Journeyman:
The “liturgy” (I am not sure if it is called a liturgy)
It is called a liturgy. Some Anglicans use the term Mass, others don’t, but “liturgy” is fairly uncontroversial.
Journeyman:
I was amazed at this since I thought this was a response that came into the RCC liturgy after Vatican II. That would mean that either the RCC or the Episcopal church copied the other churches prayer, or this particular Episcopal church is trying to be more like a RCC.
The 1979 Book of Common Prayer is deeply influenced by post-Vatican-II Catholic liturgy. You find this odd because you apparently have been led to think that Protestants as a whole ignore Catholicism. But think about it–even fundamentalists are deeply influenced by Catholicism, it’s just that that influence consists mostly in loud reaction! More high-church traditions, especially Anglicanism, are very willing to learn from Catholics. Indeed, the Anglo-Catholic movement of the 19th century copied a lot of what was then Catholic liturgy, so obviously when the changes came in the 1960s they had to do a doubletake, since they were now more Catholic than the Pope (in a sense)!
However, it goes a lot deeper than that. The liturgical changes after Vatican II didn’t just come out of thin air. They were the result of decades of meticulous liturgical scholarship, and this scholarship was ecumenical in nature (in fact, the pioneers of the liturgical movement, like Lambert Beaudoin, were also pioneers of the ecumenical movement: I bought two books by Beaudoin while visiting the
monastery he founded in Belgium; one of them was on “Liturgical Piety” while the other was a proposal for giving Anglicanism uniate status if the Anglicans would return to union with Rome). It was dominated by Catholics, but high-church Anglicans also played a huge role, and increasingly (especially in the later 20th century) members of a number of Protestant traditions joined in (one of the major figures of recent decades, who died recently, was the Methodist liturgical scholar James F. White–not to be confused with the anti-Catholic Reformed Baptist, of course!). One of the best reference books on the liturgy,
The Study of Liturgy, has chapters by scholars from various traditions and is edited by a Methodist, Geoffrey Wainwright, among others.
This isn’t really about one group “imitating” another, so much as it is about all of us learning from the richness of our common Christian tradition, especially its earlier centuries. But at least in the context of Western Christianity (the Orthodox of course have a very different attitude, since they are heirs to a rich liturgical tradition of their own from which all Westerners have a lot to learn, and which has influenced modern liturgical piety greatly) it’s natural that the See of Rome is the model to which the rest of us look. When Rome sneezes, all Western Christendom (at least) catches cold!
The acclamation to which you refer in this post, and the gesture of peace to which you refer in a later post, are both promoted by this ecumenical (but heavily Catholic historically with significant Anglican contributions) liturgical scholarship. However, Anglicans and most other liturgical Protestants place it before the Offertory (making it basically the boundary marker between the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist), while the post-Vatican II Catholic liturgy places it after the Lord’s Prayer and just before the Agnus Dei (which Episcopalians do not have as a fixed part of our liturgy, though many Anglo-Catholic priests use it).
Journeyman:
- I was wondering what the ministers at the service said when a person was receiving the bread or from the cup.
It varies. The two common formulas are “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven; the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation,” or the longer and more Protestant formula which mercygate gave in post 3. I doubt that the use of the first formula is as recent as mercygate thinks–I wonder if mercygate was as high church as he/she believes? But I could be wrong–my first Episcopal liturgy was in 1996.
Journeyman:
- What do Episcopal churches do with the bread after communion?
In my experience, it is treated much the same as in Catholic churches–either reserved or consumed. But I’ve heard stories of it being disposed of in some less appropriate way. I won’t venture to say that these stories are false. I can say with confidence that no Episcopal church I’ve attended would ever simply dump it as if it were ordinary bread. But I won’t vouch for some of the extreme low-church folks (we have far fewer of those than the English do, though–most of the American low-churchers either went with the Reformed Episcopal split or simply drifted away to other denominations).
Edwin
- which was never a very “High Church” experience, BTW - middle of the road, unfussy, orderly, and decent, would be nearer the mark.
