Foundations of the Church of England CXIV

The Lady Chapel at
Chichester Cathedral

Well, back to what is becoming my magnum opus.  Before we move on from the Stuart Age I would like to look briefly at the flowering of Anglican spirituality epitomized in a group of writers collectively referred to as the “Caroline Divines.”  They get that moniker because they are generally considered to include Anglican writers extending from the reign of Charles I through the Commonwealth (where they were in disfavor) to the reign of Charles II.  (Carolus, is the Latin for Charles, and Caroline here is not a proper name but an adjective designating the time frame from 1625 (accession of Charles I) until 1685 (demise of Charles II), though it really can be extended through the brief reign of Charles II’s brother, James II which ended with his deposition during the Glorious Revolution in 1688. 

We have already looked at Lancelot Andrews, Bishop of Chichester and later Bishop of Winchester as well as Dean of the Chapel Royal.  Andrewes defended the doctrine of the Real Presence (though he rejected Transubstantiation) claiming that after the bread is consecrated (his word) it is no longer bread in a natural sense.   Bishop Andrews considered it somewhat blasphemous to examine too closely the “how” of Christ’s Eucharist Presence, comparing it to the mystery of the Incarnation where Divinity and Humanity are united in one Person. 

Andrews used terms such as “sacrifice” and “altar” in referring to the Holy Communion and to the table on which it was celebrated.  His private chapel was fitted out with silver candlesticks, a censer, and five copes among other High Church paraphernalia. But he wasn’t just another High-Church dilettante who liked smoke and to play dress up.  He was a profound preacher who could stir his audience with both piety and theological precision.  He is most famous, however for his book of private prayers (Preces Privatae).  Here is an example, his night prayer. 

"Let me think upon thy Name in the night season, and keep thy law: let the evening prayer go up unto Thee, and thy pity come down unto us, O Thou which givest songs in the night, which makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to praise Thee, which givest thy beloved wholesome sleep."

Or this in his old age

"Gotten past the day I give Thee thanks, O Lord. The evening draweth nigh: make it bright. There is an evening, as of the day, so also of life: the evening of life is old age: old age hath overtaken me: make it bright. Cast me not off in the time of age: forsake me not when my strength faileth. Abide with me, O Lord, for even now it is towards evening with me, and the day is far spent of this travailling life. Let thy strength be perfected in my weakness."

It’s a little baroque for my personal taste, but there is a depth of deep piety in the prayers and it echoes both the scripture and profound mystery appreciated by the best of Catholic writers of the period. 

We also looked at Nicholas Ferrar and the pious household of his extended family at Little Gidding.   For me, Little Gidding is the proof being in the pudding of Anglican Spirituality in the seventeenth century.  We see people taking their faith seriously and grace welling up from deep within the soul to become charity for one’s neighbor.  For over thirty years from 1626 and long beyond Ferrar’s death, the community at Little Gidding was marked by lives of deep prayer and practiced charity among the locals.  The Ferrar household prayed the daily offices of the Church of England, kept the fasts, and maintained at least one person in prayer in the ancient church they had restored on the property while at the same time seeing to the education of local children and providing health services for the local population. 

A close friend of Ferrar was the Church of England priest, George Herbert, the noted metaphysical poet.  Herbert gave up a promising career in politics to be ordained and took a parish near Salisbury where his fervent devotion expressed itself both in worship and in the pastoral care of the people entrusted to his cure.  Much of his poetry has been set to music, both as hymns and anthems, and is still sung in the Church today.  He died quite young—aged 39—in 1633, worn out by his labors.  Here is one of his poems which echoes the doctrine of the Dark Night of Saint John of the Cross. 

When my devotions could not pierce


Thy silent ears; 


Then was my heart broken, as was my verse: 


My breast was full of fears 


And disorder:



My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow, 


Did fly asunder:


Each took his way; some would to pleasures go, 


Some to the wars and thunder 


Of alarms. 



As good go any where, they say,


As to benumb 


Both knees and heart, in crying night and day, 


Come, come, my God, O come, 


But no hearing.



O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue 


To cry to thee, 


And then not hear it crying! all day long 


My heart was in my knee, 


But no hearing. 



Therefore my soul lay out of sight,


Untuned, unstrung: 


My feeble spirit, unable to look right,


Like a nipped blossom, hung 


Discontented.



O cheer and tune my heartless breast, 


Defer no time; 


That so thy favors granting my request,


They and my mind may chime, 


And mend my rime.

These are only a few of the examples of the deep piety exhibited in the seventeenth-century Church of England.   They parallel the spiritual renaissance flowering in Catholic France at the same period—and indeed are paralleled by a number of English Catholic authors of the period such as Dom Augustine Baker.  We will look at several others in a future posting and they will provide a good foil against which we can examine the theological and spiritual decline of the Church in the eighteenth century, a spiritual bankruptcy that would deeply affect our American religious scene down to the present day.  

Destined for the Rise and the Fall of Many in Israel

Pope Francis meets with Sisters
from the LCWR: they came to
the Vatican, I understand, on a
Bus.  

Well Pope Francis called the dogs of war off the American nuns and that marks another watershed day in the history of the American Church as it is a clear sign that the JPII/Benedict XVI old guard is finished, at least for the length of this papacy.  There had been a mounting tension between the American Religious Women and the Holy See dating back to 1979 when Sister Teresa Kane publically addressed Pope John Paul on behalf of U.S. nuns and asked him to consider admitting women “to all the ministries of the Church.” This opened the question of ordaining women, a question John Paul was quick to put the kibosh on and which angered him and his Curia that it was even mentioned.  Pope John Paul had very definite ideas on the place of women in the Church and in particular on how religious women should conduct themselves.  While his understanding of the role of women in the Church actually marked a step—or several steps—beyond what up to then had been Church practice, it hardly fit our current cultural conviction that men and women are equal and should have equal access to responsibility in our world today.  (I choose the word “responsibility” as it is more consistent with gospel values than the word “power,” but I certainly mean power when I speak of responsibility in this context.) 

The changes in religious life, and especially the life of religious women, has been remarkable in the decades after Vatican II.  In following the Vatican II mandate to return to the charisms of their founders, many religious women have renounced the monastic practices that were imposed on them in the late 18^th and in the 19^th centuries, adopting modern dress, moving out of large convents and the quasi-monastic life required in that sort of environment, taking more personal responsibility for their finances, and revamping authority structures to be more collaborative than directive.  They live now not as semi-monastics but as consecrated lay women living according to the evangelical counsels and devoting themselves to the works of the Church.  Of course there are still monastic and contemplative communities, generally enclosed (cloistered) but that vocation is essentially different than that of Religious Sisters in Apostolic communities.  The monastic life too has, in most places, undergone some external change, but remains essentially focused on prayer and the common life.  If anything, the changes in Religious Life after Vatican II have permitted the Apostolic and the Contemplative vocations to more clearly differentiate themselves from each other and permitted women to make the appropriate choice according to the graces given to each person. 

Of course the changes in Religious Life have also empowered women to take responsibility for their own life and mission and this has been deeply troubling to those who favor the misogynist hierchical power structures for which the Catholic Church was once so famous.  The last thing burned-out or incompetent male clerics need is to have self-confident religious women around.  And let’s face it, if there is anything the experience of the Vatican troubling the American Sisters has shown us is that the rank and file Catholics still love the nuns while the good folk in the pews are more reserved in their affection and respect for the clergy.  In 1995 the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of the Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life (once known as the Congregation for Religious) divided out the more “traditional” religious communities of women from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (originally known as Conference of Major Superiors of Women) and established for the more compliant nuns The Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious.  This left two distinct groupings of American Sisters.  About 80% of American Sisters belong to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. 

The LCWR’s problems began in earnest early in the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI when the Congregation of Institutes of the Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life announced a “visitation” of American Sisters belonging to the LCWR affiliated communities.  This was supposedly “for their own good” to see why they weren’t getting the vocations they had once garnered in the 1960 vocational heyday.  The problem obviously was that most of the good sisters weren’t properly veiled and they were living in apartments and had drivers’ licenses—oh, and minds of their own, and used them.  A moving factor behind the original investigation was that nemesis of change, our own beloved Cardinal Burke who, at the time, was a member of the Congregation of Institutes of the Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life.  (I am getting tired of typing and retyping that title—from here on out CICLSAL.)   Mother Mary Clare Millea, a Canon Lawyer and the Superior General of the Congregation of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (a community belonging to the Conference of Major Superiors of Women) was put in charge of the visitation.  This—it was thought—would be like putting Ted Cruz in charge of investigating Hillary Clinton’s campaign.  But guess what—it became clear that under the microscope of Mother Mary Clare, the Sisters of the LCWR looked just fine!!!  That wouldn’t do.  So stage II kicked in and Cardinal William Levada, an American who at the time was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (at one time known as “The Holy Roman Inquisition” and the most powerful of the Roman dicasteries) announced that the CDF was going to do a doctrinal investigation of the LCWR because they good Sisters were writing a lot of heresy and spreading false doctrines in their various ministries.  As if they had not learned with Galileo—some people just never learn.  Levada is not Torquemada and was only the front man for a cabal of the truly evil: Cardinal Burke (again!), Cardinal Law (the disgraced Archbishop of Boston whose intransience about a fictional princely immunity kicked off the sex-abuse scandal in the American Church), Archbishop Lori of Baltimore (a slimy sycophant of a prelate if there ever was one—you don’t want to know how he got where he got) and their bankrolling stooge, Carl Anderson, Grand Poobah of the Knights of Columbus whose generosity to Vatican causes with other people’s money has given him great influence in the hallowed halls of the pre-Francisco Reform Vatican Bank.  (Just mentioning these boys makes me want to take a shower.)  Well, the pyre was well on its way to being completed when Pope Benedict surprised the world with his retirement and within a month many things had begun to change.  Within a few months of his election, Pope Francis was addressing the Religious from Latin America and he said, in obvious reference to the North American nuns:

They will make mistakes, they will make a blunder [meter la pata], this will pass! Perhaps even a letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine (of the Faith) will arrive for you, telling you that you said such or such thing... But do not worry. Explain whatever you have to explain, but move forward... Open the doors, do something there where life calls for it. I would rather have a Church that makes mistakes for doing something than one that gets sick for being closed up...

Clear enough? One would think.  But just because Petrus locutus est doesn’t mean Roma locuta est, as is becoming increasingly clear in so many ways with top Cardinals publicly disagreeing with a reigning pontiff—something that hasn’t happened in a century and a half.  Ten months later, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, current Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, made it clear that the heat was still on the good Sisters.  And then this past Thursday, suddenly, the Vatican said, in tones reminiscent of Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella on SNL, “never mind.”  There, gone. Poof.  Just like that.  Oh yes, there’s a new sheriff in town—or to put it more biblically for Law, Lori, Burke, Anderson and co: there came a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. 

As if that wasn’t enough news for one day, on Friday Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop emeritus of Chicago, passed to his eternal reward.  May God be good to him.  I will do a posting on his someday soon.  He was not a bad man, he certainly was not princely (or princessly) as some other prelates chose to be, but he represented that return to hierarchal autocracy that we witnessed during the reigns of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  It will be interesting to see that now that Chicago no longer has a living Cardinal, if the new Archbishop, Blase Cupich, will be given a red hat in the next consistory.  Of course, Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput’s predecessor, Cardinal Rigali turns 80 next Tuesday, freeing up another possible red hat.  Cupich and Chaput are cut from very different cloth.  Chaput, despite his Capuchin/Franciscan background is more of the sort of silk popular in Benedict’s papacy; Cupich, a diocesan priest, is more of the Franciscan homespun.  Yes, it’s true: the Religious take the vow of poverty and the diocesan priests live it.  I have seen it all before.  For the best food and wines, the friars and monks will guide the way. But I digress.  The Red Hat contest is further complicated by the fact that Francis will be the guest of Chaput in September for the World Meeting of Families.  Under the two previous popes, such hospitality was usually acknowledged by a cardinal’s hat for the hosting prelate.  But Francis is quite unpredictable.  Nevertheless, it would be perceived as a snub for Cupich to get the hat and Chaput not, after Chaput had organized the September event.  In the meantime, poor Bill Lori is still sporting a green galero on his coat of arms. I am going to be surprised if that changes in this papacy.  And disappointed.  

Grace or Infection: Making the New Mass Look Old

The New Liturgical Movement and
the New Old New Mass 

Not all of the Katholique Krazies (I know, the spelling keeps evolving—English is, after all, a living language unlike Old Church Slavonic or its Western equivalent) are careless in their appropriation of catholicitatis antiquae.  One of the better sites—an often serious academic investigation of liturgical history though directed towards a bat****crazy agenda—is “New Liturgical Movement.”  An intriguing assortment of scholars, professional and amateur, covering a wide range of topics from the Ambrosian Rite to Sacred Architecture regularly post meticulously researched articles aimed at stemming the tide of the Novus Ordo and restoring credibility to the usus antiquior.  I regularly read their postings—not because I agree with their agenda of Instaurare Omnia in Vanitate, but because, well because they are worth reading from a historical point of view.  The interpretation of historical data can be skewed towards their particular agenda, but the data itself is fascinating.  But I was a bit taken aback by a recent posting that implied that the “Ordinary Form” of the Liturgy is somehow in need of a strong infusion of spirituality as was found in the golden days of yore when the 1570 Rite was the ordinary rite and before we surrendered to all this vulgar tongue and even more vulgar guitars and more vulgar yet, women on the altar, and all the other abominations brought about by that detestable crypto-Freemason, Annibale Bugnini.  (By the way, I notice that New Liturgical Movement not only keeps women off the sanctuary but off their editorial board.  Hmmm,  that’s the problem you know: first the editorial board and then altar girls and who knows where it ends up.  The Church of England began its steady decline into post-modern Witchery when they started to let women serve on vestries.) 

In any event, I can’t quite figure out what the folks over at New Liturgical Movement mean by “spirituality” in this context. I used to teach courses in spirituality back in the day.  Admittedly it was the classic Catholic approach—monastic spirituality, John of the Cross, the devotio moderna,  17^th century French Spirituality—you know, the usual diet.  I think what they are speaking about is not spirituality proper, but piety.  There is a difference, one that unfortunately is not often covered in seminary classes leaving many priests to confuse the two.  Now, piety is not a bad thing; to the contrary.  But it is not spirituality.

I always over-simplified it to my students until they could get a sense of it for themselves from reading the texts, as: Spirituality marks the relationship of God with the person in which God takes the initiative and invites the person into relationship and sustains the person in that relationship by God’s grace.  Piety, which comes from the Latin pietas, meaning our duty towards our deities, our parents, our mentors and others who have guided us through our formative years or who otherwise have a claim over us, piety marks the relationship of the person to God in which the person, inspired by grace, takes the initiative and seeks a deeper relationship to God.   Though I never used this image in class, it is somewhat like who does the leading when we dance.  Now piety is often the foundation on which God builds the relationship we call spirituality, though piety can easily become short-circuited and engender religious feelings without the genuine sort of conversion God works in us through spirituality. 

So back to the New Liturgical Movement and its suggestions how to infuse the New Liturgy with Old Time “Spirituality.”  Some of my favorite suggestions are:

1.   Wear the maniple and biretta, and the cope for processions or the Asperges/Vidi Aquam. 

2.   be sure to lower your gaze so not as to make eye contact with the people when greeting them with “the Lord be with you” and other liturgical greetings.

3.   Stand at the altar with your back towards the congregation, the ad absidem position. 

4.   Add all the old offertory prayers silently alongside the current rite (also to be done silently) as a “private devotion.” 

5.   Recite the Canon (Roman of course) is a “more subdued voice.”  A footnote suggests that it might even be said inaudibly 

6.   Bend noticeably over the host and chalice when reciting the Words of Consecration and recite them slowly and deliberately so as to give them “due metaphysical weight.”

7.   Omit the sign of peace which is, after all, optional (again, we don’t want too much intimacy with the folk—nothing destroys spirituality like other people)

8.   Hold one’s thumbs and forefingers together from the consecration to the ablutions

9.   Omit the prayer of the faithful whenever possible. 

10.                 Use only the Roman Canon, mentioning all of the saints and using the “through Christ our Lord conclusions. 

11.                 Say the prayer “Placeat tibi” or the Prologue of John’s Gospel (the “last gospel” of the TLM) as a “community devotion” at the end of Mass. 

While such practices may increase a certain piety in the liturgical celebrations, I am not sure, given the difference between piety and spirituality, how all this relates to “spirituality.” The article’s author, Professor Peter Kwasniewski of Wyoming Catholic College, claims

Since the usus antiquior preserves in a specially intense way the theology and piety of many centuries of faith, a judicious emulation or adoption from it of elements of holiness and “good form” will make a real difference in the devotion of the celebrant and the ensuing fruitfulness of the Mass.

I can’t disagree that the usus antiquior preserves the theology and piety of many centuries of faith, but that is no guarantee that it will bring about an increase of holiness for either the priest-celebrant or the faithful attending.  I have no doubt that the faithful attending a devoutly celebrated TLM can benefit from the graces thereof, but I have seen no convincing evidence that there is either a quantitative or qualitative superiority of the graces bestowed in one rite over the other. 

Certainly Professor Kwasniewski’s suggestions go back to the Liturgy as theatrical performance model as his suggestions push the faithful to the edge of irrelevance to the Rite, something that might inspire a certain sense of awe but which would not normally be taken to result in a deepening of spirituality.   That sense of awe or mystery, taken for itself alone, remains a subjective experience which is not to say it could not be a channel of grace but it remains only piety.  I think this is the problem when people have not studied Christian spirituality sufficiently well and they confuse feelings of aesthetic pleasure of spiritual experience.  As I have often said before, go and see the last scene of Act 1 of Tosca and you will be transported to the seventh heaven with incense and chierichetti and copes and ombralline galore.  I confess that the “New Mass” is too often poorly celebrated with ugly churches, overly chatty priests, servers that show little attention to their duties, music that is banal at best, and people who come late, leave early, and show precious little interest in what is going on at the altar.  I don’t go to those churches and I don’t know why other people do.  But I am old enough to remember fly-specked altar clothes, albs with ripped lace, altar-servers who kept nudging one another to make each other laugh, a old lady with a chipped larynx warbling the Missa de Angelis from the choir loft, and a priest with last night’s whiskey still on his breath.  I know now that the old rite is so rarely done, few priests are still quite so casual about it, but why does it now have to reduce the celebration of the Mysterium Fidei to something akin to Les Ballets Trocadero de Monte Carlo?  No, the Novus Ordo doesn’t need to look to the Usus Antiquior for guidance.  It just needs to be done with an incarnational mixture of human authenticity and divine gravitas.