laudable Practice

Amongst the Festivals listed in the Church of Ireland BCP 2004 is the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 8th September.  Missing, however, from the Calendar is the now widespread Anglican practice of observing a feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 15th August (as, for example, in Common Worship, TEC 1979, and Canada's Book of Alternative Services).   There is good reason for the Church of Ireland's refusal to conform to current Anglican practice.  When the dogma of the Assumption was proclaimed by Pius XII in 1950, the bishops of the Church of Ireland issued a superb pastoral letter which made "our public protest against the defining, as part of the divinely-given Faith of Christ, of a doctrine ... resting as it does on no scriptural authority or historical evidence, and not even on any support from the writings of the most ancient fathers".  The pastoral letter was, indeed, a classic expression of High Church teaching, noting that the dogmatic definition of t...

In 1604, at the outset of the reign of James I/VI, a Black Letter commemoration was added to the Prayer Book calendar for 7th September, that of St. Evurtius.  Why the interest in an obscure bishop of ancient Gaul? It was because the commemoration of St. Evurtius happened to mark the date on which Elizabeth I was born in 1533.  It ensured that the day would be recalled with thanksgiving for the reign of Elizabeth and for the Settlement she established. Today, in other words, is Gloriana Day.  To mark the day, here are words from the famous 1588 sermon of Richard Bancroft (appointed Bishop of London in 1597 and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1604), defending the Elizabethan Settlement as the best expression of Magisterial Protestantism against both Puritan and Roman alternatives. When the Queen's most excellent Majesty had first obtained the crown, (which God of his great mercy grant she may long enjoy) as a most zealous Solomon, Jehoshaphat, and Josiah, her principal care w...

In an 1826 exchange with a Roman Catholic apologist , Henry Phillpotts (appointed Bishop of Exeter in 1830) provided an account of "the doctrine of our Church" regarding "the real presence in the Sacrament".  It is another example of the vibrancy of pre-1833 High Church Receptionism.  Particularly worthy of note is the distinctive High Church emphasis on this providing a "more real" understanding of the Lord's presence in the Sacrament than a 'carnal' eating: I proceed to state more fully what is indeed the doctrine of our Church on this subject. She holds then, that after the consecration of the bread and wine they are changed not in their nature but in their use; that instead of nourishing our bodies only, they now are instruments by which, when worthily received, God gives to our souls the body and blood of Christ to nourish and sustain them: that this is not a fictitious, or imaginary, exhibition of our crucified Redeemer to us, but a real ...

To continue the ' Old High/New Low ' theme, words from Richard Mant's 1845 Charge, Horae Ecclesiasticae; The Position of the Church with Regard to Romish Error , a critique of Tractarianism.  Amongst the Tractarian errors challenged by Mant was the desire restore "ceremonies which our Church has abolished or disused in her reformed Liturgy".  He provides examples of such ceremonies: the innumerable and reiterated gesti culations of the officiating priests, and the variety  and continual changes of the sacerdotal vestments:  of the exorcisms and chrisms, and the mixing of  oil and balsam with the water used in holy bap tism: of the reserving, carrying about, lifting up,  and worshipping of the consecrated bread and  wine in the holy communion: of the creepings to  the cross: of the multitudinous bowings and cross ings of the person: of the sprinkling of holy  water: of the ringing of little hand bells, and the  lighting of numerous c...

The singing of Psalms has been on my mind recently, for two reasons.  The first is the reference to psalm singing in Matthew Myer Boulton's excellent Life in God: John Calvin, Practical Formation, and the Future of Protestant Theology (2011).  He describes the importance of signing the Psalter in Calvin's reform of the Genevan churches: Accordingly, for many in the sixteenth-century reform movements, the psalms became identified as the music of the people, God's Word once only accessible to a few, now sung by one and all.  Indeed, in an era when women's voices were prominently heard in public worship only in convents, and children's voices only in specialist choirs, the joyous roar in Genevan churches rose from the entire assembly, men, women, and children singing together (p.34). Secondly, The Observer last weekend had a wonderful story on a new album, ' The Edge of the Sea ', of Gaelic psalm singing from the western isles of Scotland: In the north-weste...

Taking this quiz yesterday, I was informed that I am 'Prayer Book Low Church' Anglican.  This was defined as follows: If you're in the United States you're probably the most likely to emphasize that you're part of the PROTESTANT Episcopal Church in the United States of America and you still refer to the 1979 BCP as the "New Prayer book" regardless of how old you are. And yes you probably would like an American Flag hanging behind the altar, all things considered. If you're in Britain you're the early service 1662 spoken service type. You have a strong sense of Christian duty, but you don't want to get into the messiness of "evangelism" or too much "liturgy" and you definitely don't want any of that High Church nonsense. For you, regular Sunday services are your main exposure to Morning Prayer, except for the four Sundays a year that you add communion on to it. It's certainly OK if your priest preaches more than 20 m...

Reading through recent editions of the Church Times , I came across Alister McGrath's respectful and insightful obituary for the elder statesman of contemporary evangelical Anglicanism, Jim Packer .  What originally caught my eye, however, was the title given to the obituary on the front page of the 31st July edition: "Anglican Puritan". Now, yes, Packer did do his doctoral research on Richard Baxter and encouraged study of writers usually described as 'Puritan'.  A rather significant qualification, however, is required.  Packer was a thorough Conformist.  Consider his commitment to episcopacy : "Part of the significance of the historic episcopate in Anglicanism is as a sign of the intention to maintain the whole of the apostolic faith".  He described the Articles of Religion as securing for Anglicanism "the truest, wisest and potentially richest heritage in all Christendom".  And his love of and praise for the BCP was not quite what was tru...