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except in the section containing historical documents.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