(Please note that parts one and two were posted earlier on the blog–KSH).
There can be little doubt that the Order of Holy Communion in the English Prayer Book tradition ”“ starting with 1549, and moving through 1552 to 1559 where some slight recovery of Catholic ground was modestly extended in 1662 ”“ is hostile to ideas of Eucharistic Sacrifice and even Eucharistic Presence. At the high point of radical Protestant influence, under Edward VI, it appears to have been because Bishop Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, a conservative on the Edwardine bench of bishops, argued that the First Prayer Book was susceptible of a Catholic interpretation that Cranmer determined to embark on making a more thorough job of it in 1552. The great Anglo-Catholic liturgiologist Dom Gregory Dix describes in the final chapter of his The Shape of the Liturgy his own dismay on looking into the context of the two Edwardine Prayer Books in Cranmer’s other theological writings. ”˜[I]t is only painfully and with reluctance that have brought myself to face candidly some of the facts here set out, and I cannot but fear that they will bring equal distress to others’.[1] The benign view of Cranmer’s liturgical revision taken by most High Churchmen (though isolated critical voices had never been completely lacking), and, after the Oxford Movement, by ”˜Prayer Book Catholics’, was, so Dix concluded, historically unsustainable. For Cranmer the Eucharist was instituted by Christ not so that his death might be offered to the Father but with the simple aim of its being remembered by us. The Second Prayer Book is the Eucharistic counterpart of the magisterial Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone: in Dix’s words ”˜the only effective attempt ever made to give liturgical expression to [that] doctrine’.[2] Or as the then bishop of Ebbsfleet, Andrew Burnham, writes in his highly appealing study of the Liturgy, Heaven and Earth in Little Space, Cranmer was concerned to ”˜consecrate the congregation and not the eucharistic elements’.[3]
All this explains the rise of the Anglo-Catholic demand for the supplementation of the English Prayer Book and indeed its quasi-replacement by some version of the Western Missal. As to its content, the demand was doctrinally motivated, though it often took the form of a legal argument ”“ namely, that the proper authorities of the two provinces of the mediaeval Church which formed the Ecclesia anglicana, the Convocations of Canterbury and York, had neither initiated the Prayer Books nor even authorized them except in the sense that they advised the clergy to make use of what was sometimes referred to as ”˜the Parliamentary book’.
Will someone [i]kindly[/i] state this in ordinary everyday English that we common folk can understand? Please?
Try starting in the middle, and the meaning may be plainer:
“For Cranmer the Eucharist was instituted by Christ [i]not so that his death might be offered to the Father[/i] but with the simple aim of its being remembered by us. The Second Prayer Book is the Eucharistic counterpart of the magisterial Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone: in Dix’s words ‘the only effective attempt ever made to give liturgical expression to [that] doctrine’…….. ‘Cranmer was concerned to ‘consecrate the congregation and not the eucharistic element.” The last sentence is a quote from Burnham’s book on the Liturgy. The italics are mine.
[blockquote] “There can be little doubt that the Order of Holy Communion in the English Prayer Book tradition – starting with 1549, and moving through 1552 to 1559 where some slight recovery of Catholic ground was modestly extended in 1662 – is hostile to ideas of Eucharistic Sacrifice and even Eucharistic Presence.” [/blockquote]
Nice try, Msgr Nichols. Yes, the BCP in all of its versions it is hostile to the Roman concept of “Eucharistic sacrifice”. Rather, it follows the doctrine of the faith once delivered and followed by faithful Christians ever since: the Eucharist links us with Christ’s one sacrifice, but is not itself a sacrifice.
And the BCP only denies “Eucharistic presence” in terms of the peculiar Roman doctrine. Instead the BCP follows the teaching of the Apostles, that Christ is present and we feed on him in a spiritual and heavenly manner.
[blockquote] “The great Anglo-Catholic liturgiologist Dom Gregory Dix describes: … ‘For Cranmer the Eucharist was instituted by Christ not so that his death might be offered to the Father but with the simple aim of its being remembered by us.'” [/blockquote]
Anyone who characterizes the BCP communion services as being purely memorial in nature hasn’t really read them. This sort of incorrect ‘analysis’ doesn’t do much for Gregory Dix’s reputation.
However, he is correct that Christ’s death is not “offered to the Father” in the Anglican Eucharist: Since Christ and his Apostles did not so teach, we can hardly do so.
What this tells me is that Nichols does not know what “Eucharistic Sacrifice” and “Eucharistic Presence” actually mean.
I actually thought this was rather good. Of course it expresses his theological convictions as an RC. For myself, that an RC theologian expresses RC theology isn’t surprising and doesn’t demand on every occasion a snarky rebuttal. (One understands that Anglicans and RCs typically disagree to some degree about the proper meaning of “eucharistic sactifice”). His principal point seems to be to outline the varieties of Anglo-Catholicism and what that may mean for the Ordinariate liturgies. I think that’s interesting.
As an Anglican understanding the complex world of Anglo Catholicism helps me to comprehend why Anglo Catholics have not often been able to act in concert.
Driver8,
With respect, you haven’t characterised this article correctly and I suggest you need to meditate on the meaning of “snarky”!
it would be different if Msgr Nichols were offering an explanation for Roman Catholic doctrine. But he is not. He is alleging that the Anglican Book of Common Prayer contains false doctrine. In such a case, he should not be surprised if Anglicans point out his errors and refute them. Some of us are proud of our heritage.
This is the more so, when Msgr Nichols makes basic errors as to what the Church of England believes – yet he was a bishop in that church! To suggest that the Book of Common Prayer views Holy Communion as purely memorialist is so far off the mark that one wonders where Msgr Nichols was all those years.
Ah, you’re mistaken about who he is. Aidan Nichols has been a Dominican since his early 20s. (You’re thinking of Keith Newton)
*LOL* Done like a dinner I am! As you surmise, I was thinking he is one of the three ex-English bishops made monsignors for the Ordinariate (which is doubly-dumb because I do know who they are).
Ah well, then I can hardly blame him if he is not across all the details of Anglicanism (although a short statement correcting misinformation would still be warranted).
Nichols appears to rehash the errors of _Apostolicae Curae_. I can sympathize with Church of England Anglo-Catholics who have to live with the 1662 rite but am happy to be able to self-identify as a Prayer Book Catholic and use the Prayer Book (American 1979 version) as written.
Thinking more about this last night, I realized that the thing that really irritates me about this article is that it jumps from Cranmer to the later stages of the Oxford Movement as if there was no High Churchmanship at all in Anglicanism in the intervening centuries. It shows a profound ignorance of Anglicanism in the first half of the seventeenth century particularly. That this ignorance is also somewhat endemic in modern Anglicanism does not excuse a Roman Catholic apologist from it.
Nichols discusses the history of Anglo-Catholicism, particularly the seventeenth century, in greater detail in the first part of this series.
It is amusing how so many people get their undies in a knot over unresolvable differences.
Interesting comment about the dangers of liturgical anarchy from w/i the Alcuin camp. It appears we have several liturgical streams.
1) move toward recent RC worship rites; 2) anglican missal logic; 3) interpolations and/or silent prayers; 4) BCP alone (itself with variety); 5) modern CofE options; 6) turn the BCP into loose-leaf binder/every church prints its own service sheets ‘based on’ BCP; 7) a subset of this, ‘marriage’ and SSBs rites according to local option.
Its a fair point by Dr Seitz at #13.
Given the point made above, I can excuse Aidan Nichols’ ignorance about Anglicanism – as a member of another church, he can’t necessarily be expected to know any better (although in future more prior research might be recommended).
But those of us who do know Anglican history are conscious of Cranmer’s own comments on the Book of Common Prayer. He found England in a state of what might be called “liturgical anarchy”. He commented in the preface to 1549 that often the celebrants spent more time finding the particular variation required for a particular day, then actually reading it – and this went on during the service. And there was the plethora of rites and variations across the country. Cranmer did not see a single rite for a nation as being required by scripture (as he notes, the church fathers did not have a single rite), but in the case of England in the 16th century, a new broom was required.
Lovely, informative discussion. Many thanks to all commenters. I judge the value of websites by several criteria, but one of them is whether I frequently go away from particular posts and their comment threads better informed than when I started. This entry performs very well in that regard (although some could argue that I start from such a low point that virtually anything would informative).
#14–I was pointing to issues we ned to be concerned about, especially with the rise of the computer-generated text. I was not endorsing Nichols’ view nor do I believe he understand the eucharistic theology of anglicans, and that intentionally so. The idea that ‘transubstantiation’ is some kind of gold standard; is univocal; and demonstrates where Cranmer et al are wrong, and sub-Christian, just seems to me ill-informed and simplistic. The RCC has enough problems of its own and needs to address them, as do anglican Christians.