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Post by Admin on Jan 14, 2020 17:01:45 GMT
Michael Davies' book, Cranmer's Godly Order has long been carried in the old-SSPX bookstores and is currently still offered by the Angelus Press. 
The Destruction of Catholicism through Liturgical Change
-Taken from the Author's Introduction, 1976
" The Church is at present undergoing what is certainly the greatest crisis since the Protestant Reformation, quite possible the greatest since the Arian heresy. Pope Paul himself speaks of the smoke of Satan having entered the Church . . . vocations continue to decline . . . Mass attendance is plunging throughout the Western world; the most outlandish beliefs are put forward as Catholic teaching . . .There is hardly a traditional belief or a traditional practice which has not been questioned or reversed. Priests who for decades had been telling their people why the Mass must always be in Latin now appear to believe that any of the parishioners who ask for a Latin Mass may be of dubious orthodoxy. Priests who for decades had been explaining why we could never take part in non-Catholic services now insist that taking part in such services is the prime duty of a Catholic. Not only that but our own . . . are coming to resemble those of Protestants more closely, with each successive stage of the liturgical reform . . . An examination of the new Catholic Mass has been changed in a way which comes close to what Cranmer did, and for which he has been censured by Popes, theologians, and Catholic historians. How can changes which have been regarded as reprehensible for centuries suddenly become admirable. An equally important question is the manner in which these changes have come about. The obvious and accurate answer is-----as a result of Vatican II. But how could this Council have resulted in such a startling breach with Catholic tradition and practice? . . . Must anything coming in the name of Vatican II be accepted uncritically? [The purpose of this book] is to deal with the Protestant Reformation. It explains what happened and why . . . In order to appreciate the significance of the liturgical changes made by the Reformers it is necessary to have a clear grasp of Catholic teaching on the relevant doctrines-----particularly those of Grace and Justification. In their turn, these doctrines can only be appreciated within the context of the doctrine of the Mystical Body and the Incarnation. A chapter has also been included on Catholic Eucharistic teaching.
* * *
SOLA FIDES JUSTIFICAT
THE MOST HORRIBLE BLASPHEMY
THE REFORM AND THE MISSAL OF ST. PIUS V
ENGLISH LIFE UPON THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD VI
AN INGENIOUS ESSAY IN AMBIGUITY
" GODLY ORDER" OR "CHRISTMAS GAME?" [WESTERN UPRISING]
* * *
BIBLIOGRAPHYSome of the books referred to in the notes have been abbreviated as follows: CCT Catechism of the Council of Trent, translated by McHugh and Callan (New York), 1934. CDT A Catholic Dictionary of Theology, ed. J. Crehan, S.J. (London, 1962). CT The Church Teaches (Documents of the Church in English Translation), translated by J. F. Clarkson and others (Rockford, Illinois, 1973). This is an English version of the Denzinger Enchiridion Symbolorum and references to Denzinger in the notes, indicated by "D ", can be located in this book. CTD Concise Theological Dictionary, Rahner & Vorgrimler (London, 1965). CW The Works of Thomas Cranmer (two vols.), Parker Society. D See: CT above. DCD Development of Christian Doctrine, J. H. Newman. DEV Devon, W. G. Hoskins (Newton Abbot, Devon, 1972). EBCP Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer, Gasquet & Bishop (London, 1890). In the interests of brevity, only the first of the authors is mentioned when reference is made to this book. ESR Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Reformation, F. Clark (Oxford, 1967). FSPB The First and Second Prayer Books of King Edward VI, D. Harrison (Dean of Bristol) (London, 1968). PHR The Reformation------A Popular History, P. Hughes (London, 1960). PS Parker Society. RIE The Reformation in England, P. Hughes (three vols.) (London, 1950). RMP The Reformation, The Mass, and the Priesthood, E. C. Messenger (two vols.) (London, 1936). RS The Recovery of the Sacred, J. Hitchcock (New York, 1974). TCC The Teaching of the Catholic Church, G. Smith (London, 1956). TE Tudor England, S. T. Bindoff (London, 1952). TM The Mass, A Study of the Roman Liturgy, A. Fortescue (London, 1917). TR The Reformation, O. Chadwick (London, 1972). TUD Tudor Rebellions, A. Fletcher (London, 1973). VAC A Vindication of the Bull 'Apostolicae Curae', The Cardinal Archbishop and Bishops of the Province of Westminster (London, 1898).
This and subsequent excerpts adapted and taken from here. |
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Post by Admin on Jan 14, 2020 17:08:24 GMT
Who Was Archbishop Thomas Cranmer?
[Excerpt]
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII and Edward VI and architect of the "new liturgy", was a master of the theology of the Mass, and hated it. He died an apostate, burned at the stake for heresy under Queen Mary, decrying the Mass to the end.
She gave him a chance to repent of his crimes against God and His holy Church, which he did, briefly, then out of his hatred and sheer malice towards the sacred order, he recanted his repentance and chose death at the stake in hideous pride.
Cranmer authored the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and is considered a "martyr" by many Anglicans, his spiritual descendants.
He engineered the destruction of the Holy Mass under the Protestant kings, very cleverly, with deceit and cunning, so that many Englishmen adopted the changes slowly until they woke up and found themselves avowed Protestants, apostates like their mentor, although they merely thought the revolution was only a reform.
[Emphasis mine.]
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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2020 12:08:02 GMT
Et Incarnatus Est
CARDINAL NEWMAN has written that if asked to select one doctrine as the basis of our Faith: ". . . I should myself call the Incarnation the central aspect of Christianity, out of which the three main aspects of its teaching take their rise, the Sacramental, the hierarchical, and the ascetic." 1God the Son united His Divine with our human nature so that, as a beautiful Offertory prayer expresses it, "we may be made partakers of His Divinity." Catholic theology lays great stress on the fact that the Incarnation was made dependent upon the co-operation of Our Lady. The Sin of Adam had turned man against God and lost us the right to Heaven. Mary's " Fiat" set in motion the train of events which would reverse this situation. Through this " Fiat" Our Lord Jesus Christ entered this lowly world, explains Pope St. Leo: Everything connected with the Incarnation is a mystery, as Dom Gueranger makes clear. "The Christian religion is founded upon the reality of the Incarnation as an historical fact. Remove that reality and nothing remains, as Cardinal Newman makes clear: The Christian religion stands or falls upon the historical fact that at a given moment in time the Word of God took to Himself our humanity, our poverty, our nothingness, to give us in exchange the power to be made sons of God. This is teaching upon which both Catholic and Protestant would be in accord, presuming neither had succumbed to the Modernism infecting both communions, a Modernism which has the reality of the Incarnation as its principal target, having correctly assessed that it is the cornerstone of the entire fabric of Christian doctrine, whether Catholic or Protestant. Where non-Modernist Catholics and Protestants would disagree is on the emphasis to be placed on the role of Mary in the Incarnation-----but on the historical reality of the Incarnation and its role as the foundation of our religion they would be in accord.
CRUCIFIXUS ETIAM PRO NOBIS
Just as non-Modernist Catholics and Protestants agree on the reality and the importance of the Incarnation they would also agree that the Incarnate Word redeemed mankind by offering His life upon the Cross of Calvary. Sin is a culpable rejection of the grace which God offers gratuitously to man. It is more than an offence, it is a perversion of nature for it is intrinsically unnatural for the creature to reject the Creator's will. The meaning of Redemption can be traced back to two Hebrew roots which signify the buying back of a loved one from slavery. 5 All mankind has stood and stands in need of redemption, both as a result of Original Sin and of the guilt incurred by each individual when he accepted the godlessness of his fallen state by personal sin. Western theology holds that Jesus Christ has made superabundant satisfaction for sinners by dying for all. St. Thomas teaches that: "He properly atones for an offence who offers something which the offended one loves equally or even more than the detested offence. But by suffering out of love and obedience Christ gave more to God than was required to compensate for the offence of the whole human race." 6 Scripture and all Christian tradition consider that the Passion of Christ is the one atoning sacrifice by which the world is saved. "But God shows His love for us
in that while we were yet sinners
Christ died for us.
Since, therefore, we are now justified by His blood,
much more, now that we are reconciled,
shall we be saved by His life . . .
As one man's trespass
led to condemnation for all men,
so one man's act of righteousness
leads to acquittal and life for all men." (Romans V)
Gabriel Biel who died in 1495 has been termed the last of the medieval doctors. He was the most widely read authority on the Mass at the time of the Reformation and summarised the accepted Christian teaching on the atonement in one of his sermons: There is a difference of opinion between Protestant and Catholic theology not in the fact that Christ atoned for our sins once and for all upon the Cross but in precisely how He did so. The Church has not finally pronounced upon this matter and it has long been a matter for speculation among the different schools of theology within the Church.8 The principal difference between Catholics and Protestants, particularly at the time of the Reformation, lay in the portrayal by the Reformers of Christ's Passion as a substitutionary punishment demanded by Divine vindicatory justice." This is the most terrible thing of all," wrote Luther, "that Christ was smitten and put to the torture by God, and so took upon Himself God's anger . . . for nothing else could have placated the anger of God but a sacrifice so great as this-----the Son of God."9 Francis Clark explains that if Christ's sacrifice was essentially a penal substitution which had averted God's anger from the elect to Himself, then it was past. There could only be a thankful memory of such a sacrifice. ". . . the Church could not by a sacramental rite perpetuate its reality nor mediate its efficacy to men."10 Catholic theology, based on St. Anselm, explains Christ's sacrifice as vicarious satisfaction freely offered by Our Lord, making amends by His personal dignity for offence given by His fellow men to Divine honour.The moral value of an act before God derives not only from the content of the act but from the dignity of the agent. In this case, the agent being Jesus Christ, both God and Man, the dignity of the act is infinite and Divine, and therefore more than able to compensate for the glory of which God had been deprived through sin. The acceptance of Christ's sacrifice by God as satisfaction for the offence of sin, a fact made clear in numerous scripture references, means that He has redeemed us by offering infinite satisfaction for the sins of the world as the representative of humanity. 11It was not the physical suffering and death of Christ which was pleasing to God but the love and obedience which inspired His Passion. This was well summarised by St. Bernard when he wrote: " Non mors sed voluntas placuit sponte morientis." 12Although Christ's Passion was sufficient in itself to atone for the sins of the world and redeem all men it does not follow that all men will be redeemed. A distinction must be made between the sufficiency and efficacy of His great act of atonement. The fruits of the Passion are available to all but they will be efficacious only in the case of those who freely co-operate with Divine grace to achieve their personal salvation. This will be dealt with in more detail in Chapter 11.
Explaining the question of sufficiency and efficacy in relation to the consecration of the wine during Mass, the Catechism of the Council of Trent states: "if we look to its value, we must confess that the Redeemer shed His blood for the salvation of all; but if we look to the fruit which mankind have received from it, we shall easily find that it pertains not unto all, but to many of the human race (non ad omnes, sed ad multos)." The Catechism explains that for this reason the form for the consecration of the wine uses the words "pro multis "-----for many. "With reason, therefore, were the words' for all ' (pro universis) not used, as in this place the fruits of the Passion alone are spoken of, and to the elect only did His Passion bring the fruit of salvation."13
MYSTICI CORPORIS CHRISTI
Through the Incarnation of God the Son, men became His brethren according to the flesh and were able to regain their lost inheritance when, by means of His great redemptive act upon the Cross, He not only placated the outraged justice of the Father but merited an immense treasury of graces for mankind. It was stated above that Catholic and Protestant alike are agreed that the merits of Christ's Passion were sufficient to redeem all men once and for all. It is on the question of how these merits were to be applied to men that a radical difference of opinion arose between the Reformers and the Catholic Church. It is this question which lies at the basis of the Reformation and it is vital to realise that the Reformation was essentially a dispute concerning doctrine. Those who study the writings of the Reformers will find that it is questions of belief rather than questions of conduct which concern them. There is no question as to the fact that the Church was in need of reform in the sixteenth century, as it has been so many times during its history-----the concern of some of the most saintly Popes, such as Gregory the Great, has been to bring the members of Christ's Mystical Body to practise a manner of living which conformed in the closest possible manner to the pattern set by and required by their Head. 14But although the Reformers attacked the abuses which existed within the Church this was done mainly from a propaganda standpoint: their principal attack, the raison d'etre for their new religion, was their refusal to accept fundamental Catholic teaching. God can bestow the merits won by Christ directly upon individual men without the use of any intermediary, but His plan is that these merits should normally be distributed by means of His visible Church, a Mystical Body in which Christ is the Head and the Holy Ghost the soul, giving the human members the grace required to co-operate with their Head in His redemptive work. God has chosen to redeem us by the means of the Incarnation which required the co-operation of Mary's "Fiat." He could have redeemed us in some other way which would not have required human co-operation-----but it was His will that He should redeem us by means of the Incarnation.
Reflecting upon the Incarnation makes it easier to understand what Pius XII explains as one of the most perplexing aspects of the mystery of the Church. Pope Pius writes that it is certain, surprising though it may seem, "that Christ requires His members." He makes it clear that Christ requires this help not by necessity but by choice (just as He chose to become incarnate with the co-operation of Mary).
The Catholic conception of the Christian religion can aptly be described as "incarnational."16 Christ's means of applying the merits of His Passion is to continue the Incarnation throughout time until He comes again. He does this not simply through the effects of the Incarnation but by prolonging the Incarnation Itself-----and this prolongation of the Incarnation is the Church, Christ's Mystical Body which is Christ Himself living and acting through His members who transform the world by the Divine life of Grace which flows to the Church through Christ Her Head. Christ has communicated not only His holiness and merits but His powers of sanctification to His hierarchical Church. "Endowed with Christ's priesthood, the Church through Her ministers has the function of mediating to all men the fruits of Christ's all-sufficient work of salvation. This is the 'work,' the opus operatum of the Sacramental system."17 It is this concept of the Church and Her priests mediating between God and man, dispensing the Grace won on the Cross by means of the Sacraments, which evoked the wrath of the Protestant heresiarchs. It is therefore important that Catholics have a clear understanding of the concept of the opus operatum.
THE OPUS OPERATUM
The Sacramental system, the opus operatum, imparts grace directly from God. The Sacraments themselves are the source of the grace they convey providing they are administered by an authorised minister who intends to do what the Church intends and observes the correct ritual. This automatic transmission of grace by a correctly administered Sacrament is referred to as grace received ex opere operato.
It is made possible because Christ Himself is the true minister of all the Sacraments, the human ministers only acting as His instruments. We receive the grace of the Sacraments directly from Christ no matter how unworthy the intermediary. It would, of course, be a grave sin on the part of the minister to administer a Sacrament while conscious of unabsolved mortal sin, indeed it would be a sacrilege. But if, for example, a priest offered Mass or heard confessions while in a state of mortal sin this would not prevent the faithful receiving the Sacramental grace which comes to them from Christ. Although the grace of the Sacraments is made available automatically, ex opere operato, its fruitfulness in those who have reached the age of reason is affected to some extent by their dispositions. As we are told in the Lauda Sion, the sequence for Corpus Christi, the same Sacrament can have the opposite effect, life for some and death for others. This is the teaching of St. Paul: "For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord". (1 Cor. 11: 29)
The influence of the dispositions of the recipient upon the fruits of the Sacrament is referred to as ex opere operantis. It is of the very greatest importance to stress that in no way at all is the grace of a Sacrament ever produced ex opere operantis, the dispositions of the recipient can only help to determine its effectiveness, they are never the cause or source of grace, which only comes from Christ Himself. Because the Church is nothing less than the extension of the Incarnation throughout the ages and throughout the nations, because the Church is Christ saving and sanctifying His elect, it is clear that the Mystical Body is to be the normal channel of grace, above all through the seven sacraments. It is, however, important to realise that God is not bound by the Sacramental system even though He instituted it, and that He can and does give grace in other ways to those who do not have access to the Sacraments and who have never had the saving word of faith proclaimed to them. "Is a man in Persia acceptable to God?" asks St. John Chrysostom. "If he is worthy, then he is acceptable, by being found worthy of the Faith. That is why the Ethiopian eunuch was acceptable and was not overlooked. But what about the good men who are overlooked? Out upon you; no man is overlooked if he be devout." (PG 60: 178). The axiom "outside the Church there is no salvation" was well explained by Cardinal Bourne in his introduction to the Catholic Truth Society edition of Pope Pius XI's Encyclical on True Religious Unity ( Mortalium Animos). While this axiom is perfectly true, the Cardinal explains, "it is equally true that without the deliberate act of the will there can be neither fault nor sin, so evidently this axiom applies only to those who are outside the Church knowingly, deliberately and willfully. [Emphasis mine.]
1. DCD, Ch. I, Sect. I, 3.
2. Roman Breviary, Feast of the Annunciation, II Nocturn, Lesson vi.
3. The Liturgical Year, trans. Dom Laurence Shepherd (Dublin, 1968), vol. I, p. 7.
4. DCD, Ch. II, Sect. III, 2.
5. CDT, see entries: Atonement, Redemption and Satisfaction.
6. ST, III, Q. XLVIII, art n.
7. ESR, p. 554.
8. The various theories are summarised in the CDT entry: Atonement.
9. Commentary on Isaias 53.5.10; cited in ESR, p. 109.
10. ESR, p. 109, 110.
11. CTD, see entry Satisfaction.
12. De erroribus Abaelardi, no 21 (P.L. CLXXXII, col. 1070).
13. CCT, p. 227.
14. The most comprehensive history of the Reformation in Britain is the three volume study by Mgr. Philip Hughes (RIE). The author makes no attempt to hide the serious shortcomings in the state of the Church but shows clearly that the Protestant Reformation was concerned essentially with doctrinal issues.
15. Encyclical Letter, The Mystical Body of Jesus Christ (C.T.S., London), p. 27.
16. ESR, p. 103; TCC, p. 693.
17. ESR, p. 103. |
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Post by Admin on Jan 16, 2020 18:41:08 GMT
The Catholic Doctrine on Justification
"Ex inimico amicus"
THE KEY to the Reformers' breach with traditional Catholic teaching is found in their doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone. Its logical consequence was the rejection of the Church and the whole Catholic Sacramental concept. Their hatred for the Mass cannot be appreciated adequately without some understanding of their teaching on Justification, but before doing this it is necessary to clarify what the Church teaches. In a brief study of this kind it is not possible to study the Catholic teaching in any depth and such complex matter as efficacious grace and predestination will not be touched upon. Justification involves the establishing of a right relationship between God and man in the light of the Fall, of making man just in the sight of God. In Catholic theology this is achieved by man's acquisition of a new life with new powers and new privileges; a participation in the Divine nature by the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity. This will culminate in the Beatific Vision, the sharing in God's knowledge and love of Himself, by union (though not identity) with the Son, the Word of God. The new life bestowed upon the justified man is the life of grace, and wherever grace is mentioned in this chapter it will refer to sanctifying grace unless actual grace is specifically mentioned. The great benefit of Justification is, as Cardinal Newman explained, "This one thing-----the transference of the soul from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of Christ."1 It is, to quote the Council of Trent,
CHRIST THE CAUSE OF GRACE
Trent teaches that while the final cause (the ultimate purpose of and reason for) justification is the glory of God, "the meritorious cause is the beloved and only-begotten Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, Who when we were enemies (Rom. 5:10), by reason of His very great love wherewith He has loved us (Eph. 2:4), merited justification for us by His own most holy Passion on the wood of the Cross, and made satisfaction for us to God the Father." 3
Christ our Lord is the cause of grace and the first and greatest gift of grace. He is our Emmanuel, "God with us"; forgiveness and redemption are the gifts He bestows upon us. Grace is our adoption as sons of God, not adoption in the normal legal sense but actually a rebirth. A human parent who adopts a child can give it only his name and the rights of sonship; he cannot beget it again so that it becomes a child of his own blood, shares his nature as it were. Through grace we are begotten anew and actually share in the Divine life of God; our nature is "divinised" by sharing in the Divine nature. We are, as the beautiful Offertory prayer expresses it, "made partakers of His Divinity Who vouchsafed to become partaker of our humanity." Through grace we are able to "put on "the Son of God and become "heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ" (Rom. 8:17) and share with Him the awe-inspiring privilege of calling our Creator "Abba! Father! " By nature man is a servant of God and must call Him "Lord"; and now by grace he has become a "new creature," a heavenly creature who is able to call Him "Father." St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the gift of grace in a single man is a greater and more noble work of God than the excellence of the whole of natural creation. 4Grace is a ray of Divine light, a heavenly beauty filling the soul and stamping it with Christ's image through the seal of the Holy Ghost. The man in grace shares the Divine nature, receives Divine privileges, eternity, happiness, perfection, and holiness. It binds a man to God in a way we could never have imagined possible but for His revelation, making us children of the heavenly Father, brothers and sisters of Christ-----dying and rising with Him and sharing His inheritance. The man in grace knows that God is his Father, and Heaven is his home; he knows that Christ is his brother Who went before him to prepare him a dwelling place; that grace is only the "first fruits" of the Holy Ghost to be followed by full redemption of body and soul, eternal happiness and a share in the glory of God. Grace is the pledge of the Beatific Vision and the man filled with true hope of this eternal happiness carries the seed of Heaven in his heart. Holiness is the highest attribute of God. It is an attribute which He alone possesses as a right. In his own nature man can be good, upright, moral, but never holy. The highest Angel is not holy by nature. The Angels who stand before God's majesty cover their faces and never cease to cry: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts." The word 'holy' has tended to become devalued and is used to describe virtue and piety but in reality God alone is holy-----and yet we are also made holy through grace which incorporates us into Christ as the branch into the vine stem. The life of grace is the life of Christ. In the Mystical Body, Head and members share the same life, the same holiness.
PREPARATION FOR JUSTIFICATION
Trent teaches us that God prepares the soul of an adult for Justification by an offer of actual grace, a call to repentance. "The purpose of this call is that they who are turned away from God by sin may, awakened and assisted by His grace, be disposed to turn to their own justification by freely assenting to and co- operating with that grace. The result is that, when God touches the heart of man with the illumination of the Holy Ghost, the man who accepts that inspiration certainly does something, since he could reject it; on the other hand, by his own free will, without God's grace, he could not take one step towards justice in God's sight." 5The justified sinner receives the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity with the gift of sanctifying grace. But Faith is not only a theological virtue infused with grace but a necessary preparation for its reception. Faith is the first step which the sinner must take on the road to grace. Without it the second step is impossible. It alone can prompt us to look for grace and find it. Faith is the morning star that shines in the darkness of our souls without which we cannot come to God. "And without faith it is impossible to please Him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him " (Heb. 11:6). This text is cited by the Council of Trent which teaches that adults who have freely co-operated with the grace of God's initial call, still assisted by Divine grace, " conceive faith from hearing, and they are freely led to God. They believe that the Divine revelation and promises are true, especially that the unjustified man is justified by God's grace 'through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus' (Rom. 3: 24)." 6 The gift of faith can still exist in a man who has forfeited sanctifying grace by mortal sin for which he is unrepentant. Such a faith, however, is a dead faith and remains dead until the sinner repents. The Council of Trent explains that, having acknowledged their sinful state through faith in Divine revelation, sinners: The meaning of justification has already been explained and, as was stressed by the Council of Trent, it is not simply the remission of sins but the sanctification and renewal of the interior man. Indeed, the distinction which can be made between justification and sanctification is, to a certain extent, theoretical: the gift of sanctifying grace clearly sanctifies the sinner as its name implies. The great difference between the Catholic and Protestant theology of grace is, as will be made clear in the next chapter, that the former explains grace as something positive inhering in the soul of the justified man which he did not possess in his unjustified condition. It is a positive quality which makes him pleasing to God in himself for he has "put on" Christ. The Reformers denied this.
TRANSFORMATION BY GRACE
No possible analogy can even begin to convey an adequate idea of the transformation of the soul by grace. An iron thrust in the fire remains iron yet takes on new qualities beyond its normal range-----heat, light, burning power. There is a fable of the common briar into which was budded the stem of a royal rose. When June came it bore fragrant roses of great beauty and, passing by, the gardener smiled and said: "Your beauty is not due, dear briar, to that which came from you but to that which I put into you." The marvel of God's grace in His people is not due to what they were by nature, wild briars, but to what He put into them-----Christ Himself, the source and cause of grace and its first and greatest gift. Justified men, Trent teaches us, whether they have continuously kept grace, or lost it and recovered it again, "should consider these words of the Apostle: 'Abound in every good work, knowing that your labour is not vain in the Lord' (1 Cor. 15:58); 'for God is not unjust that He should forget your work and the love you have shown His name' (Heb. 10: 35)." 8 Faith without good works is dead, as St. James makes clear: ..What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works is dead" (James 2: 14-17). Although justification itself, the gift of sanctifying grace, cannot be merited, justified men can merit an increase in grace by good works. This increase is not produced by their efforts alone; God grants it freely as a reward. The Reformers denied such a possibility as they claimed that it would make God man's debtor, clearly an impossible situation. But there are two ways by which we can justly expect recompense of another: by having done him a service which puts him under an obligation to us or because he had previously promised us a reward if we performed certain actions. It is in the latter respect that we can merit an increase of grace, because it is a reward freely offered by a bountiful Lord.
St. Paul clearly believed that he would receive such a reward when he wrote: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but to all who have loved His appearing" (2 Tim. 4:7, 8). The words "crown of righteousness" and "righteous judge" express very forcibly the idea of a recompense which has been merited and is due in justice. As the Council of Trent explains: "Christ promises even to the person who gives a drink of cold water to one of His least ones that he shall not be without his reward" (Matt. 10: 42)."9 The teaching of the Church as defined by this Council is that good works done with the help of God by one who is a living member of Christ truly merit increase of grace and the life eternal.
GOOD WORKS IN CHRIST
The good works of a justified man are by no means something done in isolation from Christ for which he can claim a purely personal credit. They are meritorious only and precisely because they are in a very real sense Christ's actions, activities of the new Divine life of grace. It is not for us to boast as Christ brings forth the fruit. (Rom. 3:27) Christ has made Himself the Head of the new humanity; He wishes to make of redeemed mankind one Body and thus make it the extension and fulfillment of Himself. Grace is life in Christ-----the good works of a member of the Mystical Body are done with Christ, for the life of grace is a life of co-operation between Christ and His members. "As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing . . . By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples" (Jn. 15:4, 5, 8). Nor are our good works done in isolation from the other members of the Mystical Body, incorporation into Christ incorporates us into all His members, that fellowship of grace which we call the Church. The ultimate end of Holy Communion is not simply the union of the individual soul with Christ but the unity of the Mystical Body. Pope St. Leo said in a Christmas sermon:
[Emphasis mine.]
1. Lectures on Justification, 112.
2. D, 799.
3. Ibid.
4. ST, I-II, Q. CXIII, art. 9, ad. 2.
5. D, 797.
6. D, 798.
7. Ibid.
8. D, 809.
9. D, 810.
10. Roman Breviary, 2nd Nocturn, Lesson vi, Christmas Day. For a detailed treatment of Justification and Grace see: ESR, Chapter VI. CDT, Entries on Justification, Grace, Merit. TCC, Chapters XVI and XVII.
CT, Decree of Justification of the Council of Trent, p. 230 ff. Pius Parsch, Seasons of Grace (London, 1963). This is an invaluable exposition of the nature of grace as taught through the readings at Mass during the liturgical year. Much of this chapter is based upon Fr. Parsch's book. D. Knowles, Grace, The Life of the Soul, C.T.S. |
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Post by Admin on Jan 17, 2020 12:05:57 GMT
Sola Fides Justificat
(The Protestant Doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone)
"If this doctrine falls it is all over with us." - Martin Luther, Table Talk
ALL THAT is intended here is to outline the broad principles of the Protestant doctrine as taught by the leading Reformers. There were, of course, differences of opinion among them and, especially in the case of Luther, it is not always clear what was being taught. As is normally the case with sects when they begin to sub-divide, their internal disputes eventually become more fierce than their opposition to the body from which they have broken away. Calvinism expanded not simply at the expense of Catholics but of Lutherans in North Germany and the name Reformed first came into common use when opposed not to Catholics but to Lutherans. 1 Before 1570, some stricter Lutherans had even begun to profess that Catholicism was nearer to orthodoxy than Calvinism. 2While Luther himself did not actually go to the extent of totally rejecting the Catholic system, such a rejection was inevitable if his principles were pursued to their logical conclusion. It is also taken for granted that the basic thesis of the Continental Reformers concerning Justification was adopted by Cranmer and his associates. This is proved beyond doubt both from his own works and the authoritative studies of the period. 3The Catholic Church teaches that Original Sin has resulted in a wounding of our nature which sets up in the soul a resistance to good. "For the good which I will I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do" (Rom. 7:19). But a soul which is willing to accept the assistance of God's grace can still refrain from sin. Luther taught that through the Fall of Adam man's nature had become essentially evil, and must ever remain evil; that human nature was a mass of corruption and even the Redeeming Blood of Christ does not cleanse or heal it: man can contribute absolutely nothing to hi: own salvation. God justifies us by transferring the guilt which made us liable to punishment to the head of His own Son.
Calvin was explicit on this point:
Christ has taken the punishment of sinners upon Himself, expiating their sins with His Blood and appeasing the Father. Although the soul (the sinner is not cleansed, the merits won by Christ are applied to him and his sins are ignored or overlooked by God. The souls of sinners remain hideous in themselves but are covered with the cloak of Christ righteousness.
As was explained in Chapter 1, for the Reformers, the substitutionary punishment of Christ (the gibbet in place of guilty mankind paid the penalty demanded by Divine vindicatory justice. Christ was "put to the torture by God and so took upon Himself God's anger." As a result of this penal substitution Christ for sinners, the elect, that is those whom God has predestined for salvation, no longer have their sins imputed to them. The merits of Christ are imputed them in place of their sins. Man becomes just in the sight of God simply by non-imputation of sin.
The was no question of an inner sanctification which blots out sin and justifies the sinner before God, effected by the co-operation of the sinner with grace mediated through a Sacramental system by means of which the merits won for us upon Calvary were mediated to men through a Church which is the prolongation of the Incarnation in time. To quote Cranmer:
For a Protestant, Justification means declaring a man to be just: for a Catholic, it means making him so.6 For a Protestant the souls of St. Francis of Assisi or St. Therese of Lisieux are masses of corruption hidden beneath the cloak of Christ's righteousness; for a Catholic their souls are pleasing to God in themselves, having become so through the indwelling of sanctifying grace-----made possible and intensified by their own free co-operation. Grace for the Reformers was not something in man but was external to the soul altogether. It existed only in God's Divine will; it was a sentence passed by the Divine Judge imputing Christ's righteousness to the elect. Justification was not an inner change by which a soul became a sacred thing but a mere non-imputation of sins. Faith meant not a firm acceptance of Divine revelation (see previous page on Justification) but the individual's personal conviction that the merits of Christ had been applied to him. The sinner "is delivered from the punishment due to sin, but not from sin itself."7Luther overthrew a system of belief developed over fifteen centuries on the basis of his personal interpretation of Romans 1:17 which states, in a literal translation, that "the just man will live by faith." His interpretation could not possibly be reconciled with the Second Epistle of James, [cited in the previous page]-----then this epistle must be rejected as an "epistle of straw," once again on the personal authority of Luther. 8 Faith was all that counted; good works were of no avail-----indeed, they were impossible since all man's actions were made evil by the source from which they sprang-----human nature, which was essentially corrupt as a result of Original Sin. In fairness to the Reformers, it should be emphasised that at no time have the mainstream of Protestants interpreted the doctrine of Justification as a licence to sin. They have taken a godly life to be a mark of the elect. There have, of course, been some extreme sects which have taken the doctrine to what they felt was its logical conclusion, in other words, that anything is permitted. The concept of the Church mediating grace through the Sacraments was anathema to the Reformers. It was axiomatic to their theology that nothing man could do, no priestly power, nor anything in the created universe could work any good in the order of salvation or produce any intrinsic effects in man's soul. The "grace" of Justification was held to be essentially the favour of the Divine will and no Church, no priest, could play any efficacious part in mediating that grace to others.The Divine decree of acquittal, once made, was absolute. Once a man had been justified through the saving merits of Christ his salvation was assured. The sacrifice which made it possible for Christ's merits to be imputed to the elect was past. It could be commemorated in a thankful memorial which could stir up the faith of the elect but, and this is axiomatic to the Protestant doctrine, the elect received their justification directly from God. The inevitable result of the acceptance of Justification by Faith was perfectly summarised by the German scholar F. Arnold when he says that it: The most evident and most spectacular changes, wrote Mgr. Hughes, " The Reformers rightly sensed that the Mass lay at the heart of the Catholic faith and that the destruction of the Mass was of greater priority than that of the papacy, for in destroying the Mass they would "tear out the heart from the body of the Church."14 The hatred which the Reformers felt for the Mass will be illustrated in detail in Chapter V. Francis Clark expresses the opinion that, after a reading of Luther's Babylonian Captivity of 1520, The Mass, claimed the Reformers, was no sacrifice, "nor yet good work; but a blasphemous profanation of the Lord's Holy Supper, a manifest wickedness, an horrible idolatry, and a foul abomination." 16 " [Emphasis mine.] 1. TR, 137.
2. Ibid., p. 144.
3. "It can hardly be pretended that in this matter of justification Cranmer has anything new to say. All his main points can be paralleled in Luther and Zwingli before him as well as Calvin and other contemporary writers. But what he does say he says clearly and forcibly, showing a fine grasp of the essentials of the Reformation position." G. W. Bromiley, Thomas Cranmer Theologian, p. 36. See also: ESR, pp. 139-144.
4. Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, chap. 16, nn. 2, 5.
5. CW, vol. I, p. 47.
6. CDT, vol. III, p. 180.
7. RIE, vol. I, p. 142.
8. Ibid.
9. H. Rondet, The Grace of Christ (Newman Press, 1967), page 279.
10. ESR, p. 143.
11. Cited in ESR, p. 364.
12. TCC, p. 763.
13. RIE, vol. II, p. 83.
14. ESR, p. 107.
15. ESR, p. 340.
16. John Bale, Edwardine Bishop of Ossory, Select Works, P.S., p. 153.
17. John Bradford (Chaplain to Bishop Ridley), Letters, Treatises, Remains, P.S., p.270. |
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Post by Admin on Jan 18, 2020 11:45:49 GMT
Catholic Teaching on the Eucharist
 "Christ is offered today and he Himself as priest offers himself in order that He may remit our sins." -St. Ambrose 1THE EUCHARIST is the centre of Christian life just as Christ is the central figure in the Christian religion. As well as being a sacrifice, It is the greatest of all the Sacraments as It contains Christ Himself while in the other Sacraments Christ acts and applies the merits of His Passion for a particular purpose. St. Thomas Aquinas points out that all the other Sacraments are ordained to this Sacrament as to their end. 2 It not only represents the Passion and death of Christ but contains it-the Mass is the sacrifice of the Cross. 3 "The Passion of the Lord is the sacrifice we offer," wrote St. Cyprian. 4 "The priests of the Church are ordained not primarily to preach the gospel, not merely to comfort the sick with the consoling truths of religion, not merely to take the lead in works of social improvement, but to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass, to consecrate the Eucharist." 5 It would be impossible to write anything which could exaggerate the importance of the Eucharist. Catholics in the past have thought nothing in art, riches and architecture too beautiful to lavish upon their churches because they contain the King of kings Himself; and even the poorest have been ready to deprive themselves of the necessities of life to support their clergy so that at whatever cost the Sacrifice of the Mass should continue to be offered. Devotion to the Eucharist is not an incidental pious practice-----it is the very essence of Catholic life. 6Pope Leo XIII condemned as being in serious error those who rejected the sacrifice of the Mass on the grounds that
Fr. Joseph Jungmann writes: Despite the fact that at every Mass Jesus Christ is the High Priest Who offers the Sacrifice it is most certainly a work, something in which men play a part and which contributes to their salvation. The Mass is not only the Sacrifice of Christ but the Sacrifice of the Church. The Sacrifice can only be offered through the ministry of His priests. It is an aspect of the mystery referred to in Chapter I, of the fact that Christ requires the members of His Mystical Body; that He has willed to save mankind with their help. Not only are the graces won by Christ applied through the efforts of men but it is not Christ alone Who is offered in the Mass-----we are required to offer ourselves as victims with Him.10 "As the Church is the body of this head," wrote St. Augustine, "through Him She learns to offer Herself."11
Furthermore, although the intrinsic value of the Sacrifice of the Mass, like that of the Cross, is infinite, Christ being both High Priest and Sacrificial Victim, its extrinsic value is limited as regards the fruits of any particular Mass. The value of a particular Mass
Needless to say, the application of the fruits of the Mass to the living for whom it is offered or who participate in it will be governed by their own dispositions. "This lack of dispositions cannot exist in the case of the suffering souls in Purgatory, and with them, therefore, the desired effect, whether it be the alleviation of their sufferings, or the shortening of their time of purgation, must infallibly be produced."13 The effectiveness of the fruits in their case will be governed only by the holiness and fervour of the Church as a whole and Her particular members involved in offering this particular Mass. Once the Protestant leaders The teaching that every Mass produced fruits which the celebrant could apply to both the living and the dead was above all else what evoked the fury of the Reformers. This was the "good work" par excellence. It was quite incompatible with their doctrine of Justification and must therefore be rejected, as will be made clear in Chapter VII. There can be no doubt that the Protestant heresiarchs fully realised that it was the Mass that mattered. It was upon the Mass that they directed the full force of their attack.
[Emphasis mine.]
1. De officiis ministrorum, lib. I, cap. 48 (P.L. XVI, col. 101).
2. ST, III, Q.LXV, Art. III.
3. ST, III, Q.LXXXIII, Art. I.
4. Epistle LXIII, n. 17; (P .L. IV, col. 388-9).
5. TCC, p. 840.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., p. 839.
8. Letter to the Bishops of Scotland, 1898.
9. The Mass of the Roman Rite (London, 1959), p. 135.
10. Encyclical Letter, Mediator Dei (C.T.S., London), pp. 42-44.
11. City of God, Bk. X, chap. xx.
12. Pohle-Preuss, The Sacraments (London, 1916), vol. II, p. 388. M. de la Taille, The Mystery of Faith (London, 1950), Book II, Thesis XXVI.
13. TCC, p. 915.
14. Ibid., p. 893. |
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Post by Admin on Jan 19, 2020 11:26:47 GMT
The Most Horrible Blasphemy
THE USE of the word "Reformers" is something of a misnomer for the Protestant heresiarchs. It has become the standard usage in histories of the Reformation, another misnomer, but it does not require a very deep study to realise that they were not reformers but revolutionaries-----men out to overthrow the existing religion and replace it with one which they had fabricated themselves on the grounds that it conformed with the teaching and practice of primitive Christianity.1
Once they had gained power they tried to inspire in the simple Faithful the same hatred of the Church of Christ which inspired their own fanatical zeal. They were religious revolutionaries, and with perfect revolutionary insight they sensed that the first step in consolidating their power was to inspire hatred of the old order. The old religion, the people were told, is
They correctly sensed, not surprisingly as they had almost invariably been priests, that it was the Mass that mattered: that it was against the Mass rather than the Papacy that the brunt of their attack must be launched.3 This point is stressed by Dr. J. Lortz in his book Die Reformation in Deutschland. 4
One of the most outstanding and perceptive contemporary champions of the Mass was the German theologian John Cochlaeus (1479-1552). He rightly pointed out that in attacking the Mass Luther was attacking Christ Himself
With equal accuracy he diagnosed the contradiction which lay at the heart of the heresiarchs' claim to be "reformers."
He warned his fellow Catholic apologists not to concentrate their main efforts on defending the primacy of the Pope but on defending the Mass, a task which was far more vital, for "thereby Luther threatens to tear out the heart from the body of the Church."7 The Reformers themselves were bitterly divided concerning the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, but they were united in a common detestation of the sacrificial interpretation which had always been taught in the Catholic Church. 8 Luther was honest enough to admit the traditional nature of the teaching and the support of "the holy Fathers, so many authorities and so widespread a custom constantly observed throughout the world." His answer was " . . . reject them all rather than admit that the Mass is a work and a sacrifice . . ." 9Luther himself assessed the situation with perfect accuracy when he stated: "once the Mass has been overthrown, I say we'll have overthrown the whole of Popedom." 10
The hatred of the Reformers for the Mass is best illustrated by quoting a few examples from the wealth of material available: LUTHER: It is worth mentioning that on 19th July, 1970, at the Assembly of the World Lutheran Federation at Evian, Mgr. Willebrands, the Pope's [John Paul II] envoy, proposed a toast to "the profoundly religious personality of Martin Luther and the honest self-sacrifice with which he sought the message of the Gospel." 13CALVIN: LATIMER: CRANMER: Pope Honorius III commanded BULLINGER:
1. RIE, vol. II, p. 158.
2. Ibid., vol. III, p. 102.
3. ESR, p. 107.
4. Die Reformation in Deutschland, 2nd edit., vol. I, p. 229.
5. ESR, p. 337.
6. ESR, p. 64.
7. Op. cit., Note 3.
8. ESR, p. 101.
9. ESR, p. 100.
10. Op. cit,. Note 8.
11. Works, vol. XV, p. 774.
12. Against Henry, King of England: 1522, Works, vol. X, s. II. p. 220.
13. Courrier de Rome, No. 74, 10 September, 1970.
14. Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV. 18.
15. Works P.S., vol. I, p. 445.
16. CW, vol. I, p. 6.
17. Ibid, p. 238.
18. Two Epistles of H. Bullynger, with consent of all the learned men of the church of Tyrgury (London, 1548 A.v.).
[Emphasis mine.]
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Post by Admin on Jan 20, 2020 12:36:33 GMT
Protestant Teaching on the Eucharist
Part 1: Rejection of Sacrifice
" . . . the foulest and most heinous error that was ever imagined." -Cranmer1
ACCEPTANCE OF the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone necessarily involved the rejection of the sacrificial nature of the Mass. The Reformers taught that the one oblation upon Calvary had appeased the Father's anger for ever. God had granted an irrevocable decree of pardon to His predestined elect. Religion was essentially the encounter of the individual with God's free choice to disregard his sins and impute Christ's righteousness to him instead. 2This doctrine was accepted by the English Reformers who totally rejected the Catholic concept of the Church as an extension of the Incarnation, mediating the grace of Christ to man in every age, above all through the Sacrifice of the Mass. The celebration of the Eucharist could be no more than a memorial or commemoration of the penal sacrifice, in the commonly accepted meaning of these words, in that it brought the event commemorated to mind for those present. It could have no present sacrificial efficacy. 5The terms memorial and commemoration are used in a perfectly orthodox sense within Catholic theology. The Mass most certainly is the memorial of the Lord, but it is a memorial bequeathed to us by Christ Himself when He said ' Haec quotiescumque feceritis, in mei memoriam facietis." Protestants frequently hold memorial services in which the memory of some dead person is commemorated-----but in traditional Catholic theology Christ's Passion is commemorated by making the Passion present, the Memorial contains the Passion, it is the Passion. Not so with the Protestants. There can be no doubt whatsoever that the Reformers fully understood the doctrine they were rejecting. Cranmer was a trained theologian who knew perfectly well the value of the changes he had introduced. 7 When he died at the stake he not only repudiated all his recantations and denounced the Pope as Antichrist but repeated his Protestant doctrine of the Eucharist. 8 The clarity with which he grasped the Catholic doctrine which he rejected is made clear when he states: John Bradford, Chaplain to Bishop Ridley, denounced the Catholic Church for lying boldly in its "abominable doctrine that the Mass is the principal means to apply Christ's death to the quick and the dead," but explained the doctrine in terms taken from contemporary Catholic theology so accurately that it would have been hard for a Catholic apologist to improve upon his summary.As well as stressing that their Lord's Supper was merely a memorial service in which Christ was remembered, the Reformers took great pains to attack the principle that it was possible for a priest to offer a Mass and obtain benefits for other persons either living or dead. The belief that a Mass could benefit other persons, particularly the Souls in Purgatory, was the epitomization of the concept of the "good work" which, if accepted, ruled out their doctrine of Justification, and if that fell everything fell.
Thus Luther: This viewpoint is put even more forcefully by John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, in A Brief and Clear Confession of the Christian Faith. This belief that "the holy Supper of the Lord" is only a memorial in the commonly accepted sense of the word was insisted upon by the Reformers time and again. The Reformers do, on occasions, use such words as offering, sacrifice, and even oblation-----but always in a sense which is diametrically opposed to the use of these words in Catholic theology, just as is the case with such expressions as "sacramental presence," the bread being Christ's "Body" and the wine His "Blood," or a "consecration" of the bread and wine. These terms will be examined more closely on the next page. Cranmer explains that there is The leading Anglican liturgist of recent times, Professor Ratcliff, writes that in the First Prayer Book Cranmer His doctrine, which was the doctrine of the generality of the Reformers, is summed up by Fr. Messenger in terms which correspond exactly with Professor Ratcliff's description: This is also the precise judgment of our bishops in their Vindication of Apostolicae Curae in 1898. They insist that the only "sacrifice" in which Cranmer believed was The Protestant conception of the "Supper of the Lord " necessitated immediate and drastic action wherever they could gain the support of those exercising political control of a country. This restoration of "the true use of the Lord's Supper" was to be achieved both by using those parts of the Catholic Mass which could be interpreted in a Protestant sense and by the addition of completely new formulas added under the guise of a "restoration of primitive Christianity," a return to what the Reformers regarded as "primitive purity and simplicity, in contrast to the corruption and error of later Catholic times." 24The Protestant rejection of the sacrificial nature of the Mass clearly necessitated a rejection of the Catholic concept of the priesthood. Where there was no victim and no sacrifice there was no necessity for a priest. In their Vindication of Apostolicae Curae, the Catholic bishops explain that Cranmer teaches that the difference between priest and layman is not that the priest alone has the power to offer sacrifice In other words, the Minister was not a priest but a president, a man who possessed no powers denied to the remainder of the congregation, but simply acted as their representative by presiding over their communion service and distributing the bread and wine. Edmund Plowden was said to be the greatest and most honest lawyer practising during the reign of Elizabeth I. The Queen admired him so much that she even offered him the Lord Chancellorship if he would renounce his Catholic faith. Plowden declined the bribe. On one occasion when he was defending a client accused of hearing Mass he elicited the fact that the rite had been performed by an agent provocateur masquerading as a priest . . . "The case is altered!" he snapped . . . No priest, no Mass!" 28The attitude of the English Reformers towards the sacrificial nature of the Mass is perfectly expressed in Article Thirty of the Forty-Two Articles of 1553 which were basically the work of Cranmer. 29Incredible as it may seem, some Anglicans who wished to restore Catholic belief to the Church of England, have argued that this article (now Article Thirty-One) was not aimed against the sacrifice of the Mass itself, a point of view which has been endorsed by some irenical Catholics. While there is no possible room for ambiguity in the wording of the article itself, even had there been, the only honest course would have been to interpret it in the light of the beliefs of those who had framed it, and these have been made amply clear in this chapter. [Emphasis mine.]
1. CW, vol. I, p. 348.
2. ESR, p. 139.
3. Ibid., p. 142.
4. London, 1956, p. 36.
5. ESR, p. 145.
6. RMP, vol. I, p. 203.
7. EBCP, p. 253.
8. A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (London 1964), p. 270.
9. Op. cit., Note 1.
10. Letters, Treatises, Remains, P.S., p. 270.
11. RMP, vol. I, p. 137.
12. CW, vol. I, p. 47.
13. Op. cit., Note 1.
14. Later Writings, P.S., p. 32.
15. CW, vol. I, p. 352.
16. Ibid., p. 346.
17. Op. cit., Note 15.
18. Ibid.
19. CDT, vol. III, p. 362.
20. PHR, p. 194.
21. RMP, vol. I, p. 434.
22. VAC, p. 72.
23. CW, vol. I, p. 349.
24. RIE, vol. II, p. 158; RMP, vol. I, p. 380.
25. CDT, vol. III, p. 362.
26. VAC, p. 62.
27. CW, vol. I, p. 350.
28. George Godwin, The Middle Temple (London, 1954), p. 69.
29. E. S. Gibson, The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (London, 1898), p. 12.
30. Ibid., p. 84. This very useful book contains the complete text of the Forty-Two Articles. |
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Post by Admin on Jan 21, 2020 12:38:27 GMT
Protestant Teaching on the Eucharist
Part 2: Rejection of Transubstantiation
"For they teach, that Christ is in the bread and wine: but we say (according to the truth), that he is in them that worthily eat and drink the bread and wine . . ." -Cranmer 1
MOST OF the Reformers accompanied their rejection of the sacrificial nature of the Mass by the rejection of any real, objective presence of Christ in the consecrated elements. As is so often the case with revolutionaries in any sphere, it is easier to discover what they reject than what they propose to put in its place.
Professor Owen Chadwick, while explaining how Zwingli considered the Sacraments to be simply signs of a covenant between God and man, and not a means of grace, remarks that: "In his early years as a reformer he and his friend Oecolampadius of Basle were so engaged on saying what the Lord's Supper was not, that they rarely and reluctantly attempted to describe what it was."2 The belief that Christ was in any way contained in the consecrated elements was rejected by all the Continental and British Reformers but for Luther. Their standpoint was clearly expressed by Bishop Hooper. The Holy Supper was "to be used as a communion unto all men under both kinds, and not to be made a mass of them that blasphemeth God; for such as honour the bread there for God, doth no less idolatry than they that made the sun their God or stars." 3 The manner in which this attitude is reflected in the notorious Black Rubric and Article XXIX of the Forty-two Articles of 1553 is examined in detail in the final section of Chapter XII. The Reformers' theories of precisely how Christ is present to the believer during the Lord's Supper are so varied and complex that it is not possible to discuss them in any detail here. The position is further complicated by frequent developments and modifications in their particular theories. "As to the nature of Cranmer's belief in the real presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament," complains Cardinal Gasquet, "it is always difficult to determine with precision, at any given time, the exact phase of a mind so shifting." The Cardinal claims, after studying the different theories in some detail, that the schools of opinion in the sixteenth century can be roughly classified into two categories-----those who held the "real presence" and those who held the "real absence". 4"Virtualism" is a term used to describe the belief according to which the virtue of Christ's Passion is received with the Sacrament through faith. Bucer, who had more influence on Cranmer than any other Continental Reformer, totally rejected the Lutheran, let alone the Catholic, position that somehow Christ was received in or under the form of bread and wine. It will be made clear during this chapter how faithfully Cranmer echoes this theory in his own explanations of the "real presence." This fact is conceded by Anglican historians who have even gone as far as describing his views as "Zwinglio-Calvinistic". 7 Zwingli and Calvin laid great stress on the fact that since the Body and Blood of Christ were not contained objectively in the Sacrament they could not be offered by the priest. The concept of the Eucharistic oblation was, quite logically, bound up for them with what they continually denounced as "bread worship". 8 This viewpoint is reproduced in Bishop Ridley's Brief Declaration of the Lord's Supper: He agrees that if the Sacrament "be Christ's own natural body, born of the Virgin . . . then if the priest do offer the sacrament, he doth offer indeed Christ Himself." Francis Clark points out that: "this remark is another illustration of how the English Reformers understood their opponents' doctrine of the Mass." 10 He summarises the position of these English Reformers as follows: Cranmer's views were certainly far nearer to those of Calvin and Zwingli than to those of Luther who "to the end of his life, believed that Christ is really present in what the communicant receives at the hand of the minister, and not only in the soul of the communicant as he receives. For Zwingli, what the communicant receives is bread and wine and no more than bread and wine." 12 This is a point which Cranmer never tired of stressing. Bucer accepted that adoration must be a logical consequence of transubstantiation and the permanence of the Body and Blood of Christ under the species of bread and wine. He rejected these concepts ''as the common parents of impiety and superstition" and censured them as a cause of superstition
Bucer taught that:
It will be made clear how faithfully Cranmer echoed this view. The key point which must be borne in mind when discussing all the various shades of virtualism or receptionism is that however realistic the language used to describe Christ's Eucharistic presence, it [for the virtualists] is a spiritual presence in the minds of the faithful and not an objective presence in the consecrated elements.
Cardinal Gasquet points out that: "The 'real presence' is an ambiguous phrase and was capable, as anyone acquainted with the polemical writing of this period will acknowledge, of conveying, if need be, the whole range of doctrine from that of the Catholic Church to the congregations of Zurich and Geneva."15 For this reason the term substantial rather than real will be used here to convey the Catholic teaching that Our Lord is present in the consecrated elements by virtue of Transubstantiation, that after the Consecration the bread and wine upon the altar become
This chapter should make very clear the manner in which the Reformers use Catholic terminology in a sense that is a complete negation of Catholic belief. The substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist is certainly a Sacramental presence. Cranmer concedes that: This lucid rejection of Catholic teaching is made in a work in which Cranmer makes it quite clear that he fully grasps the Catholic standpoint and totally rejects it. When Cranmer uses the term 'spiritually present' he means that Our Lord's Body, though Itself in Heaven, is able, by Its innate power, to produce certain spiritual effects in the soul on earth which believes. He is very explicit about this in the preface to his treatise On the Lord's Supper. "Nothing could be more decisive than this," comment the English bishops in their Vindication of the Bull Apostolicae Curae. " In this Vindication, the Catholic bishops lay great stress on Cranmer's explicit teaching that "evil men receive not the Body and Blood in the Sacrament" and the reason is that "they (the Body and Blood of Christ) cannot be eaten and drunken but by spirit and faith whereof ungodly men be destitute . . . "21 He explains that Christ's Body "cannot be eaten but spiritually by believing and remembering Christ's benefits, and revolving them in our mind, believing that as the bread and wine feed and nourish our bodies, so Christ. feedeth and nourisheth our souls."22
Our bishops pointed out that the faith to which Cranmer refers is that "illusory feeling of assurance which is called 'justifying faith' by the Lutherans and Calvinists: for it is described i as a faith which the ungodly are incapable of having.
Cranmer's doctrine can be summed up thus: Although Cranmer sometimes actually uses the term "consecration" he makes it very clear that it is not the Catholic sense, in fact the "consecration" of the bread and wine for Holy Communion is of precisely the same nature as the "consecration" of the water for Baptism. "Consecration is the separation of any thing from a profane and worldly use into a spiritual and godly use. And therefore when usual and common water is taken from other uses, and put to the use of Baptism in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, then it may rightly be called consecrated water, that is to say, water put to an holy use. Even so, when common bread and wine be taken and severed from other bread and wine to the use of the holy communion, that portion of bread and wine, although it be of the same substance that the other is from which it be severed, yet it is now called consecrated or holy bread and holy wine. Not that the bread or wine have or even can have any holiness in them, but that they be used to a holy work and represent holy and godly things." 26Fr. Messenger rightly comments that: "It must surely be admitted that it requires no supernatural power or authority thus to 'consecrate' bread and wine; all that be required is a certain delegating or appointing thereto. At any rate there seems to be here no power which an ordinary layman does not possess." 27 A denial of the Real Objective Presence must, he explains, involve a rejection of the priesthood as Catholics understand it. 28 This point was made clear in the previous chapter. The extent of Cranmer's hatred for the Catholic doctrine of Christ's substantial presence in the Blessed Sacrament can best be indicated by citing the ridicule he poured upon the traditional piety of humble Catholics-----whose only fault was to believe what he had once believed himself. He mocked the manner in which In this passage Cranmer pays an unwitting tribute to the depth and fervour of Eucharistic devotion among the ordinary faithful, a devotion well expressed in a rhymed prayer by John Lydgate to be said at the elevation: "Hail Jesu, our health, our ghostly food,
Hail blessed Lord here in form of bread,
Hail, for mankind offered on the rood, [The Cross]
For our redemption with thy blood made red,
Stung to the heart with a spear-head.
N ow gracious Jesu, for thy wounds five,
Grant of they mercy before I be dead,
Clean house [Holy Communion] and shrift [Absolution] while I am alive."30
[Emphasis mine.]
1. CW, vol. I, p. 52.
2. TR, p. 79.
3. Early Writings, P .S., p. 139.
4. EBCP, pp. 129, 131.
5. RMP, vol. I, p. 202.
6. TR, p. 81.
7. A list of them is cited in ESR, p. 162.
8. ESR, p. 112.
9. Brief Declaration on the Lord's Supper, P.S., p. 23.
10. ESR, p. 160.
11. ESR, p. 159.
12. PHR, p. 129.
13. Censura, pp. 552-3.
14. Ibid., p. 465. The Sacraments are, of course, referred to as sacred signs or symbols within Catholic theology, particularly by St. Augustine. But in Catholic theology the Sacraments effect what they signify, the Baptismal waters do not simply symbolise the removal of Original Sin, they effect it. The Eucharist is unique, even among the Sacraments, for it actually contains what it signifies, Christ Himself. ST, III, Q. LXV, art. III.
15. EBCP, p. 275.
16. D, 355. The oath of Berengarius was familiar to Cranmer, see CW, vol. I, pp. 12-14, 196, 203. It is cited in Pope Paul VI's Encyclical Letter Mysterium Fidei (C.T.S., London), p. 23.
17. CW, vol. I, p. 57.
18. Ibid., p. 79.
19. Ibid., p. 3.
20. VAC, p. 70.
21. CW, vol. I, p. 203.
22. Ibid., p. 204.
23. VAC, p. 60.
24. RMP, vol. I, p. 429.
25. CW, vol. I, p. 138.
26. Ibid., p. 177.
27. RMP, vol. I, p. 436.
28. Ibid., p. 328.
29. CW, vol. I, p. 229.
30. ESR, p. 555. |
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Post by Admin on Jan 22, 2020 16:30:54 GMT
Liturgical Revolution
IT HAS already been demonstrated that the founders of the various Protestant heresies were revolutionaries rather than reformers. Their concern was not to reform the existing order but to introduce a new one. It has been shown in previous chapters that "the new basic theory of religion", with the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone as its basic axiom, was radically incompatible with Catholic theology, particularly that of the Mass with its insistence on Transubstantiation and the Sacrifice of Christ's Body and Blood. "Accordingly, all the various schools of the Reformers drew up new Communion rites." 4 Dr. Brightman, the noted Anglican liturgical historian, explains that everything that signifies oblation is repudiated in the four types of ritual produced by the Continental Reformation from Wittenberg, Strassburg, and Geneva, Zurich, and Cologne. 5 It will be shown that this was also true of Cranmer's reforms which will be referred to briefly in this chapter and treated in detail in Chapters XI to XV. A characteristic of the Protestant innovations is that in both doctrine and liturgy they were imposed from above by clerics backed by the support of those holding civil power. 6 There was little enthusiasm for the changes among the mass of the Faithful and sometimes fierce opposition! 7 Commenting on the introduction of Cranmer's first (1549) Prayer Book the Anglican Dean of Bristol, Douglas Harrison, admits: In order not to over-alarm the Faithful, the first Protestant Communion Services tended to be interim measures, ambiguous rites which could pave the way for more radical revisions to be introduced at a more opportune moment. To assist in this purpose the basic structure and many of the prayers of the Roman Mass were retained where possible, sometimes even in Latin. Mgr. Hughes has this to say concerning the transformation of religious life in Saxony: Needless to say, although the other reformers began their revolutions with interim, ambiguous rites, the difference between their finalised services and the Mass would quickly have been apparent to any layman familiar with the former rite. Like Luther, Cranmer included the word "Mass" in the description of his 1549 communion service: "The Supper of the Lorde and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Masse." 11The Spaniard, Francis Dryander, writing to the Zurich Protestants from Cambridge concerning this service remarked: On the same 'puerilities' Bucer explains that these things
Dr. Darwell Stone writes that
Canon E. C. Ratcliff makes the same observation:
The general policy of Cranmer and his friends was
Thus in England, as in Germany,
Many of the clergy "endeavoured to make the best of an evil situation, and used the new communion service as though it were the same as the ancient Mass, which, of course, it was never intended to be." 18 This happened to such an extent that Bucer complained: An accepted principle in regard to liturgical worship is that the doctrinal standpoint of a Christian body must necessarily be reflected in its worship. Liturgical rites should express what they contain. It is not necessary for the Catholic position to be expressly contradicted for a rite to become suspect; the suppression of prayers which had given liturgical expression to the doctrine behind the rite is more than sufficient to give cause for concern.
This principle is embodied in the phrase legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi ("let the law of prayer fix the law of faith")-----in other words the liturgy of the Church is a sure guide to her teaching. This is usually presented in the abbreviated form of lex orandi, lex credendi, and can be translated freely as meaning that the manner in which the Church worships (lex orandi) must reflect what the Church believes (lex credendi). It would, of course, be a mistake to expect to be able to deduce a system of doctrine from the liturgical books of any Christian body and an attempt to do this would be a misuse of the principle under discussion here. A study of the liturgy is perhaps most useful as a background to doctrinal belief-----but where changes, particularly omissions, are made, the doctrine behind the revised liturgy becomes very much clearer. When this principle is applied to the Protestant services, it reveals how clearly they embody the true doctrinal position of the Reformers. This factor was considered of key importance by Pope Leo XIII when he made the final decision on Anglican Orders----- his remarks concerning the Ordinal are equally applicable to the changes in the Mass. Where the 1549 Prayer Book was concerned, it is not the fact that conservative-minded clergy such as Gardiner could use it ''as though it were the same as the ancient Mass" which is important; it is the fact that it could be interpreted for what it was intended to be, for what the Continental Reformers intended their communion service to be, "nothing else than a communion or synaxis". 21 By a synaxis, they meant an assembly of the people gathered together under the presidency of the presiding minister to celebrate the memorial of the Lord in a commemorative supper where He would be present in the sense that He is always present where two or three are gathered together in His name. As Cranmer explained: It has already been shown in Chapter VI that the Protestant use of the term "memorial" in no way corresponds to its use in Catholic theology. The suppressions and additions which made the new communion services an accurate expression of Protestant theology, in complete conformity with the law lex orandi, lex credendi, were justified by the Reformers as being in accordance with, or a return to, primitive practice, a point made clear at the beginning of this chapter. The preamble to the Act of Uniformity claims that the compilers had "as well an eye and respect to the most sincere and pure Christian religion taught by the Scripture, as to the usages; in the Primitive Church."23
Fr. Messenger explains. "This of course merely means that, like all the Protestant Reformers, Cranmer aimed at a return to what he regarded as primitive purity and simplicity in contrast to the corruption and error of later Catholic times."24 As for the mass of theological literature which had built up over the centuries and could not be reconciled with their new teachings-----this they simply ignored.25 "It is evident," wrote Luther, "that it is quite impossible for the Eucharist or Mass to be applied and communicated to another. What do I care, that the custom of the whole world holds otherwise and presumes to act accordingly?"26 A final principle of the Reformers was that there was no necessity for liturgical uniformity among the different churches. They maintained that a diversity of rite, traditions, ordinances and policies may exist among the churches. Such diversity As Cranmer made clear, once the Reformers were in a position to enforce their new services they were far more insistent upon the need for uniformity than the Catholic Church had ever been. Needless to say, the Catholic Church had never insisted on absolute liturgical uniformity-----far from it. The various authorised rites within the Church were allowed to keep their own customs, rituals and liturgical languages without interference from Rome. Even within the Latin rite itself there was a degree of pluriformity in that there were differing usages, or in other words, not independent rites but variants of the Roman rites. The Dominican or Sarum Missals provide examples. As will be shown in Chapter X, The Reform and the Missal of St. Pius V, these usages within the Latin rite did not differ from the Missal of St. Pius V on any important point.28
What the Reformers were trying to justify in their demand for pluriformity was the right to take an unprecedented step in the history of Christendom, the right to concoct new services. This in itself would have been a complete break with tradition-----up to this point the liturgy had developed by a process of natural evolution. Some ceremonies and prayers were gradually discarded as the centuries passed, for example the Bidding Prayers or the practice of having two lessons before the Gospel. Others were added, such as the Last Gospel. Any attempt to bring about a clear break with any traditional usage should automatically arouse the suspicions of the orthodox, even if ostensibly plausible motives are adduced for doing so. This point will be developed in Chapter IX: The Principles of Liturgical Reform. In this case, the new services were a blatant attempt to express the beliefs of a new religion. Reference has already been made to the Bull Apostolicae Curae in which Pope Leo XIII decided irrevocably that Anglican Orders are invalid.29 In an attempt to refute the Bull, the Anglican Archbishops issued an official reply. This was answered by Cardinal Vaughan and his fellow Bishops of the Province of Westminster in a book entitled A Vindication of the Bull Apostolicae Curae.
Like Pope Leo, the Catholic Bishops lay great stress on the Question of omissions. not simply as regards the Ordinal but also in the Communion service.
The Anglican claims that their services aimed at simplicity and a return to primitive usage were dealt with in very vigorous language. The Catholic Bishops deny the right of national or local churches to devise their own rites.
[Emphasis mine.]
1. RIE, vol. II, p. 158.
2. EBCP, p. 67.
3. RIE, vol. II, p. 83.
4. RMP, vol. I, p. 203.
5. Ibid.
6. RIE, vol. II, p. 109.
7. Ibid., p. 83.
8. FSPB, p. xii.
9. H. Grisar, Luther (London, 1913-17), vol. V, p. 145.
10. PHR, p. 114.
11. FSPB, p. 212.
12. RIE, vol. II, p. 109.
13. Ibid.
14. History of the Doctrine of the Eucharist (London, 1909), vol. II, p. 139.
15. The Booke of Common Prayer in the Church of England; its making and revisions, 1549-1561 (London, 1949), p. 15.
16. ESR, p. 194.
17. Ibid., p. 184.
18. RMP, vol. I, p. 414.
19. Ibid., p. 415.
20. ESR, p. 192.
21. RMP, vol. I, p. 266.
22. CW, vol. I, p. 79.
23. RMP, vol. I, p. 380.
24. Ibid.
25. RIE, vol. II, p. 158.
26. ESR, p. 142.
27. RMP, vol. I, p. 293.
28. "The first impression upon a modern Catholic reader made by the reading of these old English Uses will be, we think, one of surprise that he finds himself so much at home in them. They are utterly unlike the 'Communion Service' of the church now established (i.e. Anglican), while we are convinced that if they were re-introduced among us tomorrow our people would scarcely feel any difference." Addis & Arnold's Catholic Dictionary (London, 1925), p. 534.
29. In a footnote to the C.T.S. revised 1968 edition Francis Clark comments: "Pope Leo XIII himself explained the nature and scope of the Bull in November 1896, in a letter to Cardinal Richard, Archbishop of Paris. Here he said: 'It was Our intention thereby to deliver a final judgement, and to settle absolutely that most grave question'. He added: 'All Catholics are bound to receive Our decision with the utmost respect, as for ever valid, firm, and irrevocable (perpetuo fir mam, ratam, irrevocabilem)'." Anglican Orders, Final Decision, C.T.S., p. 22.
30. VAC, p. 54.
31. VAC, p. 42. |
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Post by Admin on Jan 23, 2020 12:09:35 GMT
The Principles of Liturgical Reform
"We never disparage the faith of our fathers but hand it on exactly as we have received it. God willed that the truth should come down to us from pastor to pastor, from hand to hand, without any evident novelties. It is in this way that we recognise what has always been believed and, accordingly, what must always be believed. It is, so to speak, from this word always that the truth and the promise derive their authority, an authority which would vanish completely the moment an interruption was discovered anywhere,"-----Bossuet: Pastoral Letter to the new Catholics of his diocese. "THE FORMS of public prayers are the very centre and kernel of the religious life of a Christian people," wrote Cardinal Gasquet. 1 This is a fact of which the Catholic Church has always been keenly aware and her liturgical traditions have been regarded as a sacred trust. Even "what we may call the 'archaisms' of the Missal are the expression of the faith of our fathers which it is our duty to watch over and hand on to posterity," explained Dom Cabrol, 'father' of the liturgical movement. 2 When St. Pius X wrote his Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, exposing the doctrines and methods of the modernists, he found it necessary to repeat the condemnation of the Council of Nicea aimed at those The soundest principle for any liturgical reformer to use as the basis for his plan to revise the liturgy is "Don't!" This is the traditional principle upon which the Catholic Church in east and west has based her attitude to changes in the outward forms of public worship-----and where the laity are concerned this can, for practical purposes, be narrowed down to the celebration of Mass. The principles to be discussed in this chapter are less applicable to such matters as the Breviary. The sentiments expressed by Bossuet are echoed in an exceptionally profound analysis of the sociological implications of liturgical reform written in 1974 by Professor James Hitchcock. He formulates as a principle that: Cardinal Gasquet rightly remarks that any Catholic who sees in the living Liturgy of the Roman Church essential forms which remain what they were as much as 1,400 years ago cannot Liturgical laws, although coming within the category of ecclesiastical law, must be governed by the same principles by which any human law can be judged. The prayers in the Mass and the rubrics governing its celebration are generally the codification of practices already established by custom. "Liturgies are not made, they grow in the devotion of centuries" notes Professor Owen Chadwick in his History of the Reformation. 6Only heretics ever attempted any radical reform of the Liturgy. Nor were the basic prayers, gestures and rubrics from which the various rites grew the creation of committees and commissions set up to devise liturgical forms. It would be impossible to find evidence of some form of liturgical commission being set up in the early Church which decided, for example, that it would be fitting for the priest to kiss the altar from time to time, deciding upon the most appropriate moments for this to be done, and then composing rubrics to ensure that priests acted upon their instructions in future.
What happened was that the priest kissed the altar at certain times as a result of customs which had grown up naturally, and eventually this gesture was formally codified as a rubric. The genuflection at the Incarnatus in both the Creed and the Last Gospel both began as acts of popular faith in and devotion to the Incarnation, which is the basis of our entire faith. These genuflections had become general customs long before they were codified as rubrics. Hugh Ross Williamson explains that:
It is interesting to note that this custom found its way into liturgies as varied as the Roman and Sarum rites. Similarly, the elevation and adoration of the consecrated Host was a popular reaction by both clergy and people against the denial of the Real Presence. The ringing of a bell at certain points in the Mass had the practical purpose of making those unable to see the altar aware of the most significant moments in the Mass. St. Thomas Aquinas assures us that the Holy Ghost protects the Church from error in the development of liturgical customs and laws. 8An examination of any form of human law - common law, liturgical law, laws relating to games, or the laws of grammar - makes it clear that they have no intrinsic value in themselves but are simply a means to an end-----and that end is the common good of those for whom they are ordained. There is no intrinsic merit in driving on the left side of the road or on the right-----but it is clearly in the common interests of all motorists that in any particular country they should all drive on the same side. St. Thomas defines a law as "An ordinance governed by reason promulgated for the common good by the person having authority within a community." The consensus of Catholic authorities agrees with St. Thomas in his exposition of the nature of human law, namely, that whether civil or ecclesiastical it is an act of public authority having the right to demand obedience but which itself must conform to the demands of reason and to be seen to have an effect that is both good and to the benefit of those for whom it is intended. 9St. Thomas, followed by other authorities, warns that any change in existing legislation must be made only with extreme caution, particularly where it might involve changes in any long-standing customs. He treats the question of the mutation of laws in his Summa Theologica. In discussing the question of the mutation of laws he lays down the premise that there are two remote reasons which can lead to a just change in the laws.10
The first resides in the nature of man who, being a rational being, is gradually led by his reason from what is less perfect to what is more perfect.
The second reason must be found in the actions which are being subjected to the regulation of law and which can change according to the various circumstances in which men find themselves and in which they must work. Every change in law must be determined by an evident necessity of the common good since law is rightly changed only insofar as this change manifestly contributes to the welfare of the community. "It is well known," writes Louis Salleron,
Pascal notes that custom is the whole of equity for the sole reason that it is accepted and that anyone who tries to trace it back to its first principles will destroy it. Even where a change in the law carries some obvious benefit it will be accompanied by some harm to the common good as any change in the law abandons a custom, and custom is always a great help and support in the observance of laws. Any change in an individual law diminishes the force and respect paid to Law because a custom is taken away. St. Thomas, with profound psychological insight, adds that this is true even when the innovations contrary to custom are minor ones, for, even though minor in themselves, they may appear important in the common estimation.
From this he draws a general conclusion; law must never be changed unless it is certain that the common good will find in the modification at least an adequate compensation for the harm by way of derogating a custom. A principle enunciated by Professor Hitchcock is that: "The decline of a sense of tradition in the Church severely weakens not only its continuity with the ages past but also its coherence in the present age." 13 Professor Johannes Wagner, Director of the Liturgical Institute of Treves, reached the same conclusion when he stated: "History has proved a thousand times that there is nothing more dangerous for a religion, nothing is more likely to result in discontent, incertitude, division, and apostasy than interference with the liturgy and consequently with religious sensibility."14 Suarez, another great authority, insists that for his law to be considered reasonable, a legislator must not simply refrain from demanding something his subjects will find impossible to carry out, but the law must not even be too difficult, distressing or disagreeable, taking account of human frailty. On no account should it contradict any reasonable custom because custom is a kind of "second nature" and what it finds abhorrent "is considered to be morally impossible."
He also lays great stress on the necessity for laws to be permanent-----not in the sense that they can never be abrogated but that this shall only occur if changing circumstances make it quite clear that they are no longer just. If it is to work in the common interest legislation must aim at stability and uniformity within the community.15 Where there is the least doubt that the benefits of a change in the laws are likely to outweigh considerably the harm that will result in a change of custom then it is better to conserve the existing legislation rather than change it. Being the accepted practice, it has, so to speak, the right of possession and, in a case of doubt, it is the right of possession which is the stronger. Another principle stated by Professor Hitchcock is that: " The manipulation of sacred symbols to give increased meaning to the liturgy tends instead to destroy its meaning and alienate the participants from the Church's worship." 16In his Apostolic Constitution Auctorem Fidei (28 August, 1794) Pope Pius VI condemned the pseudo-Synod of Pistoia for its desire to return to what it claimed were more primitive sources by simplifying the rites, using the vernacular, and saying the entire Mass in an audible tone. The Pope laid particular stress on the fact that this Synod had suggested a conflict between the principles which should govern the celebration of the Liturgy and the order currently in use, accepted and approved by the Church.
The proposed changes were condemned as "false, disturbing the prescribed order of the celebration of the mysteries, and easily productive of many evils." The history of the various Christian denominations is replete with instances of disruption and even schisms concerning changes in established customs, changes which many modern commentators might regard as trivial matters. The secession of the Old Believers from the Russian Orthodox Church is a typical example.
What such incidents do prove is the accuracy of St. Thomas's insight into the harmful effects of changing the status quo without overwhelming reasons for doing so. Professor Hitchcock states that: "
Such is the reverence of the Catholic Church for legitimate traditions that where a custom can be shown to have been observed continuously for a period as short as forty years it is given the force of law in the Canon Law of the Church, even if it has never been expressly codified. Such a custom can only be abrogated by legislation expressly formulated to do so, and where any doubt exists the more recent law must be considered in relation to the older one and, as far as possible, reconciled with it; in other words, where doubt exists the existing law can continue to be observed. Even where new legislation contains a nonobstant clause expressly prohibiting any contrary law or custom, this prohibition cannot extend to custom of a hundred years or immemorial standing unless the new law refers to them explicitly. The testimony of the great Catholic Doctors is reinforced by the opinion of Rousseau, who could hardly be described as sympathetic to the Church! "It is above all the great antiquity of laws which renders them holy and venerable; people soon despise those which they see constantly changing."18 "Sacred rituals," observes Professor Hitchcock, "cannot be reformed substantially without serious dislocation in the society whose symbols they are."19 The application of these principles to the liturgical changes of the Protestant Reformation is best illustrated by quoting again from the statement of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales in support of Apostolicae Curae, already quoted at the conclusion of Chapter VIII. Referring to Cranmer's reforms, our Bishops insist that local churches are not entitled to devise new rites. The effect upon the religious life of Britain of the Protestant reforms is only one of many examples, which prove the truth of Confucius' dictum that "to interfere with the public rites is to interfere with the very fabric of government." This does not, of course, preclude any liturgical reform-----but a reform need not necessitate drastic remodelling of existing rites; to do this is rather to perpetrate a liturgical revolution of the type described in Chapter VIII. The total incompatibility of any radical reform of the Catholic liturgy with the ethos and traditions of the Church is well expressed by Professor Hitchcock: It is quite possible to reform the liturgy in accordance with the principles enunciated in this chapter, principles based not simply on the teaching of the great Catholic Doctors but on the common wisdom of mankind. Such a reform was enacted by St. Pius V with the promulgation of the Bull Quo Primum in 1570. Before examining this reform in detail it might be well to comment on a remark made by a character in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina: Perhaps the most simple criterion for distinguishing between a liturgical reformer such as Pope St. Pius V, and a revolutionary such as Thomas Cranmer, is that the latter would take his axe with the greatest gusto to any tree standing in his path, however old and however gnarled! [Emphasis mine.]
1. EBCP, p. 182.
2. Cabrol edition of The Roman Missal, introduction.
3. Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Burns & Oates, p. 54.
4. RS, p. 70.
5. EBCP, p. 183.
6. ER, p. 119.
7. The Great Betrayal (Britons, 1970), p. 8.
8. ST, III, Q. LXXXIII, Art. Y.
9. A comprehensive selection of citations from all the principal authorities is given in an article by Fr. Raymond Dulac in the Courrier de Rome, Number 15, upon which I have drawn extensively for this chapter.
10. ST, I, IIae, Q. XCVII.
11. La Nouvelle Messe (Paris, 1972), p. 40.
12. Pensée, 108, Translation by M. Turnell, Paschal's Pensées (London, 1962), p. 140.
13. RS, p. 75.
14. Reformation aus Rom (Munich, 1967), p. 42.
15. De Legibus: t. 5 and 6.
16. RS, p, 79.
17. RS, p. 86.
18. Cited in Courrier de Rome, No. 15.
19. RS, p. 132.
20. VAC, p. 42.
21. RS, p. 59.
22. Part VI, 29. |
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Post by Admin on Jan 24, 2020 11:12:16 GMT
The Reform and the Missal of St. Pius V
"The most beautiful thing this side of Heaven." - Father Faber
"UNIFORMITY IN Liturgy throughout the Church has never been a Catholic ideal. No one wants to replace the Eastern Liturgies, or even those of Milan and Toledo, by that of Rome. But it is a reasonable ideal that those who use the Roman rite should use it uniformly in a pure form." 1 At the time of the Council of Trent there was a great deal of variety in local usage. A proliferation of local rites had evolved during the Middle Ages, such as the Sarum rite in England. These were merely variations of the Roman rite and must not be confused with such important traditions as the Mozarabic or Ambrosian liturgies which can justly be regarded as separate rites. Father Fortescue explains that: In its eighteenth session the Council appointed a commission to examine the Missal, to revise it and to restore it "according to the custom and rite of the Holy Fathers", using for that purpose the best manuscripts and other documents. "They accomplished their task very well," comments Father Fortescue. "On 14th July, 1570, the Pope published the reformed Missal by the Bull Quo Primum, still printed at the beginning. Its title was: Missale Romanum ex decreto ss. Concilii Tridentini restitutum." 4 St. Pius is honoured by the Church as an instrument chosen by God ad conterendos Ecclesiae hostes et ad divinum cullum reparandum. This reform was carried out wholly in accordance with the principles enunciated in Chapter IX. Nothing could have been a greater contrast to the revolution described in Chapter VIII. Up to the time of St. Pius V the history of the Roman rite had been one of natural and gradual development. Father David Knowles, Britain's most distinguished Catholic scholar until his death in 1974, explained that: Fr. Fortescue considers that the reign of St. Gregory the Great marks an epoch in the history of the Mass, having left the liturgy in its essentials just as we have it today. There is, moreover, a constant tradition that St. Gregory was the last to touch the essential part of the Mass, namely the Canon. Benedict XIV (1740- 1758) says: "No Pope had added to or changed the Canon since St. Gregory." 6 Whether this is totally accurate is not a matter of great importance; even if some very minor additions did creep in afterwards, perhaps a few Amens, the important point is that a tradition of more than a millennium certainly existed in the Roman Church that the Canon should not be changed. Although the rite continued to develop after the time of St. Gregory: "All later modifications were fitted into the old arrangement, and the most important parts were not touched. From, roughly, the time of St. Gregory we have the text of the Mass, its order and arrangement, as a sacred tradition that no one has ventured to touch except in unimportant details." 8Among these additions: "The prayers said at the foot of the altar are in their present form the latest part of all. They developed out of medieval private preparations and were not formally appointed in their present state before the Missal of Pius V (1570)." 9 They were, however, widely used well before the Reformation as is proved by the fact that both Luther and Cranmer considered it necessary to abolish the Judica me, with its reference to the priest going to the altar of God, and the Confiteor-----as will be shown in Chapter XII where Cranmer's 1549 Communion service is studied in detail. "The Gloria was introduced gradually, at first only to be sung on feasts and at bishop's Masses. It is probably Gallican. The Creed came to Rome in the XIth century. The Offertory prayers and the Lavabo were introduced from beyond the Alps hardly before the XIVth century. The Placeat, Blessing and the Last Gospel were introduced gradually in the Middle Ages."10
It should be pointed out that these prayers almost invariably have a liturgical use stretching back centuries before their official incorporation into the Roman rite. The Suscipe Sancte Pater can be traced back to the prayer book of Charles the Bald (875-877).11 It would be a serious mistake to conclude with regard to the Roman or any other liturgy that an older form must be better. It is not surprising that as the Roman rite spread throughout the West in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, gradually supplanting the existing rites, it was also influenced by them.
The fusion of the original Roman rite with various Gallican elements explains the emergence of the various medieval derived rites, not really rites at all but simply variations of the Roman rite. The Canon, of course, remained unchanged. Had the Roman rite been totally satisfactory, satisfying both to priests and people, it is unlikely that elements incorporated from the Gallican rites would have eventually found their way into the liturgy at Rome itself. This is a form of liturgical development totally in accord with the principles enunciated in Chapter IX. It will also be noticed when reading Chapter XII that the prayers which came into the Roman Mass after the time of Gregory the Great were among the first to be discarded by the Reformers-----this is hardly surprising as one of the reasons which must have prompted the Church to accept them, guided by the Holy Ghost, is the exceptional clarity of their doctrinal content. This tendency for a rite to express ever more clearly what it contains is in perfect accord with the principle lex orandi, lex credendi. In the authoritative exposition of Catholic doctrine edited by Canon George Smith it is stated that: " . . throughout the history of the development of the sacramental liturgy, the tendency has always been towards growth-----additions and accretions, the effort to obtain a fuller, more perfect, more clearly significant symbolism." 12 This is fully in accord with Cardinal Newman's third characteristic of a true development-----the power of assimilation . . . In the physical world, whatever has life is characterised by growth, so that in no respect to grow is to cease to live. It grows by taking into its own substance external materials; and this absorption or assimilation is completed when the materials appropriated come to belong to it or enter into its unity . . . An eclectic, conservative, assimilating, healing, moulding process, a unitive power, is of the essence, and a third test, of a faithful development." 13These additions did not only enrich the Mass doctrinally. "If one may venture a criticism of these additions from an aesthetic point of view," writes Fr. Fortescue, "it is that they are exceedingly happy. The Old Roman Rite, in spite of its dignity and archaic simplicity, had the disadvantage of being dull. The Eastern and Gallican liturgies are too florid for our taste and too long. The few non-Roman elements in our Mass take nothing from its dignity and yet give it enough variety and reticent (motion to make it beautiful." 14It should already be quite clear what a radical difference there was between the type of reform enacted by St. Pius V and the "unprecedented" action of the Protestant Reformers in devising "their own rites", so vigorously and so justly condemned by the Catholic Hierarchy of England and Wales in the passage cited at the conclusion of Chapters VIII and IX. The nature of the reform of St. Pius V can best be expressed by citing Fr. Fortescue in regard to a part of the Mass that has already been mentioned-----the prayers at the foot of the altar. Contrast this with the methods adopted by Cranmer which are discussed in Chapter XI. Commenting on the Bull Quo Primum, Fr. Raymond Dulac remarks that:
"It is characteristic of a truly great leader that the more firm he is in imposing obligations the more scrupulous will he be in respecting rights; not simply the general and absolute rights of the abstract 'person', but the historic rights of individuals and particular communities, even when acquired solely by custom." 16
Pope St. Pius V permitted the retention of any rite that could show a prescription of two centuries as well as those of such religious orders as the Dominicans, Carmelites, and Carthusians.
Here again, the Pope, while favouring his own Missal, in certain cases does not wish to infringe established rights, and indeed, allows them priority. In this respect we must bear in mind that these particular Missals are fundamentally identical with the Roman one presenting purely minor variations. It is worth noting that the Mass brought to England and Wales by the martyr priests in the reign of Elizabeth I was, in fact, that of St. Pius V. It was adopted by the English College at Douay and George Godsalf, ordained on 20th December, 1576, must have been the first English priest to offer Mass according to the reformed Missal.17
There have been revisions since the reform of St. Pius V but, as Fr. Fortescue explains, up to his time (1917) these had been intended to keep the Missal in line with the reform of 1570. "By the time of Clement VIII (1592-1605) printers had corrupted the text in several ways." The work of the commission appointed by Clement VIII "was only to correct these corruptions. They did not in any way modify the Mass . . . Benedict XIV (1740-1758), who did so much for the reform of the liturgy did not revise the Missal." 18 Fr. Fortescue deals with all the subsequent revisions up to his time in detail and concludes that: "Since the Council of Trent the history of the Mass is hardly anything but the composition and approval of new Masses. The scheme and all the fundamental parts remain the same. No one has thought of touching the venerable liturgy of the Roman Mass, except by adding to it new Propers." 19The Reforms of Pius XII did go farther than this, notably in regard to the Holy Week services. But any objective assessment of his reforms will find them totally in accord with the principles laid down in Chapter IX and, needless to say, the Mass itself was not changed in any way.
And again: The antiquity of the Roman Mass is a point which needs to be stressed. There is what Fr. Fortescue describes as a "prejudice that imagines that everything Eastern must be old." This is a mistake and there is no existing Eastern liturgy with a history of continual use stretching back as far as that of the Roman Mass.22 This is particularly true with regard to the Roman Canon.
Dom Cabrol, O.S.B., "father" of the modern liturgical movement, stresses that "The Canon of our Roman Rite, which in its main lines was drawn up in the fourth century, is the oldest and most venerable example of all the Eucharistic prayers in use today."23 In a similar vein, Fr. Louis Bouyer, one of the leaders of the modern liturgical movement up to the time of Vatican II, stresses that: "The Roman Canon, as it is today, goes back to Gregory the Great. There is not, in the East or West, a Eucharistic prayer, remaining in use to this day, that can boast such antiquity. In the eyes not only of the Orthodox but of Anglicans and even those Protestants who have still, to some extent, a feeling for tradition, to jettison it would amount to a rejection of any claim on the part of the Roman Church, to represent the true Catholic Church."24 It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of the Roman Missal from any standpoint. At a time when everything in contemporary society seemed to be changing, the fact that, up to 1964 a Sacrifice in a form and language stretching back over fifteen centuries was still offered daily in this nuclear age in churches and cathedrals from Bosnia to Boston, from the Hebrides to Tokyo, provided-----religious considerations apart-----a unique if not miraculous cultural survival. Even an unbeliever with the least vestige of imagination could not have failed to be moved when travelling across Europe by train if he realized that an awesome Sacrifice was offered daily with identical gestures, using the same sacral language, in the innumerable churches, abbeys, and cathedrals whose spires, domes, and turrets dominated every hamlet, village, town and city through which his train passed, no matter what the country or what the language.
The essential unity of Catholics in these different countries derived from their membership of the same Church and their possession of the same Sacraments and Sacrifice-----but in the Latin rite this unity was deepened and made manifest by their common use of the Missal of St. Pius V, the Pope chosen by God ad conterendos Ecclesiae hostes ad divinum cultum reparandum. The impression these facts made upon a believer is incalculably greater. A Catholic knows that the most vital moment in human history took place outside Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago when a Mother stood weeping by a Cross upon which her torn and broken Son offered His life to unite mankind with God once more. This is the event which the Catholic Mass makes present, whatever the rite, throughout the world and throughout the centuries. A. Baumstark, perhaps the greatest liturgical scholar of this century, expressed this well when he wrote that every worshipper taking part in this liturgy:
Those who reflect upon the nature of the mystery of the Mass will wonder how men dare to celebrate it, how a priest dares to utter the words of Consecration which makes the sacrifice of Calvary present, how even the most saintly layman dares to set foot in the building where it is being offered-----Terribilis est locus iste: hic domus Dei est, et porta coeli: et vocabitur aula Dei. ("Awesome is this place: it is the house of God, and the gate of heaven; and it shall be called the court of God.")26 It is natural that the Church, the steward of these holy mysteries, should clothe them with the most solemn and beautiful rites and ceremonies possible. It is equally natural that the book containing these rites should appropriate to itself some of the wonder and veneration evoked by the mysteries themselves. There can be no doubt that the leaders of the authentic liturgical movement in this century regarded the Missal of St. Pius V with much veneration.
This veneration for the Missal is well expressed by Dom Cabrol:
Dom Cabrol also pays tribute to the incomparable beauty of the Missal from the literary and aesthetic point of view. He stresses that this is not a question of art for art's sake but "we know that truth cannot exist without beauty . . . The beauty of prayer consists in the true and sincere expression of deep sentiment. The Church has never disdained this beauty of form which follows as a consequence of truth; the great Cathedrals on which in past ages she lavished all the marvels of art stand witness to this . . . " The historical value of the Missal as a living link with the earliest and formative roots of Christian civilization in Europe is another point to which Dom Cabrol draws attention. This was the authentic spirit of the Catholic liturgical movement, wholly in accord with the principles described in Chapter IX and in total contrast to the spirit manifested by the Protestant Reformers. It was above all the theological content of the Missal which won the praise of Dom Cabrol-----for precisely the opposite reasons which made it unacceptable to the Reformers. It should not be a matter of surprise that when St. Pius V finally codified the rites of the Roman Mass he enshrined the jewel of our faith in a setting of more than human perfection, a mystic veil worthy of the Divine mystery it enveloped. It would have been surprising had this not been the case with the liturgy surrounding the sacred act that lies at the heart of the religion founded by God the Son to the glory of God the Father and guided and inspired by God the Holy Ghost. In his book, This is the Mass, H. Daniel-Rops explains that it was The beauty, the worth, the perfection of the Roman liturgy of the Mass, so universally acknowledged and admired, was described by Fr. Faber as This Divinely inspired masterpiece was, with a few unimportant variations, the liturgy that formed the object of the hatred and fury of the revolution described in Chapter VIII. The details of its destruction are set out in Chapters XI to XIII. When Laszlo Toth attacked the Pieta of Michelangelo in 1972, the world was horrified. Believer and unbeliever alike were united in their sense of outrage. "How could anyone raise a hand against anything so beautiful?" was the question everyone asked. How men who were priests and even bishops could raise their hands to destroy "the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven" is a question that cannot be answered in human terms. Although it was the Sarum and not the Roman rite Mass which Cranmer destroyed, sufficient has already been written in this chapter to demonstrate that not only were they identical in essence but in innumerable particulars. The Introit for the Feast of the English and Welsh Martyrs begins with a verse from Psalm 28: "O God, the heathens are come into Thy inheritance: they have defiled Thy holy temple; they have made Jerusalem as a place to keep fruit." There is really little to add to this except to note that, by what may not be a coincidence, this feast on 4th May is followed on 5th May by that of Pope St. Pius V in which the Collect thanks God "Who for the overthrowing of the enemies of Thy Church and for the restoring of the beauty of Thy worship, didst choose blessed Pius as supreme Pontiff."
[Emphasis mine.]
1. TM, p. 208.
2. Ibid., p. 204 and p. 202. See also Note 28 to Chapter VIII.
3. TM, p. 205.
4. Ibid., p. 206.
5. The Tablet, 24 July, 1971, p. 724.
6. TM, p. 172.
7. EBCP, p. 197.
8. TM, p. 173.
9. Ibid., p. 183.
10. Ibid., p. 184.
11. Ibid., p. 305.
12. TCC, p. 1056.
13. DCD, Ch. V, Sect. III, I.
14. TM, p. 184. The spread of the Roman rite and the incorporation of Gallican elements is discussed in detail on pp. 172-184 and 199-208.
15. Ibid., p. 225.
16. Itineraires, No. 162, p. 40. English translation by Edward Burrows from The Remnant, 1 February, 1973.
17. TM, p. 202.
18. Ibid., p. 208.
19. Ibid., p. 211.
20. Ibid., p. 213.
21. Ibid., p. 208 and p. 213.
22. Ibid., p. 213.
23. Introduction to the Cabrol edition of The Roman Missal (17th edition). Sub- sequent quotations from Dom Cabrol come from the same source. As regards the question of the relative antiquity of the different liturgies, the so-called "Anaphora of St. Hippolytus" would date back to the third century if authentic, but its authenticity is still a matter of discussion among scholars.
24. Cited in A Sharp Critique (Ogilvie Foundation, 1970), p. 3.
25. Cited in A Shorter History of the Western Liturgy, T. Klauser, p. 18.
26. Common of the Dedication of a Church.
27. Dr. J. H. Oswald, cited in The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, N. Gihr (St. Louis, 1908). p. 337.
28. This is the Mass (London, 1959), p. 34.
29. Op. cit., Note 27. |
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Post by Admin on Jan 25, 2020 12:46:53 GMT
Preparatory Measures: English Life Upon the Accession of Edward VI
MGR. HUGHES has provided an excellent picture of the religious life of the British people on the eve of the Reformation, and what he writes with regard to the Mass is applicable until the accession of the young King Edward VI in 1547. Henry VIII had shown himself very conservative as regards changing the established forms of worship. Each Sunday, Mgr. Hughes explains, all went to their parish church for Mass, A number of means were employed to prepare the people for the replacement of this traditional Latin Mass by a vernacular Protestant Communion service.
THE PRESS
In order to overthrow the Mass, and with it all that remained of the Catholic Faith, the Reformers adopted a cautious approach. They realised that an open frontal attack could rebound on themselves. The way was first prepared with the help of the Press. In 1547 a campaign against the Mass was initiated alleging among other things that "such as honour the bread there for God do no less idolatry than they that made the sun their god or stars." Gardiner complained that "certain printers, players, and preachers make a wonderment, as though we knew not yet how to be justified, nor what sacraments we should have."2 The authorities expressed disapproval in public but their failure to take any active steps to suppress these books made it obvious where their sympathies lay. By the end of the year the floodgates were opened and books began to appear filled with abuse of everything Catholic-----and even dedicated to the king himself and the Lord Protector. The Blessed Sacrament is described as "a vile cake to be made God and Man" and the Mass as "the worshipping of God made of fine flour." Many of these books were written by continental reformers, among them Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Melancthon, Bullinger, Urbanus Regius, Osiander, Hegendorp and Bodius.3 While these books shocked and outraged most of the ordinary faithful and parish clergy, they made a great impression on those who liked to consider themselves an educated and enlightened elite-----almost invariably men of influence in some sphere or other.
THE PULPIT
Another effective means of propagating the revolutionary ideas was through sermons-----preachers with a licence from Cranmer could go from town to town attacking beliefs which, in theory, he still held himself and was upholding. Under Henry for example, while "men and women were dying for beliefs which the Archbishop privately shared, he subscribed to the ruling orthodoxy and imposed it upon others." 5
While the Reformer-dominated King's Council issued proclamations forbidding irreverent attacks upon the Sacrament, and listing punishments for those who did so, in practice it could be called a "round robin" or "Jack in the box" with impunity. One preacher with Cranmer's licence-----Thomas Hancock-----was arrested after saying, among other things, "that which the priest holdeth over his head you do see and you kneel before it, you honour it and make an idol of it and you yourselves are most horrible idolators." He was completely discharged at the instigation of the Protector Somerset himself.
Cranmer alone had the power of granting a licence to preach and his attitude can best be seen by quoting from an instruction issued by the Privy Council to licensed preachers in June, 1548, forbidding them to bring "that into contempt and hatred which the prince doth either allow or is content to suffer," but at the same time permitting "the lively teaching of the word of God by sermons made after such sort as for the time the Holy Ghost shall put into the preacher's mind,"6 In his famous sermon "of the plough" preached at St. Paul's on 18th January, 1548, Latimer openly attacked Catholic practices before the whole court, declaring them and the Mass itself to be the work of the devil whose
LITURGICAL INNOVATIONS
This policy of upholding the traditional faith in theory while allowing it to be undermined in practice extended to liturgical innovationsCranmer's programme for overthrowing the established liturgy described at the beginning of this chapter was divided into four stages. It has already been explained in Chapter VIII why he deemed it imprudent to do too much too soon.
- Stage one was to have certain portions of the unchanged traditional Mass in the vernacular.
- Stage four was to replace this service with a specifically Protestant one.
As will be explained in Chapter XVI, the psychology of this process was very sound. Very few men have the courage to be martyrs and even those with strong convictions are liable to seek a compromise where one is possible. Such a compromise was possible with each of Cranmer's first three stages-----and once the process of compromising has been entered into it tends to be self-perpetuating. A man who has been making continual concessions is liable to lack the will to make a stand and to feel that, "in any case it is too late now." Prominent among the liturgical innovations which prepared the way for or accompanied the 1549 Prayer Book were the principles that the liturgy must be in the vernacular and audible throughout; Co
THE VERNACULAR AND AUDIBILITY
Although a number of the Reformers began by using a modified traditional or newly composed Latin liturgy it soon became a sine qua non of Protestantism (but for some Lutherans) that worship must be exclusively in the vernacular. 9 Statements such as the following, taken from the writings of the Reformers and condemned by Trent, provide an accurate summary of the Protestant standpoint: "The rite of the Church of Rome by which the words of consecration are said secretly and in a low voice is to be condemned and the Mass ought to be celebrated only in the vernacular language which all understand." 10 The use of the vernacular even before the introduction of the new services was, in itself, "indeed a revolution". 11 It was also an effective instrument for revolutionary change as it accustomed the people to the idea of drastic change in their manner of worship. Where the ordinary Catholic was concerned, Cranmer's revision of the Latin Mass in his new rite of 1549 did not appear as startling as the transition from Latin to English while still using the old rite. Even an Anglican author can see clearly that by introducing English into the traditional services "Cranmer clearly was preparing for the day when liturgical revision would become possible". 12As early as 11th April, 1547, Compline was being sung in English in the royal chapel. 13 The opening of the first Parliament of Edward's reign was made the occasion for a far more significant novelty as it touched the ritual of the Mass itself. The King rode from his palace of Westminster to the church of St. Peter with all the lords spiritual and temporal for a Mass during which the Gloria, Credo and Agnus Dei were all sung in English. 14 Even the more conservative bishops were now prepared to concede that while Latin should still be the general rule during Mass, especially" in the mysteries thereof, nevertheless certain prayers might be in the mother tongue for the instruction and stirring of the devotion of the people as shall be thought convenient." 15 By 12th May, 1548, it was possible to have a totally English Mass at Westminster, including the consecration. 16As well as insisting upon the vernacular, the Reformers demanded that the whole service should be audible to the congregation. A rubric in the 1549 Prayer Book requires that the priest "shall saye, or syng, playnly and distinctly, this prayer folowyng", namely, the Canon. 18 The Council of Trent pronounced anathemas upon anyone holding the propositions either that "the rite of the Roman Church whereby a part of the Canon and the words of consecration are pronounced in a low tone is to be condemned; or that the Mass ought to be celebrated in the vernacular tongue only."19 These anathemas do not, of course, preclude the possibility of these practices being permitted within the Roman rite.
COMMUNION UNDER BOTH KINDS
One of Cranmer's first important innovations was to impose the practice of Communion under both kinds for the laity at the end of 1547. Many Catholics both in England and abroad made the mistake of conceding this change without opposition for the sake of peace.
Every such break with tradition lessened the impact of those to follow so that when changes that were not simply matters of discipline were introduced the possibility of effective resistance was considerably lessened.
THE NEW ORDER OF COMMUNION
The printing of " The Order of Communion," a booklet of only three or four leaves, was finished on 8th March, 1548. This was to be used in conjunction with the traditional Mass and must not be confused with the wholly new Communion service contained in the 1549 Prayer Book. The 1548 rite contained exhortations addressed to those about to receive the Sacrament which, according to Mgr. Hughes, contained The book also included a ritual for the administration of Communion under both kinds and these prayers, with a few modifications, were incorporated into the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. Mgr. Hughes' assessment of the ambiguous nature of the new rite is shared by the Protestant historian S. T. Bindoff.
"Just how pleasing this new rite was to discerning Protestants was made clear by no less a person than Miles Coverdale who translated it into Latin and sent a copy to Calvin declaring it to be "the first fruits of godliness (according as the Lord now wills his religion to revive in England) . . . " 23In his proclamation giving effect to the new service the King admonishes such radical Protestants as Coverdale "to stay and quiet themselves with this our direction-----and not enterprise to run afore and so by their rashness to become the greatest hinderers" of change. But at the same time he speaks of a "most earnest intent further to travail for the reformation and setting forth of such godly orders."24The radicals did not need to "quiet themselves" long and the further "godly orders" were to be imposed in the following year.
ALTARS REPLACED BY TABLES
This was another step directly in line with the liturgical policies of the continental Reformers, the final product of which is well summarized by a description of the Communion service at Strassburg after 1530 when Bucer's influence became dominant. (It is worth repeating that Bucer influenced Cranmer, and hence his new liturgy, more than any other continental reformer.) On the same theme, Calvin explains that God "has given us a table at which to feast, not an altar on which to offer sacrifice. He has not consecrated priests, but ministers to distribute the sacred banquet." 26The wholesale destruction of altars in England did not take place until after the imposition of the 1549 Prayer Book, but a start had been made in 1548 with the altars of the chantry chapels which Cranmer had suppressed. After 1549 the stone altars upon which the Sacrifice of the Mass had been offered were replaced with wooden tables placed in the chancel. On 27th November, 1548, John ab Ulmis wrote to Bullinger as follows: During a vacancy in the See of Norwich when it came under Cranmer's jurisdiction (1549-1550), "The most part of all altars" in this diocese were taken down. 28 In a series of Lenten sermons preached before the King and Council Hooper urged the complete abolition of altars and the substitution of tables because there were only three forms of sacrifice which Christian men could offer and these did not require an altar. They were sacrifices of thanksgiving; benevolence and liberality to the poor; and the mortifying of our own bodies, and to die unto sin . . . On 27th March, 1550, after the appointment of Ridley to the See of London, Hooper wrote to Bullinger: Hooper's expectations of Ridley proved to be well founded. Within three months he had issued injunctions calling for the removal of the altars from churches of his diocese.31 Altars were "too enduring monuments" to "the age old belief in the sacrifice the Mass. Altar-smashing was already a well recognised mark of the Reformation on the Continent, where the practice had been the normal accompaniment of the abolition of the Mass."32
On 24th November, 1550, the King's Council ordered the universal implementation of this policy in England, "that all the altars throughout the kingdom should be destroyed. For the future, whenever the rite of the Holy Eucharist was celebrated, a wooden table was to be used, covered, during the rite, with a cloth of linen.33 This was intended "to avoid all matters of further contention and strife", and in a set of reasons accompanying the instruction (signed by Cranmer among others) it was explained that:
"Then throughout the land the consecrated altars of the Christian sacrifice were cast out, and in the account books of country parishes such items as this appeared: 'Payd to tylers for breckynge downe forten awters in the cherche' . . . . " 35
A descendant of Bishop Ridley writes in a biography of his reforming ancestor that the destruction of the altars which the ordinary people considered sacrilege shocked them into a full realization of the extent of the revolution which had taken place: The fact that the word altar is used in certain of the rubrics of the 1549 Prayer Book might appear to involve some inconsistency with the teaching of the Reformers. This point is dealt with in the explanation which accompanied the order of the King's Council demanding the destruction of altars. It explains that "it calleth the table where the holy Communion is distributed, with lauds and thanksgiving unto the Lord, an altar; for that there is offered the same sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving."37 Nevertheless, the word 'altar' was struck out of the 1552 Prayer Book and was not subsequently replaced. Archbishop Laud ordered the communion tables to be placed altar-wise, against the east wall, in about 1636.38
There were a good number of other innovations some of which might appear of minor importance but nonetheless played their part in contributing to the general atmosphere of change, disturbance, and unrest. The most important of these was the widespread destruction of statues. The Reformers abolished such well loved ceremonies as the carrying of candles on Candlemas day, the distribution of ashes on Ash Wednesday and of palms on Palm Sunday.39 "In these years 1547 and 1548 consequently the popular mind was being stirred up by changes in old established ceremonial, by novel introductions into the services, by intemperate preaching and by profane tracts scattered broadcast over the country, attacking with scurrilous abuse what the people had hitherto been taught to regard as the Most Holy."40
The seeds of revolution had been sown. All that remained was for the revolutionaries to reap their harvest.[Emphasis mine.]
1. PHR, p. 30.
2. EBCP, p. 120.
3. Ibid., p. 125.
4. Ibid., p. 118.
5. TE, p. 152.
6. EBCP, pp. 108-9.
7. Sermons, P.S., pp. 70-1.
8. EBCP, p. 102.
9. FSPB, Introduction.
10. RMP, vol. I, p. 211 (citing Calvin).
11. RIE, vol. II, p. 113.
12. FSPB, Introduction, p. x.
13. EBCP, p. 58.
14. Ibid., p. 64.
15. Ibid., p. 89.
16. Ibid., p. 102.
17. The England of Elizabeth: the Structure of Society (London, 1951), p. 17.
18. FSPB, p. 221.
19. D, 956. The Council of Trent explained that "Since the nature of man is such that without external means he cannot easily be raised to the meditation of Divine things, Holy Mother Church has instituted certain rites, namely that some things in the Mass be pronounced in a low tone and others in a louder tone. She has likewise, in accordance with apostolic discipline and tradition, made use of ceremonies such as mystical blessings, lights, incense, vestments, and many other things of this kind whereby both the majesty of so great a sacrifice might be empha- sized and the minds of the faithful be excited by those visible signs of religion and piety to the contemplation of those most sublime things which are hidden in this sacrifice," D, 943.
20. EBCP, p. 79.
21. RIE, vol. II, p. 102.
22. TE, p, 153.
23. Original Letters, P.S., pp. 31-2.
24. EBCP, p, 95.
25. FSPB, Introduction, p. vi,
26. Institutes; IV, xviii, 12, col. 1059.
27. Original Letter, p. 384.
28. EBCP, p. 256.
29. Early Writings, P .5., p. 488.
30. Original Letters, P .5. vol. I, p. 79.
31. ESR, p. 188.
32. Ibid., p. 187.
33. RIE, vol. II, pp. 120, 121.
34. CW, vol. II, p. 524.
35. ESR, p. 189.
36. J. G. Ridley, Nicholas Ridley (London, 1957), pp. 218-9.
37. CW, vol. II, p. 525.
38. RMP, vol. II, p. 219. Note 1. A rubric in the 1552 Prayer Book directs that the minister shall stand on the north side of the table and no longer face east as in the traditional liturgy. A Protestant author, Dr. Srawley, admits in his book Liturgy and Worship that this was to "emphasise the idea of the 'communion feast'." (p. 308).
39. EBCP, p. 98.
40. Ibid., p. 128. |
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Post by Admin on Jan 28, 2020 11:20:06 GMT
The Priesthood and the Ordinal
THE DENIAL of the sacrificial nature of the Mass, explicit in the teaching of the Reformers and implicit in the 1549 Prayer Book, was logically followed by the abolition of the Catholic conception of the priesthood, with its seven degrees, and its replacement by a Protestant ministry in three degrees (bishops, priests, and deacons). 1 This has already been discussed at the conclusion of Chapter VI. According to the Protestants, That this is most certainly still the teaching of an influential section of the Church of England today is made clear by the Rev. J. Charley in his commentary on the " Agreement on the Doctrine of the Ministry" published by the Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission in December, 1973. 4The Council of Trent taught against the Reformers, in its Twenty-third session, that Anathema was pronounced upon anyone who denied this. 6The Council also taught that in order that the priesthood Anathema was pronounced upon anyone who denied "that besides the priesthood there are not in the Catholic Church other orders, both major and minor, by which, as by certain steps, advance is made to the priesthood." 8
THE NEW [CRAMNER] ORDINAL
This new rejection of the Catholic concept of the priesthood was made explicit by the replacement of the Catholic Pontifical by a New Ordinal, based on a German Lutheran rite, and breathing the spirit of Protestantism throughout. 9 No unprejudiced reader who examined the evidence could doubt for a moment that this Ordinal most certainly did not have the intention of ordaining sacrificing priests with the power to consecrate and offer the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrifice of the Mass. Most Anglican ministers today would agree without hesitation that they do not consider themselves to have been ordained as sacrificing priests in this sense and would insist that there is no scriptural basis for such a concept. The scope of this study does not permit even a cursory examination of the deficiencies of the Anglican Ordinal. There is space only to cite a few of the judgments passed upon it. Those wishing to study the matter in any detail should obviously begin with Pope Leo XIII's Apostolicae Curae. S. T. Bindoff assesses Cranmer's Ordinal as follows:
The Catholic Bishops in their Vindication state: Fr. Francis Woodlock, S.J., passes a judgment on the new Ordinal and the 1552 Communion Service which provides an excellent summary of the end product of the revolutionary process which has been outlined in the preceding chapters.
[Emphasis mine.]
1. RMP, vol. I, p. 564.
2. K. Rahner, The Teaching of the Church (Cork, 1967), p. 342.
3. Ibid., p. 339.
4. Agreement on the Doctrine of the Ministry, Grove Books, Bramcote, Notts, 1973.
5. D, 957.
6. D, 961.
7. D, 958.
8. D, 962.
9. RMP, vol. I, p. 564.
10. TE, p. 162.
11. VAC, p. 78.
12. The Reformation and the Eucharist (London, 1927), p. 50. |
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Post by Admin on Jan 29, 2020 12:13:29 GMT
An Ingenious Essay in Ambiguity
IN THEIR Vindication of the Bull Apostolicae Curae, the English Catholic bishops urged a comparison of the Missal with Cranmer's 1549 Prayer Book which would reveal a series of omissions "of which the evident purpose was to eliminate the idea of sacrifice." 1 As has been shown in previous chapters, although this prayer book replaced the Sarum Missal the nature of these omissions can be made clear by comparing it with the Roman Missal in view of the substantial identity between the Sarum and Roman rites. The texts of the 1549 Prayer Book and the Sarum Missal are both obtainable. 2Cranmer entitled his new service " The Supper of the Lorde and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Masse." This title is an adequate summary of its nature; it could be, and was clearly intended to be, interpreted as a Protestant "commemoration" of the Lord's Supper but contained nothing specifically heretical and could be interpreted as a Mass. The word "Mass" was, of course, dropped from the title of the service in the 1552 Prayer Book which marked the fourth and final stage in Cranmer's liturgical revolution, the imposition of a service which could be interpreted as nothing but a Protestant commemoration. This ambiguity is stressed by Francis Clark in the most authoritative study of the Eucharistic doctrine of the Reformers yet undertaken, in which he quotes the Protestant scholar T. M. Parker: Professor A. G. Dickens assesses Cranmer's service as follows: Another Protestant historian, S. T. Bindoff comments: Ample documentation has been provided in Chapter VIII to demonstrate that the "reformed" liturgies in general, and the 1549 Prayer Book in particular, expressed their Protestant ethos principally by what they rejected from the traditional Latin Mass - everything that smacked of oblation, as Luther expressed it. 6"The liturgy of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer has been exhaustively studied, and there is wide agreement that its most significant difference in comparison with the Latin rite which it replaced was the omission of sacrificial language."7 This can be made clear by examining Cranmer's Communion service in some detail.
The Supper of the Lorde and the Holy Communion, Commonly called the Masse 1549
"Even the closest theological scrutiny of the new composition will not detect anything inconsistent with, or excluding, Luther's negation of the sacrificial nature of the Mass. "Looking therefore at the characteristics of the new Anglican service and contrasting it on the one hand with the ancient missal, and on the other with the Lutheran liturgies, there can be no hesitation whatever in classing it with the latter, not with the former," writes Cardinal Gasquet. 8 For this reason, it will be pertinent to refer to Luther's liturgical innovations while examining Cranmer's service. (a) The first part of his new rite corresponds very closely with Luther's 1523 Latin Mass. Luther stipulated that vestments still in use could continue to be used, also the word Mass. The service was to begin with the Introit (the whole psalm to be sung), the Judica me, with its reference to the priest going "to the altar of God ", and the Confiteor are both abolished. 9 The confession of sins to Our Lady, the Saints and Angels and the request for their intercession was obviously incompatible with the Protestant doctrine of Justification. It was also regarded, from the Lutheran standpoint, as a sacerdotal preparation for the sacrifice.10 Cranmer follows Luther in omitting it.(b) "Next, according to Luther, there are to follow the Kyrie, Gloria, and the ancient collects (provided they are pious), the Epistle, Gradual, Gospel and Nicene Creed." Cranmer follows this pattern but abolishes the Gradual. (c) Luther says that a sermon may be preached before the Mass or after the Credo. Cranmer follows the latter suggestion and adds two exhortations to Holy Communion taken from the 1548 Order of Communion referred to in Chapter XI. Certain modifications had been made in these exhortations to make their Protestant import more clear. (d) After this there follows in the "Roman Mass" what Luther describes as " all that abomination called the Offertory, and from this point almost everything stinks of oblation". Luther therefore swept away the whole of the Offertory in the Roman rite and Cranmer followed suit. "The 'Offertory' now became merely the collecting of money for the 'poor men's box' and for church dues. Gone were all the prayers and invocations of the former Latin rite which spoke of the sacrifice to be performed." 11 A Communion Antiphon is still said or sung "according to the length and shortness of the tyme, that the people be offering." There is no trace of such prayers as the following from the Sarum Missal: "Receive, O Holy Father, this Oblation which I, an unworthy sinner offer in Thine honour, of Blessed Mary and all Thy Saints, for my sins and offences, and for the salvation of the living and of all the Faithful departed."
(e) The Orate Fratres and the Secret Prayer are abolished both by Luther and Cranmer. Both direct that after completing the preparation of the bread and wine the minister should begin the Sursum Corda dialogue preceding the Preface. Dialogue and Preface are as in the Roman rite and in Cranmer's rite this similarity is enhanced by keeping the Sanctus in its traditional position. Luther had postponed it until after the Words of Institution, though this was not always observed. (f) The most startling difference between the 1549 Prayer Book and Luther's 1523 Mass is that the former keeps a version of the Canon while Luther had cast aside "everything that savours of oblation together with the entire Canon, let us keep those things which are pure and holy." However, from what Cranmer kept of the Old Mass "all the numerous references indicating and implying that the action being done is a sacrifice, and that what the priest is offering as a sacrifice, is the Body and Blood of Christ here really present-----all this has been carefully cut out". Cardinal Gasquet explained that: " Luther swept away the Canon altogether and retained only the essential words of Institution. Cranmer substituted a new prayer of about the same length as the old Canon, leaving in it a few shreds of the ancient one, but divesting it of its character of sacrifice and oblation." 12 Some examples of Cranmer's technique are provided here: (g) Luther kept the Pater Noster with the traditional introduction but omitted the Libera Nos with its invocation of the intercession of Our Lady and the Saints. He also omitted the Fraction of the Host. Cranmer followed suit.(h) Luther directed that the Agnus Dei should be sung during the Communion. Cranmer followed suit.(i) Luther had kept the first of the preparatory prayers for Communion in the Roman rite, namely, the prayer for peace and unity beginning Domine Jesu Christe qui dixisti, as it contains no reference to the Blessed Sacrament. 25 Luther omits the second Prayer Domine Jesu Christi Fili Dei which does contain such a reference, together with the third prayer which comes into the same category, the Perceptio Corporis tui. The first prayer does not occur in the Sarum Missal but almost identical forms of the second and third do and Cranmer omits these. In place of the prayer for peace and unity in the Roman rite, the Sarum rite has two most beautiful prayers which are excluded by Cranmer for obvious reasons: (j) Cranmer's service does contain a penitential rite before Communion with a severely truncated Confiteor in which the references to Our Lady, the Saints, and the Angels are removed. (k) The celebrant's Communion prayers are omitted from Cranmer's rite, those from the Sarum rite being even less acceptable than the Roman: "Hail evermore, most holy flesh of Christ, to me above all things the sum of delight. May the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ avail to me a sinner as the way of life." However, Cranmer does include a prayer to be said by the priest in his own name and that of the people which contains phrases more than capable of being interpreted in a Catholic sense. It is important to note that the inclusion of such expressions does not necessarily imply an acceptance of the Catholic teaching of the substantial presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, a belief which Cranmer most certainly did not have. Sufficient has already been said on the use of Catholic terms by Protestants in a sense that involves the rejection of the Catholic teaching. (See Chapter VII.) The use of the word "spiritually" is perhaps the best example. Holy Communion can be spoken of as our spiritual food and drink with perfect orthodoxy but it can also be intended to specifically exclude the Catholic teaching of the Real Presence. "For figuratively he is in the bread and wine, and spiritually he is in them that worthily eat and drink the bread and wine; but really, carnally, and corporally he is only in heaven . . ."26
(l) As regards the administration of Holy Communion, it was to be given under both kinds. This had been one of the first changes the Reformers had managed to push through Parliament. 27 The reception of Communion under one kind was, of course, simply a disciplinary matter within the Roman rite. In the Eastern rites Holy Communion is given under both kinds. However, in reverting to a practice which had been long abandoned Cranmer was making the type of revolutionary break with established tradition condemned by the English Bishops in their Vindication of Apostolicae Curae. (See Chapter VIII.) Cranmer retained the traditional form of altar-bread but one of the rubrics to the 1549 Prayer Book directs that it must be "without all manner of printe, and something more larger and thicker than it was, so that it may be aptly deuided in two pieces, at the leaste, or more, by the discretion of the minister." This would help to stress the new emphasis on the Mass as essentially a commemorative meal.(m) After the Communion, Luther omits the Ablutions but allows the two prayers Quod ore sumpsimus and Corpus tuum to be said. Cranmer omits both Ablutions and prayers, the Corpus tuum was not included in the Sarum rite but the Quod ore was followed by another prayer which he found equally unacceptable. (n) The most unacceptable prayer after the Communion was quite clearly the Placeat tibi "May the homage of my bounden duty be pleasing to Thee, O Holy Trinity; and grant that the sacrifice which I, though unworthy, have offered in the sight of Thy Majesty may be acceptable to Thee, and through Thy mercy be a propitiation for me and for all those for whom I have offered it." This prayer had been singled out for particular censure by Protestants and, quite naturally, it vanished both in the Lutheran and Cranmerian rites. 28(o) Both Luther and Cranmer end their services with a blessing and omit the Last Gospel.
DISTRIBUTION OF COMMUNION
It is interesting to note that in the 1549 rite the people received Holy Communion while kneeling from the hands of a priest. "And although it bee redde in aunciente writers, that the people many years past receiued at the priestes handes the Sacrament of the body of Christ in thyr owne handes, and no commaundemet of Christ to the contrary: Yet forasmuche 'as they many tymes conueyghed the same secretelye away, kept it with them, and diuersly abused it to supersticion and wickednes: lest any suche thynge hereafter should be attempted, and that an uniformitie might be used, throughoute the whole Realme: it: thought conuenient the people commoly receiue the Sacramet of Christes body, in their mouthes, at the Priestes hande." 29However in the 1552 Prayer Book the minister: directed to give the bread "to the people in their handes kneling". 30 In order that the fact that the communicants were still required to kneel should not be "misconstrued, depraued, and interpreted in a wrong part" the notorious "Black Rubric" was added which explains that: The rubric was issued as a Royal Proclamation after some copies of the 1552 Prayer Book had already been published. It is interesting to note the correspondence between this rubric and doctrines anathematised in the Canons of the Thirteenth Session of the Council of Trent (1551).Cranmer was taking careful note of the teaching of Trent and in March, 1552, he wrote to Calvin:
Cranmer's response to the Council of Trent can be found in the Forty-two Articles of 1553 which were basically his work. 34 A passage in Article XXIX is illuminating both with reference to the Black Rubric and to the Canons of Trent's Thirteenth Session which have just been cited. Even E. C. Gibson, an Anglican historian who is prepared to go to any length to interpret the Articles in the most Catholic manner possible, is compelled to concede that it reflects the opinion of John a Lasco under whose influence Cranmer had come, "and its teaching on the presence in the Eucharist, if not actually Zwinglianism, is perilously near to it." 35The relevant section of Article XXIX reads as follows: E. C. Gibson accepts in his history of the Thirty-Nine Articles that "there can be little doubt that in 1552 and 1553 the formularies of the Church in this country were (to say the least) intended to be acceptable to those who sympathised with the Swiss school of Reformers in regard to the Eucharist, and who held that the Presence was merely figurative." 37The "Black Rubric" was omitted in the 1559 Prayer Book but was restored in 1662 with what another Anglican historian, J. T. Tomlinson, describes as a few "merely verbal" alterations. He cites other Anglican historians who also insist that "no change of meaning was intended by the verbal alterations of 1662", and points out that: "The pivot sentence upon which the whole Declaration hung remains unchanged, viz. that the body of Christ which 'is' in heaven, is 'not HERE.' That was, and is, absolutely fatal to any theory of 'presence' in the sense of residence within the elements. It was not merely a corporal manner of presence (which no Romanist ever affirmed), but 'ANY corporal presence' at all which is expressly rejected." 38It is worth pointing out that the more radical Reformers, such as John Knox and John Hooper, objected to kneeling for Communion no matter what might be said in any rubrics. 39 For them, kneeling could imply adoration, and anything which could even imply adoration should be abolished.
[Emphasis mine.]
1. VAC, p. 54.
2. FSPB and F. H. Dickinson, Missale Sarum (Gregg International Publishers Ltd., 1 Westmead, Farnborough, Hants., England. S.B.N. 576 99710).
3. ESR, p. 182, citing T. M. Parker, The English Reformation to 1558 (Oxford 1950), p. 130.
4. The English Reformation (London, 1964), p. 219.
5. TE, p. 154.
6. ESR, p. 183.
7. Ibid.
8. EBCP, p. 224.
9. RMP, vol. I, p. 383. References to Luther's reforms are based upon this chapter (VII) of Fr. Messenger's book.
10. EBCP, p. 220.
11. ESR, 184.
12. EBCP, p. 223.
13. The Modern Mass, p. 25.
14. CW, vol. I, p. 79.
15. The Armenian Decree, 1439. D, 715.
16. Works, P.S., p. 26.
17. Works, P.S., 111.
18. RMP,vol. I, p. 387.
19. TM, p. 402.
20. Op. cit., Note 15. D, 698.
21. Op. cit., Note 15.
22. CDT, see entry: Epiklesis.
23. RMP, vol. I, p. 388.
24. ESR, p. 186.
25. RMP, vol. I, p. 394.
26. CW, vol. I, p. 139.
27. RMP, vol. I, p. 358.
28. ESR, p. 187.
29. FSPB, p. 230.
30. Ibid., p. 389.
31. Ibid., p. 393.
32. D, 883 and 888.
33. CW, vol. II, p. 432.
34. Op. cit., Chapter VI, Note 29.
35. Ibid., p. 28.
36. Ibid., p. 83.
37. Ibid., p. 645.
38. The Prayer Book, Articles, and Homilies (London, 1897), pp. 264-5.
39. Ibid., p. 255.
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