Foundations of the Anglican Church CXXVIII

Saint Sidwell's, Exeter before it
was destroyed in WWII.

A reader recently asked me if I were going to continue my series on the Church of England. I had left off with the Oxford movement and, frankly, thought it was as good a place as any to finish up.  But the Church of England has continued beyond the Oxford Movement—some might say in spite of it—so maybe a few more entries are in order. 

There was a High Church movement in the Church of England long before the famous Assize Sermon preached by John Keble at the University Church of Saint Mary Oxford on July 14, 1833 triggered the Tractarian movement.  Originally the High Church movement was concerned not so much with questions of ritual as much as doctrinal orthodoxy and patristic sacramentology.  But the romanticism of the early 19^th century led some of the High Church party into a desire to restore medieval—i.e. Catholic—practices into the Church of England.  This move did not fail to meet with opposition. 

In 1844, 11 years after the famous sermon that triggered the Oxford Movement, three years after the final tract appeared, and one year before John Henry Newman was received into the Catholic Church, Henry Phillpotts, bishop of Exeter, along with his Cathedral chapter issued an edict that the priests of his diocese were—in accordance with the rubric in the Prayer Book—to wear the surplice while officiating at the altar or preaching.  Even the most Puritan-influenced Prayer Book, Elizabeth’s 1559 Book, had required the surplice but it had, in practice, all but fallen out of fashion.  Priests typically worn the black preaching gown with tabs over the cassock rather than any sort of vestments.  One January Sunday in 1845 the Reverend Francis Courtenay, perpetual curate of Saint Sidwell’s Church in Exeter, mounted the pulpit in a surplice, per the bishop’s directions.   John Henry Newman describes the ensuing scene:

"The uproar commenced," says a contemporary account, "with a general coughing down; several persons then moved to the door making a great noise in their progress; a young woman went off in a fit of hysterics, uttering loud shrieks, whilst a mob outside besieged the doors of the building. A cry of 'fire' was raised, followed by an announcement that the church doors were closed, and a rush was made to burst them open. Some cried out, 'Turn him out,' 'Pull it off him.' In the galleries the uproar was at its height, whistling, cat-calls, hurrahing, and such cries as are heard in theatres, echoed throughout the edifice. The preacher still persisted to read his text, but was quite inaudible; and the row increased, some of the congregation waving their hats, standing on the seats, jumping over them, bawling, roaring, and gesticulating, like a mob at an election. The reverend gentleman, in the midst of the confusion, despatched a message to the mayor, requesting his assistance, when one of the congregation addressed the people, and also requested the preacher to remove the cause of the ill-feeling which had been excited. Then another addressed him in no measured terms, and insisted on his leaving the pulpit. At length the mayor, the superintendent of the police, several constables, also the chancellor and the archdeacon, arrived. The mayor enforced silence, and, after admonishing the people, requested the clergy-man to leave the pulpit for a few minutes, which he declined to do,—gave out his text, and proceeded with his discourse. The damage done to the interior of the church is said to be very considerable."  

Surplice riots took place not only in Exeter but in several places throughout England as High Church clergy tried to reintroduce the vestment, but it needs to be contextualized. 

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a time when the ancestors of today’s prim and placid Englishmen were rife for trouble.  Lord George Gordon had incited riots in 1780 when there was a move in Parliament to remove civil disabilities from Catholics.  As Catholicism was growing in England there was a strong reaction on the part of the Protestant working class who resented any social change that benefited those other than themselves.  The Industrial Revolution in England had created an enormous working class living in poverty and a small but rising bourgeoisie who were finding their way into parliament and power  There was political turmoil as well.  The young queen, Victoria, had incurred considerable unpopularity because of her dependence on Lord Melbourne even when Melbourne was out of power.  Two attempts (both unsuccessful, of course) were made on Victoria’s life between 1840 and 1842.  Riots would break out again when Pius IX restored a Catholic hierarchy to England in 1850.  All in all politics, religion, economics would provide tinder for any explosion.  Despite the fuss over surplices, Catholic practices such as vestments, altar ornaments, and incense, would find themselves at home in (many) Anglican churches very quickly.

Egeria--The Tourist Pilgrim Nun From the Fourth Century and the Liturgy of Holy Week

Egeria 

I think one of the reasons I am so enamored of the Holy Week Liturgies is that they continue the oldest known liturgical forms of worship in the Church.  While there are hints about the worship of the late first century in the Book of Revelation, and while the Didache, the Didascalia Apostolorum, and Hippolytus provide some glimpses into the liturgies of the second and third centuries, tt is the travel journal of Egeria, a nun from modern Galicia (North-western Spain) describing the annual commemoration of the Lord’s Pasch in Jerusalem that really fills out our understanding of the Church’s foundational liturgical practices. And reading her account of the festivities of Palm Sunday and the drama of the Triduum we can see just how our liturgical uses developed from the practices of the early Church. 

The Christians of Jerusalem in Egeria’s day were far more devout than we—Holy Week was an almost continuous single prayer with the faithful gathering from before cockcrow in the morning until after dark at night for the singing of psalms and attentive listening to readings, but the noted elements of our Holy Week—the procession with palms, the evening Eucharist on Holy Thursday, The veneration of the Cross on the Friday of the Lord’s Passion, the baptisms at the Great Vigil—are all there in the last decades of the fourth century at Jerusalem.  There is also a somewhat primitive sense of the Stations of the Cross—admittedly not a liturgical service for us but it was for them—on the Friday of the Lord’s Passion, when the faithful gather at the various sites such as the column of the scourging for prayers.  Egeria (I prefer the more classic spelling Aegeria but no one else seems to) spent three years in the Jerusalem and wrote her sisters back in Galicia a fervent and detailed account of the Church practices.   

Reading Egeria’s account I cannot but wonder what we can do to deepen our appreciation of the mysteries of Our Lord’s death and Resurrection during Holy Week.  I think an increased use of the daily offices and in particular the re-introduction of Tenebrae, would be a good step.  Modern adaptations of the singing of psalms and prayers such as Taizé prayer also can be deeply moving.  Night time processions with guided meditations and hymns at various stations would recapture the way the Church moved from the Garden of Olives to Golgotha and the tomb.  Even reviving the medieval tradition of the “watch at the tomb” could deepen the experience. 

From a historical point of view, Egeria’s journal is particularly fascinating not only because she shows us the basic development of the Holy Week Liturgy as it had evolved by the end of the fourth century, but because we have a woman who is free to travel as extensively as Egeria did on her pilgrimage that lasted over a period of years; we have a woman who can comment insightfully on the Liturgy  and on the practices of the Church, and we have a woman who is—unlike other women in the Romano-Christian world, in charge of her own destiny and not subject to the oversight of a male superior, familial or ecclesiastical.  Today she would be on the leadership team of the LCWR or one of the “Nuns On The Bus.” 

A careful reading of her account permits us to see the fissures that were already developing between the Liturgical approaches of the Eastern and Western Rites.  Some of the ceremonies she describes survive only in the West, many more only in the East.  In both the East and West the liturgies would become more and more elaborate over the centuries but the central core would remain.  In the Middle Ages, both East and West began to play around with the clock giving the ceremonies of Holy Week a surrealism.  Matins and Lauds gradually get shifted from the earliest hours of the pre-dawn (say 2 am until 4:30) to the evening before so as not to discourage the sleepy from prayerful vigil.  And thus prayers and hymns written for the morning are being celebrated at night.  To balance this out, Vespers—the evening prayer—is being said at midday and often even in the morning.  The Good Friday Liturgy is moved from the Hour of the Lord’s Death into the morning and the Easter Vigil is now on Holy Saturday morning.  The Liturgy had become, as the Irish say, “a dog’s dinner”—a mashup of all sorts of things that are totally out of step with the mysteries being celebrated.

During the Second World War the German and Austrian clergy, and especially the monks, restricted from so much of their pastoral work by the Third Reich undertook extensive research in the history of the Liturgical development.  The Abbey of Maria Laach in Germany was particularly ambitious in reconstructing the older forms of the Triduum liturgies.  Their work paid off when in 1955 Pius XII decreed the first reforms in centuries of the Holy Week Liturgies, stripping away much of the bells and whistles that had been added over the years and restoring the Liturgies to their proper hours. These reforms of the Holy Week Liturgies were the precursors of the far more widespread Liturgical Reforms mandated by the Council and carried out by Paul VI in the Missal of 1970.

Still Reeling From Holy Week

never ceases to speak to me

Sorry that I have fallen behind a bit here on the blog.  Holy Week got the better of me—I climbed down from my ivory tower and got somewhat over-involved in things in the parish this year—I am not sure how, I was just sort of swept away in the current of what was a magnificent experience of incarnating the profundity of Christian spirituality in the rites and ceremonies of the Christian Pasch.  It really was an opportunity to enter deeply into the mystery of Christ’s suffering, death, and Resurrection

Palm Sunday took on a particularly rich significance as in addition to the already dramatic rites of the Blessing of Palms and Procession followed by the reading of the Passion, the Mass I attended was a “bon-voyage Mass” for sixteen special needs teens and young adults and their eighty-five strong entourage of doctors, nurses, caregivers, choristers, priests and brothers who were leaving to spend Easter at Lourdes.  The enthusiasm which they brought to the procession and their obvious imaging of the sufferings of  Christ in the Passion lifted the veil between the realms of liturgical symbolism and tangible reality in a dramatic way.  No, there was no solemn reserve in the Liturgy.   Yes, the Mass was noisy, raucous even, with all the idiosyncrasies of those on the autism spectrum but then the streets of Jerusalem echoed with the Hosanna’s of Palm Sunday and the screams to crucify on Good Friday.  To see in the faces of these young people the attention and devotion to what was happening, not regarding their own hardships, was a very moving experience. 

The remainder of Holy Week took on a more solemn note.  We do Taizé prayer here weekly and it is both especially solemn and profoundly tranquil in Holy Week. The focus of the prayer throughout Lent is the Cross—“prayer around the cross”—and it is a haunting mixture of silence and scripture and repetitive music that can transport the worshipper to the foot of the Cross.   The liturgies of the Triduum were magnificent.   All were done reverently but with no show or pomp.  Yes, women were among those having their feet washed on Holy Thursday.  And yes, one of the altar servers for the Triduum rites was a young lady—along with her two brothers.  Everything was very Novus Ordo.  There were three adult baptisms and confirmations at the Easter Vigil.  There were Eucharistic Ministers and Lectors (both men and women).  Communion was given in both kinds—as it always is in our parish—except, of course, on Good Friday when the Eucharist is given from the reserved Sacrament.  The Music ranged from Mozart (Ave Verum Corpus) and Curtis Stephan (Bread of Angles) to John Rutter’s Ubi Caritas.  The schola for the Good Friday Liturgy sang the reproaches as well as old spirituals and it was all done a capella.  Good Friday afternoon the parochial vicar preached the Seven Last Words along with a string quartet from our local Opera Company doing Hayden’s Oratorio on the Seven Last Words.  Easter saw trumpets and Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus to packed churches for six Masses.  Indeed, the Church was full for all the services.   At the Vigil there were three adult baptisms and one woman received into the Church. One could clearly see the Sacrament of Baptism as a being buried together with Christ so as to be raised with Christ to newness of Life.

All this is, of course, the icing on the cake: the music, the flowers, even the solemn dignity of the rites.  What matters (and what mattered) is just how deeply moved—and hopefully changed—were  the hearts of the worshippers.  People just stayed in the church for hours, deep in prayer, especially after the Good Friday service.  There was a genuine sense, not so much of ritual well done, but of entering into the Mystery of the Lord’s Passion and Death. 

I have seen the “photo-posts” on some of the neo-trad blogs with their versus absidem altars draped in purple and a superabundance of copes and dalmatics and references to Byrd and Palestrina.  And I am sure they were lovely.  I always found that final scene in the first act of Tosca lovely too—the one where they carry a cardboard host in an antique monstrance.  But it in the end it is not about ritual and rubrics, it is about prayer.  And in the end it is not about tickling the ear with music or eye-candy vestments, but about taking away our hearts of stone and giving us hearts of flesh. 

I am not saying that the old rites can’t do this, but I am observing that the commentaries I read on their wacko sites indicates that they have traded their birthright of conversion for the pottage of ceremonial.  Beautiful yes, but the opera is beautiful.  The question is: does it change our hearts?  Our worship adds nothing to the Glory of God—our transformation into the Love that fills the heart of Christ is what gives God the glory.

Not Quite On The Mark

My brother had an interesting comment on Mrs. Reagan’s funeral.  He said that her children, in their eulogies, referred to their mother’s belief in “spiritualism”—the beliefs and practices associated with communicating with the dead. We all do remember the controversy unleashed over her consulting mediums and astrologers when she was First Lady.  But then her children were followed by a priest who read the Episcopal Burial Service (orthodox Christian doctrine rejects the premises of spiritualism).  It makes one think about the paradoxes of faith and practice but I also think it betrays a flaw in our funeral liturgies.

I hadn’t watched the ceremony myself.  I am usually a sucker for these occasions and have a historians obsession with interpreting detail, but I myself had been at a funeral this afternoon.  It was a devout Catholic lady in her 80’s, a remarkable mother and grandmother who had raised her five children alone after her husband had died when they were still very young.  She was an avid reader of Commonweal and America and never backed down in an argument even with a priest, especially with a priest.  To argue her faith was life-giving to her and she knew her points well.   She was an active member of her parish, a rather feisty old broad actually, who drove past 7 other Catholic Churches to get to the parish to which she belonged because she liked the preaching and the music in what had been years before a “Real Vatican II: parish.”  But there was something wrong about the tone of the funeral: it was a “celebration of her life” but I am not sure it was a proclamation of the Gospel.  I think the current funeral liturgy somehow or other misses the point.  It is a bland service—granted, with plenty of options of readings and music—but at the end of the day it is, well, bland. 

On the other hand I remember the old pre-Vatican II funeral Mass where flowers were removed from the altar, clergy wore black vestments, and the coffin, surrounded by orange candles in black stands, lay before the closed gates of the sanctuary as the organist sang (in Latin, thankfully):

Day of wrath and doom impending,

David’s word with Sibyl’s blending,

Heaven and earth in ashes ending.

O what fear man’s bosom rendeth,

When from heaven the Judge descendeth,

On whose sentence all dependeth. 

Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth,

Through earth’s sepulchers it ringeth,

All before the throne it bringeth. 

Death is struck, and nature quaking,

All creation is awaking,

To its Judge an answer making.

Lo, the book exactly worded,

Wherein all hath been recorded,

Thence shall judgment be awarded.

When the Judge His seat attaineth,

And each hidden deed arraigneth,

Nothing unavenged remaineth.

What shall I, frail man, be pleading?

Who for me be interceding

When the saints are mercy needing?

It was a pretty frightful scene.  The deceased stood at the gates of judgment awaiting sentence for a lifetime of crime.  Actually, to the ten year old I was at the time I first heard it,  it was sort of fun—like mixing Church and Halloween. 

Of course there are those who see everything in terms of the “four last things”—death, judgment, heaven and hell.  And I think we need to keep those four last things in mind daily but I don’t think our faith in the Resurrection of Christ—and our resurrection in him—should be obscured in any way by a view of God that seems ultimately to be a judge and we as standing at his tribunal.  Jesus “doesn’t go there” in the Gospels.  (The closest is the Last Judgment in Matthew 25 and it has a far more balanced tone.)  But there are Catholics who do see things that way, in fact there are Christians who see things that way, but it is ultimately more a matter for some collaboration between one’s spiritual director and one’s mental health worker. 

Frankly, however, I have had enough of this happy-clappy Christianity that has taken the teeth of out discipleship.  In regards to the rituals surrounding death I think we need some further reform to focus us on the solid   questions with which our faith presents us.  It may be more a matter of ritual than homiletics—though I find most funeral sermons to be appallingly saccharine and theologically uncommitted.  Father Scalia, as I pointed out in a previous post, struck just the right balance in the sermon at his father’s funeral.  I think there needs to be more gravitas in our funeral liturgy, a less pallid explanation of what it means for the individual to come face to face with God—not in fear of condemnation, but in the honest self-appraisal of the particular judgment.  A liturgy must not obscure the truth about what we celebrate and the truth is that in death we come face to face with God and that encounter strips away all our lies and myths and self-deceit as we come to see ourselves with the same brutal honesty with which God sees us.  In this encounter we never forget the key truth that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son that whoever believes in him will not perish but will have eternal life, but neither can we be flip about what will be the most profound moment of our existence.