By Robin G. Jordan
While the forms of the Holy Communion that the Liturgy Task
Force crafted for the proposed 2019 Book of Common Prayer may employs textual
material from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the manner in which it is employed
differs from the manner that it is employed in the 1662 Prayer Book. The
doctrine that the three forms embody is not that of the 1662 Prayer Book nor is
compatible with the doctrine of that historic Anglican formulary. It is also
not compatible with the principles of doctrine and worship laid out in the Articles
of Religion of 1571. The three forms embody a form of unreformed Catholicism
that does not differ greatly from Roman Catholicism, particularly in its
doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice and eucharistic presence, and which is
antithetical to the spirit of authentic historic Anglicanism.
While the language of the three eucharistic prayers is more
muted than that of the Roman Canon, their structure is identical to that of the
Roman Canon with the offering of the eucharistic elements following their
consecration. This may be seen from a comparison of the three eucharistic prayers
with the Roman Canon. The forms of the Holy Communion developed for proposed
2019 Book of Common Prayer also incorporate material from the Roman Missal, the
Book of Divine Worship, the Anglican Service Book, and the various Anglican
Missals. Unlike the 1549 Communion Service, they contain no rubrical
prohibition against the elevation of consecrated host or the showing of the
consecrated elements to the congregation for adoration. Rather they incorporate
a formula that is taken from these sources and which is historically associated
with the exhibiting of the consecrated elements for adoration.
A careful examination of the other rites and services that
the Liturgy Task Force has completed to date shows that they evidence the same
doctrinal leanings as the eucharistic rite.
Considering the theological diversity found in the Anglican
Church in North America, one would have expected the task force to have
produced a collection of rites and services that took into account the
divergent opinions of the several theological schools of thought represented in
the province. Instead the task force has prepared a collection of rites and
services that gives preferential treatment to the opinions of the Catholic
Revivalist school of thought. While the collection contains provisions that
enable those using the collection to make its rites and services more openly
unreformed Catholic in their doctrine and liturgical usages, it does not
contain any provisions that enable its users to do the reverse and to make them
more biblical and Reformed and consequently more Anglican.
If the Liturgy Task Force has any appreciation of the kinds
of challenges that churches on the North American mission field face in the
twenty-first century, it is not evident in the forms of the Holy Communion or
the other rites and services that the task force has so far produced. They lack
the kind of flexibility and adaptability to local circumstances, which is an
absolute necessity on the twenty-first century North American mission field. We
are not living the middle of the twentieth century but in the second decade of
the new millennium. Rather than produce a liturgy for the twenty-first century,
the Liturgical Task Force appears to be intent on revisiting and redoing the
Prayer Book revision of the last century.
Missing from these rites and services is careful balancing
of the desire for brevity with the desire for enrichment. The result is a
liturgy that is needlessly prolix. Even
the so-called “short form” of the Holy Communion is unnecessarily long.
Elements of the eucharistic rite which could have been made
optional because of their history, or even omitted, are required at every
celebration of the Holy Communion. The Kyries, the Gloria in Excelsis, the
Lord’s Prayer, the Collect for Purity, the Decalogue, the Collect of the
Commandments, and the Summary of the Law, are the liturgical equivalent of
“clutter” which the gathering rite has collected over the centuries. Whether
they are “necessary” is highly debatable. They are for the most part redundant.
The only essential elements are the greeting and the Prayer of the Day. Even
the entrance song may be omitted.
The retention of certain elements of the eucharistic rite
appears to be cosmetic. The Decalogue, the Summary of the Law, the Prayer for
Whole State of Christ’s Church, and the Post-Communion Prayer, and the Blessing
fall into this category. They appear to have been retained to facilitate the
acceptance of the new forms with their unreformed Catholic doctrine and
liturgical usages.
The relationship of the three forms to the 1928 Communion
Service, to which they are touted as bearing a resemblance is similar to that of the
relationship of the 1928 Communion Service to the 1662 Communion Service. The
resemblance is a superficial one and does not hold up to close scrutiny. Their
doctrine and liturgical usages are different. The 1662 and 1928 Prayer Books
are not different editions of the same book as the late Peter Toon claimed.
They are different books.
The collection contains no alternatives to the services of
Holy Communion and Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. This includes provision
for ante-communion found in The Book of
Common Prayer from 1549 on, as well as forms for alternative services of
the Word found in more recent Anglican service books. This type of service
appears in Anglican service books as early as the 1926 Irish Prayer Book.
The January 12, 2017 resolution of the College of Bishops concerning
Prayer Books and Historic Rites is a step in the right direction but it does
not go far enough. The resolution states:
1. That Title II,
Canon 2, section 1 means that the Book of Common Prayer 1662 and its
predecessor books, including versions updated or contemporized as to language,
are, with the permission of the local bishop, completely appropriate for use in
this Church.
2. That the renewed
1552 Rite submitted by the Anglican Network in Canada should be, without delay,
placed among the liturgy web resources of the Province.
3. That historic
rites, per se, are not appropriate for inclusion in contemporary Prayer Books,
but are rightly used in shaping new rites, consistent with those texts. (Thus
the Eucharistic rites proposed for the 2019 Prayer Book are not 1662 or
Hippolytus/John Chrysostom, but reflect them.) The Book of Common Prayer 1662
together with the Ordinal attached remains the authoritative standard for the
Anglican tradition of worship within the Province.
4. That the College a)
commends the commitment to the Province’s common-language-at-prayer by those
who authored the renewed 1552 Communion rite (using the texts of Commandments,
Nicene Creed, Prayers of the People, Prefaces and Gloria, etc., adopted for the
2019 Book), and b) commends the 1552 revision, in this regard, as a model for
those desiring to renew other historic Prayer Book rites for contemporary use.
5. That the Governance Task Force be
instructed to re-shape the second half of Title II, Canon 2, section 1, to make
it clear that when the Book of Common Prayer (2019) is adopted – while it will
be the Prayer Book of the Province - the College sees no route to making it
mandatory at the Provincial level (principle of subsidiarity) or to ruling out
continuing use, under the authority of the local Bishop, (of not only 1662 and
its predecessor books but) of the Prayer Books that were in use at the time the
Province came together.
Under these proposals clergy and congregations loyal to the
teaching of the Bible and the principles of the historic Anglican formularies will be afforded no protection from Catholic Revivalist bishops intent on requiring
the use of the collection in their diocese. The College of Bishops did not
propose the addition of a “conscience clause” to the constitution and canons.
The doctrine and liturgical usages of the collection will still become the
official doctrine and liturgical usages of the province and its rites and
services, the official rites and services of the province, imposing the
doctrinal and worship views of the province’s Catholic Revivalist wing upon the
province.
Under these proposals clergy and congregations loyal to the
teaching of the Bible and the principles of the historic Anglican formularies
will not be able to produce their own catechism and rites and services for use
in their churches. They will not be able to publish and use a service book
that embodies the biblical and Reformed doctrine of authentic historical
Anglicanism and which is designed for the twenty-first century North American
mission field.
The proposals that the College of Bishops backed will only
permit the use of modern-language versions of 1662 Book of Common Prayer and
its predecessors and the continued use of liturgical books in use at the time
the province was formed. The books in these two categories were designed for a
different context and suffer from problems of their own.
The College of Bishops’ resolution offers an unsatisfactory
solution to a difficult problem that is not going to go away on its own. In
this regard it is similar to the Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight
provisions that the Episcopal Church adopted. Those provisions did not meet the
needs of congregations and clergy involved in theological disputes with their
bishops and ultimately led to the formation of the Anglican Church in North
America.
If the College of Bishops wishes to free itself from the
negative image of being far too eager to cater to the special interests of the
Catholic Revivalist wing of the province even to the extent giving the
preferences of this wing priority over the mission of the Church, it needs to
take the following three steps.
1. The bishops need to reconsider their endorsement of the
catechism and the ordinal along with the other texts and rubrics of the
proposed 2019 Prayer Book. They need to support the replacement of these
formularies with ones that are far more comprehensive in their doctrine and
liturgical usages and which are geared to the needs of congregations on the
twenty-first century North American mission field.
2. The bishops need to support the authorization of the use
of The New City Catechism, a modern-language
version of Alexander Nowell’s Larger Catechism, and similar catechetical
resources in the province, leaving to the local congregation the final choice
of what resources are used in the local congregation with the proviso that the
doctrine of the resources used must be in line with the teaching of the Bible
and the principles of the historic Anglican formularies. The bishops may wish
to publish a list of approved catechetical resources for the guidance of local
congregations, updating the list at regular intervals.
3. In addition to these measures, the bishops need to support
the amendment of the constitution and canons of the province to permit
geographic- and non-geographic-based networks of churches, whether
sub-provinces, dioceses, or affinity networks—voluntary associations of
churches sharing a common theological outlook, to develop, publish, and use
their own collections of rites and services provided such liturgical resources
are in line with the teaching of the Bible and the principles of the historic
Anglican formularies. In the twenty-first century the notion that a single
Prayer Book can meet the needs of all churches in a province, particularly a
province which like the Anglican Church in North America is far from homogenous
in its make-up is a highly unrealistic one.
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