laudable Practice

In the Middle Ages, the poor were regarded as our brothers and sisters in Christ to whom we were bound in love. After the Reformation, poverty came to be seen as a sign of God's punishment and ... a problem to be dealt with through discipline and often punishment. So said Timothy Radcliffe OP - now a cardinal - in a 2012 letter to the Daily Telegraph , critiquing the late Hilary Mantel's praise for Thomas Cromwell. It is, of course, a rather standard Roman Catholic meme, entirely lacking in serious historical research, the result of 'Merrie England' fantasies encouraged by some readings of Duffy's panegyric of pre-Reformation English religion. Ironically, Radcliffe's letter opened by stating that Mantel "is not as good a historian as she is a novelist". At the heart of this fantasy is the view that with the dissolution of the monasteries, the care for the poor provided in pre-Reformation England by religious orders was abolished, to be replaced by grub...

Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's Church militant here in earth. In his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), John Shepherd hints at a relationship between the offertory and the distinctly Reformed introduction to the Prayer for the Church Militant. The stuff of the offertory - alms, bread, wine - is for the living. So too our prayers are for "Christ's Church militant here in earth": After the offertory is said, and the oblations of bread and wine, with the alms for the poor are placed upon the table, the minister addresses this exhortation to the people: 'Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's Church militant here in earth'. The latter part of this sentence is wanting in Edward's first book. The words 'militant here in earth', which were designed expressly to exclude prayer for the dead, were inserted in the second book, in which that part of this prayer which contained intercessio...

Then shall the Priest return to the Lord's Table, and begin the Offertory ... Whilst these Sentences are in reading, the Deacons, Churchwardens, or other fit person appointed for that purpose, shall receive the Alms for the Poor, and other devotions of the people, in a decent bason to be provided by the Parish for that purpose; and reverently bring it to the Priest, who shall humbly present and place it upon the holy Table. In all of the differences between the 1662 Communion rite and contemporary Anglican eucharistic liturgies, the significance of the above rubric is often entirely overlooked. In many contemporary rites, the sole focus of the offertory is the bread and wine (with the traditional placing of the alms dish upon the Holy Table now regarded with disdain). In 1662, by contrast, the offertory begins with a focus upon the giving of alms. In his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), John Shepherd highlights how this focus has...

As part of the series of weekly posts from the responses to Tract XC by Old High bishops in the visitation charges of the early 1840s, today we have a final extract from the charge given in 1842 by Henry Phillpotts (Bishop of Exeter 1831-69). These charges are a rich seam of Old High teaching. In this extract, Phillpotts interprets the Prayer Book offertory in light of the rubric: "the Alms for the Poor". This reflects the original intent of the Cranmerian offertory , applied by Phillpotts to the changed social context of Victorian era. This, of course, was a quite different emphasis to that which would be given by Anglo-catholics - e.g. in Directorium Anglicanum - to the offertory, with the bread and wine as the focus. Phillpotts, however, demonstrated the continued relevance of the Cranmerian offertory and its alms for the poor, pointing to a vision of a society renewed by love of God and love of neighbour: There is, too, one other claim still more imperative than either,...