A new organization has formed in Kansas City called the Society of Our Lady of Hope offering guidance, comfort and support to local Anglican Communion members who wish to become Catholics.
Beginning Sunday, September 7 and continuing through November, society members will celebrate the Liturgy of the Word each week at St. Therese Little Flower parish in Kansas City using the Book of Divine Worship – the Catholic Church-approved liturgy for Catholics with an Episcopalian or Anglican background.
Each week until December 1, the first Sunday of Advent, the liturgy will be followed by a talk on some aspect of the Catholic faith. If all goes as planned, the full Anglican Use Mass will begin on that date at St. Therese’s.
Speakers will include Bishop Emeritus Raymond Boland and former Episcopal priest Mat Teel and every talk is open to the public.
“I get excited about these things,” says Jude Huntz of Gladstone, who is helping coordinate the process. “I get emotional. I guess I’m in the right business.”
lucky things…some of us still minister within a church of England that just voted to treat us under codes (a yellow star for our cassocks perhaps) and contuinually offers us what we have repeatedly explained will not suffice. With a smile they collude in our death it seems
[i]Apologies in advance for the length of this.[/i] Given my background, I should be a Catholic by now: raised as an Anglo-Catholic, educated in an RC high school, sent my kids to RC schools, etc. But I’m not. God bless and richly reward those who find their home in Rome. I’m presently worshipping with an Orthodox congregation, not even a catechumen yet. While the RC liturgy is by far the more familiar I cannot seem to hurdle their methods and logic. It seems so excessively technical and circular. So often, when I listen to their Q&A;programs they don’t actually answer the questions posed. On the other hand, while Orthodox liturgy is more “exotic” they seem to have a far better grasp on communicating the Faith.
So how does this relate to the post…? I have been very disappointed by the AU liturgy. It seems to cut out the heart of Cranmer’s masterpiece. I strikes me as a cumbersome cut-and-paste job that drops the rather dull contemporary Catholic Eucharistic canon onto the BCP. My apologies if this offends, it is only my personal observation. I have heard some very derisive comments from Catholics about the “errors” of the BCP that had to be removed and corrected in the AU. Frankly, I have not been convinced. I have also heard them say that Anglicans are guilty of idolatry because Anglican priests cannot change the bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood.
Here is where I am trying to go with all of this. I may not agree but I understand their position on Anglican orders and liturgy. However, I have heard them say that an RC priest who celebrates the Eucharist using the regular Anglican liturgy (not the AU) [i]or an RC priest who leaves the Church and becomes an Anglican priest[/i] still celebrates a valid Eucharist and the elements are still transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.
At first I thought I misunderstood and tried to get an answer through Catholic Answers Online, but got no response. (Twice actually, thanks guys). Then I heard it again just this week! I did not misunderstand, I heard correctly. How is this possible? I haven’t asked my Orthodox priest yet, going to do that tomorrow. How can a Catholic priest who renounces his vows and the Catholic Church still celebrate a valid Eucharist using a rite that is in error?
Nikolaus wrote:
“How can a Catholic priest who renounces his vows and the Catholic Church still celebrate a valid Eucharist using a rite that is in error?”
A Catholic priest who “renounces his vows” and leaves the (Catholic) Church, or who is laicized (but remains a Catholic) is a priest still; it is simply that (in the latter case) he is forbidden to exercise that priesthood (normally — if a laicized priest comes across someone, a Catholic say, in imminent danger of death, he not only can, but is obliged to, hear that person’s confession and give him the last rites). As far as your example/question is concerned, that of a Catholic priest who becomes an Episcopalian (or any other sort of Protestant), all that the Catholic Church holds to be necessary for a valid celebration of the Eucharist is a.) a validly ordained priest, b.) the elements of bread and wine, c.) the recital of the Words of Institution in the context of a Eucharistic Prayer, and d.) the intention on the part of the priest “to do what the Church does” when celebrating the Eucharist (even if he mistakenly or heretically understands “what the Church does” or thinks that “the Catholic Church” is not, or not exclusively, “The Church.” (The Catholic Church would thus see a Catholic priest who becomes a Protestant minister celebrating the Eucharist validly, but illicitly — only if he deliberately formed the intention not to do what the Catholic Church does in celebrating Mass would his celebration possibly not be a valid Eucharist; in the nature of the case, something known only to God.) By contrast, the predominant view, today, in the Orthodox Church is that a.) a laicized or defrocked priest really ceases to be a priest, and b.) that there are no “valid sacraments” outside “The Church” (i.e., the Orthodox Church) — although God in his mercy and condescension may give non-Orthodox Christians who participate in good faith in the sacraments or “ordinances” of their particular denominational traditions all of the blessings that he gives to those who frequent the Church’s (the Orthodox Church’s) sacraments.
Nikolaus also wrote:
I have been very disappointed by the AU liturgy. It seems to cut out the heart of Cranmer’s masterpiece … I may not agree but I understand their position on Anglican orders and liturgy.”
I don’t think you do understand. The Catholic view is that Cranmer’s heretical views on the nature of the Eucharist and of the Eucharistic presence were embodied in the liturgies that he composed — obscurely in that of 1549, and clearly in that of 1552 (and in later Anglican liturgies, like the 1662 English BCP, that keep to the form of Cranmer’s work), and that to make any Anglican liturgy suitable for Catholic use “the heart of Cranmer’s masterpiece” must indeed be “cut out” — which is precisely what happened when the 1979 ECUSA rite was transformed into the Anglican Use Catholic BDW (although one really should add a.) that the 1789/1928 BCP’s “Prayer of Consecration,” based as it was on the 1764 Scottish Episcopalian service, pretty much rejected Cranmer’s distinctive views on the Eucharist, and b.) that the 1979 ECUSA BCP pretty much completed that process of repudiating Cranmer). Still, however, a Catholic priest (or ex-Catholic priest) who used an Anglican liturgy “intending to do what the Church does” could (it might be argued) be celebrating the Eucharist “validly but illicitly.”
He also wrote:
“It strikes me as a cumbersome cut-and-paste job that drops the rather dull contemporary Catholic Eucharistic canon onto the BCP.”
How can you write this, that is, if you have, in fact, ever seen a copy of the BDW? Like the 1979 ECUSA BCP, it has two rites for the Eucharist, a “Cranmerian English” Rite I and a “contemporary English” Rite II. In the latter, indeed, the four Eucharistic Prayers of the ca. 1970 ICEL English translation of the Novus Ordo have been substituted for the for the four EPs in Rite II of the 1979 BCP. The ICEL English translation is, IMO, pretty dull and bad — but a much improved version had been approved by Rome and should be in use within five years. But in Rite I of the BDW a 16th-Century English translation of the Roman Canon had been substituted for the two contained in the ECUSA 1979 BCP Rite I (the 1928 BCP Prayer of Consecration and a “condensed and improved” version of the same), and the language and style preserves the somber magnificence of Cranmer’s prose.
Thanks Dr. Tigue.
“It strikes me as a cumbersome cut-and-paste job that drops the rather dull contemporary Catholic Eucharistic canon onto the BCP.â€
Actually, it was Cranmer who did the cut-and-paste, if you think about it. A little Catholic here, a little Luther there …
BTW, my name is spelled with two ‘t’s. Dr. Harmon didn’t get it wrong … the staff writer at the Catholic Key did. You pronounce it the same either way, though, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.
Why would anyone want to become RC and the baggage that RC Church carries especially Purgatory and the praying to saints?
Hmmm … for that matter, why would anyone want to become Lutheran, with all the baggage the Lutherans carry (especially consubstantiation and all that angst over justification)?
Matt Teel wrote:
Hmmm … for that matter, why would anyone want to become Lutheran, with all the baggage the Lutherans carry (especially consubstantiation and all that angst over justification)?
Lutheran’s do not believe in “consubstantiation” that was a term that Catholics and Reform used to try to explain what Lutherans believed. Luther said that Christ said ” This is My Body and This is My Blood” and he let it that. Luther said that it did not need to be explained, Christ said it and that was good enough for him. Luther said that we receive Christ’s Body and Blood in, with and under the bread and wine, in other words, we receive both. As for angst over justification, it is certainly better than trying to do ” good works” in order to get into Heaven or spend less time in purgatory. Lutheran believe that good works are to serve your neighbor.
Wow, you really missed the point. But thanks for the lesson on Lutheranism, as well as the complementary Catholic-baiting. Since all of this is wildly off-topic, though, I’m not going to respond to any more of your posts.
Matt Teel wrote:
Wow, you really missed the point. But thanks for the lesson on Lutheranism, as well as the complementary Catholic-baiting. Since all of this is wildly off-topic, though, I’m not going to respond to any more of your posts.
I wasn’t Catholic baiting, the point was that I couldn’t see why anyone would want to go to Rome or go East and not try to reform the ECUSA or the Anglican Communion and bring both back to orthodox teachings.
“I wasn’t Catholic baiting, the point was that I couldn’t see why anyone would want to go to Rome or go East and not try to reform the ECUSA or the Anglican Communion and bring both back to orthodox teachings.”
You are assuming that “Protestant teachings = orthodox teachings”, a notion that anyone who knows anything avout the first millennium of Christinaity and Church teaching will find risibly absurd.
Understood in their proper context, the Communion of Saints and other teachings of the Churches of the East and West are not baggage but necessities. Given the journey that we are on it is far more important to be equipped and prepared than to be traveling light.
Well-spoken, Nikolaus!
BTW, Dr. Tigue. I withdraw my comments about the Book of Divine Worship. I had been shown a book and was told it was the BDW, as I said above it bore little resemblance to Cranmer’s liturgy. I just took the opportunity to do my own research and realize that what was presented as the BDW was, in fact, not. My apologies and thanks for the correction.