Ordinariate Pilgrim

 Not far from the Ordinariate Church of the Most Precious Blood in Borough, is Rushworth Street, and there a passer-by with a taste for fine Edwardian architecture might observe Chadwick House. He is unlikely to realise that it was once an Anglican Convent, and the headquarters of the Community of Reparation to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

Convent of Reparation Rushworth Street SE1

Less than thirty years after John Keble aroused the slumbering Church of England to consider again its Catholic roots, the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament was founded, with the Revd T T Carter of Clewer, as its first president. And here is another small link in the chain, for the present parish priest of Precious Blood, Fr Christopher Pearson, was himself Superior of the CBS in his Anglican days. In 1869 the Revd A B Goulden resolved to establish a group of Tertiaries “to repair as far as lay in their power the dishonour done to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar (1) by continual intercession for those who do not know Him under the sacramental veils of Bread and Wine (2) by active missionary work in our large towns.”

It was not long before some of the Tertiaries felt the call to dedicate themselves more completely to the object of Reparation and Fr Goulden arranged for two of them to serve a noviciate with the sisters at Clewer, near Windsor. In 1871 Fr Goulden was appointed priest of the mission district of St Alphege, Southwark, a desperately poor area where the sisters soon found themselves combining – in a way peculiar to Anglican communities – the active and contemplative life. Their chapel had perpetual Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, which was unusual even in the Community Chapels of that time.

The Community grew in numbers, taking over a local orphanage and home for girls, and moving to their Convent in Rushworth Street in 1911. Sir Walter Tapper was the architect of the house pictured above, and the stately Renaissance chapel with its marble altar. A branch House was established in the parish of St Stephen, Upton Park and a Home of Rest at Pirbright, near Woking in Surrey.

My own small connection with the Community came in the early 1980’s. I was vicar of St Edmund, Forest Gate, the parish which had taken over St Stephen Upton Park after the Second World War. I met Reverend Mother Eunice CRJBS, when she came each year on holiday to stay with her sister. The Community had moved from Southwark to the Convent at Clewer when the community numbers had dwindled to five. She died just before I left Forest Gate and I attended her funeral at Clewer.

The Community of Reparation was part of that great flowering of Catholic spirituality and practise which transformed the Church of England. It helped to introduce Anglicans to Eucharistic belief and devotion which had been dormant since the Reformation. Ultimately it convinced Pope Benedict that he was meeting people who, had for years been living forms of Catholic life, although outside the Communion of the Universal Church. I am convinced that Mother Eunice and her sisters would be content that former Anglicans, now united in full Communion, were just round the corner from her Convent. Perhaps it will inspire us at Precious Blood to two things: the first is to renew our love of Jesus in the Eucharist and the Tabernacle; the second is to love and serve the people of our parish in all their needs and concerns, to love them as Jesus loves them, reaching out from his silent presence in their midst, from his Altar Throne.

Pope Benedict XVI

The news today that the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, is to resign at the end of this month, has come as a shock to many. Those of us who have come into the fullness of Communion with the Catholic Church through the Ordinariate have particular reason to be grateful to him. His gesture in resigning the Papacy is as radical as it is humble: it shows how often people have been wrong in their judgement of a very remarkable Pope.

We give God thanks for Pope Benedict; we pray for him, and for the Cardinals meeting soon to elect our next Pontiff.

English Use or Roman  Use: it was a live question when I was a server in the 60’s, and we certainly knew the difference! There were two churches in the town, and both would have described themselves as ‘Anglo-Catholic’ but one was ‘English’ and the other was – well, I suppose that it would have called itself ‘Western’, because we didn’t want to disturb those members of the congregation who were not quite up on all of this. It all sounds rather petty now, and perhaps we servers ought to have been fussing about rather more important things. Yet as the Ordinariate moves towards a Eucharistic Liturgy of its own, to be used alongside the current Missal, perhaps we might consider how this Liturgy is to be performed. We are talking about ceremonial but more than that, the ethos of worship. Is there something distinctively English, and should the Ordinariate develop it. Certainly we young servers knew how to distinguish between ‘English’ and ‘Roman’?

The moment you walked into the church and looked at the altar, you knew. The ‘English’ altar had two candles, a frontal (sometimes curtains called ‘riddels’ on three sides) and often two standard candlesticks on the sanctuary pavement of the High Altar.

English Use altar

Now if you walked into a ‘Roman’ or ‘Western Use’ church, the altar would have looked quite different. Six candles (at least) standing on a shelf (a ‘gradine’) and a lofty reredos and lots of steps. Notice as well that the Blessed Sacrament in the ‘English Use’ is in a small aumbry (cupboard) to the left of the altar, and in the ‘Roman Use’ is in a large tabernacle in the centre of the altar.

In both churches the vestments would have been worn at the Eucharist, but the shape was very important: ‘English Use’ was full and flowing, ‘Roman Use’ was cut away at the sides and stiffened so that the chasuble hung flat. Both vestments were chasubles, but one the shape of the English Middle Ages, and the other from the Continent of the 18th century.

Notice that the priest in the English Use vestments is bare-headed in church, whereas the Roman Use Celebrant wears the biretta on his head. The alb (the long white undergarment) is trimmed with lace, and this was also a distinguishing feature. In Roman Use churches albs and cottas, as well as altar cloths, were often trimmed with lace of varying quality. In English Use churches lace was never used.

Roman Use vestments

Both the cotta  and the surplice are derived from the alb, and came to be worn in the Middle Ages in place of the alb for the Choir Offices, and for Baptism and Marriage outside the Mass.

English Use surplice

The long full surplice was increasingly shortened in Counter-Reformation Europe and decorated with lace.

In the Church of England the surplice continued in its mediaeval form through the same period, though it was sometimes made to open at the front to accomodate the full-bottom wigs worn by men at the time. This custom of wearing wigs also debased the shape of the hood worn by English academics and clergy, so that the modern strip of black and coloured silk worn by students at ther graduation bears little resemblance now to any sort of ‘hood’. In the illustration from the “Parson’s Handbook” the priest wears a full surplice, an academic hood of his university, made in the original shape before the use of wigs altered it, and the black scarf. This is often wrongly called a ‘preaching scarf’, for it is part of choir dress and has nothing to do with the pulpit! Dearmer maintains that it is the mark in choir of the clerk in holy orders, when lay clerks too would have worn the surplice and hood. He mischievously points out that, in abandoning the scarf, ‘Roman Use’ Anglicans have abandoned a priestly vestment. I do not know whether he is right or not!

English Use Choir Dress

Servers in English Use churches often wore the alb at the Eucharist, and their amices (and those of the clergy) had a strip of stiffened coloured fabric sewn on to the edge. This ‘apparel’  formed a collar, as can be seen in the picture below. Notice that the alb skirts and the cuffs are also decorated with coloured apparels. The Sacred Ministers wear full vestments, and the altar is long and low, with two candles only on the altar. Posts with angels holding four more candles support curtains on the east, north and south sides. There appears to be a fourth minister: in the English Use there might be one or two ‘clerks’ who would wear tunicles similar to that of the ‘subdeacon’ (the third minister who sang or read the Epistle) and would carry the Processional Cross and generally assist at the altar. (This custom of servers wearing tunicles was not unknown on the Continent. A little book called ‘Ceremonial Curiosities’ written by an Anglican cleric in the early 20th century, tells how he watched the acolytes in a Spanish Cathedral carry their candles over their shoulders, with streams of molte wax pouring down the back of the magnificent embroidered tunicles they were wearing) .

Solemn Eucharist according to the English Use

In this exquisite mediaeval painting, St Martin celebrates Mass assisted by a deacon. Both ministers wear very full vestments, with apparels on the amice and alb.

The battle of ‘Roman’ v ‘English’ largely faded out from the 1970’s on. As a result of the liturgical renewal of the Second Vatican Council Catholic altars were stripped of their gradines and rows of towering candlesticks. ‘English altars’ lost their curtains as they were moved forward to allow the Celebrant to ‘face the people’. Lace went out of fashion, cottas grew in length to outdo surplices, and polyester albs saved on the washing and ironing for clergy and servers alike.

But the pendulum swings, and with wider permission to use the Extraordinary form of Mass (the 1962 revision of the so-called ‘Tridentine’ Rite)  fiddleback vestments, lace albs and birettas are to be seen again in the Catholic liturgy. This may pose something of a dilemma as the Ordinariate develops its liturgical forms. Most (though not all) of us in the Ordinariate are from an Anglican background which has made a point of using ‘Western’ (Roman) ceremonial, and especially since the 1970 missal was published.

But if the Ordinariate is to be distinctive in at least some of its forms, would it not make sense to think about ‘clothing’ the rites which are in preparation with the simple beauty of the ‘English Use’ which some of us knew in former years? Certainly the assumption that the Ordinariate Rites should be celebrated in 18th century Continental vestments and with the ceremonial of the pre-conciliar Roman Rite does not seem particularly logical.

Archbishop Gerhard Müller, the new Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, warns us against extremist views concerning the Second Vatican Council. There are those in both the traditionalist and progressive camps that see the Council as a “rupture”, believing that there was a radical break with the Catholic past. Pope Benedict, by contrast, has spoken of “the hermeneutic of reform, of renewal in continuity.” Archbishop Müller said, “Outside this sole orthodox interpretation unfortunately exists a heretical interpretation, that is, a hermeneutic of rupture, [found] both on the progressive front and on the traditionalist” side.What the extremists have in common, he said, is their rejection of the Council: “The progressives in their wanting to leave it behind, as if it were a season to abandon in order to get to another Church, and the traditionalists in their not wanting to get there”, seeing the council as a Catholic “winter”.

For many of us in the Ordinariate the Second Vatican Council is especially precious, but we should not imagine that our reconciliation with the worldwide Church only became possible because of its reforming work. The following remarkable obituary of Pope Pius XII was penned by the late Cardinal John Heenan.

Pope Pius XII

To the world at large, the Pope stood as a figure apart, speaking words of peace, involking blessings upon a stricken world. But to Catholics he was naturally much more. His wisdom brought the practice of their faith into line with the stress of modern life. One of the most far reaching of his reforms was his entirely new approach to the discipline of fasting before receiving Holy Communion.

His was always an original approach; for example, he authorised bishops to arrange for the celebration of Mass in the evening, as well as in the morning. Thousands of peoploe who could never be at Mass except on Sundays are now able to enjoy the spiritual benefits of frequent Mass, and Holy Communion.

He was not only original but courageous in his enterprise. To take one isolated example: he allowed a convert clergyman to be ordained priest, although a married man.

Thus we see what Pope Benedict means when he stresses the “hermeneutic of continuity”. The far-sighted courage of his predecessor Pope Pius XII in dispensing the “convert clergyman” and allowing a married man to be ordained, has brought joy to hundreds of former Anglican clergy, married men, but able to be ordained as Catholic priests. Thus the renewing reforms of the Council are to be understood, and put into practice, within the great stream of faith and teaching which comes to us down the centuries from the Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles.

Finally, does anyone know who this “convert clergman” was? Did he come from the Church of England, or another part of the Anglican Communion? And was Pope Pius XII the first Pope to dispense from the vow of celibacy in this particular situation, and thus allow for the ordination of a former cleric to the Catholic priesthood?

“And as they were eating, (Jesus) took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” (Mark 14:22 RSV)”

Read the words in black: do the words in red.” However inadequate that might be as a direction to the priest celebrating the Mass, it will do nicely to begin reflecting on what Anglicans might bring with them of their liturgical history and experience, as they enter into full communion with the Catholic Church through the Ordinariate. Words and actions, rite and ceremony, text and rubric …

God created human beings for worship, above everything else. When we worship God we are at our truest, and when we do not worship we are lost, lonely and unhappy. This is what lies behind the Church’s insistence that we ‘go to Mass on Sunday’. The first Christians did not need telling, for we read,  “And day by day, attending the temple together and  breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. ”  (Acts 2:46-47 RSV)

Notice that the last sentence, which tells us that the growth of the early Church followed immediately on from its  worship, and the attitude of the first Christians to it. When the Church praises God with glad and generous hearts, people come to faith in Christ and the Church grows.  In the words of the Anglican liturgy from the Preface of the Eucharistic Prayer: “It is not only right, it is our duty and our joy.” As Anglicans we often envied the dutiful way in which our Catholic brothers and sisters made Sunday Mass their obligation; we want to graft on to that duty our  deep sense of celebration, in going to Mass because it is our joy to do so!

The beauty of the liturgy

We need just to make this point: that correct liturgy is not necessarily good liturgy. But good liturgy will always be beautiful liturgy. This applies whether we are worshipping with all the grandeur and resources of a cathedral, or celebrating  Mass in a caravan on a children’s holiday. Much of the responsibility for this will fall on the priest who is presiding, to make the liturgy glorious, wherever he is. It is not enough for him simply to know how to do the words in red. He must have a profound personal faith in God, a deep concern for the people over whom he presides, and a self-effacing humility which enables him to give away to others their part, equally with him, in the celebration. Much of this comes with time and experience, and it takes years of practise and prayer. To take part in the Mass celebrated by one who has been a priest all his life, to see the quiet devotion, the unhurried care with which every action is done and every word spoken, this is a real joy.

The beauty of the liturgy is not easy to define. We live in an age of relativism, and we are quite used to hearing people talk about what is true ‘for them’. We have become convinced that beauty is a ‘matter of opinion’, and so we divide into groups based on ‘what I like’; we avoid the difficult arguments which look for principles. As Anglicans we lived with a certain liturgical anarchy, and the adage that ‘every priest was a pope in his own parish’ was nowhere more true than in the liturgical practices which, too often, depended on ‘what Father likes’.  My own impression was that many serious minded (Anglo) Catholic clergy adopted the 1970 missal as a mission principle –  because it saved them from hours spent compiling ‘services’ and arguments with servers about who should be censed at the offertory!  But if it is not easy to define the principle of beauty – in liturgy or anywhere else in life – then we must at least try.

Percy Dearmer, the great protagonist of the English Use of the Prayer Book is as forceful as he always was:

Vulgarity is … due to a failure to recognize the principle of authority; and authority is as necessary in art as it is in religion. Every one does what is right in his own eyes, because we have refused to accept the first principles of the matter, the necessity of wholesome tradition on the one hand and of due deference to the artist’s judgement on the other. We do not listen to the artist when he tells us about art, and we are surprised that he does not listen to us when we tell him about religion .. Most of the tawdry stupidity of our churches is due to the decline of art in our more recent days.                                                                                                           The Parson’s Handbook,  8th edition, 1913

Liturgical renewal flowing from the Second Vatican Council

The reform of the liturgy was one of the major works of the Second Vatican Council. At first it seemed that the Novus Ordo of 1970 would simply replace the ‘Tridentine’ Missal promulgated by Pope Pius V in 1570, as that Missal had replaced the various national and diocesan variants of the Middle Ages. Such was not the case, and the arguments of recent years between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘modernisers’ are not nearly so clearly defined as the extremists on both side would like to have it.  It is common, but wrong, to refer to the ‘Tridentine’ Missal, as the ‘Latin Mass’.  The 1970 Missal of Pope Paul VI was composed  in Latin and translated into the vernaculars: in England we now have a new English translation, which we have been getting used to since Advent 2011. But the current Missal (the Ordinary Form of Mass) may just as well be celebrated in Latin as in English. Indeed, in my own Catholic parish the 11.15 Mass on Sunday is entirely in Latin (except for the readings, homily and intercessions) with the large congregation joining in lustily in the singing of gloria and creed to Missa de Angelis. And the ceremonial is that of the 1970 Missal: the celebrant faces the people at the altar, he presides from the chair for the Liturgy of the word, readings are from the ambo. I’ve laboured this point perhaps. But it is quite wrong to associate in people’s minds the 1970 missal with  ‘guitars and crimplene vestments’.  I  speak of my experience while in the Church of England, where those Anglo-Catholic parishes which used the Roman Missal often did so with the ‘noble simplicity’

we ought to associate with the celebration of the Mass, in whatever form it is celebrated.

My exploration of France took me, some years ago, to the Abbey of Fontgombault, where the monastic community uses the latin Office and the 1962 missal. There are some interesting pictures of the liturgy on the New Liturgical Movement website, where the full vestments, flowing surplices and the long altar with its low candlesticks would warm the heart of any ‘English’ enthusiast, surely.

The renewal of worship and the Anglican experience

Students  for the Anglican priesthood at Kelham received in their final year  training in the celebration of the Eucharist. This was less to do with the following of rubrics (it was expected that your training incumbent would do this while you were still a deacon) but much more about deportment (how to move slowly, gracefully and yet in a manly way), voice production (clear, calm, avoiding the extremes of the bored gabble on one hand, and the ‘full of meaning’ voice on the other) wearing the vestments properly (no knee-length albs ever permitted at Kelham) and a host of other preliminaries which the priest needs to learn before he even leaves the sacristy.

These things we prided ourselves on as Anglicans: and when we got it right our worship was profoundly beautiful. Of course, these things do not in themelves make for authentic worship for that is a gift of God to those whose hearts are open to receive it.

Now with the Christian altar comes a new focal point. Let us say it again: on the altar what the Temple had in the past foreshadowed is now present in a new way. Yes, it enables us to become the contemporaries of the Sacrifice of the Logos. Thus it brings heaven into the community assembled on earth, or rather it takes that community beyond itself into the communion of saints of all time and places. We might put it this way: the altar is the place where heaven is opened up. It does not close off the church, but opens it up – and leads it into the eternal liturgy.

The Spirit of the Liturgy – Pope Benedict XVI  p.71

The Catholic hierarchy have been cautious in their response to the moves of the Church of England to ordain women to the episcopate. Their line seems to be that this is a matter for the C of E to decide for itself: and that unity discussions will continue, though in a rather different context.

I spent Christmas with my mother: I went to the Vigil Mass of Christmas at the Catholic church, and then we went together to the Anglican church on Christmas morning, the church where I was brought up, and where my mother still worships. I am grateful to the priest and people for the warm and gracious welcome they continue to give me. Gracious is certainly not the tone of the January edition of  ‘Sarum Link’, their diocesan newspaper. Of course, it is not for me to have a go about their reaction to the lost General Synod vote, but when this spills over into ignorant and careless talk about the Holy Father and the Catholic Church, then I will certainly wade in. Here is the article under the heading ‘Second Opinion’ by Tim Biles.

How I wish the women bishops thing was resolved! As it is we go into another new year with it still dominating the way the nation sees us and the way we spend our own time and energy on our own affairs while the world with all its needs passes us by. That’s sinful.

However their is one good thing about it, which hasn’t had the publicity it deserves. We’ve heard that the failure to accept women bishops makes the church ‘even more irrelevant’, that it means we have forfeited our right to ‘speak for the nation’, that the decision was akin to the C of E ‘committing suicide’ and that our church is in the hands of a minority.

These are harsh criticisms. How does the Roman Catholic Church avoid such ridicule when it won’t even allow the question of women priests to be discussed? Their Pope has decided and no matter what the people may think they have to keep quiet about it because they have no voice. Even their bishops cannot offer a thought because if they do the papal nuncio watchdog who oversees them will report them. Their allegiance is to an absolute monarchy, behind the Vatican walls.

This is where our little bit of unpublicised good news comes in. We have a system in which everyone counts, and every member of Synod is entitled to speak and be heard. This is light years ahead of the papal contingent who must remain on message even when the message is of the past age and seems absurd. It’s true our Synod delivered a decision again the vast majority – 42 dioceses out of 44 said ‘yes’, 41 bishops out of 44 voted ‘yes’ – and yet a small group of lay people scuppered it (for the time being).

But which would you prefer in the twenty first century – an absolute monarch who silences the people, or a system of government which liberates the people, even with the risks that involves? Why not be proud of our open debates, proud of the way we share leadership and decision making? General Synod may be too bureaucratic and it must be heavy going to attend (thank goodness I’ve never been anywhere near it) but one good thing is that every member is heard and dreadful decisions can be put right.

We don’t have papal bulls set in stone, infallible for ever! Be proud of our C of E!

Underneath the article is this line: “Second Opinion is intended to create and enable debate. The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not express the policy or view of the Sarum Link, Diocese of Salisbury or the Church of England. ” Well, that’s alright then.

Ironically, in the same page, is a review of Michael Mitton’s book, ‘Dreaming of home’. The reviewer, Lavender Buckland, writes: “That longing for Michael Mitton’s ‘authenticity’ is … what enables acceptance of difference without rejection. It is a sense of profound relationship, which comes from listening to people who hold very different views from ours. Church should never be a place of unchallenged ‘settling’ but a base camp for exploration and fresh encounter.”

I can only hope that Tim Biles and Lavender Buckland will speak to each other.