Thursday, February 13, 2014

Foundations of the Anglican Church LXVII


surviving medieval glass
from Farrington Church
As conservative as the 1549 Book of Common Prayer was, its change of liturgy caused a strong reaction in the more traditionalist parts of the realm and what caused that reaction was not the theological shift which went largely unnoticed but the cosmetic changes in worship.  As I wrote yesterday, Cranmer had very deliberately removed every mention of sacrifice from the liturgy.  The Reformers—both in England and the Continental Reformers—were appalled at the idea of the Mass as a Sacrifice.  Part of their reasoning for being so determined to undo the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist was a failure, given the level of theological scholarship at the time, to appreciate the scriptural basis for calling the Eucharist a sacrifice.  The other factor—and the more crucial one, however, was how late medieval theologians had exaggerated the sacrificial nature of the Mass beyond any scriptural foundation and to a point where the Mass, instead of re-presenting the one eternal sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, had replaced Christ’s sacrifice with repeated supererogatory sacrifices offered by men claiming a priesthood in their own title or right. 

As to the first objection, contemporary Catholic theology first and foremost locates the Eucharist as a participation in the one eternal sacrifice of Christ offered on the Cross at Calvary.  It further ties the concept of the Eucharistic sacrifice into the meal sacrifice or communion sacrifice tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures where the participants received back from the Temple priests a portion of the sacrificial lamb on which to dine themselves as a mystical sharing of the meal with God to whom the lamb had been offered.  The Passover meal was one example of such a communion sacrifice and the concept of a communion sacrifice was a living part of the Tradition and Spirituality of his own faith of which Jesus would have been aware in instituting the Eucharist.  In other words, the Jesus of the Christian scriptures would have consciously intended this meal of commemoration of his Death to be such a “communion sacrifice” in the tradition of the Passover and other such sacrificial meals.  (The Passover meal was not the only such communion sacrifice in Temple Judaism.)  In “proclaiming the Lord’s Death until he comes again,” (I Corinthians 11:26) we share in such a communion sacrifice by which we feast on the Lamb that was slain on the Cross.   Unfortunately for the heirs of Luther and Calvin and Cranmer and Zwingli, the level of biblical scholarship we have today that has let us recover these scriptural roots of the Eucharistic Sacrifice was not available to the Reformers—or to their Catholic contemporaries.  The Catholic Church (and the Orthodox) had received this inheritance of Eucharistic Sacrifice from the ancient Church sources but had lost the rationale for it and could not defend it or dialogue about it with the Reformers and so it was lost in the Reformation tradition.

Had sixteenth-century Catholicism maintained the scriptural roots of patristic theology, the second problem—the exaggerated notion of Eucharistic sacrifice in which each Mass was seen as a new and unique Sacrifice of Christ to the Father—would not have been problematic.  The loss of the patristic heritage and its replacement with Scholastic Theology in the thirteenth and subsequent centuries created an appalling mystique to the Mass where it was claimed that Christ died anew and again day after day upon the altars.  This stands in total contradiction to the scriptures where we are told that Christ died once for all (1 Peter 3:18; Romans 6:10; Hebrews 9:28).  Each Mass was seen to be in its own right a propitiatory sacrifice and each priest an Aaronic priest who offered the victim to God on behalf of the people.  The priest was not seen to be a sacramental sharer in the one priesthood of the One Priest, Christ, but like the priests of the Old Law a man who approached the sacrifice in virtue of his own priesthood.  (Shadows of this exaggerated—and blasphemous—claim to a particular priesthood continue to exist among some clergy today, especially those given to the pre-conciliar rites.  The roots of this egoistic self-deception are psychological inadequacies that make men hide within an artificial persona that deludes them into a faux greatness that compensates for a lack of an authentic grace of knowing one’s true self in God.  That is why these men usually make horrid confessors who sit in judgment rather than as channels of the compassion of Christ who was tempted in every way we are: Hebrews, 4:15.)   The medieval scholastic theologians not only exaggerated the sacrificial nature of the Mass to make it repetitive of Calvary, but they invented a second sacrifice in which bread and wine were offered to God at the “offertory” of the Mass. 

In the liturgical reforms of Paul VI in the 1970 Missal, the Mass was radically restructured to take away any pretense of this second sacrifice.  There is no “offertory” of bread and wine, but rather a “preparation of the gifts” in which the bread and wine are prepared for the Eucharist.  The only sacrifice is the sharing in the One Eternal Sacrifice of Calvary as we “proclaim the Death of the Lord until he comes in glory.”  This is the major objection of those who challenge the 1970 Missal.  There is a clear break here with the 1962 and earlier Missals that follow the 1570 liturgical revisions of Pius V, and indeed many of the medieval rites that had developed and on which Pius V based his reforms after the Council of Trent.  And this is precisely where we see claims to a “hermeneutic of continuity” in the liturgy to be unsupported by fact.  I agree with those who claim that the Novus Ordo represents a break with the past: the 1570 and 1970 Missals have very different theologies of Eucharistic Sacrifice.  Where I disagree with them is that it is very clear to me that it is the 1570 Missal, not the 1970 Rite, that deviates from the Apostolic (and patristic) Tradition. 

In any event, it was not this theological shift away from Sacrifice but the more visible changes that caused the negative reaction to Cranmer’s Prayer Book.  There was great dissatisfaction in the Northern regions of England, in particular Yorkshire, where religious sentiments were more conservative. Rebellions broke out in Devon, East Anglia, and Cornwall where the rebels referred to the new liturgy as “a Christmas game,” the sort of thing of people playing at Mass.  So much of what people counted on for practical devotions—ashes, palms, holy water, images of the saints, saints’ feast days and stories—were being swept away.  Statues were being removed from the churches, paintings whitewashed over and stained glass being smashed.  Holidays and festivals associated with the saints were now common workdays.  What was one to do in a lightning storm if there was no Holy Water with which to sprinkle the house?    Also the local peculiarities of rite—given the diversity of liturgical usages in pre-Reformation England—which gave people a pride in doing things “their way,” were abolished in favor of this uniform Prayer Book Rite.  The commercial centers—London and Norwich in particular—and Kent in South-east England were more open to the changes, but these were areas that would prove to be won over to the Protestant cause as the Reformation developed.  A deep split was developing between the rural and urban populations with the former resisting the religious changes and the latter championing them.  The same split could be seen with the middle class and the new rich favoring Protestantism and the “old blood” clinging to the old religion.  It created a certain amount of political instability and indeed the King’s uncle, Edward Seymour—now Duke of Somerset—would fall from power in 1549 (the same year as the new prayerbook) and later (1552)  be tried for treason and executed.   The Reform party would remain in power, however, as the boy King was not only an ardent Protestant but a rabid-anti-Catholic.  Cranmer retained his power and he would continue to push for ever more extreme changes in the Church.

16 comments:

  1. "it is very clear to me that it is the 1570 Missal, not the 1970 Rite, that deviates from the Apostolic (and patristic) Tradition."

    In what particulars, though? My own (admittedly limited and amateur) reading of liturgical history has left me with the impression that a great deal of the actual content of the 1570 Roman Missal is of pre-Scholastic, even pre-medieval origin. Is that just not right?

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  2. Yes, the Roman Canon in very recognizable form goes back to Gregory the Great at the end of the sixth century, well in the Patristic period. Of course Eucharistic Prayer II is an ancient prayer as well, indeed more ancient in its origins, and the Eucharistic Prayer for Various Occasions in its four forms seems to be little more than an embroidering of this same Prayer II. The problem of innovation is found in the laying of the gifts on the altar and the accompanying prayers. In the Roman Rite of Gregory the gifts were simply put on the altar and the Prayer over the gifts was recited aloud by the celebrant. It is only with the collision of the Roman and Gallican rites that we begin to find a notion of an “offertory” (in the sense of a sacrifice of bread and wine) with such prayers as the Suscipe Sancte Trinitas. Indeed this rite became top-heavy with as many as a dozen or more prayers of offering being recited. By this time—the eleventh century and admittedly still technically within the patristic period—the great Eucharistic theologies of Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom and others had begun to be overlaid by Gallican hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalianism. (I love that word and have been waiting for an occasion to use it. Thank you for providing the opportunity.) As the Rite comes first and the theology follows (lex orandi, lex credendi), the scholastics would take this expanded offertory rite with its oblationary prayers and develop a theology of the sacrificial offering of the bread and wine that is totally absent from the patristic sources that identify the Eucharistic Sacrifice solely with the Sacrifice of Calvary and regulate our participation in the Eucharistic sacrifice to joining ourselves to Christ the Victim and to Christ the priest. The “Suscipe, sancte Pater, omnipotens ætérne Deus, hanc immaculátam hóstiam” prayed within the context of the Canon of the Mass would not be a problem, but at the “offertory” of the Mass it creates a second sacrifice.
    Unfortunately much liturgical “history” that has been written since the 1970 Rite was introduced, is more polemical than objective. I am particularly thinking of Monsignor Klaus Gamber in this remark, but there are others on both sides of the liturgical spectrum. While I have most of their materials in my library, I tend to rely heavily on the two classic texts—Jungmann and Dix, both of whom wrote before the Council and at a time that that any serious revision of the Roman Rite of Pius V was beyond imagining. They certainly had their agendas—all authors do—but it stands independent of the liturgical reforms after Vatican II.

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  3. As a further brief though on proleptic offertories -- what do you make of the Proskomede of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom? I know absolutely nothing about the history of the Byzantine liturgies but I can suppose with some confidence that there is little to no interaction with Scholasticism in their development.

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  4. Hmm I think blogspot ate my comment from a few minutes ago -- if so, to briefly recap: I took a brief look at the Offertories of the first three medieval Latin liturgies that came to mind -- Sarum, Braga, and the Dominican -- and all are quite different from the 1570 Roman Offertory; all are a fair bit simpler and none features the difficult prayer Suscipe sancte Pater. So I am wondering, if the pre-Tridentine Scholastics were not all working from the same Offertory, whence else might they have derived this "second sacrifice" theology?

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  5. well, Ben, I don't have access right now to either the Braga or Sarum Missals so I can't comment on their offertory rites, but let me point out that while the Dominicans don't have the suscipe sancte Pater, they have an even more troublesome Suscipe Sancta Trinitas quam oblationem which advances the notion of the bread and wine being offered in sacrifice. I don't think Sarum or Braga would have much to contribute to the argument as they don't represent locales where the theological work would have developed. You would want to check Paris and other French (Gallican) rites as well as Cologne so see what was happening there with an expanded offertory taking on a sacrificial tone. You also might want to check the origins of the various prayers that were incorporated into the Missal of Pius V. It is interesting to note, however, that the rites you did check were simpler than the offertory Rite of Pius V. Pius' was a sincere attempt to clear away medieval accretions and restore a clear focus to the liturgy, but that focus was, as I wrote, more reflective of the Scholastic tradition than the patristic or the scriptural. Nevertheless, it needs to be appreciated in the context of its time. As for the Proskomede of the Divine Liturgy I did notice two things. At the piercing of the "Lamb" (the loaf of Eucharistic bread) there is a mention of sacrifice but in the context it is referring not the bread but to Christ whose Body that bread is being set aside to become. however there is a further prayer that asks God's angel to take this oblation to God's altar in heaven and that prayer has a very definite tone of the bread being offered. (The prayer is somewhat reminiscent of the Roman Canon supplication for the same though in the case of the Roman Prayer it clearly refers to the Sacrifice of Christ as it is within the anaphora and not in the offertory rite.) It would be interesting to know the origins of the Byzantine Prayer and when it was included in the proskomede and especially if there was influence from the Roman Rite in its inclusion. Since the Roman Canon is so ancient, it seems unlikely that the influence would have developed the other way. I don't know much about the history of the Byzantine Rite. The proskomede itself however is clearly a preparaiton of the gifts and is anticipatory to the Liturgy proper, but it would be good to know the history of that particular prayer. Perhaps when I finish this series on the Anglican Church, I can start with a series on the development of the Roman Mass, though as i wrote yesterday I think both Dix and Jungmann have covered it well. There work is old though and I would like to see new scholars take up the task but not in the context of the polemics over the Missal of 1970.

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    1. I should have composed the response offline and checked the spelling and grammer. forgive the various mistakes, especially the "there" for "their."

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  6. Thanks very much for continuing this discussion. I had a look the other night at my own favorite reference, Fortescue's "The Mass" (pre-Dix and pre-Jungmann, so no worry about V2 polemics there!).

    His account of the development of the Offertory dovetails more or less with what you've described above but he says a few interesting things about this part of the Eucharistic liturgy:

    1) "very soon [in the history of the liturgy; i.e., prior to the 4th century] the idea developed that as [the bread and wine] are brought they should be offered to God at once, before they are consecrated"

    * In the East, because the proskomede takes place ahead of time (which is dimly paralleled in the Dominican rite, btw), the "Great Entrance" of the unconsecrated gifts has developed, in which "by a curious anticipation of the consecration, expressions are used which imply that the procession brings the body and blood of Christ" -- and then "when the gifts are placed on the altar most Eastern rites have another prayer repeating the idea of the offertory"

    * The Secret prayers -- which are found paired with Collects and Postcommunions in all the oldest documents -- "have the peculiarity that they are true offertory-prayers. All the old secrets ask God to accept these present gifts, to sanctify them, to give us in return his grace".

    So iIf Fortescue is right, the notion of an "offertory" as such is fairly universal in Christian liturgy and of great antiquity in all rites that have it, and in the Roman rite is found throughout the very oldest proper prayers (i.e., the Secrets).

    But if that's the case, can this notion of an offertory be distinguished from the theology of "second sacrifice" that you find problematic in the Scholastics?

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  7. This was a good read! Please send me an email. I would like to ask a question. Thank you!

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    1. No wprries. That was the first suggestion that I read somewhere on how to contact a blog author. I am writing a college paper for a theology class and would like to quote part of this blog as it is brilliant research. Profs don't look highly on uncredited references. I am most intriged by the multiple sacrifices considered before Vatican II as opposed to the ONE sacrifice understood by 1970. If you could devise a credible way for me to quote your work in my class paper,without disturbing your privacy, I would appreciate it very much! Thank you!

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  8. I am glad you enjoyed the post. Feel free to ask your question in the comments section. I don't give out my email address as I choose for various reasons to remain anonymous

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  9. Thank you.Consolamini. I understand. I am trying to figure out how to cite this page for a paper I am writing for a class. Can you help me with that?

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  10. sorry for the delay in getting this accomplished, but check out the entry for May 7th and I think you will get your information. I will be posting more on this subject over the next few days as well--May 8-10 hopefully

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    1. Consolamini:

      Thank you for your kind help. My apologies for not writing back sooner. I appreciate your thoughtful and considerate help as I delved into a new subject. My project morphed into a book. When steering a student of any age in the right direction, one can only dream of what the result might be. Thank you again and blessings to you!

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  11. Consolamini, I apologize for posting here, however couldn't find the appropriate area. Regarding the ICKSP altars lack of crucifix and extreme veneration to the Infant Jesus of Prague, instead of to a crucifix with the image of the crucified Christ on the crucifix....On their altars, there is a very, very small stand crucifix. Above the very, very small stand crucifix is a very large statue of the Infant Jesus of Prague, that ICKSP refers to as the Infant King. I am an old-timer, used to seeing a stand crucifix on the altar, and in addition, a large crucifix hanging, or mounted above the altar. In my opinion, the Infant Jesus of Prague statue has its place elsewhere in the Catholic church, but it should not be placed where a large crucifix should be located. Every photo on the ICKSP facebook page is lacking the large crucifix. What is your opinion? I do not think the ICKSP should be placing the statue where the large crucifix should be located.

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    1. pdavis93
      I am sorry for not having got back to you after your original inquiry. The short answer is that I do not know. The Longer answer is far more complex and I will suggest a number of things.
      1. I noticed through the years I lived in Italy that it was a custom there--and I suspect in some other European cultures--that during the Christmas Season (Christmas through the feast of the Purification according to the Traditional Rite and even for many Novus Ordo churches in practice) the crucifix on the high altar--usually positioned over the tabernacle--was replaced by a Bambino Gesu. This was sometimes the Infant of Prague, but more usually a baby in the manger. Similarly, from Easter until Ascension, the crucifix was replaced by a statue of the Resurrected Christ. On the "altar of sacrifice" however (the altar versus populum used for Mass in the Novus Ordo) there was always a crucifix, usually small so as not to impede the view between priest and people. I would be interested to know if the Infant of Prague over the tabernacle is normal for the ICKSP or in the Christmas season.
      2. The ICKSP, devoted to the Royal Priesthood of Christ (which is actually the Royal Priesthood of his members, the Church, but the ICKSP seems to forget that) and so may decide (on its own without theological reason or canonical approbation) to put the Infant King of Prague in the place of honor. This is theologically disastrous, of course, but that is one of the problems with the TLM and their followers. The theological rationale beneath the liturgy is often overlooked in favor of popular pieties. As the principle Lex Orandi Lex Credendi informs us: liturgical practice (good or bad) shapes the faith of the worshippers (for good or bad) we can see how the bad theological practices of the TLM (or bad theological practices when people start to innovate in the Novus Ordo) corrupt the faith.
      3. The Church requires a crucifix on or near the altar, in prominent sight of the faithful, to remind us of the essential connection between the Eucharistic Banquet and the Sacrifice of the Cross. While many contemporary churches have a Risen Christ over the altar, it strikes me that no image should be as central as the Cross. I think one of the flaws of the post Vatican II Church (in practice, not in its actual legislation) is not its emphasis on the Resurrection but our forgetting that the Resurrection is the completion of the Paschal Sacrifice. There is no Resurrection without the Cross and a Resurrected Christ without the reminder of the Cross is only a symbol of cheap grace. The replacement of the crucifix by the Infant of Prague is even more disastrous as it replaces the Mystery of Faith with what is no more than a sentimental private devotion. It is a charming private devotion, but a private devotion none the less and one that can easily be corrupted into poor doctrine. But that is what I find unacceptable about the TLM: at least in practice, if not in the form itself, it is bad theology through and through. And bad theology leads to misdirected and ultimately empty faith.

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  12. Consolamini,

    Thank you very much for your exceptional response. It seems the ICKSP does as they please and make up their own rules and rituals to fit their bad practices leading to corrupt the faith. I agree with you, the replacement of the crucifix with the Infant of Prague is even more disastrous. The ICKSP has permanently placed the Infant of Prague over the tabernacle instead of the crucifix at all times.

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