As Christmas approaches, it is usual to find some online Anglican voices protesting at the use of 'Midnight Mass' to describe the First Eucharist of Christmas. Usually these are robustly Protestant voices, angered by the use of a term which - it is contended - was entirely rejected at the Reformation. At other times - perhaps rather more surprisingly - it can be a minority of Anglo-catholics, criticising its use in Anglican parishes which do not otherwise describe the Eucharist as 'Mass'. Let us begin with those Protestant voices. That 'Mass' ceased to be used in the Church of England as a title for the Eucharist in 1552 is a fact. There was good reason for this in light of the significant differences between the Prayer Book Eucharist and the Tridentine Mass: communion in both kinds, denial of of the eucharistic sacrifice as a propitiatory sacrifice, use of the vernacular, rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation for more deeply Augustinian accounts o...
Old High - Burkean - clerk in holy orders