cms@dragon.uucp (08/16/90)
Catholic: A word meaning "general" or "universal" which has come to have a number of meanings in the church. It is used to distinguish the church universal from local congregations, to mean "orthodox" instead of "heretical," to recall the undivided church before the divisions which separated the Eastern from the Western churches in 1054, to name churches which claim an unbroken continuity of faith and tradition from the age of the apostles (including Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox traditions), and to mean those who value continuity and unity. Traditionally, the "catholic" part of the creedal phrase "one holy catholic and apostolic church" refers to the claim that what the church believes, it has always and everywhere believed. A New Dictionary for Episcopalians The Rev. John N. Wall, Jr. Catholic. The word, meaning "general" or "universal," has come to have various uses in Christian terminology: 1. Of the universal Church as distinct from local Christian communities. 2. In the sense of "orthodox," as distinct from "heretical" or "schismatical." 3. Of the undivided Church before the schism of the E. and W. in 1054. Thereafter the W. Church referred to itself as "catholic," the E. preferring to describe itself as "orthodox." 4. Since the Reformation RCs have come to use it exclusively of themselves. Anglicans and Old Catholics have also adopted it to cover besides themselves and the RC Church also the E. Orthodox Church in the belief that these communions together represent the undivided Church of earlier ages. 5. In general it is employed of those Christians who claim to possess a historical and continuous tradition of faith and practice, as opposed to Protestants who tend to find their ultimate standards in the Bible as interpreted on the principles of the 16th-cent. Reformation. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church edited by E. A. Livingstone In 1689, when William and Mary were crowned, English monarchs have vowed to uphold the "Protestant Reformed Religion." A hundred years later, Americans chose to call themselves the "Protestant Episcopal Church." Two hundred years after that, in a seeming about face, the word "Protestant" disappeared from the official name, and Americans decided to call themselves the "Episcopal Church." In the fact, the word "Protestant" doesn't appear anywhere in the Book of Common Prayer except in the section containing historical documents. Why? The changing attitude of Anglicans toward the word "Protestant" is a reflection, in some measure, of the change in usage. Originally, Protestant meant "non-Roman." However, the Episcopal Church, and its parent the Church of England, has always considered itself Anglican Catholic, although it deplored what at the time were regarded as many "Romish" practices. Actually, however, the Anglican tradition was far more conservative in terms of late medieval Catholic worship than many Protestant churches, although it wasn't nearly as conservative as some. If we regard "medieval ceremonial" as including vestments, images, Marian devotions, private confession, and Latin rites, many Lutheran churches were more Catholic than the Church of England in the 16th Century. In terms of Eucharistic theology, as well as theology of the Sacraments in general, Calvin is more Catholic in the medieval tradition than Cranmer. In the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, for example, many fought to retain the words "may worthily receive the most precious body and blood of thy son Jesus Christ...that he may dwell in them, and they in him," but they were eventually dropped from the English rite. I won't bore with details of the development of the Book of Common Prayer except to say that no other liturgical tradition is so closely identified with a single document. Other churches fight over the their hymnals; our hymnal was late in coming anyway, but the 1940 hymnal wasn't changed until 1982. We reserve our passionate fights for revisions in the Prayer Book. Today, Roman Catholic and Anglican Catholic worship is extremely similar. The Roman Catholics borrowed the Eucharistic liturgy from the Anglican Catholics, the same lectionary is used (along with other Churches cooperating in this movement), and the Romans also adopted the long Anglican practice of face-to-face personal Confession. How did this come about? Many shifts in liturgical practice were mutual. In the late medieval period, there was a stage and an audience, and the audience watched the priest perform. The English Reformation changed this attitude to more direct lay participation in the liturgy. The BCP specified that whenever the priest spoke, or a minister read from the Bible, they were instructed to SPEAK IN A LOUD VOICE, to the end that people may the better hear (not to mention that he spoke in a loud ENGLISH voice). We take this for granted today; in 1549, it was a revolution. ONe of the 16th Century Protestant Reformation's most ardent tasks was its restoration to the liturgy the element of the Word of God, which by the end of Medieval era had practically vanished. Even though Luther and Calvin supported weekly celebrations of the Eucharist, the combined force of their influence failed against the philosphical revolution sweeping the Protestant churches. Nominalism resulted in the number of yearly Eucharistic celebrations being drastically reduced. In the 1800s the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States experienced what is commonly called the Catholic Revival (detractors often refer to it as the Oxford Movement, Puseyism, Tractarianism, and Ritualism). It was not intended to be construed as moving closer to Roman Catholic worship of the period, but rather, towards the worship prevelant in the late Middle Ages of England. In the Catholic Revival, there was a shift towards the liturgy before the monasteries were destroyed, and had nothing to do with contemporary Roman Catholicism. This revolution reversed 300 years of rejection of medieval worship practices and was also a rejection of a 150 years of rationalism that had shown little patience with either Protestant or Roman Catholic supernaturalism; rationalism had lost much of its appeal due to the excesses of the French Revolution and the industrial age brought its own problems. Yet the Victorian era was noted for its piety as well as wealth and pleasure expressed, in many ways, in people's devotion to the Church. There is probably no other era in which study of Church architecture became a popular hobby :-). The standards of taste reshaping Anglican worship in England had its presence felt around the world, including America. Typically, Anglican worship stayed in tune with the Prayer Book. The Catholic Revival was both strongly supported and vigorously resisted. Styles of worship ranged from the typically Protestant bare-bones approach to elaborate ceremonial. The biggest change was from Morning Prayer to celebration of the Eucharist every Sunday and holy day. This was a substantial change from the days when baptisms, weddings, and funerals were more common than the Eucharist. Sacramental theology also changed with a renewed emphasis on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, on Baptism as regeneration, and on the value of the Sacramental Confession. There was renewed emphasis on seasons and feasts, visual and musical support, and vestments. Anglican orthodoxy also caused a changed in church architecture; village Gothic churches of the 14th Century were held up as the standard. Carved, painted, and glazed medieval images became common. The Cathedral building movement flourished, symbolism flourished, art flourished. The practical results of the Catholic Revival are still felt today in the nearly universal "8 o'clock" weekly celebrations, customary even in parishes where the main service at 9 or 11 is still Morning Prayer three days out of four. The Episcopal Church today continues to maintain, in thought and practice, a theologically proper balance between the Word and the Sacraments, especially in the liturgy. The invention of the printing press has received too little recognition for its influence in the universalism and liturgical conformity of Catholic and Protestant worship practices. The political and ecclesiastical tensions of the Reformation made consistency not only possible but necessary. Invariable liturgical texts were the norm until the 1979 Prayer Book introduced "or this" every other page. Daily Anglican worship included daily family worship, led by the father for the family (as Jews do today). A return to this practice would do much to eliminate the Sunday-morning-and-the-rest-of-the-week mentality of many Americans. In the 19th Century, a number of great preachers extolled the virtues of the Catholic Revival such as John Henry Newman, F. W. Robertson, and Phillips Brooks. Evangelicals have always stressed preaching for conversion and, in the shift towards more sacramentally based worship, preaching came to be associated with celebration of the Eucharist. Colored vestments, candles, crosses, and the like were restored. Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics, in some ways, supported each other in the early days of the movements, with Evangelicals opposing slavery and Anglo-Catholics ministering to the poor in urban slums. In the 1920s, the liturgical movement was gaining momentum and the need for revision of the Prayer Book became evident, giving new impetus to the broader needs the Catholic Revival had brought to public awareness. Still, the new Prayer Book reflected a rejection of many Victorian tendencies, clericalism, architectual revivalism, sentimental music, individualism, and the general preference for things medieval. At the same time, Anglican worship broke out of England in America, and began to embrace liturgical traditions and prayers from all time period of Christian worship as well as all traditions, both eastern and western. In the 1930s, the Anglican liturgical movement joined forces with the Roman Catholic liturgical movement. In this way, the early church, rather than the medieval church, became the standard by which the liturgical movement measured its revisions. The ecumenical movement was also gaining momentum in this period. Before World War II, liturgical movements ran parallel, but soon began to diverge. By the time Vatican II rolled around, the new Roman Catholic agenda was plurality of forms, simplification of rites, a three-year lectionary, contemporary language, and recovery of primitive church practices. This has resulted in changes in both Anglican and Roman worship practices. The greatest triumph of the liturgical movement was the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The laity have been given more active roles, lay readers read the Bible and lead prayers, spontaneous intercessory prayer is encouraged, and exchanging the peace is now common. The new calendar introduced many feasts, and many saints, many of them Anglicans. Provisions have been made in the Prayer Book for the public Healing Mass, ministrations to the sick, at the time of death, new marriage rites stressing equality of partners. Also, the new Anglican ordination rites embrace the third-century Hippolytus instead of medieval rites. A lot of this has to do with a growing disatisfaction with nominalism, the "common sense" approach to reality so prevelant in the earlier era in both American and European thought. The restiveness is in conjunction with a hunger for meaning in contact with the mystery of life; nominalism cannot appease this hunger. This has produced a renewed interest in the Sacraments and sacramental worship of the early church. Thoughtful persons are looking into water and bread and wine for true meaning. Eucharistic Prayer D in the Book of Common Prayer is the Ecumenical Eucharistic celebration used, with minor variations, in a number of Christian denominations. It is a notable accomplishment and only a foretaste of future unity. The experience of 2000 years of worship has taught that not all clergy are capable of spontaneous expressions of joy and moving prayers during Eucharistic celebrations, making standard texts greatly desirable and useful. The 1979 Prayer Book is, in many ways, the ultimate triumph of the Catholic Revival. The Prayer Book proclaims the Episcopal Church is a member of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. The Episcopal Church has retained the three-fold ministry of bishop, priest, and deacon, and the Prayer Book consecration in the Eucharist retained most of the Canon of the Mass in a way no other non-Roman church did. Today, Scripture is read, the Word is preached, sacraments are administered; priests and laity alike minister to the suffering, injustice is condemned, and people are led in building the Kingdom of God. The Prayer Book requires people to be cleansed of their sins before approaching the Holy Altar to receive Communion, expressed in the Prayer Book's rhythmic cycle of repentance and thanksgiving, designed to affect personal and social behavior as well. The Anglican Catholic Church is a Bible Church through and through while simultaneously maintaining the importance of tradition. -- Sincerely, Cindy Smith _///_ // SPAWN OF A JEWISH _///_ // _///_ // <`)= _<< CARPENTER _///_ //<`)= _<< <`)= _<< _///_ // \\\ \\ \\ _\\\_ <`)= _<< \\\ \\ \\\ \\ <`)= _<< >IXOYE=('> \\\ \\ \\\ \\_///_ // // /// _///_ // _///_ // emory!dragon!cms <`)= _<< _///_ // <`)= _<< <`)= _<< \\\ \\<`)= _<< \\\ \\ \\\ \\ GO AGAINST THE FLOW! \\\ \\ A Real Live Catholic in Georgia