Rite as well as using their own liturgical books, and the Apostolic Constitution makes no distinction here between the two forms of the Roman Rite which exist by law in the Latin Church. And Summorum Pontificum established that, in principle, every Catholic priest of the Latin rite may use the Extraordinary Form without permission either from the Apostolic See or from his Ordinary. To put the seal on it, the Ordinariate Order of Mass promulgated by Rome incorporates the Preparation, the Offertory Prayers, the Libera nos, the Last Gospel, from the Tridentine Rite. Thus these things have been formally accepted by Rome as part of the Anglican Patrimony. Roma locuta est.

 
This series is now complete. I include a Comment from an old thread which is of great interest ... it shows how the Anglo-Papalist clergy in one of our great churches reacted to the 1960s.

11 comments:

neilmac said...

Dear Father

I am not sure whether or not you were familiar with S John's, Tuebrook, Liverpool, which had as its parish priest the saintly Canon Frank Sampson from 1946 to 1994. This parish used the English Missal, following the structure and prayers of the Missale Romanum, but using the Prayer Book Prayer of Consecration. After the upheavals of the 1960s, some changes were introduced. Thus the Last Gospel, birettas and maniples disappeared from all Masses; and at the Solemn High Mass, celebrated each Sunday and holyday, after the prayers at the foot of the altar and the censing of the High Altar, the Mass was conducted from the sedilia until the Offertory, with the Epistle being chanted facing west. In the late 1970s, at the behest of the altar servers, the maniples, birettas and Last Gospel were all restored, though, unfortunately, the Solemn High Mass was never fully restored to its full former glory.

Cannon Sampson, who died as incumbent, not being subject to the rules of retirement then in force as he had been inducted under an earlier system, celebrated Mass according the English Missal to the end.

S. John's, Tuebrook, was designed by G. F. Bodley and is one of his finest works, now being classified as a grade 1 listed building. In some ways it is a shrine to Bodley's work. If I remember correctly, the Lady Chapel was decorated by Hare, one of Bodley's pupils and the chapel under the tower, constructed in the 1970s, used much of the decoration from the rood screen of (I think) Dunstable Abbey, which Canon Sampson had saved from total destruction. The High Mass cruets and a number of vestments which may still be in use were made to Bodley's design. Stephen Dykes_Bower, the Bodley expert was the architectural consultant for many years. The building today preserves almost all of its Victorian splendour. The stencil work covering walls and ceilings is astounding.

Shaun Davies said...

I am not trying to cap St John's Tuebrook - but - another place which rejected all the Roman reforms from Pius XII onwards was St Clement's, Cambridge, under their long serving Vicar the Rev Dr C.C.Keet. He put up notices in the reign of Pius XII that Holy Communion would NOT be given at the Solemn Mass, despite the Roman relaxation. St Clement's in the 1970's became the centre for the society ECCLESIA -for Traditionalist Anglo-Catholics. I wish I still had their small Directory of Churches using Traditional Rites.

Simple Simon said...

High fives to your five posts, Father H.

coradcorloquitur said...

That Cardinal Wuerl not get the very clear connection between the Ordinariate Mass and its ancestor, the Apostolic Roman Mass, is hardly surprising: when have liberals and Modernists---who almost to the man see the world and everyone and everything in it through ideological lenses---cared about history or facts? Whether due to ignorance (a likely possibility) or willful intent to fit the Modernist narrative, Cardinal Wuerl would have been speaking, if he made that observation, in classical liberal fashion: "reality is what I want and need to fit my agenda." Honest, and at times difficult, acknowledgement of truth and logic is the detritus of the glorious Western tradition of rationality that liberalism has left in its wake for the rest of us to contend with. No such burden for the "liberated" lefties!

vetusta ecclesia said...

How does TC impact on the Ordinariates? If you need to the blessing of a higher power is that your Ordinary or the territorial Ordinary where you live?

E sapelion said...

I do not understand Shaun Davies comment about Holy Communion. Not only does Fortescue in 1918 give clear instruction for the distribution in a section called "The Distribution of Holy Communion at High Mass", but he starts with the comment "... any Catholic has normally a right to present himself for Communion at any Mass ...".
The Roman Missal, looking back to the 1862 typical edition, Ritus Celebrandi X;9 gives explicit mention, simply referring back to the procedure at Low Mass, at X;6.

Unknown said...

A kind soul has put Blagdon-Gamlen onto the Internet: https://stchrysostoms.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/the-church-travellers-directory/

Shaun Davies said...

To E sapelion
I think it was a custom in both pre-1950s Roman Catholic churches and Anglo-Catholic Churches not to give Holy Communion at the late morning Masses. I wasn't there - this is just what I have read and been told.
It was the usual thing for those who wished to go to Holy Communion to be at an early Mass.This was continued in St Clement's,Cambridge and possibly that other "Old Ways" bastion St George's, Bickley (Kent).

E sapelion said...

Shaun Davies - I agree it was very unusual, I think I saw it just once between 1945 and 1955, not even the non-ordained monks in choir would receive at the Conventual Mass (Ealing Abbey). And I don't recall when over the next 15 years that began to change. There were so many changes (most of which I welcomed).

Shaun Davies said...

The lay brothers - non-ordained Monks - in Choir would have I suppose already served a Low Mass and received Holy Communion. This is what still happens at the Abbey of Fontgombault (Solesmes foundation) and many other traditional Abbeys, also, many laity would go to the early Mass then BREAK their FAST and then go later on to the High Mass. All a bit like an old style High Anglican parish !

Dale Griffith said...

The Roman rite did have official approval in the American Church. In the 1920s several Italian and Hungarian Catholic communities entered the Episcopal Church and were granted the use of the full Roman rite in Latin. I well remember a conversation with Fr Angwin, who brought his Drtroit Anglo-Catholic parish into western rite Orthodoxy, mentioning serving the Roman rite in Latin in the Hungarian parish in Cleveland, Ohio.