The Foundation of the Anglican Church III

The Image of Christ as Apollo

found in the Vatican Necropolis

beneath St Peter's Basilica.  The

rising sun is here used as a

symbol for the Resurrected

Christ.

Before we go on let me draw your attention to two aspects of Romano-British Christianity that bear note.  The first is a small point but could have some significant repercussions.  In my last posting, I used the illustration of an ancient church discovered in the archeological dig at Calleva Attrebatum, a Roman town on the site of modern Silchester in Hampshire.  What I found curious about this church is that while it runs on an east-west axis, the altar was at the western end, the doors at the eastern end.  I say this because there is always much discussion about how early churches were oriented, that is built facing eastward to that priest and people faced the rising sun as they celebrated the Eucharist.  This argument is used by those who want to reverse the altars in Catholic Churches and have the priest again face away from the people as was the usual custom before the Second Vatican Council.  Well, this ancient church could be a sort of fluke in the normal practice except that as I have noted in other blogs that deal with the “ad orientem” (facing eastward) issue, the practice was not followed at Rome where ancient churches can be found facing every direction of the compass.  Yes, the ancient churches of Rome face every direction of the compass except that Saint Peter’s Basilica and Saint John Lateran Basilica—two of the three Constantinian Basilica’s in Rome face westward. That does not seem to be a co-incidence given that they are such prominent churches built under imperial supervision. The argument, for St Peter’s, was always given that the terrain of the Vatican Hill gave the builders no choice in how to situate the church, but in fact Constantine had his builders level out the hill and built the basilica on top.  It could have  been built in an eastward position.  Moreover, while the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls—the third of the Constantinan basilicas in Rome and the “twin” to St. Peter’s—faces east, I was surprised on a recent visit to Rome to read in a museum display at Saint Paul’s that it too originally faced west.  Hmmm.  And now we find an ancient church in Roman Britain also facing west.  Could it be that these churches were built so that the bishop or priest standing at the altar faced, not the rear wall of the Church, but, looking over the altar, faced the east and the rising sun?  Was there a Roman peculiarity here of situating the priest—but not the faithful—to face the rising sun?  We do know that the custom in Rome up to at least the 11^th century was for the bishop or priest to stand behind the altar facing the people, not with his back to them.  A westward facing Church would permit the celebrant to face the rising sun while maintaining the Roman custom of facing the faithful over the altar.
Now, the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber in his book The Reform of the Roman Liturgy (Die Reform der römischen Liturgie)made the somewhat preposterous claim that in St. Peter’s and other westward facing churches, the people stood at the Eucharist facing eastward towards the open doors of the Church to greet the rising sun.  This means, that they would have stood with their backs to the priest and the altar for the Eucharistic Liturgy—a very strange position, especially if they believed that Christ became truly present in the Eucharist.  Gamber would have us believe that the faithful stood facing a symbol of Christ—the rising sun—while their backs were to his Real Presence in the Eucharistic Gifts?!?  Gamber was opposed to the liturgical reforms that followed the Council and his work is more a polemic undermining the Liturgy of Paul VI than it is a critical study of Liturgical history.  Jungmann and Dix still remain the better works for liturgical history.  Nevertheless, Gamber is often cited by those neo-traditionalists who want to restore the pre-conciliar rites, especially the ad apsidem position of the priest at the altar with his back to the people.    
What we do know about this small Roman church in Hampshire is that the altar was freestanding.  A somewhat more elaborate mosaicked square in the apse of the Church marks where the altar would have stood and like all other altars of the period it was square and free standing.  The priest presumably stood behind it in the Roman fashion facing the congregation and beyond them the rising sun. 
What is this importance of the rising sun?  We have wandered far from the topic of this chain of postings—the history of the Anglican Church but it is worth commenting on none the less.  The Eucharist was normally celebrated early in the morning—at dawn.  The ancient cultures were far more sensitive to the interplay of nature and religious faith and the liturgy expressed this.  From the beginning of the Christian cult the rising sun was a symbol of the Risen Christ.  In the catacombs of Rome, or rather in a Christian tomb in the necropolis beneath Saint Peter’s Basilica, one can see Christ depicted at the god Apollo whose chariot daily drew the sun on its arc across the sky.  The paradigmatic liturgy of the year—the great Vigil of Easter—was always timed so that the great prayer of Thanksgiving, the Eucharistic Prayer, was being sung at the moment that the morning sun, representing the Risen Christ, broke over the horizon.  Each Sunday, therefore, the liturgy was celebrated at dawn to continue the Easter celebration in the weekly Eucharist.  The Sunday Eucharist was seen—and still is—as the weekly renewal of the Easter Proclamation.  We moderns with our vigil Masses and our preference to lie abed on Sunday mornings with coffee and papers have lost that connection.  Anyway, let’s get back to British Christianity.   
My second point that I wanted to make regarding Christianity in Roman Britain is that is spawned a heresy.  Pelagius (c. 354- c.420) was a British monk who came to Rome at the end of the fourth century. (There is some possibility that he was from Brittany in France rather than from Britain but most sources believe he was British.)  Coming out of the very strict ascetic tradition of hiberno-british monasticism, he was a man of very severe temperament shocked by the moral laxity in Rome.  (He would have an absolute apoplectic seizure if he saw Rome today.)  He blamed this laxity on the influence of Augustine of Hippo—who was still alive—the distinguished North African bishop-theologian who determined the course of Western theology and is usually considered a rigorist, though not by Pelagius.  Pelagius was actually far more morally rigid than Augustine and he thought that Augustine’s emphasis on grace was simply a cop-out that let people blame God for their own moral failures.  “I committed perverse sexual acts because God didn’t give me the grace to resist,” or as Geraldine used to say “The devil made me do it.” 
Little of Pelagius’s writings have survived.  His name being associated with heresy, his once-extensive writings were destroyed early on.  We know what various councils such as the one Augustine called at Carthage in 418 claim he taught but Pelagius was not at that Council and had no opportunity to explain himself.  The Council of Diospolis in 415—at which he was present—heard him out and confirmed his orthodoxy.  From what little we do know, we probably should conclude that Pelagianism, the heresy named after him, is more of a caricature of his actual teaching than an accurate reflection.  Pelagianism says that the human person is capable of doing good moral acts independent of God’s grace.  This is a heretical position, but nowhere do we find that it is actually what Pelagius taught.  Being a strong Augustinian myself and having what might even be an overdeveloped appreciation for the mystery of Grace, I abhor Pelagianism which I see very much reflected in the shallow naiveté  of today’s happy-clappy Matthew Fox pseudo-Christianity.  Of course I think the morose and sullen pseudo-Catholicism of Michael Voris and Joseph Fessio is shot through and through with Jansenism, equally heretical and the moral opposite of Pelagianism. 
All this takes us far away from today’s topic, the development of the Ecclesia Anglicana but I did want to draw reader’s attention to the vitality of the Romano-British Church before we move onto its Celtic salvation and the Anglo-Saxon era.                

Fr. Guarnizo, Communion Controversy, and Janssens Redivivus

Cornelius Janssens, 1585-1638, Bishop of

Ypres and the theologian who gave us

Jansenism

I am a big Saint Augustine fan.  I get kidded about this all the time, but then so is Benedict XVI.  Most conservative church people are disciples of Thomas Aquinas but Saint Thomas is just far too liberal for either the Pope or myself.  I always hear people complain that Augustine is just too “obsessed with sin,” like there’s something wrong with talking about sin.  Pop Theologians like Matthew Fox—whom I shudder referring to as a “theologian,” even a”pop” one, make that claim all the time.   I wonder if they have ever read Augustine—I mean other than a quck glance through the Confessions.  I will admit that at first read, the Confessions does sound pretty negative—but only at first read.  (I had to read the Confessions for five different courses in grad school—and that was at a secular university!   That just shows to go you how influential Augustine is for Western Thought!  Think about that you ‘Religion on Tap’ people.)  But when you read Augustine in depth—really get to what he is saying—he is not talking about sin at all.  Augustine is the Doctor Gratiae—the Doctor of Grace.  Augustine is obsessed with Grace and he talks about sin only because sin is the foil against which grace is visible.  You can never understand God’s Mercy and Love if you don’t give serious consideration to the subject of sin.  All of which is prelude to the ongoing debacle of Marcel Guarnizo, the suburban DC priest who refused communion to a woman because she is, according to him, “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin.”  (That is a quote from the infamous canon 915 which is used (or abused) to justify withholding communion from a variety of people ranging from those who vote for pro-choice politicians to grieving lesbians.) 

      Cornelius Janssens (1585-1638) was the Flemish bishop of Ypres in the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium).  Janssens was of an easily irritable personality, given to fits of temper and moodiness.  He was withdrawn and suspicious by nature, inclined to see the negative side of things.  In other words, he wasn’t a lot of fun at parties, not that he tried to be or would even go them if he could help it. (I know some of my friends are going to say: “hmmm. We know someone like that"; ‘curmudgeonly’ is the word one friend in particular uses.)   Janssens despised the Jesuits and their scholastic theology (yes, in the old days Jesuits were conservative Thomists) preferring the patristic approach, and he was particularly fond of Saint Augustine. (Well, yes, the shoe may fit, though I am by no means the scholar.)  In any event, Janssens wrote his magnum opus,  Augustinus, a summary of Augustinian thought.  Now, nobody ever has been able to write a summary of Augustine’s thought—even Augustine (who tried).  Augustine was a prolific writer and his thought was constantly evolving.  At the end of his life he wrote his Retractions to try to systematize his thought, but even he failed.  His work is simply too broad both in volume and scope to be put in a nice coherent and consistent précis.  What Janssens did was to write a brilliant theological work reflecting his (Janssens’) thought with references to the great Doctor of the Western Church.  Unfortunately he went a bit overboard on some of his ideas and the work was condemned and put on the Index of Forbidden Books.  But that is not to say that it didn’t have influence.  It had huge influence as one might expect a forbidden book to have.  Without wanting to oversimplify, Janssens basically devised a Catholic variation on Calvin.  It was certainly not what Janssens intended to do, but his anthropology was so negative, that is to say that his understanding of human nature was so depraved, that it basically reduced the human person to a pawn in the hand of a Sovereign God who might or might not choose to save it with no regard to the individual’s will.   

     Janssens’ name was lent to a heresy that in all truth has gone even far beyond what the dyspeptic bishop would ever have taught.  It attracted notable adherents, not least of all Blaise Pascal,  Angelique Arnauld and the nuns of Port-Royal-des-Champs, the Abbé de Saint Cyran, and others.  The Jesuits were the opponents of this heresy.  Though condemned by the Pope in 1653, Jansenism persisted to infect French seminaries and religious establishments up through the time of the Revolution.  And it came to America—not with the Irish of the mid-nineteenth century as is commonly said (though the Irish Church indeed was, and is, infected with the heresy) but with many (I am not saying all) the French émigré priests who fled the Revolution in 1789 and helped build the American Church.  It is often said that the American home of this heresy is Mount Saint Mary’s, Emmitsburg, which was founded by émigré priests.  While this is a great over simplification, many priests of the Diocese of Arlington VA, a diocese known for (some) clergy with a very narrow and not necessarily authentic interpretation of Church teaching, have been educated there.  Many Washington priests also have studied there, though whether Marcel Guarnizo is an alumnus or not I do now know.  And—to be balanced—many really fine priests who are knowledgeable in the faith and pastorally sensitive men have studied there.  

       One of the keys to understanding the basic flaw in Jansenism is that it does not see the world—and its inhabitants—as existing within the love of God.  The world is seen as fallen and not redeemed—those whom God has chosen for salvation are saved out of the world, not in it.  Creation is fatally flawed and anything to do with creation is an impediment to grace.  This leaves us with a negative understanding of human sexuality.  Sexual relations, even within marriage, are tainted by human concupiscence. Jansenism would say that marriage gives a permissible forum for sexual relations if they are restricted to narrow conditions—they must, for example, be used (only for) procreation.  All sexual acts must be open to the possibility of procreation.  The unitive element of sexual relations—increasing the intimacy of the spouses through the mutual exchange of physical pleasure—is not a constitutive part of the marriage act—for Jansenists—and indeed is sinful other than as a byproduct of the procreative element.  And even as a byproduct of the procreative element, the taking of pleasure in sex is wrong.  This will give us a very distorted view of marriage—certainly one incompatible with the scriptural roots of our Christian faith, especially those found in the Hebrew (Old Testament) tradition.

       Given such a “theology” of human sexuality we can see why Jansenists and Catholics influenced by the Jansenist heresy, would believe that those who forgo marriage for remaining single (and, of course, chaste), and especially those who consecrate themselves to a celibate lifestyle, are spiritually superior to those who must accommodate themselves to the married life.  Thus the religious and the clergy are “higher” than the married laity in the hierarchy of holiness.  This delusion is particularly dangerous as we have seen in the recent sex-abuse crisis, not that there is anything wrong in celibacy but rather that such an attitude encourages a psychological state in which human sexuality is buried away in the remote corners of one’s self-awareness, leaving an individual open to a denial of reality.  (See Blog Entry: History in the Making, Sex Abuse Crisis—Let’s Stop Telling Lies,  5/20/2011)

The idea that a priest has a responsibility to “safeguard” the Eucharist against an unworthy reception is not of itself a Jansenist doctrine though it does reflect a Jansenist view of the state of a soul.  Jansenists were preoccupied with making those sorts of judgments about both themselves and others whereas the mainline mystical tradition in Catholicism takes a more moderate approach.  I am teaching a course on Saint Teresa of Avila this semester and I am struck by how often Teresa speaks of being “unworthy,” but also what role that unworthiness plays in her spiritual life.   A consistent theme in Saint Teresa is humility and  by humility Teresa explains that the more advanced a soul is in grace, the more aware it is of its own unworthiness of God’s favor, yet this unworthiness does not make it back off from God but only approach God with deeper gratitude.  Teresa would not approve of a person receiving Holy Communion in what our Catholic Tradition calls Mortal Sin but neither is she hung up on “worthiness” and “unworthiness” in approaching Christ.  In fact, Teresa would be deeply grieved by a person in serious sin rather than preoccupied about their receiving Holy Communion.  This is what I find disconcerting in the current question.  Aside from the priest’s spiritual attitudes in refusing Holy Communion, what is the spiritual condition of those who are so anxious to keep others whom they judge—wisely or not—to be “unworthy” of the Eucharist from receiving?  The priest in this case might not be ("might" being the operative word) infected by Jansenism, but the howling chorus of those justifying his actions would certainly seem to be.  When I read the local blogs—“An Archdiocese of Washington DC Catholic” and “Restore DC Catholicism”—I pick up a sense of Jansenist infection—not just in this question but looking back through their archives.  These “Catholic Bloggers”  remind me of Henri Brémond's judgment of the Jansenists: "Before penetrating into the depth of the mind Jansenism ruins the peace, condition of all true religion.  Before making converts it makes partisans, sectarians, whom it fatally severs from the mystical currents of their time."