Not mystery cult but "a visible society": how the Litany prays for the Church

Amongst the significant differences between the classical forms of the Litany in traditional Anglican liturgies and contemporary forms of the Litany is how the Church is prayed for in the former.  In the classical form, the Church is prayed for amidst the other institutions which shape our common life.  Thus, for example, in the Irish BCP 1926 (using the variants for use in Northern Ireland), petitions for the Church are interspersed with petitions for the Crown, the Royal Family, Ministers of the Crown, Parliament, magistrates, and the armed forces.  At the outset there is a petition for "thy holy Church universal"; in the midst, a petition for bishops, priests and deacons; at the conclusion, a petition for "all thy people".

It is possible to dismiss this as a reflection of a historic ecclesiastical establishment no longer applicable to Anglicanism outside of England: and even there, it embodies an understanding of establishment which is routinely dismissed by CofE figures as embarrassing and antiquated.  What should give us pause for thought here, however, is the fact that this construction of the Litany was retained - either wholly or largely - by, for example, PECUSA 1928, Ireland 1926, Scotland 1929, and Canada 1962: none of which were at the time established churches.  Is it the case, then, that this ordering of the Litany is speaking of something more than legal establishment?

A good case can be made that this is indeed what the classical form of the Litany is pointing towards.  In places the Church amongst the public institutions which shape common life it is indicating the nature of the Church as such a public institution: not a mystery cult, not a sectarian assembly, but a public institution.  In the words of Ratzinger:

According to the conviction of Christians from the very beginning, those who meet for the Eucharist do not form a social group or a circle of friends but, rather, the public entity of the People of God, which is comparable, in the status that it claims, not to any cultic associations, but solely to the political entity of the Roman Empire and its citizenry ... In this regard, there was an intrinsic reason that led the Christian assemblies to gather in the imperial building called the basilica, when public law allowed this public self-expression of their claim.

Hooker articulated a similar conviction with his insistence that "the Church is always a visible society of men, not an assembly, but a society", "they are public Christians societies".  This leads, of course, to Hooker's discussion of ecclesiastical polity:

To our purpose therefore the name of Church-polity will better serve, because it containeth both government and also whatsoever besides belongeth to the ordering of the Church in public.  Neither is anything in this degree more necessary than Church-polity, which is a form of ordering the public affairs of the Church of God (III.1.14).

It is this emphasis on the public nature of the Church that is recognised by the classical ordering of the Litany, a recognition lost when a Litany separates petitions for the Church from petitions for those other public institutions which shape common life.  An implicit sectarianism is then at work, portraying the Church as (in Ratzinger's words) 'cultic association' rather than rather a public society, proclaiming and embodying the Christian proclamation in the public realm, to shape and form common life. 

That the petition for the ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons occurs in the midst of the petitions for the other institutions of common life is also significant.  As Hooker states:

we must again call to mind how the very wordly peace and prosperity, the secular happiness, the temporal and natural good estate both of all men and all dominions hangeth chiefly upon religion and doth evermore give plain testimony that as well in this as in other considerations the Priest is a pillar of that commonwealth wherein he faithfully serveth God (V.76.2).

Again, Hooker's view is not dependent on legal establishment but, rather, agrees with Augustine that "the Churches are ... sacred seminaries of public instruction, in which this sound morality is inculcated and learned" (Letter 91, to Nectarius, a pagan civic official).  We might also point to similar insights by Burke and Tocqueville on the inherently political significance of religion: "We know ... that man is by his constitution a religious animal", "the first political institution of American democracy is religion".  With its teachings on natural law, on the gift and good order of political society, and its vision of the just and peaceable community, the Church shapes and forms the public square, orienting it to the Good.

In other words, a rich ecclesiology and public theology is at work in the classical ordering of the Litany, setting before us the Church as public society not cultic assembly, so that, rather than defined by mere cultic acts, it orders our common life towards the the fulness of life in the City of God.