Catholic Priest Reflects on the Beauty of the Anglican Mass - When Father Bradford Goes Away...
by Fr. Joseph F. Wilson
Introduction : Fr. Wilson is a Roman Catholic priest who was
brought up on the Novus Ordo Mass - authorised by Pope Paul VI. Fr. Bradford is
also a Roman Catholic priest
EVERY once in awhile, my friend Father Bradford will take the
opportunity to get away for a brief break. I am always glad to encourage him to
do so. I am sure that I always encourage friends to take their breaks and
refresh the spirit, with the zeal of one who is thoroughly bored by vacations
and thus avoid them while living vicariously through others; but my reasons are
more than a bit selfish for urging Father Bradford to get away and take his
time, with Mrs Bradford. You see, Father Bradford is an Anglican Use Priest of
the Roman Rite (which is why there is a Mrs Bradford), chaplain to the Anglican
Use congregation in Boston. And when he folds his tent and steals away, I get
to fill in for him. And I leave a few thoughts to offer on that experience.
"Anglican Use" Roman Catholics
The Anglican Use if a fruit of the Second Vatican Council. The
Council Fathers, expressing their hopes for Christian unity, said that in the
future it should be possible that worthy elements of the patrimony of piety of
other Christian bodies might find a home in the [Roman] Catholic Church (as
radical as this might have sounded to Catholics before the Council, it was
seriously discussed at the time of the Council of Trent, four hundred years
earlier). In the early 1980s, responding to the overtones of groups of
Anglicans who were seeking to come into full communion of the Catholic Church,
the Holy Father established the pastoral Provision. By it, Anglican clergymen
received into the Church had the opportunity to present themselves for the
possibility of ordination as priests even if they were married, and groups of
former Anglicans could, with the permission of the Bishop, continue to worship
together using rites based on the Anglican liturgy, carefully adapted to
conform in essentials to the Roman Rite.
A group of parishioners of All Saints Episcopal Church in Ashmont,
Massachusetts, parted company from their Episcopal brethren several years ago,
and, under the leadership of father Bradford were received graciously by
Bernard Cardinal Law into full Communion, and Father Bradford was ordained.
They are the staunchest group of Catholics you could ever want to meet, having
studied the Catechism and embraced the Faith whole and entire. They form the
Congregation of St. Athanasius, worship at present in the convent chapel of St.
Theresa's, West Roxbury, and I count it a great privilege when I can be of
service to them as a priest.
Approaching God with Reverence
And the experience of celebrating Mass in a different ritual has
led me to reflect on my experience of fifteen years a priest celebrating the
Novus Ordo. Celebrating to the Anglican Use is a very different thing, you see;
and one realises that from the start of the rite.
Having vested, and joined in the sacristy with the servers and the
gentlemen of the schola in the preparatory prayers - the old prayers at the
foot of the altar - the procession begins, and makes its way to the Altar as
the opening hymn is sung.
From the very beginning, I experience the Anglican Use liturgy in
a very different way from Novus Ordo. Daily and Sunday in my own parish, I
reverence the Altar, go to the chair and, facing the people, initiate a
dialogue with them, and I am even encouraged by the Liturgy to offer
introductory comments.
Mass Text - Book of Common Prayer
Ascending the Altar in the Anglican Use Liturgy, I first reverence
it with a kiss, then proceed to the epistle side to charge the thurible, and
incense the Altar. The test of the mass is based upon the Book of Common
Prayer; the ceremonies are the traditional ceremonies of the Roman Rite. When I
am standing at the Altar, I am facing eastward, in the same direction as the
People, the direction of the rising sun, in the ancient symbol of the whole
Church gathered in prayer awaiting the Second Coming of the Lord.
Therefore, upon finishing the incensation of the altar, I move to
the epistle end to begin, Blessed be God Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to which
the people respond, and I then pray the ancient Collect for Purity,.....cleanse
the thoughts of our hearts...that we may perfectly love Thee, and worthily
magnify Thy Holy Name....Then, to the center of the altar as the Kyrie is sung,
and the Gloria. I kiss the altar and turn to the people to say, the Lord be
with you; with their response, And with thy spirit, I move to the epistle end
of the altar and sing the collect, and we sit for the readings.
An Extraordinarily Liberating Experience
I set out the beginning of the rite in some detail for a reason;
the ceremonies described will be familiar to anyone who is acquainted with the
traditional ceremonies of the Roman Rite. The reason I offer the detail is to
set the context for my reflection on how different my experience of this ritual
is from Novus Ordo, for I find the Anglican Use rite with the traditional
ceremonies extraordinarily liberating.
In a sense, it is paradoxical that I should find it so liberating
- from the modern perspective, it offers very little freedom. From the very
beginning of the Liturgy to the end (except for my sermon) my words, and
actions, and posture are carefully ritualized. Instead of mounting my
president's chair (I generally refer to it as the Captain Kirk Chair) and
initiating a dialogue with the people, offering ad-libs on the feast or
whatever, I deliberately, consciously have to enter into this liturgy with the
assembled Faithful. I have my part to fulfil in this rite; they have theirs,
and together we enter into the worship. This is not something I am directing,
or coordinating. My gestures are carefully prescribed, and once I am done with
the incensation of the Altar I stand before it, facing God as it were, in the
same direction as the people, and we begin to address Him, we begin our
worship. I am not putting it too strongly at all when I characterize my
reaction as feeling liberated by the form the ritual takes.
I'm not carrying this rite forward by the force of my wonderfully
magnetic personality. I'm entering into it, submitting to the Liturgy's
rhythms, with the People, and the effect of this on me is a much deeper sense
of common worship.
Here, I need to offer an observation about the music.
Anglican Hymnal - solidly Scriptural and Liturgical
There is nothing more frustrating than attempting to discuss music
in Catholic worship. It is maddening. Many Catholics are fierce partisans of
the contemporary renewal music of the Eagles Wings variety. They are insensible
to how transitory this music actually proves to be, how quickly the new hits
become tired (and how most of the congregation doesn't even attempt to sing them!),
how much of the music in Glory and Praise, the folk hymnal, has dated terribly
after just a few years and is never sung at all.
Traditional Catholics, on the other hand, often long for the glory
days of Mother Dear, O Pray for Me, the St. Gregory hymnal and the old
devotional hymns.
It was my experience as a choir boy in my parish church which
first sparked my interest in Anglican liturgy - our choirmaster was a convert,
which was a blessing, and one soon figured out where all of these wonderful
motets and hymns were coming from. In the Anglican Use liturgy, one draws upon
a hymnal of six to eight hundred hymns, solidly Scriptural and Liturgical (you
come for Mass on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, you get hymns
honoring the Angels; you come on the Annunciation, you get Annunciation
hymns!!). The hymns are PART OF THE WORSHIP - the whole congregation joins
prayerfully in the whole hymn, from beginning to end, instead of using it as
filler and doing a verse and a half until father gets to the chair. And the
parts of the Mass - Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sursum Corda, Agnus Dei - are all set
to beautiful, singable music.
For me, the whole experience of worship is transformed when I have
the chance to celebrate in the Anglican Use. I'm a cradle Catholic; I made my
First Holy Communion in 1967. I grew up in the age of post-conciliar liturgical
renewal. I vividly remember making my way to the altar rail in 1968 as the folk
group bawled out, Blowing in the Wind. I am used to polyester vestments,
incredibly banal liturgical texts, poorly chosen hymns rushed through and cut
off as soon as possible, the forty-five minute Sunday mass (the Catholic
Church's answer to fast food restaurants).
Anglican Mass is timeless. Words are rich, profound and lovely
What a joy it is, then, when Father Bradford goes away. What a
pleasure, to join with a congregation in a rite which seems utterly timeless,
which is theirs as much as mine, in which we are never looking to entertain
each other, but rather join together to approach God, The words of the rite are
traditional, rich, profound and lovely, and a deep part of each of us gathered
there. How heartening it is to be saying things like "And grant that we
may ever hereafter serve and please Thee in newness of life, to the honor and
glory of Thy Name, or those lovely words we say as we kneel at the altar before
Communion,... grant us therefore gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of Thy dear
Son Jesus Christ, and to drink His Blood, that we may evermore dwell in Him,
and He in us... I once, in an acerbic moment, explained to someone who had
asked about the difference between the Anglican Use Rite and our Novus Ordo.
The difference is that at Vespers, when the Anglican Use folks sing the
Magnificat, For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed,
we are reciting, I betcha everybody calls me happy. Slightly exaggerated, I
suppose, but there is a point to it. And, may I add, I'm NOT saying that
Elizabethan English would work for regular Catholic parish liturgy, at all, at
all. But cafeteria English hasn't worked either!
So, whats the point in this article? Well, it is written, as I
have noted, by one who grew up in the post-conciliar mess, who made his First
Communion in 1967 at the age of seven, and watched the Church collapse around
him as he grew older. And who cannot help but wonder - was all of this really
necessary?
If the goal was liturgical renewal, was it really necessary to so
violently overhaul the form of the Mass that people had to lose the sense of
continuity with the Tradition? If you're tempted to protest that observation,
please stop and recall the folk group bawling Blowin' in the Wind as a
communion hymn in 1968. People in my generation grew up with no sense of
continuity at all - the only things valuable and valued were innovations and
novelty. And look at the devastation that resulted.
I readily concede the usefulness of the vernacular, and that there
were aspects of the Liturgy which needed revision, but the rite we used for
Mass before the Council was truly ancient, well-established by the time Gregory
the Great, and gave full expression to the vertical dimension of worship. The
richness of that rite, very conservatively revised where needed, traditional
ceremonies intact and made more accessible to the people through use of the
vernacular as appropriate, and with texts carefully married to plainchant and
with good hymns, could have resulted in every parish having the kind of
experience I have with the good folk of St. Athanasius - the profound sense of
joining together in a communal stepping into the worship and submitting
ourselves to the rhythms of the Liturgy and Tradition of the Church. And had
that been done, Catholics might not have gotten the impression that, the Mass
having been turned upside-down, everything else in the Church's teaching was up
for grabs, too.
Presently, the music, manner of celebrating and entire atmosphere
of the Novus Ordo all too often leaves one feeling that this is a prayer
service cobbled together by the relative genius of the participants; there's no
sense of anything having been handed on at all.
Notably Jesus is Host at Anglican Mass
And this is especially true at major ceremonies. It seems that,
every time I am present for a liturgy celebrated by a Bishop, he experiences
the driving need to assert that he is the host of the occasion - lengthy
commentaries from him open and close the rite (after he has marched down the
aisle as though he were running for re-election, kissing babies and
glad-handing congregants). But it is Jesus Who is the Host of the occasion; and
I know that I have experienced this most notably at the Anglican Use Mass.
That there is something lacking in the Novus Ordo is beyond
question, as far as I can see - it was to have been the occasion of a great
renewal, and after thirty years we can look back and see how many people simply
stopped coming to Mass! Being able, as a priest, to celebrate with a different
rite has perhaps given me a new perspective on something I find lacking in the
revised Liturgy. It has certainly convinced me that there is something wrong
with the president's role as currently understood, enthroned as I am in my
Captain Kirk chair, facing the people and dialoguing with them. I'd dearly love
to be free of the tyranny of that Chair. I really long to be able to skip the
dialogue, abandon the liturgical talking points and the jabbering and the
chatter, and to be able to - have you guessed?? - just go with my People to the
Altar of God, to God who giveth joy to my youth |
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