Tag: Anglican use

The Anglican Use Mass

**Note: this is a long one and probably only exciting if you’re kind of a nerd and want to know about rites and ordinariates and such. I find all this fascinating!**

My last post on the Church of England was, I know, not the usual for this blog. But the new ordinariates are just so complicated that I thought you’d want some background explaining the context from which this all arose. Now we all know that the Church of England came from the Catholic Church (didn’t they all?), that there is great beauty in their traditions and liturgies, that there have been divisions from the beginning, and that these divisions have recently become so significant that many members have been returning to Rome after nearly 500 years.

Because of the age and beauty of the CofE liturgy, because it is so similar to the Catholic liturgy, and because of pastoral sensitivity, the Church in her wisdom has determined that former Anglicans shouldn’t be expected just to dive in to the Catholic melting pot and lose their particularly Anglican culture. Instead, she’s established the option of entering via the ordinariate. Distinct ordinariates have been established in different countries; so far, there’s one in England, Scotland, and Wales, one in the US and Canada (although Canada will be establishing its own soon), and one in Australia. I’m going to go ahead and refer to all three as “the Ordinariate,” by which I’ll mean any one of the three–as far as I know, the only distinction is regional, each being headed by a different ordinary but without any other real differences.

For a little more background, let’s talk for a minute about different rites in the Church. The Catholic Church is divided into two arms, the Western and the Eastern. The vast majority of Catholics (98%) are Roman Catholics, members of the Western Church whose liturgical language is Latin. The other two percent belong to different Eastern rites of the Church. There are 22 different Eastern rites (check them out here–very cool information). Each of these rites is completely in union with Rome; they have all the same doctrine as Roman rite Catholics but different liturgies and some different rules. For example, Eastern rite priests are permitted to be married. On the other hand, many Eastern rite churches require that the faithful abstain from meat throughout all of Lent. Nothing huge and nothing doctrinal.

Eastern rite Catholics are not the same as the Eastern Orthodox. The Eastern Orthodox are not in union with Rome; they don’t recognize the authority of the Pope. So while Eastern rite Catholics may look much more like Eastern Orthodox (bearded clerics with their wives, ornate vestments worn by a priest behind an iconostasis), they’re totally different. As a Roman Catholic, you’re welcome to attend a Melkite Mass, receive communion, go to confession, even register at the parish. Because they’re Catholic. We are not welcome to receive Sacraments in the Orthodox Church (although they’re valid) because our two churches are not in communion with one another.

Got that? Okay, well, the Anglican use Mass celebrated by the Ordinariate is not a rite distinct from the Roman rite the way that the Melkite or Ruthenian is. In much the same way that the Extraordinary Form (Tridentine/”Latin” Mass) is a version of the Novus Ordo, the standard form of the Roman rite, the Anglican use is a version of the Roman rite. Because it’s not a distinct rite, it feels very similar to the Novus Ordo Mass that you’re used to attending every Sunday. It’s generally the same shape and many of the words are the same or similar. Eastern rite liturgies, on the other hand, can be dramatically different. I was once 20 minutes into a Ruthenian Mass before I realized that Mass had started!

Because it’s not a different rite, members of the Ordinariate don’t have any different rules from other Roman Catholics. Priests of the Ordinariate1 are permitted to be married if they had previously been CofE priests, but the norm will not be for married men to be ordained. Even those who have converted have to get permission from the pope to be dispensed of the obligation of celibacy. They use the same lectionary, a very similar liturgical calendar, and the same Code of Canon Law (as opposed to the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches). What’s different is the liturgy, as I’ll explain below, and the fact that it’s possible through the Ordinariate for entire Anglican parishes to convert to Catholicism, as was the case this past Saturday with the Anglican Cathedral of the Incarnation. Although there have been many difficulties because of red tape and property ownership, a number of entire Anglican parishes have already come over to Rome, maintaining their traditions and community while receiving the fullness of the Truth.

The idea is not to establish a new rite in the Church but to serve the needs of people who are so accustomed to lofty, sacral language in their liturgy, who cherish their roots in 16th century English Catholicism, and who may have lived for 60 years in a parish of 300 souls, a community much smaller than your average Catholic parish.

The Ordinariate is similar to the Archdiocese of the Military in that it covers a large area that is divided into more traditional geographical dioceses; parishes belonging to the Ordinariate (or the Archdiocese of the Military) are not part of the dioceses in which they physically exist but report directly to their particular ordinary.

Yet while the Archdiocese of the Military is in fact a diocese, the Ordinariate is not, technically. In the case of the U.S. Ordinariate, for example, the Ordinary is a former Episcopal bishop but has not been ordained a Catholic bishop. Msgr. Steenson is married, and while there have been many married priests in the Catholic tradition, there have never been married bishops (nor are there in Eastern Orthodoxy). Not being headed by a bishop, the Ordinariate clearly isn’t a diocese, although it’s closer to a diocese, as far as I can tell, than it is to anything else. The website of the U.S. Ordinariate explains the distinction this way:

However, a diocese is “territorial”: its members live in a specific geographical area. An ordinariate is “personal”: its members may live anywhere the ordinariate is authorized to function. They belong to the ordinariate because of a shared attribute; in this case, because they are former members of Episcopal or Anglican churches who now are Catholic, but wish to retain elements of their Anglican heritage.

The reason this is so hard to explain is that a personal ordinariate is a totally new thing in our Church. That’s why it was so exciting when Benedict XVI explained that this was going to happen–a totally new type of institute within the Church established to respond to a particular modern need of a particular group of people. Talk about New Evangelization–talk about pastoral compassion! I just find this all so exciting.

I’m hoping that gives you enough of an idea of what the Ordinariate is (not a rite, kind of like a diocese, similar to a movement, but mostly just all its own) to hear about the Mass I went to last week.

I was invited to daily Mass at the parish of St. Gregory the Great in Mobile. Since there are so few members of the Ordinariate in Mobile, Fr. Venuti is the pastor of St. Gregory, a community that meets at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, as well as being in residence at St. Mary’s, saying the Novus Ordo Mass for the rest of us. This is often the case with Ordinariate priests, especially as the Ordinariate is so new.

When I say “so few members,” I’m not kidding. At daily Mass, there was one person outside of Father’s wife and son and the friends I brought with me. From what I hear, Sunday Mass isn’t much bigger, providing you with an intimate community, if not the ability to sit back and observe. Fortunately, Mrs. Venuti was in the front, so we all just followed her lead. If you want to read exactly what we did, check out the order of the Mass here.

The first thing you notice, of course, are Father’s old school vestments and the fact that he’s facing ad orientem (or “with the people,” as opposed to towards the people). The language is different but familiar somehow–a more beautiful version of the usual, I guess. It really made me grateful for our new translation but hungry for the language I was hearing here: “that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name,” for example–it just feels more glorious to me.

The first moment my jaw dropped was right at the beginning: before the Kyrie, Father read the greatest commandment:

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

The rubrics said, though, that he could have chosen to read all 10 Commandments. A real examination of conscience, not just a second to think about our day. It made begging for mercy feel much more real.

When the Liturgy of the Word began,2 the different translation of Scripture (the Revised Standard Version or RSV) had that same foreign-yet-familiar feel. I can’t say that I prefer one or the other, but it certainly made me listen when the cadence was so different from the norm. The Mass had the standard form–first reading, psalm, Gospel acclamation, Gospel, homily–so familiar, I kept slipping and forgetting to say thou.

Father recited the petitions, filled with strong and poetic language like:

And to all thy people give thy heavenly grace, and especially to this congregation here present; that, with meek heart and due reverence, they may hear and receive thy holy Word, truly serving thee in holiness and righteousness all the days of their life.

And we most humbly beseech thee, of thy goodness, O Lord, to comfort and succor all those who, in this transitory life, are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity.

Now those are prayers! None of this “for Mary Sue on her birthday, that she would have a really fun day” nonsense that seems to creep into the Novus Ordo. The petitions seem to come only in four forms with no option to add specific intentions; they covered so much, though, that one wouldn’t really need to.

After the petitions, there was another penitential rite. I’m beginning to see why people talk about Catholic guilt–and yet I’m convinced that those who really humble themselves before God don’t drown in shame the way seculars often do. In any event, I found the placement beautiful; we’ve asked for blessings and we beg again for mercy before we approach the table:

Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, maker of all things, judge of all men: We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously have committed, by thought, word, and deed, against thy divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; the remebrance of them is greivous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable.  Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; for thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, forgive us all that is past; and grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life, to the honor and glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It’s hardcore, but it was followed by Father saying, “Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.” (Other consoling verses were possible there as well.) In case that wasn’t sensitive enough for you, it was followed by the sign of peace.

The placement of the kiss of peace was once of my favorite things about this liturgy. It followed an act of contrition, so the act of offering peace to our neighbor stemmed directly from expressing our sorrow to God. It made the handshakes feel more like an effort at reconciliation than a coffee break, the way they often do in the Novus Ordo. And this reconciliation is just as tied to approaching the altar when placed right before the consecration as it is right before communion. I think moving it earlier also helps me stay focused from the Sanctus all the way through communion, rather than taking a break from prayer to chat before the Agnus Dei.

The Offertory seemed (to my untrained eye) to be almost identical to the Novus Ordo. The Eucharistic prayer was very similar as well, albeit with that high sacral language that I love. It wasn’t until the Our Father that I saw another significant difference–we kept going! We didn’t stop after evil. You know that awkward moment that you always forget to warn your Protestant friends about and they say “for thine” loudly while everybody else is silent? It didn’t happen. No “deliver us, Lord,” just straight through to the end and moved on. If that’s not a concession to Protestant prayer, I don’t know what is.

“Lord I am not worthy” took on greater depth and humility when preceded by this prayer, recited by all the people:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the Flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his Blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

We received communion kneeling at the altar rail–love it. And then prayer and blessing and dismissal. Like in the Extraordinary Form, the prologue to John’s Gospel is read at the end of Sunday Mass, a little throwback to the Tridentine Mass.

For most of the Mass, I pretty much knew what I was supposed to do and say, even if I didn’t know what was coming next. I had to remember to say “thee” and “thou” and keep my eyes on my missal for sudden divergences from the Novus Ordo, but it was much more familiar than the Eastern rite liturgies I’ve been to, much more accessible than the Extraordinary Form, and much more profound than the Novus Ordo.

Yup–I liked it better. Now, a lifelong Catholic can’t be a member of the Ordinariate–the purpose is to serve converts. I can, however, attend Anglican use Masses whenever I want to, and believe me, I will. The Latin of the Extraordinary Form is off-putting to me, but I’m beginning to understand when people lament the vernacular of the Novus Ordo. Maybe what we need, though, is a less vernacular vernacular–language that’s comprehensible but clearly sacred. That’s what the Anglican use Mass offers us, and that’s what I’ll be back for.

 

If you want to check it out for yourself, here are the American Ordinariate parishes, listed by state. If you’ve got more questions, check out the U.S. Ordinariate’s FAQ–very helpful. Fr. Venuti and some of his priest friends write for a blog on the Ordinariate, in case you’re a stalker like me and kind of obsessed with different liturgies.

  1. I met the first one ordained in the U.S., NBD [↩]
  2. read by Father’s wife, standing at the ambo holding their baby [↩]

The Church of England: A Brief (Catholic) History

If you’ve been around here for any length of time, you’ve probably figured out that I’m a grade-A nerd. I love old books and math jokes and I once consoled myself after a terrible football loss by reading a commentary on the Code of Canon Law (Bush Push 2005. I don’t want to talk about it.).

So I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I literally squealed with joy when I was invited to attend an Anglican use Catholic Mass on Thursday. By the (Catholic) priest’s wife, no less! I want to tell you all about the Mass, but I thought we might need some background first to clarify why this liturgy exists and how it connects to Anglicanism and to more mainstream Catholicism. So here you have a brief history of the Church of England1 (from a Catholic perspective, of course) from 1534 to Thursday at 1pm. Now, I’m not a historian, but I’ve studied this period some. I do think the background is necessary to understand the current situation, so I’m going to do my best. If you have to correct me, please be nice.

Courtesy of David M. Luebke

In the early 16th century, the Church was being torn apart like never before. Martin Luther began it all in 1517 by nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the cathedral in Wittenberg. That wasn’t in itself an act of rebellion,2 but it opened the door for the Protestant Reformation. Before long, most of Northern Europe had declared for Luther (or Calvin or Zwingli or anybody but Rome) and France was on the brink. England, though? England was strong. Often called Rome’s most faithful daughter, England had no interest in reformation. King Henry VIII was even declared a defender of the faith after St. Thomas More ghostwrote a tract for him that argued against Protestantism.

But then, tragedy. Henry wanted a divorce.3

Now, to be fair, this was rather a sketchy marriage. Henry had married the wife of his dead brother. Canon law forbids this. But Henry had gotten permission from Rome to marry her, so the marriage was valid. The Church can dispense from her rules,4 after all, just not from God’s rules.5

So Henry was married to a woman who “couldn’t give him a son.”6 Divorce is impossible,7 so Henry had to claim that the marriage had been invalid, that he couldn’t have married his late brother’s wife because the Pope didn’t have the authority to dispense him. Because the Pope didn’t have jurisdiction in England.

And so, because he wanted a male heir,8 Henry declared himself head of the Church in England.

But–and this seems ludicrous to Catholics today but it wasn’t as unreasonable before Vatican I reaffirmed papal infallibility–Henry still wanted to be Catholic. He wanted Mary and the Saints and Mass and Purgatory and really everything but, well, the Church. Henry was decidedly not a Protestant, so when he split, he created a church that was in schism, not a heretical sect.9

And throughout Henry’s lifetime, it stayed pretty darned Catholic. He considered himself an “English Catholic” and repeatedly condemned Protestantism. Without Rome, though, things can devolve rather quickly, and Englishmen were becoming Protestants in dramatic numbers. But the Church itself stayed fairly Catholic in “conservative” Henry’s lifetime.

When he seceded from Rome, Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, the head bishop in his church. Unfortunately for Catholics, Cranmer had very Protestant sensibilities. He maintained much of the pomp and circumstance (and Catholic doctrine) during Henry’s lifetime, but when Edward VI took the throne in 1547, all bets were off.

Cranmer’s reforms were fairly gradual, beginning under Henry and continuing until Cranmer’s death in 1556. The great challenge he faced was developing a theology for one united church composed of every type of Christian, from the most traditional Catholics to the most radical Protestants. What resulted was a church defined by compromise and filled with language so vague as to allow for widely varying interpretations.

This is most evident in the gradual development of the language of the Eucharistic liturgy. In the 1549 liturgy, Cranmer changed the Roman “let this bread and wine become unto us the body and blood of Christ” to “let this bread and wine be unto us”—leaving room for physical or symbolic interpretation and widely regarded as a compromise between Catholics and Protestants. Three years later, the liturgy was changed to ask that those who receive the bread and wine “may be partakers of his most blessed body and blood,” language even less oriented toward the doctrine of transubstantiation, yet still without excluding it entirely from the language of the liturgy (although the rubrics very clearly deny it).10

Cranmer’s reforms were significant enough (rejecting purgatory, the Deuterocanonical books, and five of the Sacraments) to make the Church of England a decidedly Protestant church. The basic tenets of the CofE are expressed in the Thirty-Nine Articles, a document written after Cranmer’s execution11 but based largely on his writings.

Then follow a few centuries of great music, beautiful language, and some significant theological confusion (as some eras were more Catholic, others more Protestant). I’m going to skip over all that and jump to the twentieth century, where the Church of England’s roots in compromise begin to bear fruit.

Since its foundation, the CofE’s congregations have varied widely in their interpretation of church teaching. While the structure of services is generally the same, they can look dramatically different depending on how “high” or “low” the congregation is. It’s not just a matter of incense and statues, though, but of core beliefs. Some congregations, for example, believe in transubstantiation and sacramental absolution;12 others wouldn’t touch that popery with a ten foot pole. It’s even possible to find two priests in the same congregation with views on the Eucharist that are diametrically opposed, one saying it is actually Jesus, body, blood, soul, and divinity, the other saying it’s a piece of bread that symbolizes Jesus.

This spectrum of acceptable beliefs has increased divisions in the Church of England for centuries (sometimes but not always resulting in new denominations), but it came to a head in the late twentieth century with disagreement over the ordination of women. Different bishops’ conferences began ordaining women in the 1970s; the 1978 Lambeth conference allowed each region to determine its own policy on women’s ordination, saying, “…the holding together of diversity within a unity of faith and worship is part of the Anglican heritage.”13 The Church of England14 voted to allow women’s ordination (and got it signed off on by the Queen) in 1992.

Not surprisingly, all this didn’t go over so well with the more “Anglo-Catholic” communities, who agreed with Rome that women weren’t capable of holy orders. According to some reports,15 some 500 priests (and many more lay people) left the church over this development, most becoming Catholic.

In response to this mass exodus (and predating much of it), Rome issued a pastoral provision allowing that former Episcopalian priests might petition to be ordained as Catholic priests, even those who were married. Hundreds of priests have been ordained by virtue of this pastoral provision, issued in 1980. Many of these priests were permitted to celebrate the “Anglican use” of the Roman rite, a version of the Roman Catholic Mass that is heavily influenced by CofE language and traditions, based on the Roman Missal (Catholic) and the Book of Common Prayer (Anglican).

When this flow of converts slowed to a trickle, another controversy began to shake the Church of England: the question of homosexuality. Just as members differed widely on matters of faith, they disagreed vehemently on matters of morals. The issue came into the spotlight in 2003 when Gene Robinson was ordained a bishop despite being openly gay and living with his partner. Naturally, this event was extremely divisive in the Episcopal Church,16 with some entire congregations severing ties from the Episcopal Church and forming the Anglican Episcopal Church, a communion of traditional Church of England congregations in America.

In the years since, divisions between liberal and conservative members of the CofE have widened. I’ve been told that some of the more conservative congregations even use the Baltimore Catechism17 in their Sunday school classes. Those communities are far closer to Rome than they are to Canterbury, but their particularly Anglican traditions and liturgy and communities are rich and beautiful. Many have felt drawn to communion with Rome but are rightly reluctant to forsake their Anglican heritage.

Enter Benedict XVI.18 Since 1980, converted CofE priests had been permitted to “retain certain elements of the Anglican liturgy.”19 But this was a concession to a limited group and considered temporary. It allowed for the establishment of Anglican use parishes, but the understanding was that this was a temporary solution. In 2009, in a document called Anglicanorium Coenibus, the Holy Father announced the establishment of ordinariates, canonical groups with essentially the status of a diocese (think Archdiocese for the Military) formed to “allow Anglicans to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church whilst retaining much of their heritage and traditions.”20 These ordinariates are permanent groups intended to preserve perpetually the Anglican use liturgy and the communities with Anglican roots.

So here we have a community of Christians–fully in union with Rome–with all the benefits of Canterbury and of Rome. But you’ll have to wait to hear all about their rules and liturgy and canonical status–my “brief” history of the Church of England is already too long, so the Ordinariate will get its own post. Get excited!

  1. I’m going to use this term or “CofE” throughout–Anglicans and Episcopalians are Church of England, but the words aren’t interchangeable. “Church of England” might not always be correct, either, but it’s the best I can do. [↩]
  2. 91 of the Theses were perfectly fine. Even those that weren’t were his proposal for debate, not his rejection of the Church or the Pope, of whom he speaks very highly in the Theses. [↩]
  3. It’s all so very much more complicated than this. Here’s the CliffsNotes version. [↩]
  4. No meat on Fridays in Lent, you can’t be ordained until you’re 25, etc. [↩]
  5. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not lie, etc. [↩]
  6. She bore him daughters. When a man can’t father sons, that’s his fault, not his wife’s. Y-chromosome and all. [↩]
  7. Lk 16:18 [↩]
  8. Not just an heir–he had an heir. Women can inherit the throne in England and he had a daughter–“Bloody Mary.” [↩]
  9. Schism: denial of Church authority without denying any Church doctrine, e.g. the Eastern Orthodox; heresy: denial of Church doctrine, e.g. Protestantism. “Heretic” is not a derogatory term. All it means is that you disagree with the Catholic Church on a central issue. Protestants disagree with Catholics on many central issues. This does not make them bad or stupid or damned. When I say “heretical,” I am not suggesting that we burn anyone at the stake. [↩]
  10. Search for “partakers” on this page–very interesting. [↩]
  11. He was executed under Queen Mary, the Catholic queen who followed Edward, for his Protestant beliefs. [↩]
  12. The Catholic Church does not recognize these Sacraments as valid in the Church of England. Although their priests do have apostolic succession in theory, the changes to the prayer of ordination were significant enough to make the Sacrament invalid. Without valid Holy Orders, only baptism and marriage can be performed validly. [↩]
  13. http://www.religioustolerance.org/femclrg3.htm [↩]
  14. kind of but not really in charge of all members of the Anglican communion [↩]
  15. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1032526/Church-England-plans-male-superbishops-rebel-clergy-refuse-led-women.html [↩]
  16. the CofE in America [↩]
  17. A traditional Catholic catechism. [↩]
  18. and the point of this whole post [↩]
  19. http://www.pastoralprovision.org/history [↩]
  20. U.K. Ordinariate [↩]