Alpha60
Taxiarches
There is much to criticize about Anglicanism, and given the very large numbers of former Anglicans or semi-Anglicans such as myself who variously crossed the Bosphorus, the Nile, the Aras, the Euphrates or I suppose the Ganges in joining an Eastern or Oriental Orthodox church, there are many among us prepared to provide such criticism.
However, I think, despite the somewhat unpleasant nature of Archbishop Cranmer and the more unpleasant parts, particularly in the 1552 and Irish editions of the book, we can look on the BCP on the whole as being of some benefit. It is evident that the Roman Catholic Church had seriously dropped the ball in much of Western Europe; those countries in particular which did not speak a Latin-derived language tended to be left a bit in the dark, versus in Orthodoxy where, if the vernacular was not used, some archaic predecessor much loved by the people and at least somewhat understood was in use.
The BCP represents an elegant simplification of the Divine Office, which, outside of some the Dominican and other religious orders and Benedictine monasteries, which had their own office, the Archdiocese of Milan (and thus the Ambrosian Rite) or the small number of churches in Toledo still using the Mozarabic Rite, had been disastrously fumbled by Rome by the 16th century. It was not ultimately brought into anything like the elegance of the Orthodox or Assyrian offices until, I would argue, Pius X (instead, in the intervening centuries between Trent and Pius X, various attempts at revision were made which failed miserably). The services of Mattins and Evensong are elegant and concise, as is the lectionary. The book failed when it came to sacramental services, but not so disastrously as to require wholesale abolition; the Antiochian Western Rite Vicarate uses a Divine Liturgy of St. Tikhon based on the recommendations of the great confessor-Patriarch, or rather of a committee led ny him, on the changes required to the BCP to make it acceptable to Orthodoxy.
Many of these changes were partially mirrord by Anglo-Catholic revisions of the text.
The book I would argue benefitted us, by:
- Shaping a hieratic, liturgical English which became the basis for other service books
- Keeping alive, in the face of Puritanism, the idea of liturgical worship and a prayer book
- Providing greater comfort in many cases to people in times of war or disaster than would be provided by the Puritanical solution of “the Bible” by itself, with no interpretive context
- Preserving most of the more important holy days and the idea of an episcopate, a priesthood and a diaconate
- Preserving a sense of Catholicity
One could argue that, particularly in the last two instances, this was something largely missed out on by the Swiss and Dutch Calvinists, the Puritan settlers in North America, and so on, and to a lesser extent in the more low-church Lutheran territories.
However, I think, despite the somewhat unpleasant nature of Archbishop Cranmer and the more unpleasant parts, particularly in the 1552 and Irish editions of the book, we can look on the BCP on the whole as being of some benefit. It is evident that the Roman Catholic Church had seriously dropped the ball in much of Western Europe; those countries in particular which did not speak a Latin-derived language tended to be left a bit in the dark, versus in Orthodoxy where, if the vernacular was not used, some archaic predecessor much loved by the people and at least somewhat understood was in use.
The BCP represents an elegant simplification of the Divine Office, which, outside of some the Dominican and other religious orders and Benedictine monasteries, which had their own office, the Archdiocese of Milan (and thus the Ambrosian Rite) or the small number of churches in Toledo still using the Mozarabic Rite, had been disastrously fumbled by Rome by the 16th century. It was not ultimately brought into anything like the elegance of the Orthodox or Assyrian offices until, I would argue, Pius X (instead, in the intervening centuries between Trent and Pius X, various attempts at revision were made which failed miserably). The services of Mattins and Evensong are elegant and concise, as is the lectionary. The book failed when it came to sacramental services, but not so disastrously as to require wholesale abolition; the Antiochian Western Rite Vicarate uses a Divine Liturgy of St. Tikhon based on the recommendations of the great confessor-Patriarch, or rather of a committee led ny him, on the changes required to the BCP to make it acceptable to Orthodoxy.
Many of these changes were partially mirrord by Anglo-Catholic revisions of the text.
The book I would argue benefitted us, by:
- Shaping a hieratic, liturgical English which became the basis for other service books
- Keeping alive, in the face of Puritanism, the idea of liturgical worship and a prayer book
- Providing greater comfort in many cases to people in times of war or disaster than would be provided by the Puritanical solution of “the Bible” by itself, with no interpretive context
- Preserving most of the more important holy days and the idea of an episcopate, a priesthood and a diaconate
- Preserving a sense of Catholicity
One could argue that, particularly in the last two instances, this was something largely missed out on by the Swiss and Dutch Calvinists, the Puritan settlers in North America, and so on, and to a lesser extent in the more low-church Lutheran territories.
