'Mass in Masquerade'? Notes for an Old High Church reading of Anglo-catholicism

I first saw this picture on Twitter, with the following caption:

The altar from the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. This stunning church was built by Lutherans in the height of the years of Lutheran Orthodoxy.

It immediately brought to mind Anglo-catholic parishes in which I have worshipped in England and the United States: All Saints, Margaret Street and St Paul's, K Street; St Matthews, Westminster and St Mary the Virgin, NYC.  

This might help contribute towards an Old High Church reading of the Anglo-Catholic introduction of ceremonies unknown to the BCP, accentuating the positive rather than a critique which echoes Disraeli's famous criticism of Ritualism as "Mass in masquerade".  The parishes mentioned above are a reminder that Anglo-catholicism has been since at least the beginning of the 20th century a settled, significant and now enduring part of Anglicanism.  If Anglo-catholicism had been an entirely 'foreign' development, it is unlikely that it would have taken root in Anglican soil, or done so as widely as it did.  

Perhaps it did take root because it was not a dramatic rupture but, rather, because it cohered with older tendencies and emphasises within Anglicanism.  One of those tendencies explored by laudable Practice over recent months was a recurring emphasis on the similarities between Anglicanism and Lutheranism.  This was reflected in a characteristic late 16th and early 17th Conformist insistence on pointing to the Lutheran churches in defence of the Prayer Book's ceremonies; in the Laudian ambition for a 'Union of Churches of the Northern Kingdoms'; in again invoking Lutheran ceremonies at the Restoration; and in early 18th century Anglican accounts of Lutheranism.  As William Dawes, Archbishop of York, said of the Lutheran churches in 1715, "we vary very little from them in the Exercise of our Publick Devotion", while going on to acknowledge that they were "not only more abundant in their at Ceremonies, but in the Pomp and Splendour of their Churches".  

Against this background, the emergence of Anglo-catholicism in the 19th century could be interpreted as a development of such similarities with Lutheranism.  After all, Mass and chasuble did not necessarily mean 'popish': in large parts of Europe they were to be found in reformed national churches which rejected papal pretensions, had married clergy, administered the Sacrament in both kinds, and possessed vernacular liturgy.  In the words of Article XXIV of the Augsburg Confession:

Falsely are our churches accused of abolishing the Mass; for the Mass is retained among us, and celebrated with the highest reverence. Nearly all the usual ceremonies are also preserved.

There was something of a suggestion of this in the 1906 Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline.  Discussing the wearing of the chasuble (used, the Report noted, in 10% of English churches in 1901, and without controversy as "thousands of middle-aged persons now living have been accustomed to see those vestments worn as long as they can remember"), it stated there was not "any necessary approximation to Rome in the use of vestments which even in Western Europe are not exclusively Roman".  Furthermore, the Report declares, the Roman teaching on the Eucharistic sacrifice as "propitiatory" - rather than the "commemorative sacrifice" upheld "by many divines of eminence", such as Bishop Bull - "is generally repudiated by those who use the vestments".

To state matters plainly, and despite the regular claims of Anglo-catholics to the contrary, perhaps the reason why Anglo-catholicism was able take root in the Church of England and other Anglican churches was precisely because it was Protestant.  Disrael's 'Mass in masquerade' was incorrect because he was thinking of the wrong form of Mass.  It was not Roman Mass that was encountered in Anglo-catholicism - in a national church, rejecting papal claims, with a married clergy and Reformation formularies - but Lutheran Mass.

To qualify this, I am not at all claiming that this was the self-understanding of 19th century Ritualists and Anglo-Catholics.  It self-evidently was not.  I am, however, suggesting that it explains why Anglo-catholicism could take root in the Church of England.  It would do so because Mass and chasuble could be Protestant, as Lutheranism showed.

What is more, another aspect of the relationship with Lutheranism needs to be considered.  In Liturgy as Revelation: Re-Sourcing as a Theme in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, Philip Caldwell situates the Tractarians amongst wider Western European ecclesial movements.  The 1830s also witnessed liturgical and sacramental revival amongst German and Danish Lutherans.  Caldwell invokes J.F. White's study:

John Henry Newman marked the beginning of the Oxford Movement as a sermon preached by John Keble on July 14, 1833 ... In Bavaria, Wilhelm Loehe began a long pastorate in Neuendetteslau in 1837, devoted to making frequent confession and communion a reality among Lutherans.  Nikolai S. Grundtvig led a sacramental revival in the Lutheran church of Denmark ... Something dynamic was in the atmosphere worldwide in the 1830s.

Caldwell himself locates such movements in the cultural context of Romanticism:

Tempered by a certain scientific rigor, the product of both a scholastic and a rationalist heritage, nineteenth-century theology welcomed feeling, dynamism, and imagination.

The emergence of Anglo-catholicism in the 19th century, therefore, is not a narrative of splendid isolation, but part of a wider movement within Protestantism.  We might also point to similarities with the Mercersburg Theology which emerged within mid-19th century Reformed thought in the United States. Anglo-catholicism can be understood within this broader set of movements seeking to deepen Protestant experiences of sacrament, liturgy, and church order. 

That Tractarianism and later Anglo-catholicism particularly paralleled simultaneous and similar movements within German and Danish Lutheranism, both in the shared cultural context of Romanticism, is certainly suggestive of wider similarities in terms of a shared Protestant liturgical and sacramental response to Romanticism.  Loehe, we should note, contended like the early Tractarians for a conception of ministry derived from apostolic succession, while, in the words of one study, "Grundtvigianism became the most sacramental type of Lutheranism".  

Anglo-catholicism took root because, contrary to the noisy claims of supporters and detractors alike, it was Protestant.  Just as with Lutheranism, Mass could be celebrated and the chasuble could be worn without altering the fundamental Protestant nature of the Church of England and other Anglican churches: national churches, rejecting papal claims, with a married clergy, communion in both kinds, and Reformation formularies.

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'Notes for an Old High Church reading of Anglo-catholicism' will be an occasional series on laudable Practice over the next few months.  This post has focused on aspects of ceremony. Future posts will address both doctrinal issues and matters of ritual.