Are there churches in England or the US which use the English Missal,
unadulterated? Most places I have been to use it as a resource, but not the
full liturgy thats there.
THe abpove question was placed on another list, and I wrote the following response to it.
Perren
Before the 1979 BCP there were many that used it or one of its American
variants, The American Missal (SSJE) or The Anglican Missal (American Edition)
(OSF). There was one English edition of The Anglican Missal that had most (if
not all) of the Prayers of Consecration — our Sacristy had one of them also.
Where I was in charge of a congregation, I used The English Missal
(American Edition) pretty straight out e3xcept that I used the BCP, not the
Gregorian, Canon on Sundays and major feasts. I don’t recall using the Gregorian
Canon in English, but I did use it a few times with a specific congregation in
Latin.
By the time that Presiding Bishop Sherrill made his radical proposal that
the Ameican Episcopal Church should become the foundation stone for a “new”
American (semi official) Protestant Religion — by giving up Apostolic Order,
and cutting down the requirements for the Creeds and removing the requirements
for wine at the “Communion Service” we Anglo Catholics were really off on our
own. There were a series of Dioceses that were “Catholic” or accepting of
catholic work. There was a whole list of parishes that used one of the missals
The American Church Union worked real hard against that. In the later 40s
and early 50s, we had a series of Special Events Solemn Masses that included
about 20 English Bishops in cope and miter. The one in New York completely
filled St.. John’s Cathedral to standing room only. I was there. When
approached to use the “National Cathedral” Bishop Dunn is reported to have said
“Yes, but for the number that will come, you might consider renting a telephone
booth.” When the entire Mount St. Albans was covered with Anglo Catholics,
even he was nearly converted.
The first series of documents to produce a new BCP was so bad — ignored
“The Shape of the Liturgy” which also played a part in the formation of Vatican
2 — that we waited for a new Presiding Bishop to get a new and unrelated
set of documents posing as a revision of the first. Many of us, including my
very good and close friend Fr. Donald Garfield, Rector of St.. Mary the Virgin
in New York, really felt that if we didn’t get something catholic from
General Convention that we Anglo Catholics might have to find some other way to be
Anglicans. We all went to work ion many ways, and General Convention
authorized us to do a new BCP that was NOT based on revising the 1549 and later
BCPs, but would be a new beginning trying to reformulate the Episcopal CHurch
into something approaching the pre Constantinian Catholic Church. This was
presented as a movement for evangelism and growth within the Episcopal Church,
and was presumed especially to be a major revision of the meaning of Baptism.
My very good friend (whom I will be visiting in a few days) Leonel Mitchel
(who was to Baptism very much as Dom Gregory was to the Eucharist) AND Fr.
Garfield were both on the commissions.
All of us agreed that we did not want to split the Episcopal Church. What
we wanted was a BCP that could be used by ALL variations of Episcopalian. We
worked very hard to accomplish this. The rubrics will allow all the minor
propers from the older Missals (English, American, Anglican) for those who
wanted them; there would be both Rite 1 and Rite 2 so that no one was forced to
use contemporary language. Holy Week was fully developed, and again, the
rubrics allow all the things we could not get through General Convention as
printed text, but we cold get the built in permissions to do adoration and washing
on Maundy Thursday and Veneration of the Cross and Communion from the
Reserved Sacrament on Good Friday. A Paschal Candle was just “assumed.” AND the
wonderful new Order for Baptism — even though it did not go quite as far as
many of us had hoped — by allowing chrismation/confirmation by rpiests, using
Episcopally consecrated Chrism.
With the testing and trials and other work, we got the whole church geared
into this, pretty much. AND the vast majority of Anglo Catholics agreed that
we could use this book as is — pretty much. At least there were no violetn
displacements in teh Liturgy, such as where the Gloria in excelsis was sung,
where the sermon was preached, where the ablutions happened. AND the whol
Litururgical Cycle was built around Easter, with the entire week before Easter
and the week following filled with complete Liturgy for each day.
While a lot of what we had hoped has not yet happened (because 1979 is still
seen as simply a replacement for 1928), the results are astounding in terms
of what happens in the average Episcopal Church on any Sunday. Mass as the
main Liturgy for Sundays is normal in 98% or 99% of the parishes; Holy Week is
observed with more than just Stainer’s “Crucifixion” on Good Friday by the
choir of men and boys. Ourf worship is pretty well balanced and established.
ALSO (and I believe 1979 is a very important part of the reason why these
have happened) we have ordained women and acceptance of gay clergy including a
bishop. NOW we need to get to work on real catholic evangelism.
I say this in spite of the fact that several bishops and congregations
apparently do not understand the full meaning of catholic, and clearly have NO
understanding of the origins of the 1928 B CP and the mess between it and the
1979 BCP. Clearly the basic structure of the Anglican Communion is not
prepared for what we did, BECAUSE it is an undoing of much of the reformation and
medieval stuff that encrusted the Liturgy and the actions of Anglicanism. WE
also, in the USA, at least many of us Anglo Catholics, were/are also
profoundly affected by the 19th Century Christian Socialism movement in England –
even when TEC was dominated by an Eastern and Virginian conservative group who
worshiped the Reformation instead of the Holy Trinity, along with a kind of
mystical (and misinformed) idea of the CofE.
Enough for now
