Friday 11th June saw five men, long-serving and dedicated pastors from the Church of England's priesthood, ordained to serve the embryonic parish groups of lay faithful that have accompanied them into the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, as priests of the Catholic Church. As at Southwark the previous Saturday, the event was marked with an air of intimate belonging to the Church as the one Body of Christ, as it was attended by the regular Cathedral congregation and the friends, supporters and pastoral groups of the five clergymen. Also in attendance were Sisters Carolyne, Wendy and Jane of the Marian Servants of the Incarnation, the monastic religious community that has been at the spiritual heart of the Ordinariate since before its formal establishment. In the sanctuary - or, as Catholic idiom would say, on the altar - were fifty priests, eight deacons, his excellency the Ordinary (Mgr Keith Newton ProtAp) and Bishop Alan Hopes (the Bishops' Conference's Episcopal Delegate for the Ordinariate), concelebrated with his grace the Archbishop of Westminster.
This being scheduled in the Cathedral's regular 5-30 pm slot for its daily Solemn Mass, the ordination liturgy benefited from the ministry of the outstanding Westminster Cathedral Choir. As we have tried to do with each of the great liturgies surrounding the foundation of the Ordinariate, we offer some reflections on what happened and how it exhibits the Catholic liturgical and spiritual patrimony, the Anglican liturgical and spiritual patrimony which in a real way originated from the Catholic and is now being given its own honoured space with the fullness of communion of the Catholic Church, and how, almost imperceptibly over the years, there has taken place that marvellous exchange of gifts from the one to the other that actually lies at the heart of spiritual ecumenism - that desire to excel in holiness that leads to convergence upon Christ and thus unity in his heart, mind and Body.
The Entrance Hymn was Edward Plumtre's stirring paean to the Church's unity and the constancy of the disciples, Thy hand, O God, has guided thy flock from age to age, set to Basil Harwood's fine tune Thornbury. Both are important parts of the story and identity of Anglicans, especially Catholic-Anglicans and we have contemplated that in our report on the Southwark priestly ordinations (here), where it also served as the Entrance Hymn. Once it was ended and the Archbishop was censing the altar, the Choir immediately took up the proper Introit, Sacerdotes Dei, with its Gregorian melody. This rather bore out the point Fr Mark Woodruff has made in his essay, Hymns: The Sound of Commmunion in our Special Edition of the Messenger, Anglican and Catholics in Communion, that it is possible, thanks to Anglican patrimony's experience and historic usage, to ensure that the English hymn does not simply supplant the Propers that are actually integral to the Mass of the Roman Rite, but can be skilfully deployed to complement them, whether in the parish setting or on great occasions in a Cathedral. In Catholic worship at mass, hymns are here to stay. The Gregorian chant patrimony is thankfully being retrieved and its integrity respected, but exposing the wider body of worshipping Catholics to it once more and making it more accesible to them will not aid necessarily be aided by abolishing the vernacular hymns, crafted over centuries of liturgical usage in other traditions, that have been embraced by the Catholic community and indeed internalised as they have found service in expressing the belief and adoration of Catholics too. Much benefit can be gained from these two great traditions of Christian praise meeting in their integrity, coming to terms and serving to enrich the Church's liturgy as they are set in their appropriate place.
The setting of the Mass was Mozart's Missa Brevis in B flat, K275. This is pure Catholic patrimony from Catholic Salzburg. Or so you would have thought. At the time of its first performance (believed to have been on old St Thomas's Day, 21st December, in 1777) one of the soloists was the castrato Francesco Ceccarelli, a friend of the Mozart family and for whom the Mass was written. Ceccarelli was renowned for his technique and the beauty of his soprano-register voice and his performance was much praised. But, even though his way of singing was thought very suitable for Church, his fame was as a singer at the opera and the Court. It lent weight to more "traditionalist" Church musicians' criticism that Mozart's B flat Mass was theatrical and even mocked the text of the liturgy. Indeed the Agnus is long and is set, furthermore, as a gavotte, which has led some to compare it to a gavotte at the end of his opera style, Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail. In other words, it was not seen by some as authentically sacred music. In 1903 Pope Saint Pius X issued his motu proprio on sacred music, Tra le Sollecitudini, in which he criticised the use of theatrical music at worship, especially where it had the effect of rendering the people passive spectators, as if they were attending a concert rather than actively participating in the liturgy (leitourgia, the work of the people). He ordered the wide restoration of Gregorian chant so as to enable the faithful's "active participation" in the Mass and the Divine Office. Mercifully, however, the development of the great tradition in which this motu proprio stands as a milestone has not deprived us of the great and joyous creations of a former age and culture and above all Westminster Cathedral Choir sets the standard on how it is possible to worship God at a Catholic mass in the vernacular, with a world-class choir, Gregorian chant in Latin, the "active participation" of the faithful (in the responses, the Litany, the hymn Veni Creator, the Sanctus and acclamation, the Our Father and the Agnus, as well as in some judiciously deployed gems from the English hymn tradition. What a treasury of traditions and gifts from many parts of the Catholic Church's own patrimony and what it has united to itself from other Christian traditions and - evidently - eighteenth century secular entertainment culture.
As at previous diaconal ordinations in the Westminster Diocese for the Ordinariate, the Archbishop prayed the prayer of thanksgiving for previous ministry in the Church of England immediately after the rite of Election by the Bishop and Consent by the People, rather than immediately prior to the Litany of the Saints, its originally intended position when devised in 1995 (see this post for more details). Indeed this is where the prayer was placed at Southwark St George's Cathedral the preceding Saturday. Its use is at the discretion of the Bishop of the diocese in which the clergy are ordained for the Ordinariate, but it is interesting to see the different views on where it is best placed - as part of the invocation of God's grace, or as part of the candidates' presentation. On reflection, the Westmisnter view seemed appropriate that each of these men was not simply being chosen as a candidate for the presbyterate exactly like others, but as people with a long and faithful life behind them as ordained ministers and pastors. In the best ecumenical spirit, the Catholic Church was not merely embracing them as new Catholic priests, but uniting to herself their whole ministry, identifying it and recognising it, owning it and making it a facet of her own life and identity.
There followed a magnificent homily from Archbishop Nichols, evoking (as had the Entrance Hymn) the words of the Epistle from Ephesians 4, where St Paul describes himself as a prisoner, but a prisoner in the Lord, totally held by him and bound up with him. The archbishop went on to meditate on the unity of the Body of Christ, the unity of the priestly life but also how the unity in the knowledge of Christ that is at the heart of the Church's life is to be known in none other than the fullness of its communion, which the new priests will now be serving and working: "the saints together make a unity in the work of service, building up the Body of Christ." The full text can be read here.
The Archbishop, followed by Bishop Hopes, Mgr Newton and the fifty priests, among them several of the new Ordinariate priests who had been ordained at Southwark the previous weekend and former Anglican bishops Mgr John Broadhurst and Mgr Edwin Barnes, laid hands on the five candidates. After the Ordination prayer, the new priests were vested, not in silence as at Southwark, but as we sang the first three verses of Veni Creator Spiritus in Latin and not in Cosin's translation for the Anglican Ordinal as at Southwark. So having sung of the spiritalis unctio and the septiformis munere, the seven were anointed with Chrism. At Southwark the new priests, it seems, washed their hands, but at Westminster their unction was suffered to remain and imbue itself. The remaining verses of Veni Creator were sung as the people brought the eucharistic gifts and the Archbishop performed the porrectio instrumentorum to each new priest, their specific commissioning to celebrate the eucharist for and within the People of God with the means to do so: "Accept from the holy people of God the gifts to be offered to him. Know what you are doing, and immitate the mystery you celebrate: model your life on th emystery of the Lord's Cross." Then the Archbishop, Bishop Hopes, the Ordinary and the other priests exchanged the Peace with each of their new brothers in the priesthood. Each of these immensely personal and solemn acts of the Church as a Body, from the laying on of hands to the gift of peace, took place, as the Ceremonial of Bishops provides, without organ or choral accompaniment. This enables the faithful to enter into each aspect of the unfolding rite and its symbols, watching and contemplating, praying and giving praise and thanks to God. As the time slips by unnoticed, the dimesion is eternal.
For the Offertory Chant, the Choir sang Giovanni Gabrieli's Iubilate Deo - Rejoice in God all the earth; the man who fears the Lord shall be blessed. May the God of Israel unite you an dbe with you himself ... Serve him with gladness. We have already commented on the important musical influence of Giovanni's uncle Andrea on a succession of Church musicians, Catholic and Protestant, hinting how there is a deep root of Anglican and Evangelical Lutheran patrimony there, even if it is not immediately obvious in so obiouvsly a Catholic and indeed Counter-Reformation piece of music (Andrea's O sacrum convivium). Now here was a piece by his nephew, setting a psalm and perhaps indicating even more powerfully the growth of an exciting new departure in Church music in the tranistion from the Renaissance to the Baroque, that would not only set the terms of reference for Schuetz and Bach, but also Purcell and Haendel, and the composers working subsequently in the ongoing Anglican choral tradition.
At the Fraction, the lengthy Agnus from the Missa Brevis K275 was not used and the congregation joined together in singing the Agnus from Mass VIII, De Angelis. Mozart's Agnus was not cut, however; it served as the motet during Holy Communion. After the Communion Antiphon Ego vos elegi, all sang the hymn Alleluia, sing to Jesus by William Chatterton Dix (1837-1898). Knowing hymn writers' and composers middle names is one of the by-ways of Anglican patrimony. If you have been raised as a choirboy - the decline of the church boys' choir is the loss of a unique nursery for priestly vocations and pre-formation - you tended to find time on your hands. The alternative to a rebuke from the choirmaster for misbehaviour was to pore over the available reading material, namely the hymnbooks and the Book of Common Prayer. Thus did you become conversant with the Table of Kindred and Affinity, the Articles of Religion (including the one about the unworthiness of the minister not hindering the sacrament, always a comfort during a long sermon), the hair-raising Commination service, and the service of Baptism for them that are of Riper Years. You also learned the names and dates of the hymn and tune writers: William Chatterton Dix (more famous for As with gladness men of old), Vincent Stuckey Stratton Coles (Ye who own the faith of Jesus), John Mason Neale (the peerless translator of Greek and Latin hymns into English hymn-verse), Frederick Arthur Gore Ouseley, Bt. (composer), Bishop William Walsham How (For all the saints), and not forgetting John Henry Newman (Praise to the holiest in the height). Dix was named for a Bristol forger of medieval poetry, on whom his father had written a biography, Thomas Chatterton. It was not this that prompted William to write sacred verse, but a bout of severe post-traumatic depression following a lengthy illness that almost cost him his life. The words of Alleluia, sing to Jesus are much loved and well known by Christians of many English-speaking churches, but the hymn has a line which made it especially resonant with Anglo-Catholics. Having hailed the Eucharistic Christ as Bread of Angels, the lines "Intercessor, Friend of Sinners, earth's Redeemer, plead for me" recall the terms of a particular avenue of Catholic Apologetic within the context of Anglicanism and the Anglo-Catholic and Tractarian traditions' efforts to catechise their fellow Anglicans in classic Catholic belief. Without pressing a distinction to far, while Roman Catholics might talk of offering the sacrifice of the mass, Anglican Catholics in a period where Catholic belief and interpretatoin is being proposed in a progressively more convincing way might explain that the Eucharist is a sacrifice, but not one that is a repeat of Calvary, but one in which (as the Prayer Book's eucharistic Prayer of Consecration has it) "the full perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world" is not merely being commemorated by us on earth, but by Christ the "sole Mediator" as he pleads his sacrifice before the Father. This little turn of phrase by Dix is a vein through which the blood of Angl-Catholicism has run and it evokes an important part of the history and formation to the Anglican patrimony that, through the Ordinariate, is currently being united with the Catholic Church's own consciousness. It comes from a time when an understanding of Catholic belief was being commended to Protestants in the Scriptural terms that they might understand and even come to accept. After all the Decree on Ecumenism 80 years later stated how important it was for dialogue to take place between different parts of the Christian Church not only so that we could all understand our different doctrinal approaches better but also so that we could express doctrine more aptly and truthfully. In this little flashback to the early second half of the nineteenth century we see that, indeed, no part of Anglicanism - Evangelical, or Anglo-Catholic, or classic Broad Church or Liberal Protestant - exists in a vacuum. All have been formed in a conversation with each other, a dialogue through history that has even been a bitter argument at times, but is nonetheless an exercise in the quest for comprehensiveness, the search for fullness of communion in faith and life together in the Body of Christ. It is important to remember that the Ordinariates, far from detaching the Catholic wing of the Church of England (as some critics have said) actually makes available to the Catholic Church access to this rich and deep tradition of dialogue and mutual formation, of Catholic Apology, of the ecumenical search for reconciliation and the resolution of theological difference in the one ecclesial Body. It is clear that members of the Ordinariate, lay and clergy, are not stereotypical Anglo-Catholics, but people who have drawn themselves together from various Anglican traditions, bringing with them varied customs, histories and cultures. This is not only a gift enriching the Catholic Church in England & Wales; it is potentially massive contribution to its ability to engage more deeply in ecumenical dialogue with other Christians and to its effectiveness at explaining and commending its faith and life in Jesus Christ - Catholic Apologetics.
A beautiful moment occurred as the congregation took up the Recessional Hymn. The Archbishop knelt on the sanctuary steps and received the first blessings of the new priests, kissing the hands that will now be Christ's own, that he had chrismated minutes before. The hymn had served as the Entrance Hymn at their diaconal ordination in Easter Week (see the relevant post here), St Fulbert's Ye choirs of New Jerusalem, translated by Robert Campbell 1814-1868). As this hymn is in English, it is tempting to say that this hymn, much loved at Easter in all parts of the Church of England, is part of the Anglican patrimony. But Campbell was a Catholic advocate from Edinburgh. Henry John Gauntlett's tune (note the middle name) is looked forward to by Anglican choirs and congregations as soon as they see it is listed, for they know what is coming. At the end of the strophes comes the tune's own distinctive "Alleluia, Amen". This was not used at the diaconal ordinations at Our Lady of Victories; perhaps Catholic liturgists are not aware of this custom. But at Westminster, when the organist continued to play, everyone knew what to do. Indeed, Alleluia, Amen.
The League, which was represented by four trustees (Fr Mark Woodruff, the Revd James Bradley who attended the Archbishop as deacon at the altar, David Chapman and Cyril Wood), warmly congratulates Fathers Gordon Adam, Peter Andrews, Timothy Bugby, Mark Elliott Smith and Antony Homer, promising our prayers for their people and the Ordinary in the tasks ahead evangelisation and of working for and living out the Christian Unity in Catholic communion of which the Archbishop spoke.
Sadly we cannot be present at each of the Ordinations or write a reflection on the momentous events that are unfolding, but we promise our prayers for all the new priests, all the groups of the faithful, as well as all those others who are discerning their path to service in the Catholic Church in the Ordinariate.
Saturday, 11 June 2011
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
Newman Fund
From late 2010 the Catholic League has operated the Newman Fund to receive donations in support of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham until it was able to establish its own systems and charitable status. So far we have collected £29,500 with around an additional £5,000 due thanks to Gift Aid.
Approximately £11,000 of this is for the Ordinariate's general purposes, the remainder having been donated in respect of particular local groups. The Ordinariate gained charitable status in its own right a few months ago, but registration with HM Revenue and Customs has not been concluded, so the Newman Fund enables tax-efficient donations to be made online and by bankers order in the meantime.
Since Easter and the reception of nearly 1,000 as members of the Ordinariate, monthly donations stand at £9,984 in April and £7,821 in May (both before Gift Aid is added). We are currently conveying these funds to the Ordinariate. Once its own systems are all in place, we shall close the Newman Fund in favour of the Ordinariate. But for now it remains open, especially for processing tax-efficient standing orders and other online donations.
These funds are in addition to the substantial grant of £65,000 that the League has offered from its own resources towards the ordinariate's central administration and the Ordinary's office running costs.
Approximately £11,000 of this is for the Ordinariate's general purposes, the remainder having been donated in respect of particular local groups. The Ordinariate gained charitable status in its own right a few months ago, but registration with HM Revenue and Customs has not been concluded, so the Newman Fund enables tax-efficient donations to be made online and by bankers order in the meantime.
Since Easter and the reception of nearly 1,000 as members of the Ordinariate, monthly donations stand at £9,984 in April and £7,821 in May (both before Gift Aid is added). We are currently conveying these funds to the Ordinariate. Once its own systems are all in place, we shall close the Newman Fund in favour of the Ordinariate. But for now it remains open, especially for processing tax-efficient standing orders and other online donations.
These funds are in addition to the substantial grant of £65,000 that the League has offered from its own resources towards the ordinariate's central administration and the Ordinary's office running costs.
Love is come again – Some Patrimonial Reflections on the Ordination of Priests for the Ordinariate at Southwark St George’s Cathedral
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| (c) Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham |
The Liturgy of Ordination was notable for its intense atmosphere of expectation and prayer. If it was ever in doubt before, the seven men, supported by their parish groups and a number of the deacons of the Ordinariate and led by Mgr Newton, demonstrated that the Ordinariate has now passed beyond proving itself – it is evidently an ecclesial reality, a “particular Church” in its own right,. And so the concentration was not on an event but the operation of the grace of Christ’s Spirit in the life of the People of God. Fine music from the classic Catholic liturgical tradition was provided by a choir especially convened by friends for the occasion, but equally there were riches from the Anglican tradition – including the Anglican tradition of using the Catholic patrimony.
Recently a prominent Catholic liturgical commentator observed that the music of Johann Sebastian Bach is confessionally Lutheran and intrinsically pietistic and thus has little place in Catholic worship. Thank goodness this is not actually the belief of the Catholic Church, or the opinion of Pope Benedict. We should never cease to read again and again the words of the Decree on Ecumenism 4:
It is right and salutary to recognize the riches of Christ and virtuous works in the lives of others who are bearing witness to Christ, … Nor should we forget that anything wrought by the grace of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of our separated brethren can be a help to our own edification. Whatever is truly Christian is never contrary to what genuinely belongs to the faith; indeed, it can always bring a deeper realization of the mystery of Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, the divisions among Christians prevent the Church from attaining the fullness of catholicity proper to her, in those of her sons who, though attached to her by Baptism, are yet separated from full communion with her. Furthermore, the Church herself finds it more difficult to express in actual life her full catholicity in all her bearings.
So it was no mere organ piece chosen to precede the Mass. Bach is the theologian of the Lutheran Reform’s music. So much of what he wrote for use in Church was designed to serve and adorn the set liturgy Sunday by Sunday. No one thinks twice about the use of Bach’s music in any church service these days; but it is not half a century ago that either his organ or choral music and hymn tunes would hardly have been heard at all in a Catholic church, even at a separate organ concert. What is perhaps less well known is that Bach’s organ works did not start to become well known in England until the first half of the nineteenth century. This was in no small part due to the son of Charles Wesley (the great Anglican Methodist hymnwriter and brother of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism), Samuel. He was a gifted classical scholar, organist and composer whose erratic progress through life (following conversion to Roman Catholicism at the age of 18, he was admitted to Freemasonry for a time, served as organist in Anglican churches and conducted unconventional marital relationships) was the result of a tragic head injury at the age of 21. It was upon his eventual recovery some years later that he threw himself into the study of Bach’s compositions and promoting then among English musicians. His son, the more famous church music composer Samuel Sebastian (named after Bach), inherited his genius and introduced the choral music of Bach more widely in England outside London, notably the St Matthew Passion (incidentally, Bach wrote this for Palm Sunday, and there is a Bach Passion for each of the evangelists, reflecting the calendrical arrangements in Lutheran worship derived from the Roman Latin rite). This piece had been all but forgotten since Bach’s death in 1750, until Mendelssohn was given a manuscript copy in 1825 and he was able to arrange a revival four years later. This led to the revival of Bach’s music in Germany and thus animated further the interest provoked in England by Samuel Wesley, with Mendelssohn visiting Britain the same year and subsequently meeting him.
Thus the organ Music before the Mass comprised three Bach pieces – the Chorale Preludes Komm, Gott, Schรถpfer, Heliger Geist (BWV 667) and Von Gott will ich nicht lassen (BWV 658), followed by the "Fantasia super Komm, Heiliger Geist" (BWV 651). It will be noticed that, far from being “confessionally Lutheran”, the first piece (from the Little Organ Book) is based on the melody for the German translation by Luther of the great Latin hymn by Hrabanus Maurus (776-836), Veni Creator Spiritus, which was sung later in the service to Bishop John Cosin of Durham’s translation for the Anglican Ordinal, Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire. Thus we heard a masterpiece that embraced the way in which Lutheranism had drawn on the patrimony of the Western Latin Catholic tradition in both text and music; that had in due course been received as a gift from Lutheran liturgical and musical patrimony in the Church of England; and that is now part of the common patrimony of all Western Christendom, finding an appropriate place in setting the scene for a Catholic ordination Liturgy, resonating with a piece of classic Anglican hymnodic patrimony.
The second Chorale Prelude sets the tune of a hymn by Ludwig Helmbold of Erfurt from 1563, translated by the great Victorian populariser of German-language Evangelical Reformed hymnography, Catherine Winkworth. She was raised a Unitarian but who gravitated to more orthodox Protestantism thanks to her love of its chorales. Her many hymn translations are standards in the worship repertoire of all English-language Christian Churches, the Catholic Church included. Among the most famous are Now thank we all our God and Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation. The words of this particular chorale were especially appropriate for the ordination of the seven new priests and their personal journeys as disciples of Jesus Christ:
Thus the organ Music before the Mass comprised three Bach pieces – the Chorale Preludes Komm, Gott, Schรถpfer, Heliger Geist (BWV 667) and Von Gott will ich nicht lassen (BWV 658), followed by the "Fantasia super Komm, Heiliger Geist" (BWV 651). It will be noticed that, far from being “confessionally Lutheran”, the first piece (from the Little Organ Book) is based on the melody for the German translation by Luther of the great Latin hymn by Hrabanus Maurus (776-836), Veni Creator Spiritus, which was sung later in the service to Bishop John Cosin of Durham’s translation for the Anglican Ordinal, Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire. Thus we heard a masterpiece that embraced the way in which Lutheranism had drawn on the patrimony of the Western Latin Catholic tradition in both text and music; that had in due course been received as a gift from Lutheran liturgical and musical patrimony in the Church of England; and that is now part of the common patrimony of all Western Christendom, finding an appropriate place in setting the scene for a Catholic ordination Liturgy, resonating with a piece of classic Anglican hymnodic patrimony.
The second Chorale Prelude sets the tune of a hymn by Ludwig Helmbold of Erfurt from 1563, translated by the great Victorian populariser of German-language Evangelical Reformed hymnography, Catherine Winkworth. She was raised a Unitarian but who gravitated to more orthodox Protestantism thanks to her love of its chorales. Her many hymn translations are standards in the worship repertoire of all English-language Christian Churches, the Catholic Church included. Among the most famous are Now thank we all our God and Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation. The words of this particular chorale were especially appropriate for the ordination of the seven new priests and their personal journeys as disciples of Jesus Christ:
From God shall naught divide me,
For he is true for aye,
And on my path will guide me,
Who else should often stray,
His ever bounteous hand
By night and day is heedful,
And gives me what is needful,
Where'er I go or stand.
For he is true for aye,
And on my path will guide me,
Who else should often stray,
His ever bounteous hand
By night and day is heedful,
And gives me what is needful,
Where'er I go or stand.
The last organ piece sets the melody of a German poem from the fifteenth century, so both are directly a piece of the medieval German Catholic devotional tradition mediated to the present day through Bach the devout Lutheran. The tune is believed to be derived from the 14th century melody for Adesto, sancta Spiritus by Marchetto da Padova. Again, a piece of Latin Catholic patrimony absorbed into the Protestant Reformed Church and now finding fresh service in the Catholic Church. The words on which the music depended were fitting for the occasion:
Come, Holy Spirit, Lord God,
fill with the goodness of your grace
the heart, spirit and mind of your believers,
kindle in them your ardent love !
O Lord, through the splendour of your light
you have gathered in faith
people from all the tongues of the world;
so that in your praise Lord, may there be sung
Alleluia! Alleluia! (translation by Francis Browne, 2006 – gratefully acknowledged)
fill with the goodness of your grace
the heart, spirit and mind of your believers,
kindle in them your ardent love !
O Lord, through the splendour of your light
you have gathered in faith
people from all the tongues of the world;
so that in your praise Lord, may there be sung
Alleluia! Alleluia! (translation by Francis Browne, 2006 – gratefully acknowledged)
The whole Liturgy was marked by extended periods of silence. No attempt was made to cover these with the organ, hymns or choral music. This gave the service its spirit of anticipation and prayerful expectation. Indeed the tone was set by the offering by the choir of a familiar Easter Carol, set by its director, Mark Levett. Now the green blade riseth was written by the Revd John Macleod Campbell Crum (1872-1958, who ended up as a Canon of Canterbury throughout the 1930s and into the Second World War) and included in the influential Oxford Book of Carols in 1928. It is usually thought to be much older, because its tune is from a 15th century French Christmas carol. But Crum's words were a perfect match for Martin Shaw to set the tune to for the carol book. Martin Shaw is an important figure in the story of Anglican liturgical patrimony. From 1908 to 1920 he served as organist for Percy Dearmer, vicar of St Mary’s Primrose Hill, who drew on Sarum customs (in deliberate contrast with Anglo-Catholic attraction to Tridentine and Baroque cultures) and scholarly principles behind the development of the Book of Common Prayer, to devise the so-called English Use, popularised in The Parson’s Handbook (1899) and The English Liturgy (an amplified working version of the Prayer Book rite, 1903 to promote weekly and even daily Eucharistic celebrations to a high standard), whose influences can still be traced in Anglican cathedral and parish worship to this day. He worked with his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams (music editor) and Percy Dearmer (leading words editor) on the production of the English Hymnal (1906) and was, with them, co-editor of the hymn book Songs of Praise (1926) and the Oxford Book of Carols. He was a co-founder of the Royal School of Church Music in 1918 and did much to encourage community singing and thus choral singing in small parishes.
Crum’s words, doubtless conceived with a memory of the massive loss of life during the Great War and its devastating effect on the rural economy and old ways of life and culture, convey an image of the Church which had started to realise it had lost hold of the religious imagination of the people. In an age of rapid social change (disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Wales, the birth of the welfare state, the General Strike, decline in Church support and deference to authority, and the collapse of centuries-old orders in Europe) people in the Church of England addressed the new realities with both appetites for change and for denial – proposal and rejection of a Revised Prayer Book (1928), the modern Protestant Ecumenical Movement (1910 onwards), the Catholic ecumenical-liturgical movement (1907 onwards), the growing theological crisis of Modernism in Catholicism and Protestantism alike, and the revival of hopes, ultimately inconclusive, for Anglican-Catholic corporate reunion through the Malines Conversations (1921-25). The words “Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been: Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green” aptly communicate this sense of grieving loss and Christian hope in the future as, even then, the clouds were gathering. In the present day, too, the Churches sense their vulnerability in the face of the relativist secular atheism that people opt for in place of the authentic engagement between Christian faith and society that most truly answers humanity’s deepest questions, just as Pope Benedict said on his visit to Britain in 2010. The Ordinariate is part of the Holy Father’s imagination for a reinvigorated Catholic Church that can carry out its mission to the world and specifically serve the re-evangelisation of culture in the “struggle for the soul of Europe”. So Now the green blade riseth fits today too. It was also poignant to observe in this great endeavour that the seven new priests had previously exercised devoted ordained ministries in the Church of England, the Catholic Church’s “ever beloved Sister”. Truly in a new ordination for a new purpose and ministry, “Love is come again” to them.
The entrance procession made its way into the Cathedral as this was still being sung; and so immediately it was ended we joined in the Entrance Hymn, Edward Plumptre’s Thy hand, O God, has guided thy flock from age to age. Plumptre (1821-1891, Dean of Wells from 1881) was not an Anglo-Catholic, but his hymn - a stalwart for Anglican confirmations, inductions of incumbents and other great Church occasions – could be something of an Anglo-Catholic national anthem. Its tale of articulating the Gospel in adversity and the teeth of opposition – and the unity of the Church which is intrinsic to the proclamation of the one faith – has long resonated with those who have been well versed for generations in the arts of Catholic Apology and sacramental catechesis in a Church setting that has at best tolerated them and at worst failed to understand and even undermine them: “Through many a day of darkness, through many a scene of strife, the faithful few fought bravely to guard the nation's life … we will maintain, unflinching, one Church, one Faith, one Lord.” The tune, Thornbury, was written in 1898 by Basil Harwood, once organist of the Anglo-Catholic stronghold that was St Barnabas, Pimlico (where his remains are buried), scene of “ritual riots” when it opened in 1850. This hymn, full of contemporary determination and dedication was thus also redolent with rich Anglican character and a noble history that is being brought into the fullness of communion in the Universal Church.
During the rite of ordination itself (or “priesting” as long-standing usage has it), Archbishop Smith used the prayer of thanksgiving for previous Anglican ministry as intended by the Congregation for Divine Worship, immediately prior to the Litany of the Saints and the conferral of the sacrament of order, rather than as part of the rite of the candidates’ election, which has been the usage in some areas. As the use of the prayer is at the discretion of the bishop of the diocese in whose territory the Ordinary has requested a candidate to be ordained, there is no necessary significance to be inferred into the location of the prayer. Evidently some bishops consider it right to cast in terms of the manner and source from which the candidates were chosen; others regard it as part of the invocation for the ordaining grace of the Holy Spirit. But there is an ecclesiological point involved in this litrugical question. Do these ordinations take place within the particular church, the Catholic Church in its own right that is the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham – or are they achieved by “going out” of the Ordinariate to seek the assistance, fellowship and ministry of the local Catholic territorial diocese? The Order of Service, with its tell-tale cover picture by Martin Travers (designer and illustrator to the Anglo-Catholic movement approaching its height in the interwar years) asserts that the Church concerned is the Ordinariate, with the Archbishop of the diocese of Southwark ordaining on behalf of the Ordinary. But “Keith” was not mentioned in the Canon as the head of the ecclesial circumscription and indeed he was “welcomed” by the Archbishop most warmly, rather than being seen for the purpose of the occasion as in some way the host. At the Canon, the Archbishop commemorated “me your unworthy servant and my assistant bishops” – in other words, the diocese of Southwark, not the Ordinariate. No one wants to make an issue of this, not least as the overriding feeling was of generosity and mutual support and assistance. But, still, we do not belong to the Catholic Church, or exist in communion with the Successor of Peter, in general terms, but always through our communion in the particular Church or diocese to which we belong. The Ordinariate is a particular church in its own right and is not under the tutelage of a territorial diocese or dioceses. Evidently the Ordinariate, for all that it is prefigured in Ad Gentes and the Code of Canon Law, is pioneering new liturgical and ecclesiological territory, especially as the Ordinary is not a bishop himself. So it will be interesting to see how Catholic communion is signified in the “reading of the diptychs” at the Eucharistic Prayer as things develop – clearly the Roman Rite does not allow for the commemoration of “Keith our ordinary” and, as the Ordinariate depends directly on the Apostolic See of Rome, only Pope Benedict’s name is apparently mentioned at Mass in the Ordinariate itself. But perhaps the custom in monasteries with abbots nullius (e.g. Grottaferrata) will be observed – to name the Pope and then the priest who is head of the community.
After the prayer of ordination, the hymn Come Holy Ghost (already mentioned) was sung not during the vesting, as for instance at the Westminster and East Anglia ordinations, but as the new priests were anointed with Chrism. This is surely better, stressing the significance of “thy blessed unction from above”, even though it is the hands and fingers that are anointed, not “our soiled face”. The tune is the version of music from the Mechlin Gradual declared official by Pius IX in 1848, now seen as a debased form of Gregorian chant. While it was later supplanted in Catholic circles thanks to the researches of the Solesmes monks and the ensuing Liturgical Movement, for the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, it will have been seen as definitive by Anglicans looking to receive and recover their historic Gregorian chant patrimony by looking to the current practice of the Roman Catholic Church. So it is different from the Sarum version commended in the English Hymnal, as much as it is different from the Solesmes monastic and Roman chant versions as restored and now familiar in the Catholic community. But learning it and fitting it to the revered words of Bishop Cosin (even with a truncated doxology that is favourite and distinguishing mark of Anglican usage) it must have been deeply aspirational.
The long and prayerful silences during the rite of ordination brought it home how very much, in the Catholic Church, this was no ordination of a grouping of priests. The procession of symbols and actions made it quite clear that each priest was being ordained to fill the sacred ministry of presbyter in and for the Body of Christ personally. Thus was laid bare the election of each individual (“upon … permission of the Holy See”, a phrase unique to the Ordinariate covering both the ordination of the married clergy and the extraordinary nature of the nonetheless ordinary Ordinariate), their kneeling individually to promise obedience to the Ordinary in whose Church they are incardinated, the laying on of hands by all 30 or so priests present on each of the candidates in turn, their vesting, the anointing, the gift of the peace by all the priests present to each of the newly ordained priests and the personal entrusting to each new priest of the gifts for the Eucharist just brought up by the people. It was a momentous period, out of time.
The candidates had to kneel several times – and at length for the laying of hands – on the bare stone, without a carpet runner or kneeler. So an important piece of Anglican patrimony that was missing was the hassock.
The Offertory Hymn was from John Mason Neale’s translation of the 7th century hymn to celebrate the Dedication of a Church, Urbs Beata, Jerusalem – Blessed City, heavenly Salem. We have commented before how Anglican patrimony in Catholic communion cannot be extricated from the work and legacy of hymn-writing and translation by Neale. With the Second Vatican Council, it was instructed that he revised rites should restore the ancient texts of the Latin hymns that had been "improved" and in many instances utterly altered by the reworking that took place under Pope Urban VIII, a considerable scholar who preferred the purity of classical Latin verse to the vivid and rough edges of early medieval Latin as it was producing imaginative verse for the Latin liturgy. A number of the well known Catholic translations of the office hymns into English thus translate Urban’s work. Neale, however, translates the unrevised texts known to the Sarum use and other dialects of the Roman rite. Neale is unsurpassed as a translator of Latin and Greek verse into English. So using his work is not only part of the story of how Anglicanism re-received aspects of its own foundation and origins in the Ecclesia Anglicana up to the end of the Middle Ages, it is also a way of restoring to the Catholic Church, as it worships in the vernacular, a part of its own living tradition, which it has “loved long since and lost awhile”. The tune, Westminster Abbey, was by Henry Purcell, the major church and court composer (and Westminster choirboy), whose father had been Master of the Choristers at the Abbey from the restoration of King Charles II from 1661. Here again was a pointer to core Anglican patrimony and identity that has already been embraced and made part of the Catholic Church’s musical and liturgical culture in England.
There were several other gratifying features. The deacon (the Revd James Bradley, our trustee) sang the gospel to – we were told – the simple tone commended for the new version of the missal. The Our Father was sung, not to the Rimsky Korsakov melody familiar at Westminster Cathedral, but to the adaptation of Sarum chant that has been sung for many generations by Anglicans. At Holy Communion the choir sang William Byrd’s Laudibus in sanctis. We have discussed before the relationship between this Catholic composer and his duties as a court composer for the Protestant monarchs Elizabeth I and James I. Much of his Latin sacred music was composed for clandestine celebrations of the Catholic liturgy, but this piece from the Liber Secundus Sacrarum Cantionum of 1591(dedicated to two powerful Protestant courtiers) is a setting of a paraphrase of Psalm 150 in Latin elegiac verse. A non-liturgical motet, it is not from the Catholic liturgy. Could it have been sung at court, or even in the Anglican Chapel Royal? If so, it is a nice piece of Anglican Latin patrimony, recovered to enrich Anglican choral worship thanks to the scholarly passion of E. H. Fellowes (a minor canon at St George’s Chapel, Windsor from 1900-51), happily pressed into the Catholic litrugy's service in the late twentieth century, as if it had always been part of it.
Crum’s words, doubtless conceived with a memory of the massive loss of life during the Great War and its devastating effect on the rural economy and old ways of life and culture, convey an image of the Church which had started to realise it had lost hold of the religious imagination of the people. In an age of rapid social change (disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Wales, the birth of the welfare state, the General Strike, decline in Church support and deference to authority, and the collapse of centuries-old orders in Europe) people in the Church of England addressed the new realities with both appetites for change and for denial – proposal and rejection of a Revised Prayer Book (1928), the modern Protestant Ecumenical Movement (1910 onwards), the Catholic ecumenical-liturgical movement (1907 onwards), the growing theological crisis of Modernism in Catholicism and Protestantism alike, and the revival of hopes, ultimately inconclusive, for Anglican-Catholic corporate reunion through the Malines Conversations (1921-25). The words “Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been: Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green” aptly communicate this sense of grieving loss and Christian hope in the future as, even then, the clouds were gathering. In the present day, too, the Churches sense their vulnerability in the face of the relativist secular atheism that people opt for in place of the authentic engagement between Christian faith and society that most truly answers humanity’s deepest questions, just as Pope Benedict said on his visit to Britain in 2010. The Ordinariate is part of the Holy Father’s imagination for a reinvigorated Catholic Church that can carry out its mission to the world and specifically serve the re-evangelisation of culture in the “struggle for the soul of Europe”. So Now the green blade riseth fits today too. It was also poignant to observe in this great endeavour that the seven new priests had previously exercised devoted ordained ministries in the Church of England, the Catholic Church’s “ever beloved Sister”. Truly in a new ordination for a new purpose and ministry, “Love is come again” to them.
The entrance procession made its way into the Cathedral as this was still being sung; and so immediately it was ended we joined in the Entrance Hymn, Edward Plumptre’s Thy hand, O God, has guided thy flock from age to age. Plumptre (1821-1891, Dean of Wells from 1881) was not an Anglo-Catholic, but his hymn - a stalwart for Anglican confirmations, inductions of incumbents and other great Church occasions – could be something of an Anglo-Catholic national anthem. Its tale of articulating the Gospel in adversity and the teeth of opposition – and the unity of the Church which is intrinsic to the proclamation of the one faith – has long resonated with those who have been well versed for generations in the arts of Catholic Apology and sacramental catechesis in a Church setting that has at best tolerated them and at worst failed to understand and even undermine them: “Through many a day of darkness, through many a scene of strife, the faithful few fought bravely to guard the nation's life … we will maintain, unflinching, one Church, one Faith, one Lord.” The tune, Thornbury, was written in 1898 by Basil Harwood, once organist of the Anglo-Catholic stronghold that was St Barnabas, Pimlico (where his remains are buried), scene of “ritual riots” when it opened in 1850. This hymn, full of contemporary determination and dedication was thus also redolent with rich Anglican character and a noble history that is being brought into the fullness of communion in the Universal Church.
During the rite of ordination itself (or “priesting” as long-standing usage has it), Archbishop Smith used the prayer of thanksgiving for previous Anglican ministry as intended by the Congregation for Divine Worship, immediately prior to the Litany of the Saints and the conferral of the sacrament of order, rather than as part of the rite of the candidates’ election, which has been the usage in some areas. As the use of the prayer is at the discretion of the bishop of the diocese in whose territory the Ordinary has requested a candidate to be ordained, there is no necessary significance to be inferred into the location of the prayer. Evidently some bishops consider it right to cast in terms of the manner and source from which the candidates were chosen; others regard it as part of the invocation for the ordaining grace of the Holy Spirit. But there is an ecclesiological point involved in this litrugical question. Do these ordinations take place within the particular church, the Catholic Church in its own right that is the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham – or are they achieved by “going out” of the Ordinariate to seek the assistance, fellowship and ministry of the local Catholic territorial diocese? The Order of Service, with its tell-tale cover picture by Martin Travers (designer and illustrator to the Anglo-Catholic movement approaching its height in the interwar years) asserts that the Church concerned is the Ordinariate, with the Archbishop of the diocese of Southwark ordaining on behalf of the Ordinary. But “Keith” was not mentioned in the Canon as the head of the ecclesial circumscription and indeed he was “welcomed” by the Archbishop most warmly, rather than being seen for the purpose of the occasion as in some way the host. At the Canon, the Archbishop commemorated “me your unworthy servant and my assistant bishops” – in other words, the diocese of Southwark, not the Ordinariate. No one wants to make an issue of this, not least as the overriding feeling was of generosity and mutual support and assistance. But, still, we do not belong to the Catholic Church, or exist in communion with the Successor of Peter, in general terms, but always through our communion in the particular Church or diocese to which we belong. The Ordinariate is a particular church in its own right and is not under the tutelage of a territorial diocese or dioceses. Evidently the Ordinariate, for all that it is prefigured in Ad Gentes and the Code of Canon Law, is pioneering new liturgical and ecclesiological territory, especially as the Ordinary is not a bishop himself. So it will be interesting to see how Catholic communion is signified in the “reading of the diptychs” at the Eucharistic Prayer as things develop – clearly the Roman Rite does not allow for the commemoration of “Keith our ordinary” and, as the Ordinariate depends directly on the Apostolic See of Rome, only Pope Benedict’s name is apparently mentioned at Mass in the Ordinariate itself. But perhaps the custom in monasteries with abbots nullius (e.g. Grottaferrata) will be observed – to name the Pope and then the priest who is head of the community.
After the prayer of ordination, the hymn Come Holy Ghost (already mentioned) was sung not during the vesting, as for instance at the Westminster and East Anglia ordinations, but as the new priests were anointed with Chrism. This is surely better, stressing the significance of “thy blessed unction from above”, even though it is the hands and fingers that are anointed, not “our soiled face”. The tune is the version of music from the Mechlin Gradual declared official by Pius IX in 1848, now seen as a debased form of Gregorian chant. While it was later supplanted in Catholic circles thanks to the researches of the Solesmes monks and the ensuing Liturgical Movement, for the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, it will have been seen as definitive by Anglicans looking to receive and recover their historic Gregorian chant patrimony by looking to the current practice of the Roman Catholic Church. So it is different from the Sarum version commended in the English Hymnal, as much as it is different from the Solesmes monastic and Roman chant versions as restored and now familiar in the Catholic community. But learning it and fitting it to the revered words of Bishop Cosin (even with a truncated doxology that is favourite and distinguishing mark of Anglican usage) it must have been deeply aspirational.
The long and prayerful silences during the rite of ordination brought it home how very much, in the Catholic Church, this was no ordination of a grouping of priests. The procession of symbols and actions made it quite clear that each priest was being ordained to fill the sacred ministry of presbyter in and for the Body of Christ personally. Thus was laid bare the election of each individual (“upon … permission of the Holy See”, a phrase unique to the Ordinariate covering both the ordination of the married clergy and the extraordinary nature of the nonetheless ordinary Ordinariate), their kneeling individually to promise obedience to the Ordinary in whose Church they are incardinated, the laying on of hands by all 30 or so priests present on each of the candidates in turn, their vesting, the anointing, the gift of the peace by all the priests present to each of the newly ordained priests and the personal entrusting to each new priest of the gifts for the Eucharist just brought up by the people. It was a momentous period, out of time.
The candidates had to kneel several times – and at length for the laying of hands – on the bare stone, without a carpet runner or kneeler. So an important piece of Anglican patrimony that was missing was the hassock.
The Offertory Hymn was from John Mason Neale’s translation of the 7th century hymn to celebrate the Dedication of a Church, Urbs Beata, Jerusalem – Blessed City, heavenly Salem. We have commented before how Anglican patrimony in Catholic communion cannot be extricated from the work and legacy of hymn-writing and translation by Neale. With the Second Vatican Council, it was instructed that he revised rites should restore the ancient texts of the Latin hymns that had been "improved" and in many instances utterly altered by the reworking that took place under Pope Urban VIII, a considerable scholar who preferred the purity of classical Latin verse to the vivid and rough edges of early medieval Latin as it was producing imaginative verse for the Latin liturgy. A number of the well known Catholic translations of the office hymns into English thus translate Urban’s work. Neale, however, translates the unrevised texts known to the Sarum use and other dialects of the Roman rite. Neale is unsurpassed as a translator of Latin and Greek verse into English. So using his work is not only part of the story of how Anglicanism re-received aspects of its own foundation and origins in the Ecclesia Anglicana up to the end of the Middle Ages, it is also a way of restoring to the Catholic Church, as it worships in the vernacular, a part of its own living tradition, which it has “loved long since and lost awhile”. The tune, Westminster Abbey, was by Henry Purcell, the major church and court composer (and Westminster choirboy), whose father had been Master of the Choristers at the Abbey from the restoration of King Charles II from 1661. Here again was a pointer to core Anglican patrimony and identity that has already been embraced and made part of the Catholic Church’s musical and liturgical culture in England.
There were several other gratifying features. The deacon (the Revd James Bradley, our trustee) sang the gospel to – we were told – the simple tone commended for the new version of the missal. The Our Father was sung, not to the Rimsky Korsakov melody familiar at Westminster Cathedral, but to the adaptation of Sarum chant that has been sung for many generations by Anglicans. At Holy Communion the choir sang William Byrd’s Laudibus in sanctis. We have discussed before the relationship between this Catholic composer and his duties as a court composer for the Protestant monarchs Elizabeth I and James I. Much of his Latin sacred music was composed for clandestine celebrations of the Catholic liturgy, but this piece from the Liber Secundus Sacrarum Cantionum of 1591(dedicated to two powerful Protestant courtiers) is a setting of a paraphrase of Psalm 150 in Latin elegiac verse. A non-liturgical motet, it is not from the Catholic liturgy. Could it have been sung at court, or even in the Anglican Chapel Royal? If so, it is a nice piece of Anglican Latin patrimony, recovered to enrich Anglican choral worship thanks to the scholarly passion of E. H. Fellowes (a minor canon at St George’s Chapel, Windsor from 1900-51), happily pressed into the Catholic litrugy's service in the late twentieth century, as if it had always been part of it.
Laudibus in sanctis Dominum celebrate supremum:
Firmamenta sonent inclita facta Dei.
Inclita facta Dei cantate, sacraque potentis
Voce potestatem saepe sonate manus.
Firmamenta sonent inclita facta Dei.
Inclita facta Dei cantate, sacraque potentis
Voce potestatem saepe sonate manus.
Celebrate the supreme Lord in holy praises:
Let the firmament proclaim the renowned deeds of God.
Sing the renowned deeds of God, and with a voice of holiness
Again and again proclaim the power of his mighty hand.
Let the firmament proclaim the renowned deeds of God.
Sing the renowned deeds of God, and with a voice of holiness
Again and again proclaim the power of his mighty hand.
Magnificum Domini cantet tuba martia nomen:
Pieria Domino concelebrate lira.
Laude Dei resonent resonantia tympana summi,
Alta sacri resonent organa laude Dei.
Pieria Domino concelebrate lira.
Laude Dei resonent resonantia tympana summi,
Alta sacri resonent organa laude Dei.
Let the war-trumpet sing the wondrous name of the Lord:
Throng a celebration to the Lord with Pierian lyre.
Let resonant drumming resound with the praise of God most high,
Let instruments resound to the high praise of God in his holiness.
Throng a celebration to the Lord with Pierian lyre.
Let resonant drumming resound with the praise of God most high,
Let instruments resound to the high praise of God in his holiness.
Hunc arguta canant tenui psalteria corda,
Hunc agili laudet laeta chorea pede.
Concava divinas effundant cymbala laudes,
Cymbala dulcisona laude repleta Dei.
Omne quod aethereis in mundo vescitur auris
Halleluya canat tempus in omne Deo.
Hunc agili laudet laeta chorea pede.
Concava divinas effundant cymbala laudes,
Cymbala dulcisona laude repleta Dei.
Omne quod aethereis in mundo vescitur auris
Halleluya canat tempus in omne Deo.
Let hearts be attuned to sing of him with the slender-stringed psaltery
Let joyful dancing praise him with agile feet.
Let rounded-out cymbals pour out divine praises,
Sweet-sounding cymbals fi lled with the praise of God.
To every age let the Alleluia sung to God from everything that is nourished in the world
Let joyful dancing praise him with agile feet.
Let rounded-out cymbals pour out divine praises,
Sweet-sounding cymbals fi lled with the praise of God.
To every age let the Alleluia sung to God from everything that is nourished in the world
Be heard in the heights of heaven.
Andrea Gabrieli’s O Sacrum Convivium does not provide an obvious reference to the Anglican tradition, although it is a setting of an antiphon that is regularly used at the Choral Eucharist of many Anglican cathedrals and churches across the world. But it is worth remembering that the great master of Venetian renaissance polychoral style stands in, and is inseparable from, a kind of music “apostolic succession” that encompasses the Latin Catholic liturgy and the worship of the Reformation traditions from the Renaissance to the Baroque. A friend of the Franco-Fleming Lassus in Munich , to whom he sent his even more illustrious nephew Giovanni as a student, Andrea influenced the development of the Baroque style and the hallmark Venetian antiphonal choral style at Saint Mark's, of which he was organist to his death. His students were the Germans Hans Leo Hassler (a Protestant composer who also held Catholic appointments, writing for both Lutheran and Catholic worship - the famous melody of O sacred head sore wounded now belongs to all western Christian traditions) and his nephew Giovanni. Giovanni was also influenced by the composing of Monteverdi and in turn influenced Hassler. Giovanni's students included Heinrich Schรผtz, whose influential musical legacy in turn culminated in the masterworks of Johann Sebastian Bach, the systematic theologian, so to speak, of Lutheran liturgical music.
Soul of my Saviour and the restored mass setting by Schubert in G firmly belong to the Roman Catholic patrimony, but Anglicans have made them their own, especially in the last three decades. So it was good to recognise a further instance of the mutual exchange of gifts that is spiritual ecumenism.
Finally, the great celebration ended with a much-loved Anglo-Catholic hymn in honour of Our Lady of Walsingham, now principal patron of the Ordinariate, Joy to thee, Queen within thine ancient Dowry. It is sung to Pilgrims, a tune written by Henry Smart (a convinced Protestant Anglican) for the inclusion of Father Faber’s Hark! Hark, my soul! Angelic songs are swelling in Hymns Ancient & Modern. Sadly, the authorship of this great stirring anthem to Our Lady as the healing, grace-bearing and protecting Mother of God, has long gone unacknowledged. Perhaps a reader can inform us on this important aspect of Anglican patrimony that has now found its way to make a home in the Catholic Church through the Ordinariate.
The League was represented at the Ordinations by three trustees – Fr Mark Woodruff, the Revd Deacon James Bradley and Miss Mary Bacon. We warmly congratulate Frs Ivan Aquilina, Stephen Bould, Simon Heans, Nicholas Levisseur, Christopher Lindlar, Christopher Pearson and Edward Tomlinson and we assure their people, the Ordinary and all the others soon to be ordained to the priesthood in the order of presbyter in the Catholic Church of our constant prayers.
Friday, 27 May 2011
Pastoral Message of CBCEW - November 1993
This message was first published by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England & Wales in November 1993:
As the first ordinations of women to the priesthood in the Church of England draw near, a number of Anglicans, both laity and clergy, who are unsure about their future in the Church of England, have approached members of this Bishops’ Conference. We are aware, too, that many others, in some ways represented by those who have approached us, await our response. In the light of these discussions, and of our own careful consideration of all the issues involved, we now wish to address publicly the questions they have raised.
Our responsibility, as bishops of the Catholic Church, is to ensure that the Catholic community in England and Wales, in its faith and life, is within the full communion of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, united in bonds of faith and sacraments, with a clear awareness of its universality. Our ministry as members of the College of Bishops in full communion with the Bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter, is one of the visible signs of that universality. Within this Catholic Church there is a clear doctrinal structure and vigorous debate, both of which are needed for Church life. There is also to be found a variety of styles of prayer and liturgical practice. The distinctive and complementary roles of laity and clergy, and women and men, are a point of continuing development.
Many of those who have approached us manifestly share this vision of the Catholic Church. Their concern is not primarily that women are to be ordained to the priesthood. Rather they are struggling with the question of the authority by which the decision to ordain women to the priesthood has been made by the Church of England and the implications of that decision for those who wish, above all else, to live their Christian life in the Catholic tradition. Many have arrived at the conviction that visible communion with the Bishop of Rome is a necessary element of Catholic life. They believe they can no longer work within the Church of England to achieve that end. To them we wish to extend a warm welcome.
Those who have approached us make very clear the personal sadness and distress which they experience at this time. For our part too, we take no encouragement from the difficulties being faced in the Church of England. The urgent task of announcing the Gospel in Britain needs the strength and vigour of all Christian communities. This same task also underlines the importance of the search for unity of life and witness among all the followers of Christ. Working vigorously for this unity remains one of our grave responsibilities. It is our conviction that this search for unity would not be assisted if another ecclesial body were to emerge from present doctrinal and pastoral difficulties.
Approaches have been made by clergy of the Church of England, both singly and in groups. In some few instances groups of parishioners with their pastors have also made approaches, enquiring about the possibility of coming into full communion with the Holy See, embracing the fullness of Catholic life. After our Low Week meeting we stated that our aim in welcoming those who wish to join the Catholic Church must be their eventual total integration into the Catholic life of our dioceses. This remains our aim. Other paths have been suggested. We have looked carefully at the suggestions of the establishment of a Personal Prelature or of a Special Pastoral Provision, such as exists in the USA. We are of one mind that, in our particular circumstances, such alternatives would serve to increase the multiplicity of Church identities in an unhelpful and confusing manner. Our determination in this matter does not imply any lack of respect or esteem for the tradition, strengths and vision of Christian living represented by those who are approaching us. In fact the opposite is the case. We are convinced that the Roman Catholic community, diocese by diocese, will be enriched by the eventual full integration of those who bring with them not only the traditions of English Anglicanism, but also its commitment to reach out to those who are on the margin of Christian living, or beyond. But for this to be the case, it is essential that we strive to come together in a fully integrated manner, a challenge which will involved real change for all concerned.
It is this fundamental conviction that gives shape to the ways in which we have agreed to respond to those who approach us.
1. We welcome those who have served as clergy in the Church of England, and will endeavour to express in specific ways the value of the ministry they have exercised. We gladly acknowledge and esteem their faithful celebration of Word and Sacrament in the Church of England. We would never suggest that those now seeking full communion with the Roman Catholic Church deny the value of their previous ministry. According to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, the liturgical actions of their ministry can most certainly engender a life of grace, for they come from Christ and lead back to him, and belong by right to the one Church of Christ. We recognise in the ministry they have exercised a call from God. This is the basis for our readiness to assume a continuity of ministry, normally leading to ordination to the priesthood in the Catholic Church, depending on a process of mutual discernment. A period of study, preparation and integration, suited to the requirements of each person, will also be necessary.
We are convinced that our solemn duty to ensure the unquestionable validity of the sacraments to be celebrated with and for the Catholic community means that we cannot accept any residual doubts as to possible defects affecting the validity of the orders already conferred in the Church of England. This means we must ask all who are chosen to exercise priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church to accept ordination in our Church as the fulfilment of their ministry and its full integration into the Apostolic Succession. This is a difficult and sensitive matter, but we are reassured that so many who have approached us understand quite readily this need for certainty in such a crucial matter.
2. As is well understood, there are special difficulties faced by those who have thus far exercised ministry in the Church of England and are married. The celibacy of priests in the Church of the Latin Rite is the norm. It is a witness to the total love of Christ for his Church and a treasured part of our tradition. This is not at stake. In fact, it is shared by some who are seeking the fullness of Catholic life and priesthood. Rather, in these exceptional circumstances, consideration has to be given to the manner and extent in which it is possible, and desirable, to permit exceptions to this norm. This is because the discipline of the orders of those married clergymen who now seek full communion with the Holy See permitted them also to take up the vocation of married life. We understand and accept that they may well be convinced of the continuity of their vocation to serve the Catholic Church in the priesthood. This is a matter which we are pursuing with sympathy for those who have approached us.
3. In welcoming those pastors who approach us together with a group of parishioners, we wish to state that we respect and esteem the bonds of fellowship that exist within such a group and between the group and its pastor. While insisting that the decision of faith entailed in coming into full communion with the Catholic Church is always one which must be made individually, we will do all we can to respect and build on those precious bonds of shared discipleship. Steps are now being considered which will enable a group to stay together for as long as it is wishes not only during any period of enquiry and exploration, and in the process leading up to reception into the Catholic Church, but also, if thought fit in particular circumstances, after that point. The process whereby that group becomes, in practice, fully one with the Roman Catholic local community may, indeed, be gradual. On the other hand, once important steps are taken, and misapprehensions or misgivings removed, it may well be that the common identity of full Catholic faith opens up a much easier process of integration into the local Catholic parish community than is now envisaged by some. The Catholic community in many parts of England and Wales is already characterised by a diversity of culture and background. It is Catholic faith shared within the visible unity of the Church which forms our identity.
At this important time, it is clear that the way forward requires of us all both generosity and patience. For many troubled in conscience difficult decisions lie ahead. We are exploring ways in which they can be given additional spiritual and pastoral support. We will do all we can to encourage the Catholic community to give a warm and generous welcome to all who join it at this time. Similarly, we will seek not only to protect but also to enhance key ecumenical relations so that ecclesial life may be strengthened and the service and common witness required by the Gospel given in our society.
19 November 1993
Monday, 23 May 2011
Resolution of the Plenary Meeting of CBCEW - April 1994
This continues our series of posts of texts pertaining to the transition and reconcilation of Anglicans into the full communion of the Catholic Church in the 1990s.
Matters relating to the Reception of Anglican Clergy into the Catholic Church.
Statement
In recent weeks and months approaches have been made by members of the Church of England unsure, about their future, to most of the Roman Catholic Dioceses of England. These have been both from individuals and groups, clergy and laity. Some have already been received into full communion with the Catholic Church; others are about to be so received; others are making first enquiries about what such a journey involves and how they will be received.
The discussions which have taken place, with individuals and groups, involving both bishops and Catholic laity, have made clear a number of important perspectives and some widespread misunderstandings. It is these we now wish to address.
First, there should be no doubt that those approaching us are not simply wishing to avoid the advent of women priests. To describe them in such terms is inaccurate and a real disservice. Rather they reveal depth of Catholic faith which is both impressive and moving. The doctrines they hold concerning the sacraments and the Eucharist in particular, including its reservation for prayer and devotion, are substantially Catholic. Many follow the same devotional and liturgical practices as we do; they have a deep respect for the Holy Father and acknowledge the primacy which is his as the successor of Peter.
It is important for members of our Catholic community to understand that for some of these Anglicans, especially the clergy, the principal aim in their Church life has been to help bring about the visible unity of the Church of England with the See of Peter. In their judgement, recent decisions make this no longer a realistic possibility within the Church of England, and lead them to seek that full visible unity individually or in groups. As we said in our statement of November 1993: “Many have arrived at the conviction that visible communion with the Bishop of Rome is a necessary element of Catholic life. To them we wish to extend a warm welcome.”
Secondly, it has become clear that question the key question from many who are approaching us is the view they should take the sacramental life they have faithfully lived as members of the Church of England. This is an important question for our Catholic community, too. It is the clear teaching of the Second Vatican Council that visible elements of the Church of Christ can and do exist outside the boundaries of the Catholic Church. The visible elements and sacred actions spoken of by the Conciliar Decree on Ecumenism include “the celebration of the memorial of the Lord's Supper” (para 22). These sacred actions, and the ministries by which they are carried out, are clearly to be found in the Church of England. Catholic teaching is, then, that the liturgical or sacred actions of those in the Church of England “most certainly can truly engender a life of grace and, one must say, can aptly give access to the communion of salvation.” (para 3). No one who is considering full communion with the Catholic Church is, therefore, expected to deny the value of the liturgical life they have celebrated in the Church of England, which has sustained them to this point. Rather they are coming to recognise that it is “through Christ's Catholic Church alone … that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained.” (para 3).
These perspectives have important consequences for the nature of the journey into full communion to be undertaken by those seeking full communion with the Catholic Church. Undoubtedly they will engage in a period of exploration of contemporary Catholicism, offered in discussion with the neighbouring Catholic community. But the period between their decision to leave the Church of England and their reception into full communion need not be lengthy. As the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults states, when speaking at the reception of baptised persons, such preparation is to be “adapted to individual pastoral requirements” (No 391). For those who have been accustomed to regular, if not a daily, Holy Communion in the Church of England, a lengthy delay before they are admitted to the Eucharist is not desirable. Their sharing in the sacramental life of the Catholic Church will help the process by which they come to an experience of being part of the local Catholic community.
As we stated in on the 1993 November meeting, in welcoming those clergy of the Church of England who are approaching us, “We recognise in the ministry they have exercised a call from God. This is the basis of our readiness to assume a continuity of ministry, normally leading to ordination to the priesthood in the Catholic Church, depending on a process of mutual discernment.” For some this has already begun. So, too, has the exploration of ways in which we can respect and build on the bonds of fellowship that exists between groups of Anglican laity who wish to lead a Catholic life and their pastors.
In all these matters we ask that the five principles enunciated in our 1993 Low Week meeting be kept in mind. They are:
- the conviction that the fullness of Catholic life, and the Orders which part of it, is to be found in the visible communion of the Catholic Church.
- the aim for those who seek to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church must be their eventual total integration into the life of the Catholic community.
- that those seeking full communion are required to accept the teaching authority of the Church in matters of faith and moral, as exercised by the Pope as the successor of Peter and by the College of Bishops acting in union with him.
- that we reiterate our commitment to developing ecumenical relations with the Church of England and with other Churches and communities; we will continue this dialogue and common effort in the new circumstances that now obtain.
- that we are confident that the Catholic community will be enriched by the spiritual heritage of those seeking full communion and that Catholics will show generosity of heart as they work with us in the duty of meeting the needs of those who are now approaching us.
“Father, may they all be one, just as you are in me and I am in you, so that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me.” (John 17.20-21)
14 April 1994
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Pastoral Message of CBCEW - April 1993
Over the course of the coming days and weeks we will be publishing some texts from the 1990s, especially pertaining to the management of the transition of Anglican clergy and laity to the Catholic Church. Many of these, it is thought, are not available elsewhere online. There are significant differences between the circumstances of the 1990s and the current development - the difference between individual and group reconciliation being chief amongst them. Having said that, many of the texts enunciate, in a helpful way, the journey of many of Anglicans towards the full communion of the Catholic Church and the official response of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, to their requests.
First is a Pastoral Message from the Archbishops and Bishop of England & Wales to the Catholic priests and people of their dioceses. It was read in parishes on the Fourth Sunday of Easter 1993.
Last November, the General Synod of the Church of England passed a resolution authorising the ordination of women to the priesthood. Although this measure was agreed by a two-thirds majority, it left a number of Anglican clergy and laypeople not only opposed to the decision itself but also deeply troubled in conscience. As has been well-publicised, some have turned towards the Catholic Church and begin to consider whether they might seek full communion with our Church. The extent of reaction has taken many by surprise. The uncertainty about the numbers involved has helped to fuel rumour and misunderstanding.
Many different hopes and anxieties have been expressed, in the nation at large as well as within the Church of England and within our own Catholic community. As your bishops, we have listened to these and have reflected together on the sensitive pastoral and ecumenical issues which are involved. During our Low Week meeting at Westminster, we have been able to agree on certain principles which must guide our response, and we have begun to set out some practical ways forward. More detailed reports of these discussions will be available through the media, but we also wish to send this pastoral message to all our priests and people. Our purpose is to explain these principles and invite you to share with us the process of proud reflection which is needed at this time.
It is important first of all to understand that, for many of those Anglicans now looking towards the Catholic Church, the Synod vote last November brought to a head some long-felt difficulties. These people, by no means all clergy, are concerned particularly about authority. They do not believe that the General Synod has the authority to admit women to the priesthood. They believe that decisions about a matter of such doctrinal importance should not be taken by the Church of England alone. Even though much discussion focused on attitudes to women and ordination, it is the issue of the teaching authority claimed by the Church of England which is at the heart of present anxieties. It is to this that we, as Catholics, must respond.
We believe that whilst the gift of the Holy Spirit is given to all Christians by virtue of their baptism, it is the bishops of the Catholic Church, together with the Pope, who have the task of teaching with authority those things which Christ has revealed to us as saving truth. It is this understanding of authority, as the sure way to truth, which in recent years led us to explain that the Anglican vote to ordain women would in fact change our relationship with the Church of England, adding a real obstacle to our hopes for unity. It is this same teaching authority, expressed especially in the ministry of the Pope, which some Anglicans now wish to recognise and adhere to.
Our response must reflect our deep pastoral concern. As a Catholic community, one of our first responsibilities is to welcome those who seek with a sincere hearts to belong to our Church. Each person’s journey into the Catholic Church is unique, but in these present circumstances, we shall wish to acknowledge the value of the ministry and life of faith, which those who now seek to join us have already experienced.
In the light of some fears which has been expressed, let it be clearly understood that this does not mean bargaining with truth, nor a wholesale abandonment of the disciplines of our Church. Nor is compromise sought in what is expected of those seeking full communion with the Catholic Church. We gladly welcome their rich devotion and personal holiness, but we look towards their eventual total integration into the life and mission of the Catholic Church. This remains true whether their approach to ask is as individuals or in groups. Our response will be generous and understanding. It will be guided by the same principles, even if in the difficult period of transition, these may be expressed in different practical forms suited to varying situations in our different dioceses.
We repeat: we shall look towards eventual total integration into the Catholic Church. But this is a new situation and we must feel our way forward sensitively, courageously, with understanding and faith. Of course it will also, in general terms, be after due consultation with the Holy See. It is communion with the one universal Catholic Church which those troubled at this time are seeking, not some negotiated change of membership at the local level.
We hope that those who join us as a result of these events will come to live happily a truly Catholic way of life, in accordance with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. But we cannot expect that the issues and concerns of the present time can be resolved quickly, not least because of the uncertainty created by the parliamentary legislation now needed by the Church of England to implement the decision of last November’s Synod. For our part, we must proceed patiently, and with prayer.
Whatever the outcomes of this process, our ecumenical relationships continue because they are central to our response to the Lord’s will for his Church. The real bond a baptism still unites us, and we must make every effort to build upon that bond, not only with our Anglican brothers and sisters but also with other Christian communities. Together we are called to serve God’s kingdom in our world. Together we have a mission to proclaim the Gospel in the circumstances of our own society in this country, as well as in the wider world. Our ecumenical commitment must always keep in mind this larger purpose.
We ask you to pray that is together we will find the right ways forward for the whole of God’s Church. Let your prayer guide your contribution to the reflection and conscientious questioning, now taking place in the whole Church. We need to have a deep reliance on the Holy Spirit, who unfailingly guides the Church in the way of truth. ‘But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part, is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.’ Eph 4:15-16.
Signed: In the name of the Bishops of their Provinces,
+George Basil Cardinal Hume, for the Province of Westminster
+Derek Worlock, for the Province of Liverpool
+Michael Bowen for the Province of Southwark
+Maurice Couve de Murville, for the Province of Birmingham
+John Aloysius Ward, for the Province of Cardiff
and
+Francis Walmsley, Bishop of the Forces
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Diaconal Ordinations for the Ordinariate in Portsmouth
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© Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham |
On Friday 13 May 2011 three candidates for ordination as deacons in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, were ordained by the bishop of Portsmouth in his cathedral church.
A few months earlier, Bishop Crispian Hollis ordained former Anglican bishop of Richborough and Principal of St Stephen’s House, Oxford, Edwin Barnes as a deacon and then a priest in the Catholic Church. Just as with Fr Barnes’ ordination to the diaconate, this was a low-key affair, this time in the chapel of St John, the cathedral’s patron.
The Revd David Elliott, sometime Priest in Charge of the well-known Anglo-Catholic parish of the Most Holy Trinity, Reading, the Revd Jonathan Redvers Harris, who until recently was the Vicar of All Saints’, Ryde on the Isle of Wight, and the Revd Graham Smith from Bournemouth, represented three distinct areas of the diocese of Portsmouth, which are now linked by their association with the Ordinariate. The Revd Christopher Pearson, who leads the London (South) Ordinariate Group and was ordained to the diaconate at Aylesford Priory on the previous Saturday, deaconed the Mass, which was concelebrated by the Dean of the Cathedral, the Canon Chancellor of the diocese of Portsmouth, the Parish Priest of Ryde, and Fr Edwin Barnes, who represented the Ordinary, Monsignor Keith Newton.
At 10.30am, the sacristy bell was rung as Come, ye faithful began. This has become something of a favourite at Ordinariate ordinations – surely because of the paschal theme, but also undoubtedly because of the resonances with the exodus of the ancient People of God:
A few months earlier, Bishop Crispian Hollis ordained former Anglican bishop of Richborough and Principal of St Stephen’s House, Oxford, Edwin Barnes as a deacon and then a priest in the Catholic Church. Just as with Fr Barnes’ ordination to the diaconate, this was a low-key affair, this time in the chapel of St John, the cathedral’s patron.
The Revd David Elliott, sometime Priest in Charge of the well-known Anglo-Catholic parish of the Most Holy Trinity, Reading, the Revd Jonathan Redvers Harris, who until recently was the Vicar of All Saints’, Ryde on the Isle of Wight, and the Revd Graham Smith from Bournemouth, represented three distinct areas of the diocese of Portsmouth, which are now linked by their association with the Ordinariate. The Revd Christopher Pearson, who leads the London (South) Ordinariate Group and was ordained to the diaconate at Aylesford Priory on the previous Saturday, deaconed the Mass, which was concelebrated by the Dean of the Cathedral, the Canon Chancellor of the diocese of Portsmouth, the Parish Priest of Ryde, and Fr Edwin Barnes, who represented the Ordinary, Monsignor Keith Newton.
At 10.30am, the sacristy bell was rung as Come, ye faithful began. This has become something of a favourite at Ordinariate ordinations – surely because of the paschal theme, but also undoubtedly because of the resonances with the exodus of the ancient People of God:
God hath brought his Israel into joy from sadness;loosed from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke Jacob’s sons and daughters;led the dry-shod and un-harmedthrough the Red Sea waters.
The hymn, which was also sung in Cambridge at the diaconal ordinations, is a fine example of the Anglican tradition of translating patristic hymnody for use in the vernacular liturgy; maintaining the unbroken tradition of the Church within the broader context of contemporary liturgical practice. The translator, The Revd J.M. Neale, contributed over sixty translations for the English Hymnal and was also one of the principal founders of the Society of St Margaret, from which the first Religious of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, originated.
Bishop Hollis introduced the Mass with a warm and informal manner – a real and genuine sense of joy tempered by an equally impressive level of respect for the ministry which the three candidates exercised in the Church of England.
An unaccompanied Responsorial Psalm was followed by the Gospel and the Rite of Ordination. Fr Edwin Barnes, who is resident in the diocese of Portsmouth whilst being a priest of the Ordinariate, presented the candidates to Bishop Hollis on behalf of the Ordinary. As such, and as a former Anglican bishop, he wore the pectoral cross and ring – sharing for a particular action and moment in jurisdiction of the Ordinary.
Bishop Hollis, in his homily, then spoke of the significance of the occasion and the correlation between the candidates’ own journey to that day and the journey all the faithful make towards Easter. He also drew on the First Reading from Acts 9, making a clear link between the conversion of Saul, the ongoing and continual conversion of all the faithful, and the place of the Ordinariate within that wider call.
The Litany of the Saints was then sung as the candidates prostrated before the altar. After the laying-on of hands and the Prayer of Consecration, each was vested in a stole and dalmatic. The Revd James Bradley, a member of the Executive of the Catholic League who undertook a pastoral placement in Reading during his time at St Stephen’s House, assisted the new Deacon David Elliott as the Veni Creator was sung in Latin, to plainchant. The Liturgy of the Eucharist then followed and was concluded by a few final words by the bishop, the blessing and the Regina coeli.
Afterwards, the small group which represented the family, friends and groups of the three new deacons, were entertained in Bishops’ House.
The Litany of the Saints was then sung as the candidates prostrated before the altar. After the laying-on of hands and the Prayer of Consecration, each was vested in a stole and dalmatic. The Revd James Bradley, a member of the Executive of the Catholic League who undertook a pastoral placement in Reading during his time at St Stephen’s House, assisted the new Deacon David Elliott as the Veni Creator was sung in Latin, to plainchant. The Liturgy of the Eucharist then followed and was concluded by a few final words by the bishop, the blessing and the Regina coeli.
Afterwards, the small group which represented the family, friends and groups of the three new deacons, were entertained in Bishops’ House.
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
New Anglican Bishop of Richborough
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| Fr Norman Banks, Chaplain to HM The Queen |
Let us pray that, thanks to the prayer and faithfulness of all the martyrs, Catholic and Protestant alike, and their self-oblation in union with the sacrifice of Christ, the Christians of today may grow ever closer together into fullness of communion in his one Church. We know how deeply Fr Norman cares for the Catholic faith as it has been lived in the Anglican Church and what it has promised for the reconciliation of all Christians. So we assure him of our prayers for God's blessing in his future ministry to bring about the day of unity in Christ's one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
Monday, 9 May 2011
Ordinations of Deacons for the Ordinariate within the Diocese of Westminster: Anglican & Catholic Patrimony
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| Fr Mark Woodruff (left) vests the new Deacon Timothy Bugby (c) Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham |
Fr Mark Woodruff, director of the League was a concelebrant and assisted the Revd Tim Bugby, to vest in the stole and dalmatic. Deacon Timothy is a member of the Hemel Hempstead Ordinariate Group.
The new deacons were consecrated by Bishop Alan Hopes, Episcopal Delegate for the Ordinariate from the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, on behalf of the Ordinary, Mgr Keith Newton, at the Church of Our Lady of Victories, Kensington. Our Lady of Victories was the Pro-Cathedral of the Diocese of Westminster before the consecration of Westminster Cathedral.
The Liturgy was a fine mix of the best of the Catholic musical tradition and elements of English litrugical patrimony that have long since been owned and absorbed within Catholic worship. It is interesting to reflect on the mutual histories. The Kyrie, Gloria and Agnus Dei were from the Missa Papae Marcelli by Palestrina, famous as the Mass formerly sung as a rule at papal coronations. Probably dating from 1562, it comes from the time of the closing sessions of the great Catholic reforming Council of Trent. Thirteen years after Thomas Cranmer crafted his first Book of Common Prayer, launching the Anglican liturgical patrimony that was set a year later to simple music by John Merbecke (organist of St George's Chapel, Windsor, who had once composed polyphonic music for the Catholic liturgy, but who had become a convinced Calvinist and theological controversialist, narrowly escaping the death penalty for heresy, thanks to the clemency of Bishop Stephen Gardiner), the Council had completed its work of aggiornamento - the Catholic reform - to meet the conditions and challenges of a world beyond the Middle Ages, along with the continuing effects of the Renaissance. It is not really accurate to speak of a counter-Reformation, since the roots to the Catholic reform go back further and show remarkable continuity with development and growth in the Middle Ages, not least in the development of a firmly Catholic humanist tradition (Erasmus, St Thomas More) and movements of lay and religious spiritual revival (such as in the Low Countries, cultivating the Devotio Moderna), the effects of which can be traced not only in the pietistical objectives of Protestant Reformers, but more truly in the Carmelite reform inspired by St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross and subsequently in the genesis of the Society of Jesus. In England, the Carthusians were at the forefront of this spiritual renewal process. This was doubtless more than part of the reason why they found themselves almost the first to be confronted by Henry VIII, as he wrested control of the Church, its orientation and purpose. Whereas England embraced a truncated, partial reform in response to the crisis in the Church after the end of the Middles Ages, the Catholic Church completed a reform that opened the Liturgy to the involvement of the people, cultivated liturgical spirituality, provided for the thorough training of the clergy in orthodox theology and philosophy, so as to enable the catechesis of the faithful in their Catholic faith, and opened up a vigorous sense of mission not only around the world, but also in Europe in response to the challenge of the Protestant Reformers. Perhaps the greatest of its exponents in Europe was St Francis de Sales, whose transparent holiness and zeal as a pastor and teacher won back to the Catholic faith the diocese of Geneva, even if not the city itself. Under Queen Mary I, England was a first laboratory for the reforms contemplated by the Council; and Professor Eamon Duffy has shown, in Fires of Faith, that however else history has judged this reign, its religious policy of catechesis, preaching, liturgical development, mission and persuasion were not only effective but popular, later to be emulated in other parts of Europe. By 1562, England had been channelled back into Protestantism for four years and the English Church was not to benefit from the post-Renaissance renewal of music and worship, pioneered by Palestrina's new approach in the spirit of the Catholic reforms, for over 400 years. The choice of this particular Mass setting, composed at a time of rupture in the Church at the root of the Anglican schism and thus its missing out on the full process of reform within the Church, was inspired, since it represented something of a healing of histories, a resetting of something that had been dislocated. Those with an Anglican patrimony could reclaim a symbolic part of their missed Catholic heritage.
The entrance hymn was from the time of the Church before the Great Schism - St Fulbert of Chartres' Ye choirs of New Jerusalem, translated by Robert Campbell, who brought into English many Latin hymns (notably the hymns of Charles Coffin from the Paris Breviary). This great favourite has occupired a place in Anglican worship for 150 years, but is less well known as a hymn to sing at mass in the English Catholic Church. The tune, St Fulbert, was written by Henry Gauntlett (1805-1876), the organist, composer and organ-builder who had the distinction of having been the first person to be awarded a Doctorate of Music by the Archbishop of Canterbury, with pontifical powers to oversee ecclesiastical and university education reserved to the Pope before the breach with Rome, in 200 years. He is also famous as the composer of the tune, Irby, for Once in Royal David's City. In the Anglican church, the custom is not to omit the Amen at the end of hymns concluding with a trinitarian doxology, and with St Fulbert the Amen is preceded by an Alleluia. This did not happen at Our Lady of Victories - it is not their tradition - but there was a sense of expectation to sing it, as many present were, or had been, Anglicans familiar with this custom of singing Alleluia. Amen.
During the vesting of the new deacons, Veni Creator Spiritus was sung in Latin. In future, when the Ordinariates benefit from their own distinctive Use of the Roman Latin rite, will it become the custom to sing the much-loved translation into English by Bishop John Cosin from the 1662 Anglican Ordinal - Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire? The signs are that this could be so - Cosin's version was indeed sung at the ordinations for the pastors of the Ordinariate groups in the Southwark archdiocese the very next day at The Friars, Aylesford, with its short and to the point rendering of the doxology in a stanza of just two lines:
Praise to thy eternal merit,Indeed, Amen. The last hymn was Thine be the glory, a fairly recent arrival in English, but now a hymn that truly belongs to all Britain's Christians. It had its origins in the French-speaking Swiss Reformed Church, and stands as another example of different Christian patrimonies, in the exchange of spiritual riches for which Vatican II's Decree on Ecumenism hoped, informing and infusing each other.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This seems to be the first of the Ordinariate ordinations in which the participants were furnished with the full text of the presentation of candidates, marking the exceptional constitutional nature of the Ordinarite and its provsions for the ordination of married transitional deacons destined for ordination to the priesthood:
Bishop Hopes: Do you judge them worthy?And the Ordinariate has its first permanent deacon. His Honour Judge James Patrick was a non-stipendiary assistant priest at All Saints' Anglican Parish, Clifton, Bristol. As a circuit judge he holds public office and this prohibits his ordination to the Catholic priesthood. Should he step down, or when he retires from the judiciary, he will become eligible to be ordained priest.
Mgr Newton: After enquiry among the people of Christ and upon recommendation of those concerned with their training, and with the permission of the Holy See, I testify that they have been found worthy.
As at the ordinations in Cambridge in Easter Week, Bishop Hopes included after the Election by the Bishop and Consent of the People the Vatican-approved prayer of thanksgiving - and thus Catholic recognition - for previous Anglican ministry "derived from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church". This led directly into the Bishop's homily, which we hope will be made available in due course. At the Ordinariate ordinations in the Archdiocese of Southwark the following day at Aylesford, it seems that Bishop Hines also used the same prayer; but he placed it with the invitation to prayer, prior to the Litany of Saints (which, as it is Eastertide, was sung standing while the candidates prostrated). This is the position suggested by the Congregation for Divine Worship in the rite at which the Prayer of Thanksgiving was used at the Ordination of Mgr Graham Leonard and subsequent priestly ordinations of former Anglican priests in the diocese of Westminster under Cardinal Hume, whose initiative it was.
Finally, for the Offertory the motet was William Byrd's Haec Dies, the Gradual for Easter used at both mass and the office throughout the eight days of Easter. Byrd was probably born in 1540 at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. He witnessed the collapse of the shortlived and futile Henrician pseudo-Catholic Church in 1547 and its replacement by a more thorough Protestant Reformed Church of England under his son, with worship in English according to the First and Second Books of Common Prayer until Queen Mary restored the English Church's allegiance to the Catholic Church. Possibly by then he was a Chapel Royal choirboy. Certainly he was a pupil of Thomas Tallis, who as a Gentlement of the Chapel from 1543 to his death in 1585 was a leading court composer, serving Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. Like Byrd he remained a Catholic throughout, but avoided religious controversy, adapting his musical style and output to the tastes and requirements of his royal employers. The young Byrd collaborated with Tallis, John Sheppard and William Mundy in writing new music for the Sarum rite used by the Chapel Royal towards the end of the reign of Queen Mary in 1558. Thereafter, with the Church of England re-established and its Prayer Book restored, Byrd's public musicianship had to serve the requirements of Queen Elizabeth. After he too became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1572, he collaborated with the aged Tallis on the publication of a collection of motets in Latin. Dedicated to the Queen, the collection comprised items used in the Chapel Royal, in which the Prayer Book was used in Latin translation. But Haec Dies comes from Byrd's own 1591 second volume of Cantiones Sacrae, containing his later output of motets more specifically reflecting his Catholic perspective. Like his subsequent Masses and the Gradualia that date from the reign of James I (Byrd's long life ended in 1623), they may well have seen service in the clandestine masses and performances of religious music in the houses of Catholic patrons.
So Haec Dies represents an attempt to recover the tradition of a Catholic musical and liturgical patrimony Byrd treasured from the time of his youth, as well as to renew it with influences from the continent and developing tastes in secular music, at the same time as his outstanding and innovative contribution to the emergence of the Anglican musical and liturgical patrimony. But despite his high reputation as a master of European Renaissance music in his lifetime, and despite such illustrious pupils as Peter Philips, Thomas Tomkins and Thomas Morley, the English tradition of Latin sacred music died with him. The place of his secular music in the repertoire declined with changes in popular taste and it was only his Anglican music that preserved his fame beyond the Restoration, until it too fell out of use. But the story does not end there. Despite various attempts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to revive interest in his enormous output over such a long life, it took an Anglican clergyman and musicologist, Edmund Fellowes, to edit and publish twenty volumes of Byrd's music as well as the remarkable series, Tudor Church Music, through which he also recovered the long forgotten works of other English Renaissance composers, notably Orlando Gibbons.
So the selection of Haec Dies could not have been more apt for the ordination of deacons for the Ordinariate. Ostensibly a piece of Catholic patrimony from the age of the Tudors, it speaks of the genesis of the Anglican musical patrimony by the same hand. Furthermore, it was recovered for re-reception within Catholic worship through the scholarship of a Church of England priest, as a labour of love that he thought would enrich the Anglican choral tradition in such places in which he served as Bristol Cathedral, St George's Chapel, Windsor, and St Michael's College, Tenbury (1856-1985 - a school founded by Sir Fredreick Gore Ouseley as a model for church music raised to the highest standards, in reaction to its parlous condition in the mid-nineteenth century).
It is interesting to reflect that the sacred music of the English Renaissance that is associated with the Anglican patrimony par excellence, especially Choral Evensong, owes its place deep in the heart, imagination and folk memory of the Church of England's cathedral tradition to the efforts of a clergyman who flourished in the first half of the twentieth century, a matter of mere decades ago. It is also worth bearing in mind that long before Anglicanorum Coetibus, the restoration of Anglican patrimony brought with it some treasures to be restored to their rightful and much loved place in the Catholic liturgy too.
Sunday, 8 May 2011
New Trustee Ordained
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| Bishop Hine, Mgr Keith Newton, Deacon James Bradley (c) The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham |
Until recently, Fr Deacon James was assistant curate in the Anglican parish of St John the Baptist, Sevenoaks, working alongside the vicar, the Revd Ivan Aquilina, who was also ordained on Saturday. Together they have been leading a vibrant group aiming to become a parish of the Ordinariate.
James has been helping to lay good foundations for the Ordinariate through keeping a full photographic record and maintaining a blog with news on developments, analysis and events. On the strength of his work he was recently invited to attend a conference for Catholic bloggers in Rome, convened by the Pontifical Council for Social Communitions. He was co-opted as a member of the Executive and trustee of the Catholic League in March, in the stead of Miss Mary Lamb who died in December.
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