What’s Wrong with the New ACNA Eucharistic Rites? (Part 2)

By Robin G. Jordan

The Anglican Church in North America’s liturgical commission’s vision of worship on Sundays and festivals is a solemn celebration of High Mass—the kind of eucharistic celebration that one might find in a cathedral or large parish church in an Anglo-Catholic diocese. It presumes an affluent, established congregation with a full complement of priests, deacons, and lay readers, a reed organ, and a vested choir, celebrating Mass in a traditional setting. It is totally out of sync with the North American mission field in the twenty-first century and the circumstances of many Anglican congregations in Canada and the United States. Sadly the ACNA’s College of Bishops shares the same vision. The bishops not only approved the eucharistic rites that the liturgical commission developed but also contributed to the development of these rites.

The purpose of this two-part article is to help readers have a clearer understanding of the problem areas and weaknesses of the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer. The focus of this part of the article is the introductory rites, the Liturgy of the Word, the Prayers of the People, the Penitential Preparation, the Peace, the Offertory, and the concluding rites. I also discuss the significance of the new ACNA eucharistic rites for Anglicans in and outside of North America.

The Introductory Rites. The introductory rites are one of the three parts of the Holy Eucharist, which is prone to attract clutter. The other two places are the offertory and the concluding rites. As a consequence, the introductory rites tend to become longer and more complicated over time. Rather than prepare the people to hear the Word, they are apt to take on a significance of their own. Nearly all the major liturgical reforms have sought to cut out the unessential additions to the introductory rites so that they may serve their function better.

The ACNA’s liturgical commission in the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer goes in the opposite direction. This may be partly explained by the commission’s seeming obsession with the 1552 Prayer Book’s predecessor, the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, and various embellishments to the liturgy from the Anglican missals and other sources.

In the manner of the Holy Eucharist in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the Mass in the new English translation of  the third edition of The Roman Missal, the introductory rites begins with a liturgical greeting after the entrance of the ministers. This greeting is required. Eight seasonal greetings are provided in addition to the greeting for ordinary time, which is printed at the beginning of the introductory rites. The seasonal greeting for Pentecost is quite lengthy.

The liturgical greeting is followed by the Collect for Purity. It is also required. This doublet of greeting and opening prayer will be repeated later in the introductory rites with the Salutation and the Collect of the Day.

The Collect for Purity is in turn followed by the Summary of Law. Like the liturgical greeting and the Collect for Purity the Summary of the Law is required. It may be omitted if the Ten Commandments are used. This is a peculiarity of Texts for Common Prayer and is highly unusual.

In the older Prayer Books the Summary of the Law may be used as an alternative to the Ten Commandments. In the more recent Anglican service books both the Ten Commandments and the Summary of the Law are optional. If the Ten Commandments are used, the Summary of the Law is not used and visa versa.

The new Irish Prayer Book permits the use of the Beatitudes as an alternative to the Ten Commandments and the Summary of the Law. All three are optional.

In requiring the use of the Summary of the Law at all celebrations of the Holy Eucharist except those at which the Ten Commandments are used, the ACNA’s liturgical commission appears to be emphasizing the Law as a command to love. One of the reasons that Archbishop Cranmer appears to have inserted the Ten Commandments into 1552 Communion Service is that through hearing its moral imperatives we recognize our sinfulness and our need for a Savior.

Liberals in the Episcopal Church prefer the Summary of the Law over the Ten Commandments. It fits more with their theological views. They emphasize the command to love others over the command to love God. In loving others, in accepting them as they are as God accepts them, we show our love for God. It would be interesting to learn what was the thinking behind the decision to require its use at almost every eucharistic celebration.

After the Summary of the Law (or the Ten Commandments, if they are used in place of the Summary of the Law), a three-fold Kyrie or Trisagion may be said or sung.

After the three-fold Kyrie or Trisagion the Gloria in Excelsis or another song of praise may be said or sung. The song of praise may be omitted in penitential seasons and on fast days. The Gloria in Excelsis may be alternatively sung in the concluding rites before the Blessing and the Dismissal.

The ACNA’s liturgical commission place the Kyries and the Gloria in Excelsis in the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer in the order they are placed in the 1549 Prayer Book and The Roman Missal. Priests influenced by the 1549 Prayer Book and The Roman Missal, in which both the Kyries and the Gloria in Excelsis are used most Sundays will be tempted to do the same.

The introductory rites of the 1549 Communion Service and the Roman Mass, however, are different from the introductory rites in the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer. The singing of the Kyries (or Trisagion) in combination with the Gloria in Excelsis or another song of praise will draw out the opening of the service and get it off to a slow start that will affect the whole pace of the service. It will have the same effect as singing a long, slow hymn at the beginning of the service.

Even longtime church goers experience lengthy, slow-moving eucharistic celebrations as tiresome and boring. First time worship visitors are not going to return for a second visit.

The kind of stately celebration of High Mass that may work in the cavernous space of a Medieval cathedral does not work in a school cafeteria and other non-traditional settings.

If the Kyries (or Trisagion) and the Gloria in Excelsis are both recited such as at an early service, the priest will be tempted to read them as rapidly as possible, spitting out words like bullets from a machine gun, while a breathless congregation struggles to keep up with him.

The Salutation and the Collect for the Day follow the song of praise. See my article, “What’s Wrong with the New ACNA Eucharistic Rites? (Part 1)” for a discussion of how Anglo-Catholics and Roman Catholic interpret the versicle and response, “The Lord be with you; and with your spirit” and an explanation of why Archbishop Cranmer omitted it from the 1552 Communion Service.

In the new English translation of the third edition of The Roman Missal this versicle and response is one of three versicles and responses that the Celebrant may use as a part of liturgical greeting at the very beginning of the introductory rites. The Celebrant introduces the Collect of the Day with a simple invitation to prayer, “Let us pray,” at the conclusion of the introductory rites. After a pause for silent prayer, the Celebrant says the Collect. In its introductory rites the Roman rite avoids the redundant doublets of liturgical greeting and Collect for Purity and Salutation and Collect of the Day.

In the General Instructions following the Long Form in Texts for Common Prayer permission is given to use the alternative versicle and response, "The Lord be with you; and also be with you," for the Salutation. In relegating this permission to the General Instructions, the liturgical commission gives the appearance of intentionally seeking to discourage the use of this alternative text for the Salutation. Both texts should have been printed in the two forms wherever the Salutation is used, and service leaders given the option of using one or the other of the texts or of omitting the Salutation altogether. A number of the more recent Anglican service books permit both options. The versicle and response, "The Lord be with you; and also with you" is usually printed first in the service as the preferred text for the Salutation; the versicle and response, "The Lord be with you; and with your spirit," second as the alternative text.

While the introductory rites for the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer can be made more cumbersome, they cannot be made shorter and simpler.

One of the better features of the introductory rites in the Holy Eucharist, Rite Two, in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is that the Collect for Purity can be omitted and a hymn or worship song can substituted for the Gloria in Excelsis, Kyries, and Trisagion. It is possible, as Byron Stuhlman points out in Prayer Book Rubrics Expanded, “to restore something of the clean lines of the ancient rite.” The ministers either take their places unobtrusively before the opening acclamation or enter in procession during the hymn or worship song. This streamlined version of the introductory rites is less musically demanding for small congregations with limited musical resources. It is particularly useful for new congregations gathering for worship in non-traditional settings.

In 2001 I attended a workshop which explored how Anglican eucharistic rites could be simplified to make them more understandable and less daunting to the unchurched individuals and families who had no previous experience with Christian community at prayer, much less came from a liturgical church background. These individuals and families were not just unaccustomed to the ceremonies, postures, and vestments that some North American Anglicans equate with Anglican worship; they were put off by them altogether. They form one of the largest segment of the unchurched population of North America. In some regions of North America they are the largest unchurched population segment.

This simplification involves the omission of a substantial number of the elements required by the rubrics of Texts for Common Prayer. They are not essential. The result is a barebones liturgy. But it is a liturgy that is visitor-friendly.

This barebones liturgy also lends itself to the use of contemporary music. On the North American mission field in the twenty-first century a medley of worship songs, perhaps followed by a rousing Gloria such as David Haas’ rock setting of the Gloria in his Mass of Light, and concluding with an opening prayer, is much more effective way of bringing people together as a worshiping assembly and focusing their attention on God than a number of the elements in the introductory rites of the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer, even when these elements are used in combination with each other.

A number of the elements in the introductory rites in the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer were not originally a part of the Holy Eucharist in the Western Church. They include the Kyries, the Gloria in Excelsis, and the Collect of the Day. The Collect for Purity and the Ten Commandments were added to the English Communion Service in the sixteenth century; the Summary of the Law, to the American Communion Office in the eighteenth century. The Salutation was added to the American Communion Office in the early twentieth century; the Opening Acclamation, the Trisagion, and the Peace later in that century.

To give the local congregation the freedom that it needs to tailor its worship to its particular circumstances and to its community and its ministry target group or groups, all these elements should be optional.

What may make a liturgy attractive to longtime Anglo-Catholics accustomed to using the 1928 Prayer Book, perhaps with additions from one of the Anglican missals, or the 1979 Prayer Book, also perhaps with additions from The Roman Missal, is not going to make the liturgy attractive to the unchurched. One of the reasons that congregations in Anglican Church of Canada, the Episcopal Church, and the Continuing Anglican Churches have not been successful in reaching the unchurched is that they have put their preferences in worship first. They have erected a liturgical barrier through which the unchurched must pass to hear the gospel. The few who do negotiate this barrier are not likely to hear the gospel once they negotiate it. But that is another problem.

One of the dangers of a liturgical commission in which the most influential members are fascinated with the liturgies of the past and the liturgies of other church traditions is that it will easily lose sight of the purposes of worship gatherings in a great commission church. The liturgical commission will be tempted to adorn the rites of the church with elements from such liturgies, to which its most influential members are themselves attracted but to which the unchurched will have a different reaction. The result will be rites that will not help the church carry out the great commission but hamper it. The local congregations will not be equipped with the liturgical tools they need to reach the lost in their communities. This is what appears to be happening in the Anglican Church in North America.

The Liturgy of the Word. Among the liturgical elements that put off the unchurched are the High Church practices of standing for the Gospel reading and the Nicene Creed and saying the Gloria tibi response to the announcement of the Gospel reading and the Laus tibi response after the Gospel reading. These elements are required in the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer. They should be optional as is the Deo gratias response to the first two readings.

In the 1549 and 1552 Prayer Book the rubrics do not direct the people to stand for the Gospel reading or the Nicene Creed. The Gloria tibi is omitted in the 1552 and 1662 Prayer Books. The Laus tibi was first introduced into the American Prayer Book with the 1928 revision. Its use is optional in the 1928 Prayer Book.

The eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer, like the 1979 Prayer Book, depart from a long standing practice of the American Prayer Book , which is to permit the use of the Apostles’ Creed as an alternative to the Nicene Creed, and to permit the omission of the Creed, if it has been said immediately before in Morning Prayer. The use of the Nicene Creed is required only on Christmas Day, Easter Day, Ascension Day, Whitsunday, and Trinity Sunday. This practice has much to commend it and a number of the newer Anglican service books have adopted it.

The use of the Apostles’ Creed is particularly appropriate in congregations which contain a substantial number of adults and children who are not baptized and may be preparing for baptism. This is not an uncommon situation on the North American mission field in the twenty-first century.

The use of the version of the Nicene Creed used in the 1979 Prayer Book and the new English translation of the third edition of The Roman Missal is required. A congregation is not given the option of using a contemporary language version of the Nicene Creed used in the 1662 and 1928 Prayer Books or the option of reciting the Creed before the Sermon as in those Prayer Books. A number of the more recent Anglican service books permit both options.

While the rubrics do not permit the placement of the Creed before the Sermon, they do permit the placement of the Offertory before the Prayers of the People. The more recent Anglican service books that permit the placement of Offertory before the Prayers of the People or after the Peace also permit the placement of the Creed before or after the Sermon. The failure of the ACNA’s liturgical commission to provide this option in the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer points to a lack of consistency on its part.

The rubrics of the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer permit the omission of the Filoque from the Nicene Creed. See W. H. Griffith Thomas’ discussion of Filoque in the accompanying article, “W. H. Griffith Thomas on the Filoque.”

The Offertory.The Offertory may precede the Prayers of the People as in the 1662 and 1928 Prayer Books or follow the Peace as in the 1979 Prayer Book.

The rubrics do not prohibit the use of devotional material such as the Presentation and Preparation of the Gifts and the Prayer over the Offerings from the new English translation of the third edition of The Roman Missal or the Prayers at the Preparation of the Altar and Gifts from The Book of Divine Worship. These devotions could be used to bring the eucharistic theology of Texts for Common Prayer into even closer conformity to that of the Roman rite.

The rubrics leave entirely to the discretion of the Celebrant what ceremonial he uses at the Offertory. They do not prohibit the Celebrant from offering up the bread and wine before he places them on the Holy Table.

The Prayers of the People. The eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer contain only two forms for the Prayers of the People. One is printed in the Long Form; the other, in the Short Form. They are both contemporary language versions of the Prayer for the State of Christ’s Church. The rubrics do not permit the use of the form printed in the Long Form in the Short Form or the use of the form printed in the Short Form in the Long Form.

Replacing the six forms of the 1979 Prayer Book to which many ACNA congregations are accustomed is an unnecessary step backwards to say the least. Like the 1979 Prayer Book the newer Anglican service books permit congregations to prepare their own Prayers of People and provide directions to which the Prayers of the People must conform. They also provide a number of forms from which a congregation may choose or use as models in preparing its own Prayers of the People.

Even the late Peter Toon’s An Anglican Prayer Book (2008) permits as an alternative to the Prayer of Intercession a series of biddings, led by the priest or some other minister. After each bidding the minister says “Lord in your mercy” and the people respond “Hear our prayer.” At the conclusion the minister says “Merciful Father” and the people respond “Accept our prayers for the sake of your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”

The Penitential Preparation. While they permit a deacon or other person appointed to say the Invitation to Confession, the rubrics in the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Worship require a deacon to lead the Confession of Sin. How many ACNA congregations have a deacon as well as a priest? In the 1662 Prayer Book “one of the Ministers” leads the General Confession. This minister may be a priest, deacon, or lay reader. This is also the practice in the more recent Anglican service books.

The Peace. The Peace follows the Absolution (or the Comfortable Words, if used) and is required. As well as provision for its omission, greater flexibility as to where the Peace may be used would be desirable. Under some circumstances it would be preferable to use the Peace at the beginning or conclusion of the service or at some other point in the service.

The Concluding Rites. The concluding rites in the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer consists of a Post-Communion Prayer, a Blessing, and an optional Dismissal. The rubrics permit the singing or recitation of the Gloria in Excelsis before the Blessing and the Dismissal if it has not already been used in the introductory rites.

The rubrics do not permit the substitution of another song of praise for the Gloria if it is used before the Blessing and the Dismissal. This represents a break with what has been a long standing practice in the American Prayer Book and one of its better features. It also rules out the use of a metrical version of the Gloria at this point in the service. The singing of a familiar metrical version of the Gloria or another familiar hymn of praise or even a familiar worship song is preferable to a lackluster, perfunctory recitation of the Gloria.

One of two Post-Communion Prayers may be used in the Long Form. Only the second Post-Communion Prayer in the Long Form may be used in the Short Form. The first Post-Communion Prayer in the Long Form cannot be substituted for this prayer.

The Blessing printed in the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer is the blessing said by the new priest at ordination with “among” substituted for “upon” and “always” for “for ever.” The rubrics permit the substitution of a seasonal blessing but no texts are provided. Presumably the Celebrant is free to find or compose a blessing appropriate to the day or season.

The rubrics do not permit the omission of the Blessing if the Dismissal is used--one of the better features of  the 1979 Holy Eucharist, Rite Two.  The optional use of the Blessing and the placement of an optional final hymn before or after the  Post-Communion Prayer allow the service to move to a swift conclusion after the Post-Communion Prayer (or the final hymn).

The Dismissal is optional. Four texts are provided.

The function of the concluding rites is to send the people into the world to witness and serve. Like the introductory rites, the concluding rights have a tendency to become longer and more complicated and eventually to work against their function. Like the introductory rites, they also are apt to take on a significance of their own.

The ACNA’s liturgical commission in the eucharistic rites in Texts for Common Prayer adapt the conclusion of the 1979 Holy Eucharist, Rite One, for the concluding rites of the two forms, doing away with the one of changes that compilers of that rite made to restore the proper proportions of the concluding rites and to give much needed emphasis to their function. The commission permits the singing of hymn, psalm, or anthem after the Blessing or Dismissal.

The singing of a hymn, psalm, or anthem after the Blessing or Dismissal, however, defeats the purpose of the Blessing or Dismissal, which is to send the people out. The words of the song make meaningless nonsense of the words of the Blessing or Dismissal.

In churches in which the practice of singing a final song after the Blessing or the Dismissal is customary, it is not uncommon for the priest to say a string of prayers after the final song and then the acolytes to ceremonially extinguishing the candles. The people remain kneeling in their places until the candles are put out. All three practices drag out the worship gathering when it should have ended and the people gone on their way. They do not make a good impression upon first time worship visitors.

Rather than correcting these practices, the ACNA’s liturgical commission appears to be intent upon encouraging them.

Having used a number of features from the 1549 rite, I am surprised that the ACNA’s liturgical commission did not adopt this feature of the rite: it has no final song. The rite concludes with a blessing.

The Medieval Catholic Sarum Mass and the Lutheran German Church Orders from which Archbishop Cranmer took material for the 1549 rite also have no final song.

A final song is not prescribed in the present day Order of Mass of the Roman Catholic Church. After the dismissal the priest and ministers are supposed to process out of the church and the people to follow them. The Order of Mass does not even make provision for instrumental music to be played as the priest and ministers process out. Any song or instrumental music used after the dismissal is not considered a part of the Mass.

The Significance of the New Rites. The Holy Communion, Long Form, and The Holy Communion, Short Form, in Texts for Common Prayer are essentially the same rite. The only difference between the two forms is that they use different forms for the Prayers of the People and the Eucharistic Prayer. There is no choice of Post-Communion Prayer in the Short Form. Otherwise, the two forms are identical.

In my study of Anglican service books, I have examined shortened forms of the service of Morning and Evening Prayer. Texts for Common Prayer is the first service book that I have encountered that has a shortened form of the service of Holy Communion. “Short Form” may be a misnomer as the rite itself is not shorter in length than the Long Form. Elements of the Long Form have not been omitted to shorten the rite. Rather shorter prayers have been substituted for two of the prayers used in the Long Form--the Prayers of the People and the Eucharistic Prayer. Only the shorter of the two Post-Communion Prayers in the Long Form may be used in the Short Form.

The General Directions that follow the Short Form tell us that the rite is intended for “other occasions,” not the principal service or services on Sundays and feast days. The Short Form is not a second rite provided as an alternative to the rite given the title, “The Holy Communion, Long Form.” Rather it has been included for churches that have daily celebrations of Mass—a practice seen in Roman Catholic and more “advanced” (or extreme) Anglo-Catholic parishes.

The ACNA’s liturgical commission has a wealth of liturgical material available to it. The twentieth century was the century of Prayer Book revision. A number of Anglican provinces and dioceses have revised their service books in this century. From this wealth of material the commission could have easily produced two or more rites.

Since the global South provinces have extended their recognition to the ACNA, one would have expected the liturgical commission to have made substantial use of liturgical material from these provinces to express solidarity with the global South provinces. The commission has not to my knowledge used very little if any material from these sources.

Successive revisions have moved the American Prayer Book away from the “Protestant Reformed religion” of the Anglican formularies and closer to the unreformed Catholicism of the Roman Catholic Church. This includes the most recent revisions of the Reformed Episcopal Church’s The Book of Common Prayer and the Anglican Mission’s Services in Contemporary English from The Book of Common Prayer of 1662 (2006) and An Anglican Prayer Book (2008). The Anglican Church in North America’s ordinal and its Texts for Common Prayer continues the movement of the American Prayer Book in that direction.

In the light of this development the Anglican Church in North America, the Anglican Mission, and the Reformed Episcopal Church cannot be expected to spearhead a recovery of authentic historic Anglicanism in North America with its acceptance of the authority of the Bible and the Anglican formularies. They are leading a movement in the direction of unreformed Catholicism. If such a recovery is to occur in North America, impetus for this recovery must come from outside of North America. It may be more accurate to speak in terms of an introduction of authentic historic Anglicanism into North America than a recovery as the Episcopal Church was already moving in the direction of unreformed Catholicism when it was founded in the eighteenth century.

Also see
What's Wrong with the New ACNA Eucharistic Rites (Part 1)