T
Timbot2000
Guest
On the New Liturgical Movement Blog, Fr. Anthony Symondson S.J. stated as follows with regard to the Anglican Use liturgy in the Roman Rite
I understand the aesthetic and historical appeal for many American Anglicans for Cranmerian English and I love the Anglophile feeling in the best Episcopalian churches. When I saw some magnificent examples last year I felt completely at home in a national sense, not least because many of the late-c19 and early-c20 churches were far better than ours of the same period. But, wonderful as these nuns are (and I can say the same for a host of other Anglican nuns who are inspiring religious - in the past some of the holiest I have been privileged to know in a long life have been among them), I do not believe that the riches of the Western liturgical tradition can be surpassed.
But, I would ask the good Father, cleansed of defective theology (would that the same could be said of the current English form of the OF), how is the Anglican use not a part of the Western liturgical tradition? Particularly if we view it in the context of the rites of York and Salisbury by which it is heavily influenced. It certainly seems far more “organic” in terms of its development than does the current OF. “I do not believe that the riches of the Western liturgical tradition can be surpassed”, and it is here that I am caught in a conceptual difficulty that sorely tempts me to swim the Bosphorus. What exactly does the Western Liturgical Tradition excel in? Once upon a time one could make the argument that the Western Liturgy, calendar, and Devotions were theologically more focused on the Incarnation (i.e. the relative importance of the Announciation, Visitation, Nativity and Feasts such as Corpus Christi, while Antioch was more focused on the Trinity (i.e. the relative importance of the theophany and transfiguration). Scholars such as Stanley Jaki have written that the incarnational focus of Western Orthopraxis contributed to the development of natural science in the West. But today Eastern practices are described by all and sundry as more incarnational than the West, the tradition of which has been described to me, by Catholic priests of both West and East as:*
(1) In the modern West liturgy is primarily didactic (this is why we have no chant or sung mass as chant is alien to the Western Tradition). It is why we do not use incense or art in our spaces, whereas the east is holistic and organoleptic in its approach to liturgy. In Western tradition the liturgy is just an annotated lesson or lecture, involvement of senses other than hearing would be a distraction at best, stumbling block or occasion of sin at worst. (So it would seem that if you are deaf, or very young, or mentally impaired you just have to hope for infused graces!). So those actually handicapped are denied, and those of education, intelligence, and discernment are likewise denied. In the modern West everything seems reduced down to a lowest-common denominator version of Christianity-lite.*
(2) The East preserves the Catechumens/Faithful distinction in the liturgy, thereby elevating the sacred presence as the supreme mystogogical reality. In the Western tradition as it exists today the orthographic and pragmatic focus of the liturgy is on the assembly primarily, the readings secondarily, and the Eucharist as a tertiary afterthought. It is the modern Western tradition (so I have been told by westerners, and so my eyes have seen in the Mass) that Christ is substantially, equally, and indistinguishably present in the Word, Host, and Assembly, and there is no hierarchy of realities, only manifestation of Christ most perfectly in the community of the faithful, most immediately in the readings, and only symbolically/incidentally/analogously in the Eucharist; The faith I was raised in comes off as a religion of works, and pretty lame works at that.*
(3) In the East, the architecture expresses theological realities down to the smallest details, the Western tradition is that anything other than the readings, Eucharist, and general bonhomie of the assembly (in ascending order of importance) are mere externals distracting us from the presence of Christ, and that this is the Western Tradition. (I’ll never forget what happened to the parish church were I grew up. I returned after 10 years to find that the old high altar and tabernacle had been torn out. The Book of the Gospels was placed on the central axis in front of the Crucifix, while the Blessed Sacrament had been shunted to the far side of the sanctuary in a stone pillar (what does this arrangement tell us theologically? And how is this theology normative to the Western Tradition. Well, after 40 years, its tradition now! It is, as westerners often point out, legal under current regulations, and as is often employed in arguments against legal abortion “that which is legal becomes normative”!)*
(4) The liturgies of Antioch and Alexandria, and even India (Malabaric and Malankaric), Armenia and Ethiopia are filed with rich theological content and quotes from the Fathers, and are coherent is style, tone, and language. The current English liturgy deals with most things briefly, and obliquely, with all the profundity, nuance, and complexity of an American news talk show. The tradition of the West seems to be not the noblesimpliciteof the Latin patristics, but rather thesimplesseof the modern mass democratic culture, or so I am told, and so I have seen.*
Most Easterners I know go doxing on Sunday if there is no Eastern Catholic church nearby. The idea of going to a Roman church seems utterly pointess to them. Many have described attending a Mass as “why would I put myself through that (again)?” usually followed by a “but it is the same Christ in the Eucharist, don’t get me wrong”. The very thought of taking an Orthodox friend to a Roman church fills me with terror and deep shame. Indeed, such is the thought of taking anyone to the ongoing and unremitting horror I have witnessed, and witness every time, every single time I stray beyond my “safety zones” like St. George in Aurora or John Cantius in Chicago. And I am not just nitpicking “the Bishop is not supposed to wear a mozetta blah, blah, blah…” like the nerds on the*NLM, but words, actions, and symbols that declare to the world in ways both great and small “we say we believe a lot of things, but we really don’t” Western Christians claimed that their Mass was their Church’s most precious possession. It seems that they lied. They tossed it overboard with alacrity in an act of vandalism unheard of since the Iconoclast heresy of late antiquity.
I understand the aesthetic and historical appeal for many American Anglicans for Cranmerian English and I love the Anglophile feeling in the best Episcopalian churches. When I saw some magnificent examples last year I felt completely at home in a national sense, not least because many of the late-c19 and early-c20 churches were far better than ours of the same period. But, wonderful as these nuns are (and I can say the same for a host of other Anglican nuns who are inspiring religious - in the past some of the holiest I have been privileged to know in a long life have been among them), I do not believe that the riches of the Western liturgical tradition can be surpassed.
But, I would ask the good Father, cleansed of defective theology (would that the same could be said of the current English form of the OF), how is the Anglican use not a part of the Western liturgical tradition? Particularly if we view it in the context of the rites of York and Salisbury by which it is heavily influenced. It certainly seems far more “organic” in terms of its development than does the current OF. “I do not believe that the riches of the Western liturgical tradition can be surpassed”, and it is here that I am caught in a conceptual difficulty that sorely tempts me to swim the Bosphorus. What exactly does the Western Liturgical Tradition excel in? Once upon a time one could make the argument that the Western Liturgy, calendar, and Devotions were theologically more focused on the Incarnation (i.e. the relative importance of the Announciation, Visitation, Nativity and Feasts such as Corpus Christi, while Antioch was more focused on the Trinity (i.e. the relative importance of the theophany and transfiguration). Scholars such as Stanley Jaki have written that the incarnational focus of Western Orthopraxis contributed to the development of natural science in the West. But today Eastern practices are described by all and sundry as more incarnational than the West, the tradition of which has been described to me, by Catholic priests of both West and East as:*
(1) In the modern West liturgy is primarily didactic (this is why we have no chant or sung mass as chant is alien to the Western Tradition). It is why we do not use incense or art in our spaces, whereas the east is holistic and organoleptic in its approach to liturgy. In Western tradition the liturgy is just an annotated lesson or lecture, involvement of senses other than hearing would be a distraction at best, stumbling block or occasion of sin at worst. (So it would seem that if you are deaf, or very young, or mentally impaired you just have to hope for infused graces!). So those actually handicapped are denied, and those of education, intelligence, and discernment are likewise denied. In the modern West everything seems reduced down to a lowest-common denominator version of Christianity-lite.*
(2) The East preserves the Catechumens/Faithful distinction in the liturgy, thereby elevating the sacred presence as the supreme mystogogical reality. In the Western tradition as it exists today the orthographic and pragmatic focus of the liturgy is on the assembly primarily, the readings secondarily, and the Eucharist as a tertiary afterthought. It is the modern Western tradition (so I have been told by westerners, and so my eyes have seen in the Mass) that Christ is substantially, equally, and indistinguishably present in the Word, Host, and Assembly, and there is no hierarchy of realities, only manifestation of Christ most perfectly in the community of the faithful, most immediately in the readings, and only symbolically/incidentally/analogously in the Eucharist; The faith I was raised in comes off as a religion of works, and pretty lame works at that.*
(3) In the East, the architecture expresses theological realities down to the smallest details, the Western tradition is that anything other than the readings, Eucharist, and general bonhomie of the assembly (in ascending order of importance) are mere externals distracting us from the presence of Christ, and that this is the Western Tradition. (I’ll never forget what happened to the parish church were I grew up. I returned after 10 years to find that the old high altar and tabernacle had been torn out. The Book of the Gospels was placed on the central axis in front of the Crucifix, while the Blessed Sacrament had been shunted to the far side of the sanctuary in a stone pillar (what does this arrangement tell us theologically? And how is this theology normative to the Western Tradition. Well, after 40 years, its tradition now! It is, as westerners often point out, legal under current regulations, and as is often employed in arguments against legal abortion “that which is legal becomes normative”!)*
(4) The liturgies of Antioch and Alexandria, and even India (Malabaric and Malankaric), Armenia and Ethiopia are filed with rich theological content and quotes from the Fathers, and are coherent is style, tone, and language. The current English liturgy deals with most things briefly, and obliquely, with all the profundity, nuance, and complexity of an American news talk show. The tradition of the West seems to be not the noblesimpliciteof the Latin patristics, but rather thesimplesseof the modern mass democratic culture, or so I am told, and so I have seen.*
Most Easterners I know go doxing on Sunday if there is no Eastern Catholic church nearby. The idea of going to a Roman church seems utterly pointess to them. Many have described attending a Mass as “why would I put myself through that (again)?” usually followed by a “but it is the same Christ in the Eucharist, don’t get me wrong”. The very thought of taking an Orthodox friend to a Roman church fills me with terror and deep shame. Indeed, such is the thought of taking anyone to the ongoing and unremitting horror I have witnessed, and witness every time, every single time I stray beyond my “safety zones” like St. George in Aurora or John Cantius in Chicago. And I am not just nitpicking “the Bishop is not supposed to wear a mozetta blah, blah, blah…” like the nerds on the*NLM, but words, actions, and symbols that declare to the world in ways both great and small “we say we believe a lot of things, but we really don’t” Western Christians claimed that their Mass was their Church’s most precious possession. It seems that they lied. They tossed it overboard with alacrity in an act of vandalism unheard of since the Iconoclast heresy of late antiquity.
