Apostolic Constitution ‛Anglicanorum Coetibus’ released

The Apostolic Constitution on a Personal Ordinariate for Anglicans coming into full communion with in the Roman Catholic Church has now been released. The key passage for Prayer Book enthusiasts is this:

Without excluding liturgical celebrations according to the Roman Rite, the Ordinariate has the faculty to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and the other Sacraments, the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical celebrations according to the liturgical books proper to the Anglican tradition, which have been approved by the Holy See, so as to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared.

However, it does not say what rites will be approved, beyond the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite of the Mass, and the Book of Divine Worship currently in use in the United States. The Sarum Use? The Prayer Book, with or without the Black Rubric and the Thirty-Nine Articles? My questions, I must confess, are not answered by this document.

Anglo-Catholics here in the UK will not, as a general rule, mind this very much. Stripped of alternative Episcopal oversight, and believing that women priests and bishops do not actually have any sacramental powers, they really don't have a lot of choice.

Most are unware of the riches in the Anglican tradition that this blog and my website are about, and are comfortable with the New Rite (Ordinary Form) of Mass. The lack of the 1662 Prayer Book, which many regard as the beginning of the process that has led to the Hobson's Choice they face today anyway, is hardly going to matter to them.

Meanwhile, a prayer for guidance for all of us.

GOD, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men: that thou wouldest be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations. More especially, we pray for the good estate of the Catholick Church; that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life.

The picture shows St Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604), who revitalised British Christianity by building stronger connections with Rome.

The anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

Daily Telegraph blogger India Lenon writes about the fall of the Berlin Wall, twenty years ago today.

It's her twentieth birthday today, and she reflects on the fact that for her generation, Communism seems as remote as Kaiser Bill. It is ancient history, and Communists are empty-headed student radicals who will eventually grow up to be accountants.

Last December, Miss Lenon's fellow Telegraph blogger Gerald Warner listed some of Cuba's 'achievements" as a Communist country today. Warner wrote:

During his “five decades of resilience, progress, allegiance to peace and social equality”, Castro has executed 16,000 people and imprisoned more than 100,000 in labour camps. The Western media are greatly exercised about Guantanamo; but few have heard of Kilo 5.5, Pinar del Rio, Kilo 7, the Capitiolo (for children up to age 10) and the other camps that compose Castro’s gulag. Two million Cubans have by now rejected the resilience and progress of Castro’s revolution and more than 30,000 have died trying to escape.

Plenty of countries are still Communist, like Cuba, China, North Korea and Burma (once an Imperial paradise).

Other countries simply reflect key aspects of Communism: the transfer of power from the people to an unaccountable political Elite; the pitting of socio-economic groups against each other, fostering dissatisfaction and resentment; the coercive regulation of the economy, personal and sexual relationships, and decisions of life and death; and of course an extreme antipathy towards and fear of traditional religion, especially Christianity. I'll leave you to think of some.

GOD is our ' hope and ' strength : a very ' present ' help in ' trouble.
2. Therefore will we not fear, though the ' earth be ' moved : and though the hills be carried ' into the ' midst of the ' sea;

3. Though the waters thereof ' rage and ' swell : and though the mountains ' shake at the ' tempest ' of the ' same.
4. The rivers of the flood thereof shall make glad the ' city of ' God : the holy place of the ' tabernacle ' of the most ' Highest.

5. God is in the midst of her, therefore shall she ' not be re' moved : God shall ' help her, and ' that right ' early.
6. The heathen make much ado, and the ' kingdoms are ' moved : but God hath shewed his voice, and the ' earth shall ' melt a'way.
(2nd pt) 7. The Lord of ' hosts is ' with us : the God of ' Jacob ' is our ' refuge.

8. O come hither, and behold the ' works of the ' Lord : what destruction he hath ' brought up'on the ' earth.
9. He maketh wars to cease in ' all the ' world : he breaketh the bow, and knappeth the spear in sunder, and burneth the ' chariots ' in the ' fire.

10. Be still then, and know that ' I am ' God : I will be exalted among the heathen, and I will be ex'alted ' in the ' earth.
11. The Lord of ' hosts is ' with us : the God of ' Jacob ' is our ' refuge.

Glory be to the Father, and ' to the ' Son : and ' to the ' Holy ' Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ' ever ' shall be : world without ' end. ' A'men.

(Psalm at Mattins today, Day 9)

For I will yet give him thanks, which is the help of my countenance

Among the Psalms at Evensong today (Day 8) is Psalm 43, Judica Me. Prior to the Reformation, this Psalm would be read before the Mass, as a Psalm of preparation for service at the altar.

O send out thy light and thy truth, that they may lead me : and bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy dwelling.
And that I may go unto the altar of God, even unto the God of my joy and gladness : and upon the harp I will give thanks unto thee, O God.

It is in fact one with the previous Psalm, Quemadmodum, "Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks", and is a Psalm of unquiet and distress; yet each time, it is the Hill of Zion, the place where Solomon built the Temple of the Lord, which brings comfort and solace.

Why art thou so heavy, O my soul : and why art thou so disquieted within me?
O put thy trust in God : for I will yet give him thanks, which is the help of my countenance, and my God.

The word Eucharist comes from the Greek meaning "to give thanks". In all the debates about Christ's presence in the sacrament, and its sacrificial nature, the element of thanksgiving can get a little lost. But as Joseph Barber Lightfoot (1828-1889) said,

Thanksgiving is the crown of Christian worship; thanksgiving is the purpose for which the Church exists. The glory, which redounds to God through the thanksgiving of His people, is the ultimate end and aim of their being. The thankful heart, the thankful lips, the thankful life, these alone fulfil the purpose for which they were created.

So important is thanksgiving, says Bishop Lightfoot, that

To the highest act of Christian worship, to the service which links us most closely with our Lord, the Holy Communion of His Body and Blood, she has given, as its proper right, the title of thanksgiving, Eucharist; thanksgiving for God's gift of His only-begotten, thanksgiving for the sacrifice upon the Cross, thanksgiving for our participation in that sacrifice, for our cleansing and sanctification through the shedding of that blood.

Uniquely, the traditional Prayer Books place the Gloria in excelsis Deo at the end of the service, not near the beginning; but for Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), this was a very happy notion on Thomas Cranmer's part.

It is the last word in the Sacrament, "this is a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving," and the whole text resolves into laudatium Deum ['praising God'], and not to praise Him alone, but to praise Him with this hymn of Angels. Now being to praise Him with the Angels' hymn, it behoves to be in or as near the state of Angels as we can; of very congruity to be in our very best state, when they and we to make but one choir. And when are we so? If at any time, at that time when we have newly taken the holy Sacrament of His blessed Body and most precious Blood — when we come fresh from it.

"In that one eucharistic service" said Lightfoot in summary "we gather up, as it were, all special thanksgivings for all special mercies, we fulfil the apostolic injunction, 'Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.' The transcendent mercy of Christ's death on the Cross, which we set forth in that Holy Sacrament, unites, harmonizes, illumines, glorifies all lesser mercies which we owe to God's goodness."

Keep thy household in continual godliness

Our Collect (for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity) is a prayer for the Church as the Household of Faith.

LORD, we beseech thee to keep thy household the Church in continual godliness; that through thy protection it may be free from all adversities, and devoutly given to serve thee in good works, to the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

In Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Fanny Price waxes lyrical over the image of household prayers in the chapel at Sotherton Hall (possibly Stoneleigh Abbey, pictured), a practice by her time discontinued.

"It is a pity," cried Fanny, "that the custom should have been discontinued. It was a valuable part of former times. There is something in a chapel and chaplain so much in character with a great house, with one's ideas of what such a household should be! A whole family assembling regularly for the purpose of prayer is fine!"

Mary Crawford is unaware that Fanny's cousin Edmund, for whom Mary has a decided liking, is training for the clergy.

"Very fine, indeed!" said Miss Crawford, laughing. "It must do the heads of the family a great deal of good to force all the poor housemaids and footmen to leave business and pleasure, and say their prayers here twice a-day, while they are inventing excuses themselves for staying away."

"That is hardly Fanny's idea of a family assembling," said Edmund. "If the master and mistress do not attend themselves, there must be more harm than good in the custom."

The same point was made by Hugh Blair (1718-1800) of public figures in England. "I must ask such persons, how they can expect that religious assemblies will be long respected by the lower ranks of men, if by men of rank and education they are discountenanced and forsaken?"

The national Church is the chapel of the national Household, and the discountenancing of the discipline of 'family' prayers, by politicians and in some ways by churchmen, has done far more harm than good. Of course, not everyone thinks so. Mary Crawford gaily prattled on, thinking she was impressing Edmund with her urban cynicism.

Every body likes to go their own way — to choose their own time and manner of devotion. The obligation of attendance, the formality, the restraint, the length of time — altogether it is a formidable thing, and what nobody likes.

That was not, however, an opinion welcome to Edmund, nor to "my dear Dr. Johnson" as Jane called the great Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).

That religion may be invigorated and diffused, it is necessary that the external order of religion be diligently maintained, that the solemnities of worship be duly observed, and a proper reverence preserved for tbe times and the places appropriated to piety. The appropriations of time and place are indeed only means to the great end of holiness; but they are means without which the end cannot be obtained; and every man must have observed how much corruption prevails where the attention to public worship and to holy seasons is broken or relaxed.

On Sotherton and Stoneleigh, see "The Leighs: The Revelations of Stoneleigh" by Jon Spence, at the Jane Austen Society of Australia.

John Buchan: What a precious thing this England is (Remembrance Sunday)

Although Remembrance Day, the eleventh day of the eleventh month, does not fall until Wednesday this week, it is now usual to mark the nearest Sunday with special services and of course, the ceremony at the Cenotaph in London.

REMEMBER, O Lord, all those who have died the death of honour and are departed in the hope of resurrection to Eternal Life, especially the Officers, Men and Women of our Sea, Land and Air Forces, to whom it was given to lay down their lives for the cause of Freedom and Justice. In that place of light, whence sorrow and mourning are far vanished, give them rest, O Lord, the Lover of Men. Grant this for Thine only Son, Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

The First World War is largely overshadowed today by the evil regimes of the Nazis and the Communists. But it is no exaggeration to say that it shattered Europe, and tested her faith. Indeed, it can be seen as perhaps the direct cause of these two hateful political ideologies gaining traction, because of the depressive effect of so much loss of life, the damage done to economic, social and industrial infrastructure, and the vengeful terms exacted of Germany under the armistice.

In Mr Standfast, John Buchan (1875-1940, sometime Governor of Canada) sends his hero General Richard Hannay, whom you may recall from The Thirty-Nine Steps, undercover as a pacifist during the First world War. He did not find his assignment easy. "It was difficult to keep from sending them all to the devil, for their amateur cocksureness would have riled Job. One had got to batten down the recollection of our fellows out there who were sweating blood to keep these fools snug".

The best of the bunch was Launcelot Wake who, when he learnt that his friends harboured active traitors, felt the betrayal deeply. Hannay recorded,

'You may count on me,' he said, 'for this is black, blackguardly treason. But you know my politics, and I don't change them for this. I'm more against your accursed war than ever, now that I know what war involves.'

'Right-o,' I said, 'I'm a pacifist myself. You won't get any heroics about war from me. I'm all for peace, but we've got to down those devils first.'

The peace that Hannay wanted was not the "peace" of controlling others. He knew that, in Edmund Burke's words, a nation is not governed, that is perpetually to be conquered.

It was what the Pax Britannica has always been, the peace of liberty, and a peace that is mystically bound up with the landscape and history of England. It was early on in his adventures, before they truly started, that he had a kind of epiphany, a sudden knowledge of why he fought in His Majesty's army:

I had a vision of what I had been fighting for, what we all were fighting for. It was peace, deep and holy and ancient, peace older than the oldest wars, peace which would endure when all our swords were hammered into ploughshares. It was more; for in that hour England first took hold of me.

Before my country had been South Africa, and when I thought of home it had been the wide sun-steeped spaces of the veld or some scented glen of the Berg. But now I realized that I had a new home. I understood what a precious thing this little England was, how old and kindly and comforting, how wholly worth striving for. The freedom of an acre of her soil was cheaply bought by the blood of the best of us. I knew what it meant to be a poet, though for the life of me I could not have made a line of verse.

For in that hour I had a prospect as if from a hilltop which made all the present troubles of the road seem of no account. I saw not only victory after war, but a new and happier world after victory, when I should inherit something of this English peace and wrap myself in it till the end of my days.

The picture showing the red telephone box is of the hills around Lake Ullswater at Patterdale, Cumbria. By Mark J at Wikimedia Commons.

Motet: Os Justi Meditabitur

Today's Psalm at Evensong is Psalm 37, of which verses 31-32 were made into a wonderful a capella motet by Anton Bruckner. You can hear it in the YouTube video opposite, sung very nicely by the Regensburger Domspatzen.

OS justi meditabitur sapientiam, et lingua ejus loquetur judicium.
Lex Dei ejus in corde ipsius et non supplantabuntur gressus ejus. Alleluia.

The mouth of the righteous is exercised in wisdom : and his tongue will be talking of judgement.
The law of his God is in his heart : and his goings shall not slide.

This "Wisdom" Psalm is joined in today's readings by a chapter from the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach, in which we hear "Blessed is the man that hath not slipped with his mouth, and is not pricked with the multitude of sins", a strikingly similar sentiment.

Bishop Thomas Sherlock (1678-1761) writes of the wisdom that is from above:

And in the first chapter the Apostle [James] instructs us how to obtain it: If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all Men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him: But let him ask in faith. And soon after he shews us upon what grounds his advice stands: Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

Mark Frank: a Marian spirituality of prayer and sacrament

Mark Frank (1613-1664, biography here) complains of "a new generation of wicked men" after the English Reformation, who talk down Mary, "who because the Romanists make little less of her than a goddess, they make not so much of her as a good woman".

By considering and laying all these points together, we shall both vindicate the blessed Virgin's honour, as well from all superstitious as profane abuses, and ourselves from all neglect of any duty to the mother of our Lord,— one so highly favoured and blessed by him, whilst we give her all that either Lord or Angel gave her; but yet dare not give her more.

Frank goes on to list her honours: Star of the Sea (quoting Bede); Hill of Zion, wherein God dwelt among his People; Mother of God (which he regards the highest); Our Lady. He makes her a type of the soul, spouse of Christ, the soul visited by angels and God in the chamber of the heart. In our private devotions, however "reformed", each of us is an image of Our Lady, and our prayers are the deeper and our love the stronger for feeling it.

Like "the Lady Mother of our Lord", in our secret chamber we know, we feel the triple blessing,

peace, and grace, and blessedness; that heaven was now at peace with us; grace was thence coming down apace, heaven's doors set open, and the very blessedness of heaven clearly now propounded and proffered to us.

Within, we too hear Ave, "Eva spelled backwards; all Eve's ill spun web unravelled, undone, rolled backward by the conception of this blessed Virgin here foretold; temporal and eternal woes taken all away; nothing but joy and salvation to us if we will hear it with the blessed Virgin and accept it." As "the Lord is with thee", so with us more and more by prayer. And never more so, than in the Blessed Sacrament.

There he is strangely with us, highly favours us, exceedingly blesses us; there we are all made blessed Marys, and become mothers, sisters, and brothers of our Lord, whilst we hear his word, and conceive it in us; whilst we believe him who is the Word, and receive him too into us. There angels come to us on heavenly errands, and there our Lord indeed is with us; and we are blessed, and the angels hovering all about to peep into those holy mysteries, think us so, call us so.

There graces pour down in abundance on us,—there grace is in its fullest plenty,—there his highest favours are bestowed upon us,—there we are filled with grace, unless we hinder it, and shall hereafter in the strength of it be exalted into glory—there to sit down with this blessed Virgin and all the saints and angels, and sing praise, and honour, and glory, to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for ever and ever.

Frank addresses no prayers to Mary. He does not "rob God of His honour and bestow it on her", as Anthony Stafford (1587-1645) put it. All this, without one word repudiating our history, our culture, our Divines, our English Reformation.

The EU President and the Church of England

Honestly, I don't get commission for linking to John Richardson's blog, and in fact so far as I know he isn't even a Comfortable Words regular. But he keeps posting really arresting topics.

This time it is the attention grabbing, "Goodbye Church of England, Hello Church of Europe".

Mr Richardson points to Archbishop's Cranmer's somewhat reluctant admission that on his ecclesiology, Nero was the Head of the Church in Rome because he was the Head of State at the time. It was therefore as rightful Head of the Church that Nero executed St Paul, and Mary I executed Cranmer.

On this model, now that our Queen has been trumped by the ghastly EU Commission and soon a new President, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England may be about to be Belgian economist Herman van Rompuy. He can, therefore, do as he pleases in destroying what little of the Church of England her own bishops have left standing.

Richardson also argues that by the same token, Barack Obama is Supreme Governor of the Episcopalian Church in America and, I take it, all other Anglican Churches there. Worse, the more 'orthodox' you are, the more this is true.

But actually, though I think Mr Richardson is right about Thomas Cranmer, I'm not sure he's right (and he doesn't address this question anyway) about the English Reformation as a whole.

My reading of Richard Hooker is that the relationship between Church and State is contractual. It depends in effect on the Coronation Oath - i.e., the Supreme Governor can be an RC (like James II) if he promises to uphold the CofE by law established. He can even be king by conquest, as the rather unattractive King William III was, if the people and Parliament agree, and if he takes the Oath in good faith. Lex regem facit, and all that. "The law maketh the king".

But if that law is dissolved, or not consonant with the positive demands of Scripture, or if the Coronation Oath is not taken or is taken insincerely, I'm not sure that the contract holds.

The Head of State must also have some traditionally English concept of ecclesiastical polity itself. Richard Hooker would surely not have recognised The Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, because his understanding of the relationship of Church and State was based on the Geneva Church, whose ecclesiastical polity Hooker explicitly rejected as alien to our historic legal system.

I'm not doubting, for one moment, that Cranmer's Erastianism leads just where Mr Richardson says. My understanding of Cranmer is that it probably does. But I'm deeply relieved to say that as far as I can see, it was not representative of the English Reformation. Phew.

Plainchant: Kyrie eleison

Plainchant remained the basic music of the Church of England long into the 17th century.

It was interrupted of course by the Interregnum which saw sacred music proscribed and organs smashed. But it revived at the Restoration, though musical books also included simple harmonised melodies by such 16th century composers as Thomas Tallis.

The video above is an interesting one for anyone interested in the Reformation. It is an enchanting Kyrie - just my sort of sacred music - such as we might find in the Litany, or at Mattins and Evensong:

Kyrie eleison (Lord have mercy),
Christe eleison (Christ have mercy),
Kyrie eleison.

But from a (rather kill-joy) Reformation perspective it has serious problems.

First, it has been "troped". Troping is the insertion of extra lines of text, in this case telling us about Christ's birth from the Blessed Virgin.

Rex virginum, amator Deus Mariae decus, eleison.
Christe, Deus de Patre, homo natus Maria matre, eleison.
O Paraclite, obumbrans corpus Mariae, eleison.

O King of virgins, thou God, lover and honour of Mary, have mercy.
O Christ, Deus from thy Father, Man born of Mary thy mother, have mercy.
O Comforter, overshadowing the body of Mary, have mercy.

From a Reformer's point of view, "troping" is frowned on because it lengthens the service, involves the choir in ferreting about in choir books for today's variation, and opens to door to various abuses in the choice of text. Texts like this are called laudes or versus, examples of the "multitude of Responds, Verses" of which Cranmer complained. The Roman Catholic Council of Trent (1545-1563) also suppressed many additional chanted texts.

Second, this Kyrie has several long melismas, i.e. runs of notes set to one syllable. Cranmer himself disapproved of this practice, and it remained usual to set one note to each syllable of a word, not infrequently producing a rather unexciting result. In this example, the melismas are not all that extended and they are kept very simple, but they are there.

Third, it is in Greek, with Latin tropes. This is not such a problem today in the sense that we have a more literate public and cheap printing, so translations are readily available; but once again, too much of it and we end up again with a situation in which "to turn the book only was so hard and intricate a matter, that many times there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out".

Finally, it has for some lines been harmonised with a simple pedal bass note like the ison in Byzantine chant, adding a mystery and ecstasy all its own without detracting from the clarity of the diction. So far as I know, there is no reason to object to this, which is good because I personally think it takes this beautiful chant to another, higher level.

Without a shared moral code, there can be no free society

November, so Thomas Hood (1799-1845) would have it, is a dismal month.

No mail — no post
No news from any foreign coast —
No park — no ring — no afternoon gentility
No company — no nobility —

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member —
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!

Economist and Sky News journalist Jeff Randall gave us a contemporary twist on this today, by headlining a superb article on the downfall of our society, "No respect, no morals, no trust - Welcome to modern Britain". How telling, that the religious authority he quotes is the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks.

Parliamentary reform and financial re-regulation will treat the symptoms, not the cause. Without conscience there can be no trust. Without a shared moral code there can be no free society. Either we recover the moral sense or we will find, too late, that in the name of liberty, we have lost our freedom.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) said much the same, warning that politicians are short-termist, "like the husbandman who mows down the heads of noisome weeds, instead of pulling up the roots". Or as William Wilberforce (1759-1833) reminded us,

The distemper of which, as a community we are sick, should be considered rather as a moral than a political malady. How much has this been forgotten by the disputants of modern times!

If only our leading Christian clergy would abandon their futile trust in politicians and secular political theory, and return instead to that shared moral code of which the Chief Rabbi speaks here.

But November is not wholly bleak. O2continuum has a very thoughtful post today about the Collects of the 1979 Prayer Book, in which he argues that the month climaxes with the Feast of Christ the King, having painted with each passing Sunday a more detailed picture of our Everlasting Rest. Anglo-Catholics using the New Roman Rite and Calendar will appreciate this.

Unfortunately, this very attractive notion does not work with the 1662 Book, which has quite different Collects throughout the month, and ends with "Stir Up" Sunday (named after the opening words of the Collect) for the last Sunday before Advent, as it was in the old Tridentine Rite.

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer, of course, closely follows the Old Roman Rite and Calendar. To me, though, that is a matter of such enduring comfort that I confess it eclipses all else. Our English Prayer Book belongs among those ancient Liturgies that share a common tradition and ancient heritage: it belongs on the other side of that line between the old ways of worship and the new.

Nor is all lost, in regard to Sunday symbolism. Stir Up Sunday is the day on which to get stirring up your Christmas pudding ingredients. That's something to look forward to.