Dr (Tracey) Rowland, the author of Ratzinger’s Faith: the Theology of Pope Benedict XVI and Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed, said many commentators have observed an affinity between the Anglo-Catholic approaches to liturgy and the Pope’s own liturgical theology.
“In particular, (Pope Benedict) is very concerned about what he has variously described as ”˜parish tea party’ liturgy, ”˜pastoral pragmatism’, ”˜emotional primitivism’, ”˜Sacro-pop’ and ”˜utility music’,” Dr Rowland told an Anglican Ordinariate Festival in Melbourne on 11 June.
Dr Rowland, a former Anglican, said that, in her personal experience, the barriers to full communion with the Catholic Church are primarily cultural rather than doctrinal.
Sacro-Pop — a really good one. Worth using.
However, the 1979 American BCP and the Novus Ordo are just about even in the banality department in my book. Where Anglicans always pull out way ahead of Romans is in the preaching dept. Talk about banality! — Almost every sermon I ever heard in a Roman Catholic Church was not worth the oxygen it used.
#1,
Agreed. Although I am an RC, I have found the level of preaching
in Anglican/Episcopalian churches to be of significantly higher quality
than in RC churches.
I finding the RC liturgy uneven and disjointed. It is usually said so fast as to be incomprehensible. The congregation seems bewildered and particpates in only a few responses. Preaching centers around the primacy of Peter and church doctrines. They deserve better. The point here is not well taken.
I must agree with Pb. A homily at Catholic Mass is usually a mumbled waste of 10 minutes of my life. The RC method of disinterested rote presentation of the liturgy has yet to allow me to hear either warmth or beauty.
And “tea party liturgy”??? Perhaps The Ratzman had best spend his energies removing the plank from his own organization’s black eye.
LumenChristie,
Two things — first, Rite 2 is still more graceful and reverent than the Novus Ordo and we do have Rite 1, besides. Every parish I’ve attended offers both rites every Sunday. And the parish I currently attend does a bit of Morning Prayer combined with the Rite 2 liturgy one Sunday per month. It’s really beautiful — we chant the canticles. Secondly, our music binds it all together. We do music really well.
If there’s one, stand-out disjointed bit in the RC’s Novus Ordo, for me it has to be the Exchange of Peace. Why on Earth would you do the glad-handing thing right before the Lamb of God and Distribution of Communion? It takes the focus off the Eucharist. And at some parishes I attended, it got carried away. Some priests would leave the altar and start shaking hands with the folks in the pews.
I think we Anglicans do “the Peace” at the appropriate time. I like that we still have communion rails; I like that when the liturgy of the Eucharist begins those gates are closed and all focus is on the action at the altar. There are no built-in liturgical distractions.
[blockquote] “Many of my Anglican friends have long held that, for them, the major barrier to their return to full communion with the Catholic Church is precisely the banality of parish liturgies.†[/blockquote]
I believe you’re misreading this (although admittedly it’s written in a way that it would be easy to do so). I believe they are saying the Pope is saying this about Catholic liturgies. [Not that anyone seems to be quoting him directly.]
However, all I have to say is:
Kumbaya my Lord, kumbaya
Kumbaya my Lord, kumbaya
Kumbaya my Lord, kumbaya
Oh, Lord kumbaya (swaying)
See comments 120 and 95 [url=http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/37002/]here[/url] by way of explanation
Liturgy is a mighty fine thing, both for teaching and expressing. The issue though is what is to be taught and expressed? If the teaching is false, no amount of “good” liturgy covers that (or maybe it does, in the sense that covers = hides). If one believes the issues of the reformation, and that they still matter, Rome is not an option no matter how prettily they may sing. On the other hand, if Rome was and is right, then bad liturgy is something that simply must be endured and prayed through. It must not be a deal breaker.
I came into ECUSA in the ’70s as a solid Baptist, seeking to learn to worship. I found what I was looking for in a small high church / charismatic parish trying to live as a semi-monastic community. But even though I was drawn by the liturgy, by the music (plainsong and “contemporary”), and by the rule of life, the big question was “What do these people teach?” “What do they believe?” I devoured the BCP, read the English reformers (if I had read more of the struggles in my own time, it would have been harder!) and satisfied my soul that this was a tradition that I could be subject to.
Making such a decision based on liturgy alone, without doctrine, is in my opinion foolish if not faithless.
While I agree that liturgy’s an important part of worship, it isn’t the most important part of worship.
My wife and I have had a different experience of Catholic homilies. After years at Truro and the Falls Church, both of which featured exceptional preaching by their rectors, we were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the homilies at our local St. Suburbia. Our pastor and our recently ordained Parochial Vicar are easily of the same quality as any of the Episcopal/Anglican priests we’ve known with regard to the passion and content of their homilies. Moreover, having visited other parishes in the Diocese of Arlington we found that to not be an isolated case. In particular I’ve found Fr. Scalia (son of the Supreme Court Justice) to be as good as anyone I’ve ever heard. With regard to the liturgy, I agree that the current translation is pretty banal. However, the new, vastly improved, translation is coming on the first day of Advent this year.
Let’s not forget that brief line about Anglo-Catholics bringing the “moral sensibility associated with the idea of a gentleman” to the Roman Church. I’m sure that’s why the RC hierarchy in the Anglo-European world is so enthusiastic about the Ordinariate; far too many of them are the sons of workers and peasants and they are eager for more polish on their Polish, Irish, Italian, and German.
How ironic that should be pointed out in Australia.
Mr. Sawyer above has a point. I moved over from Methodism after reading the BCP and the English Reformers and attending liturgical Methodist worship. Liturgy nudged me, but it was the Biblical spirit of the BCP that convinced me this was what I already believed. Subsequent events have caused me some regret, but I still hold to the Articles of Religion and the Creeds.
Liturgy is a means of expression between God and humanity in my Protestant view. I prefer simple but elegant, other may be fulfilled by a beautiful and elaborate mass, or a hymns and a sermon, or guitars and drums and relevance, or the Church of God of Prophecy’s urgings to join its army and pick up a gun and shoot it at the Devil.
A church claiming universality and catholicity in the modern world will need to accommodate all of that if it wishes to preserve doctrinal integrity.
(1) The Peace occupies the exact same place in the Roman Mass as it always has. The Peace in an Anglican Communion service is an innovation wherever it is, since it was absent from the all the Prayer Books from 1552 to the modern revisions.
(2) I’ve been a Baptist, an Episcopalian, and now a Roman Catholic. I’ve heard great sermons, not-so-great sermons, and truly awful sermons in each group. The caliber of the preacher has more to do with his passion for the Gospel and his ability to communicate, than with what communion he’s in.
(3) I considered getting a doctorate in liturgy at one time, with the goal of teaching in an Episcopal seminary. I must admit, my attachment to Anglican liturgy put me off converting for a few years. In the end, though, it was a question of substance over style. Yes, an ordinary parish mass in a Catholic church can be quite banal, but that’s true in Episcopal parishes too. (I should know, I’ve sat through a number of them.) All the people I know who have converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism knew what they’re getting into, liturgically speaking. They counted the cost and decided it was worth it.
Hmmm, I hesitate to step into such a morasse of odd comments (not #9 or CM) about Dr. Rowland’s straightforward assessment of a disparity between Anglo-Catholic and Catholic liturgies. Yet this is a well-written article, though Barich left out the best part of the Newman ‘gentleman’ quote. The talk by Dr. Rowland on which it reports is even better and could be read here for example: http://anglicanpatrimony.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-06-23T12:59:00-07:00&max;-results=1
not forgetting that this talk was given to an assembly of mainly Anglican Australians contemplating entering an Australian Ordinariate.
…..‘parish tea party’ liturgy, ‘pastoral pragmatism’, ‘emotional primitivism’, ‘Sacro-pop’ and ‘utility music’, – wonderful phrases from Pope Benedict’s writings, with which he points out abuses that have descended from misguided implementation of some Vatican II outcomes. The cadre of Catholic clergy, academics and theologians (‘the Ressourcement’) who have striven for over 40 years to correct mis-implementations of the Council, steering the ship onto true course with Christ at the helm, have largely worked quietly and in other languages besides English, but their work is now becoming more accessible, in part thanks to Dr. Rowland. And why any sincere Christian seeking the catholic and apostolic tradition would get stuck on the poverty of preaching at a local Catholic parish and thus limit themselves, when they can easily read or listen to Benedict XVI or a number of other outstanding Catholic homilists and teachers through all the (internet-based) media we have today, is beyond me. Personally, after an occasional boring/unlearned/narrow sermon by any Anglo-Catholic preacher I currently sit under, I just go there.
#11 posted while I was writing #12….
If Dr. Rowland thinks the barriers to union with Rome are primarily cultural rather than doctrinal for many Anglo-Catholics, she is quite right. Her “straightforward” assessment can be “unpacked” to reveal the class and ethnic biases behind those barriers, though, not that she is all that subtle about them.
If you ever met Dr. Rowland (and I have), #14, it’s doubtful you would go away still thinking she holds class and ethnic biases. She became a Catholic at about age 8 or 9, IIRC, at the school she was attending so she could receive Communion with her classmates, rather presciently for a young Anglican girl in sectarian mid-century Australia.
Your list of Catholic ethnicities – which looks typically USA to me – needs to be expanded for Australia to include Aboriginal, Croatian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lebanese (Maronite), multiple Indian ones, Filipino – and on and on, actually. The proposed [i]Australian[/i] Ordinariate may be to some degree of ‘British Isles ethnicity’, though not only, while liturgically/creedally Western Rite Catholic.
Then there will likely be (request under consideration) the distinct [i]Ordinariate of Torres Strait[/i] of aboriginal people in parts of northern and offshore Oz and other nearby peoples. We could think of this as ‘unity in (increasing) diversity’. Having met the Bishop of Torres Strait and some clergy I daresay they would recognize Newman’s definition of a gentleman, offered in the talk and article, though British ethnicity isn’t part of their world. Here is the good bit not in Barich’s article: “…If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it.”
May I be preserved from blundering discourtesy, as sometimes the comments on blog posts on this topic do seem to leave the question somewhat more involved….
As long as Rome teaches imparted rather than imputed grace, the primacy and infallibility of the Pope (even under limited circumstances), prayers to Mary, and transubstantiation, the theological barriers for me are insurmountable.
R. Eric Sawyer — thanks for a great comment.
I think one thing — quite odd to me — that I’ve discovered in converts to Rome is that some convert to Rome completely oblivious to Rome’s doctrine and come trundling back or over several years later. Others convert to Rome completely oblivious to Rome’s *practice* particularly in the US and come trundling back or over several years later. The US practice seems to be particularly onerous in a vast sea of parishes [despite CM’s uneasiness with this being pointed out by everybody from the Pope to happy converts].
If a convert to Rome is going to stay in Rome they should probably be aware of both doctrine/dogma as well as liturgical/pastoral/ecclesial practice.
The fact is, most AngloCatholics simply don’t believe Rome’s doctrine and dogma sufficiently to affirm “I believe and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” If they did — they’d convert. And if there are AngloCatholics who do believe Rome’s doctrine and dogma sufficiently to affirm “I believe and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God” then they are already RCs in theology anyway and are thus AngloCatholic in external accoutrements only anyway.
I’m not uneasy with what the Pope or happy converts point out about the Catholic Church. Not at all. I’m particularly inclined to pay attention to what the Pope has to say on the subject as I think he has substantially more experience and knowledge on the subject than I do. 🙂
On the other hand, I’m not just gritting my teeth to “endure” the awful liturgy and music in my parish church because I’m convinced that it is the “One True Church” as some here think Catholics must do. I’ve been happy as a clam in all the Catholic churches I ever belonged to. I LIKE the liturgy. I LIKE the music. I sing it around the house. My kids sing it in the shower. [When you can get a teenage male to sing a religious song in the shower, you know at least it’s sticking in his head.] I sent all my kids to Vacation Bible School at various Protestant churches every summer for 10 years because they give out a music disc on the last day. We played those CDs in the car for years — still do. I remember my five year old saying once “Mom, you should open the windows so other people can hear about Jesus.” Gotta love that! Yes — not 5-part polyphony from the middle ages (however beautiful that might be) but songs that tell people about Jesus that my kids listen to and sing.
However, in keeping with my solemn vow of the other thread, I shall close by saying only:
Someone’s sighing, Lord
Kumbaya
Someone’s crying, Lord
Kumbaya
Someone’s knocking Catholic liturgy and music
Kumbaya
Oh Lord
Kumbaya. 🙂
RE: “I’m not uneasy with what the Pope or happy converts point out about the Catholic Church.”
Right — only with the observation that “the US practice seems to be particularly onerous in a vast sea of parishes” — and the uneasiness is fairly obvious on dozens of threads around T19.
It’s not really a big deal . . . other than that members of Anglitania are capable of dealing with all sorts of vast criticism of our affiliations on this very blog.
But no need to admit it — I expect people see it without your having to do so.
Hmm…strange that it’s important that you be right about my mental state when you have no idea whatsoever what my mental state is. Still, the truth is that I am not made even slightly “uneasy” by what people write here about the liturgy and music of the Catholic Church because it’s just their own view of what must essentially be a personal opinion.
My experience is utterly different from what is described here — not only my personal experience but my experience of other people’s experiences. We just had to build a huge new wing on our church because we can’t pack everybody in there. I just dropped my kids off at summer CCD — I got trapped in the parking lot for ten minutes behind all the other moms doing the same. Maybe the music and litugy is driving them away in droves. I haven’t seen it. All the ex-catholics I know are so because of their issues with divorce and abortion.
Excellent response, Catholic Mom, and my sentiments exactly. I know that, in my case at least, it wasn’t that I was *put off* by Catholic liturgy so much as I was wild about the BCP. But the liturgies in the various RC churches I’ve attended over twenty years have been just as beautiful as the Anglican ones. I certainly have no complaints. (I’ve even grown to love the music, though I was particularly attached to the Anglican choral tradition.)
Well, then, CM, you’ve come to the right place. There are lots of ex-RC Anglicans about in the Anglican blogs who did NOT leave over divorce or abortion, myself included.
And I might mention that you can thank the Protestants for “summer CCD.” The RCs didn’t come up with that on their own — they apparently saw over the years how popular Vacation Bible School was and how some RC parents (again, myself included) sent their children to VBS.
Your affinity for “Kumbaya” has resurrected an awful memory. The priest sang that, with modified lyrics, over each baby at my son’s group baptism. I was dismayed; my son cried and cried. I didn’t blame him. 😉
Well, “summer CCD” is not actually Vacation Bible School (which we love but which is substantially different.) You have to attend kindergarten CCD or they won’t let you into 1st grade CCD. You have to go to 1st grade CCD or they won’t let you into 2nd grade CCD. You have to go to second grade CCD or they won’t let you make your 1st Communion. You have to make your 1st Communion or they won’t let you into 3rd grade CCD. This continues until 8th grade when you are Confirmed and they have no more way to compel you to go to CCD!
BUT…you can skip the “one school night a week CCD throughout the whole school year” (which is a pain once your kids get old enough to have activities on school nights or any significant amount of homework) and go to “summer CCD” which is 4 hours a day for two weeks in the summer. VBS is mostly “bible school” (stories from the Bible and basic ideas of Christian belief) whereas CCD is everything from theology to ecclesiology to sacraments to how to say the rosary and just about anything else you would need to be a Catholic.
[blockquote] “How ironic that should be pointed out in Australia.” [/blockquote]
Indeed. How very proletarian. Next thing you know, they will be visiting the UK and taking your jobs in pubs…
Sarah,
Well said, thank you. These threads always follow the same course. Long protestations by those who have converted to Rome about how good it is there – and hey, I have no problem with them going there and staying there. But the reality is, lots come back. And even as we read these posts, we know many of them will be coming back, often even more conflicted than when they left. Oh well, such is life.
Truly a funny comment #24, MichaelA. So I was pondering what ethnicity of workers and peasants Cardinal Pell might be descended from (if he isn’t a recent immigrant) – English ones perhaps? Then I looked him up (Wikipedia) and found I am partly right on all counts – though his ethnicity didn’t prevent him celebrating the first Catholic Mass since the Reformation at Eton College in the UK. Cheeky Aussie bloke, er, prelate! The major misconception Americans have about Australia is who settled here (in Australia); there’s a tendency to suppose it was more of the same who settled the US, and they then developed a similar egalitarian society. Not quite so.
Everyone should see ‘The King’s Speech’ and learn a little from it.
I was thinking along the same lines as you, how these threads often return to their central theme, only it seemed to me it was ‘always’ the varied re-statement by Sarah of her position and firm opinions, or by you of yours, regarding the Catholic Church. It is after all Protestants who make ‘protestations’. It doesn’t seem to me that the Catholics who do post here go on about how good it is in the Catholic Church, at all. Typically they seek to correct misunderstanding in comments that is plain to see. I think I post on such threads usually to try to correct misunderstandings about the developing Ordinariate(s) insofar as I’m able, when others sometimes clearly are not familiar with their development, but whack away at it anyway. It is after all Anglican to approach matters rationally and have facts rather than rumor, speculation and innuendo at hand.
There could be considerably less coming and going of timid sheep through the fence with the Ordinariates, as they will be led in flocks.
[blockquote] “It doesn’t seem to me that the Catholics who do post here go on about how good it is in the Catholic Church, at all.” [/blockquote]
Given the posts on this very thread, I would have to put that also in the “very funny comment” category!
[blockquote] “There could be considerably less coming and going of timid sheep through the fence with the Ordinariates, as they will be led in flocks.” [/blockquote]
Well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? We just don’t know how many people are actually going to make the jump. We should have a bit of a clearer view in a few months.
[blockquote]Everyone should see ‘The King’s Speech’ and learn a little from it. [/blockquote]
Except that large chunks of the movie are fictional. Lional Logue’s son wrote a book about his father which included letters written to the King by Lional Logue. His attitude towards the King inclined towards the sycophantic and he certainly never called him anything other than “Your Majesty.” The whole “I have to call you Bertie or the therapy won’t work” thing was just made up for the movie to make the character more interesting. Even in the movie it didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
OK, thanks for that, CM. I found the movie portrait of the Queen Mother (of QEII) hard to accept. I didn’t know that much about the background, but it impressed me that aside from the Lionel Logue/King George VI dynamic, there was an accompanying story conveying how many Australians relate to the British monarchy, which is informative for Americans (Wallis Simpson having been American, as was Churchill’s mother, we may get a different slant). And I think for some reason reading about Cardinal Pell had brought that aspect of the movie to my mind (seems Pell’s father was an English migrant who had a career as a heavyweight boxer….).
Whether or not LL ever called him ‘Bertie’, it was fascinating (if) His Majesty opened up with the volley of expletives in this low commoner’s presence, I thought – therapeutically of course. Would the book of letters dismiss the notion that LL really functioned as the King’s psychotherapist to a significant degree?
I don’t think there is any evidence that he ever acted as the king’s psychotherapist or even significant confidante at all — however the king very definitely found his services invaluable. On the other hand — the movie pushed everything ten years into the future to make it coincide with the build up to WWII for dramatic effect. In reality, Logue had substantially “cured” the king a decade earlier. It is true however that the king never made any major speech without having Logue work with him on it and prepare a script showing where to pause, breathe, etc.
Not that this has much to do with banal liturgy etc., but of course I had to google his name, and a couple clicks yielded this interesting piece: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mandrake/8182390/Queen-Elizabeths-posthumous-endorsement-of-Lionel-Logue.html
Reading it one will see that the King’s own wife wrote that she felt Logue had helped her husband with ‘his whole life’, and so I would not retract my suggestion that over the many years, Logue ministered to the King in ways that did much more for him than just enable him to give speeches without stammering.
Logue was evidently a Christian Scientist, despite a robustly Methodist educational background. It was his grandson, not a son, who wrote the book after locating the letters in his attic.
Since it seems Logue had lived much of his younger adult life in the precise locale where I have spent the past twenty years it was all that much more interesting to read about him – thank you CM!
Yes, sorry, I remembered it was the grandson after I posted. I’ve been searching my own attic for sometime but have yet to come upon any letters between my grandfather and a king. 🙂
I didn’t mean to imply that Logue did not become a valued friend — just that there is no evidence that he was a “psychotherapist” as they were trying to imply in the film when he hints to the king that the cause of his stammer must be some deep seated psychological issue between him and and his family. It’s a total red herring in the movie anyway because he keeps trying to get the king to discuss his inner feelings about his father and brother (which the king rightly points out are none of his business) on the grounds that this is somehow going to be therapeutic (along with calling the king “Bertie”) whereas the actual therapies that work (even in the movie) seem to be totally physical and linguistic. I understand why the movie does this — it’s hard to make an Oscar winning movie around the simple fact that “King George VI had a very bad stammer and an Australian doctor helped him with it and they became close friends and he relied on the doctor whenever he gave a speech.” Hence the creation of the “cheeky” Austrialian persona, the introduction of the dysfunctional family dynamics, and most of all, the shift in action to the eve of WWII so that the king’s ability to give effective speeches is positioned as a critical defense against Hitler’s rhetoric. In actually, by the eve of WWII the king was already speaking very well thanks to Logue’s help. [Also, the scene where the king finally manages to give a great radio speech and then goes out on the balcony to the cheers of the crowd was also shifted in time — the radio speech followed by the cheering crowd was at the end of WWII announcing the German surrender.]