Ask an Anglican/Episcopalian

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Contarini said:
No. That will be in the next one:rolleyes:

Essentially the change is from a heavily Augustinian, Reformational theology stressing sin and Jesus’ atoning death to a theology focusing more on our baptismal vocation and on the renewal of creation. I totally understand why the Calvinist low-church conservatives didn’t like it, but most of the opposition seems t have come from Anglo-Catholics, which I find a bit odder. I’ll let GKC voice the Anglo-Catholic objections, if he wishes.

My own view is mixed. I think that the theology behind the 1979 BCP is fundamentally orthodox, but that some of the changes made were questionable. I can worship in good conscience using either the “old” or the “new” liturgy.
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I went to S. Nickolas church the last sunday in advent, yesterday. It was truly a mixture of high and low with the Nashotah trained Wisconsin rector. They sang nearly everything including the preface to the Sanctus which was good to me. But they used the 'Star Trek" canon, canon number three. UGH
This was followed by the Our Father sung in modern casual English. “Our Father in heaven, may your name be held holy”. Double UGH and I had never even heard that.

I think there are times when contemporary English is appropriate, but not the Our Father. Some things should never change IMHO.
 
Contarini said:
The liturgical changes were really a convergence, in which liturgical scholars from different churches came to a consensus based on their study of the early Church. But Catholics did implement the changes first.

Edwin
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I am not sure if scholars from different churches came together to discuss them and returned to their churches to implement liturgical changes. It seems that changes were initiated in the respective churches, with inter-church contacts between liturgists helping change along in the later part of the process.

I am still trying to figure out what caused the change. It is probably different causes or different combinations of causes in different churches with the following suspects:

1 General liberalisation of social norms, and openess to new ideas after the last schakles of Victorianism fell away.

2 Lifting of restrictures against contact with other liturgies leading to exposure of other modes of worship (let us not forget that it wasn’t that long ago that Catholic law forbid attendance at Protestant services)

3 Information explosion allowing freer flow of knowledge and opinions, letting insights into the underlying doctrines of other denominations

4 General peace and church stablity allows the luxury of tinkering with liturgy. Churches with internal or external problems generally have other distractions, as well as a tendency towards conservatism.

5 Reaction against liberalism in society leads to reinforcement of more traditional values among Christians, with reversion to older modes of worship being in tune with such a movement.

6 The charisma of JP2’s leadership made Catholicism acceptable instead of indenfensible (see the difference in reaction to Ferraro’s VP candidacy compared with Kennedy & Alfred Smith - Ok, changes in American society also had a hand)

7 Baby-boomers’ sense of nostalgia and the concept of ‘old is gold’?

Any addition to the list?

Guys, thanks for enriching my Advent with this thread. And as I prepare for midnight mass in my part of the world, Merry Christmas to all of you and god bless you & your family. And God bless the Church.
 
jimkhong said:
I am not sure if scholars from different churches came together to discuss them and returned to their churches to implement liturgical changes.
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Well, not necessarily in some sort of formal meeting, though of course there were scholarly conferences and so on. But scholars from different churches were interacting as scholars do, sharing their findings with each other and so on, long before Vatican II met. This is particularly the case for Anglicans, Catholics, and Lutherans. Catholics certainly get most of the credit for starting the ball rolling in terms of liturgical scholarship and were the dominant influence early on, but Anglicans such as Gregory Dix and Lutherans such as Yngve Brilioth (coming from “Catholic” movements within their own traditions) picked it up and themselves made contributions which then influenced Catholics.
It seems that changes were initiated in the respective churches, with inter-church contacts between liturgists helping change along in the later part of the process.
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No, what I’m saying is that the work of liturgists came first, before any churches made any changes at all. This is well documented and began as early as the 19th century, although of course 19th-century liturgists like Prosper Gueranger would be extremely conservative by the standards of all but the staunchest traditionalists today! The Anglo-Catholic movement in Anglicanism, and the “Mercersburg theology” in the Reformed tradition, were parallel movements creating an interest in liturgy and breaking down suspicion of things that looked “too Catholic.”
I am still trying to figure out what caused the change. It is probably different causes or different combinations of causes in different churches with the following suspects:
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1 General liberalisation of social norms, and openess to new ideas after the last schakles of Victorianism fell away.
Click to expand...
2 Lifting of restrictures against contact with other liturgies leading to exposure of other modes of worship (let us not forget that it wasn’t that long ago that Catholic law forbid attendance at Protestant services)
Click to expand...
3 Information explosion allowing freer flow of knowledge and opinions, letting insights into the underlying doctrines of other denominations
Click to expand...
4 General peace and church stablity allows the luxury of tinkering with liturgy. Churches with internal or external problems generally have other distractions, as well as a tendency towards conservatism.
Click to expand...
5 Reaction against liberalism in society leads to reinforcement of more traditional values among Christians, with reversion to older modes of worship being in tune with such a movement.
Click to expand...
6 The charisma of JP2’s leadership made Catholicism acceptable instead of indenfensible (see the difference in reaction to Ferraro’s VP candidacy compared with Kennedy & Alfred Smith - Ok, changes in American society also had a hand)
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7 Baby-boomers’ sense of nostalgia and the concept of ‘old is gold’?
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Any addition to the list?
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I think that the article I linked to above from Mundelein Seminary does a good job of describing the original roots of the movement in the 19th century. Romantic nostalgia for the past certainly played a role, as did response/reaction to the secularization of the modern world. It became increasingly clear to Christians across confessions that a “traditional” Christianity based primarily on the idea of following rules laid down by an omnipotent lawgiver and enforced by the fear of hell was spiritually as well as culturally inadequate. (This is a bit of a caricature, of course, but if you read some 18th and early-19th-century apologists, it isn’t far off.) In other words, there was a movement to recover the mystical traditions of Christianity which had been swept aside by the Enlightenment. And given the 19th-century’s fascination with history, this took the form of historical research.

I think that this movement still has a long way to go. Lots of Christians (and even more non-Christians) still think of Christianity in terms of the caricature I described above. And as your post indicates, the legacy of the liturgical movement in the Catholic Church in particular has unfortunately been co-opted by the narrative of "modernization vs. reaction and of a dichotomy between conservatives and liberals. In earlier posts you’ve referred to Pope Benedict, for instance, in ways that make it appear that you think of him as a “curial” Pope who was mostly about enforcing rules. With all due respect, if that’s how you think about him you’re missing what basically made him “tick,” which was precisely this powerful liturgical and “neo-patristic” spirituality that the Mundelein article describes.
Guys, thanks for enriching my Advent with this thread. And as I prepare for midnight mass in my part of the world, Merry Christmas to all of you and god bless you & your family. And God bless the Church.
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Amen!

Edwin
 
jimkhong said:
I am not sure if scholars from different churches came together to discuss them and returned to their churches to implement liturgical changes. It seems that changes were initiated in the respective churches, with inter-church contacts between liturgists helping change along in the later part of the process.

Any addition to the list?
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Somewhere in the middle of reading your list, Jim, I lost focus. Are you talking about the post-Vatican II changes of the recent changes to the changes?
jimkhong said:
Guys, thanks for enriching my Advent with this thread. And as I prepare for midnight mass in my part of the world, Merry Christmas to all of you and god bless you & your family. And God bless the Church.
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Thank you. I return those same blessings to you and your family and to all on this list. God bless us every one.
 
Ferde_Rombola said:
Somewhere in the middle of reading your list, Jim, I lost focus. Are you talking about the post-Vatican II changes of the recent changes to the changes?
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I do not see any liturgical change in the Catholic Church in the last 50 years as emanating from Vatican 2 but as part of a continous, if uneven, progress from the 19th century, for which Vatican 2 gave definition from a Magisterium point of view.
 
Thanks, Edwin for an excellent summary and I will follow up on your link, well after I have finish digesting my post-midnight mass supper. I probably misread your earlier post.
Contarini said:
I think that this movement still has a long way to go. Lots of Christians (and even more non-Christians) still think of Christianity in terms of the caricature I described above. And as your post indicates, the legacy of the liturgical movement in the Catholic Church in particular has unfortunately been co-opted by the narrative of "modernization vs. reaction and of a dichotomy between conservatives and liberals. In earlier posts you’ve referred to Pope Benedict, for instance, in ways that make it appear that you think of him as a “curial” Pope who was mostly about enforcing rules. With all due respect, if that’s how you think about him you’re missing what basically made him “tick,” which was precisely this powerful liturgical and “neo-patristic” spirituality that the Mundelein article describes.
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Perhaps, I should explain my comment about Benedict’s curial papacy. I did see Benedict as a curial pope but no longer. I now see him as an unfortunate, if brilliant, scholar who found himself caught in a job he realised he may not have the aptitude or skills for. The papacy at this time requires someone with a reformist zeal, and management skills to go along with it. He realised he wasn’t that man, unfortunately and I salute his courage to acknowledge it. I pray he is happier now, with his praying and his writing.

The papacy was curial though (and here my directness could be too brutal for this season of goodwill) because there was, to me, clearly a cabal of curia officials controlling the papacy (and the later part of JP2’s as well) for reasons that could be personal and/or what they thought best for the Church. The centralising tendency of the curia officials only serves to pull the veil of intransparency over the activities of a small number of officials, leading to the mess Francis was elected to sort out.

There would still be actions of Benedict/Ratzinger that I may not agree with but not with his scholarship. Some of his papers for Vatican 2 I find particularly interesting and merits reading. That, his honesty and his courage are how I would like to remember him.
 
Ferde_Rombola said:
A perspective, indeed. I hope you’ll find the time to ‘comment.’
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A brief comment. The liturgical movement, as Canon Read said, was a smokescreen for a theological revolution, driven from a clandestine top, downward. The companion piece to the train wreck (to coin a phrase) was the equally stealthy transformation of the TEC polity, as I have mentioned before. The result is a new entity, that has a nostalgic look, if one doesn’t examine it too closely. But it is a a new thing under heaven. And none can call its power to account. I recall the comment of an elderly and prominent academic, who, with her equally prominent academic husband was active in the Society for the Preservation of the Book of Common Prayer, back in the 70s. Founding member of my parish. A couple of years ago she visited family in a far-off state. Where she visited her family TEC parish. When she returned she spoke of it with tears: “They have taken my Church from me”. So it is.

I likely will have little more to say on this. I have problems with charity. Maybe.

GKC
 
GKC said:
A brief comment. The liturgical movement, as Canon Read said, was a smokescreen for a theological revolution, driven from a clandestine top, downward. The companion piece to the train wreck (to coin a phrase) was the equally stealthy transformation of the TEC polity, as I have mentioned before. The result is a new entity, that has a nostalgic look, if one doesn’t examine it too closely. But it is a a new thing under heaven. And none can call its power to account. I recall the comment of an elderly and prominent academic, who, with her equally prominent academic husband was active in the Society for the Preservation of the Book of Common Prayer, back in the 70s. Founding member of my parish. A couple of years ago she visited family in a far-off state. Where she visited her family TEC parish. When she returned she spoke of it with tears: “They have taken my Church from me”. So it is.

I likely will have little more to say on this. I have problems with charity. Maybe.

GKC
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I read the article you cite and have specific questions, if you have the time. I noticed the reference to Logos Christology; how does that play out in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer? Also can anyone elaborate on this comment from the article: “He attributes this predicted stormy sailing to 'an attempt to bring to this country a brand of English Evangelicalism which has never really found much acceptance here before.”
 
I went to St. Nicholas this morning and I was not impressed, there was hardly anyone there, no servers. And worst of all the Nashotah educated priest pretended to consecrate ginger bread! That is not, as we all know valid matter for the Eucharist, I nearly spat it out but it been intincted in valid wine and I was at a loss.
 
andrewstx said:
I went to St. Nicholas this morning and I was not impressed, there was hardly anyone there, no servers. And worst of all the Nashotah educated priest pretended to consecrate ginger bread! That is not, as we all know valid matter for the Eucharist, I nearly spat it out but it been intincted in valid wine and I was at a loss.
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Oy! I had not realized liberal Catholic diseases had infected Orthodoxy. You have my sympathies.

I had to serve at Mass this morning for the same reason you mention – no servers. We had four young servers at midnight Mass. Poor planning.
 
Ferde_Rombola said:
Oy! I had not realized liberal Catholic diseases had infected Orthodoxy. You have my sympathies.

I had to serve at Mass this morning for the same reason you mention – no servers. We had four young servers at midnight Mass. Poor planning.
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St. Nicholas is an Episcopal church. Orthodox churches are far away, and I cannot drive due to a stroke. So I have to go where I can get a ride.

The deacon did not show up and Father David had to do everything by himself, and their were more people in the sanctuary (readers, EMHC) than their were in the pews. Their were two in the choir. No incense, none of the propers were sang. So disappointed.
 
andrewstx said:
St. Nicholas is an Episcopal church. Orthodox churches are far away, and I cannot drive due to a stroke. So I have to go where I can get a ride.

The deacon did not show up and Father David had to do everything by himself, and their were more people in the sanctuary (readers, EMHC) than their were in the pews. Their were two in the choir. No incense, none of the propers were sang. So disappointed.
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Sorry you had to deal with that.
 
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