The Roman Canon on the Trash Heap?
There is still a flurry here or there claiming that the Roman Canon is incoherent or obsolete for one reason or another. Traditionally, this Eucharistic prayer, sometimes called the Gregorian Canon, is held to be so sacred that even Popes have feared to make modifications. In the last fifteen hundred years, Gregory the Great added a few words to the Hanc igitur, and John XXIII added Saint Joseph to the list of Saints in the Communicantes.
Naturally, the Reformers of the sixteenth century wanted to trash it, and twentieth century liturgical bureaucrats were making the same mistakes. Pope Paul VI had to push very hard to keep it as an option in the modern Roman missal.
Read this article by Adrian Fortescue from the Catholic Encylopaedia.
About Fr. Anthony Chadwick
Father Anthony Chadwick was born in the north of England into an Anglican family. He was educated in one of the Church of England’s most well-known schools, St. Peter’s in York, at which he was nurtured in the Anglican musical tradition. After several years studying and working in London he studied theology at university level in Switzerland, Italy and France.
Still living in France, he has been a priest of the Traditional Anglican Communion (under Archbishop Hepworth) since 2005. Fr. Chadwick is charged with chaplaincy work among dispersed Anglicans in the north of France, is married and lives in Normandy. His interests outside the Church and directly religious matters include classical music, DIY and sailing. As a non-stipendiary priest, he earns his living as a technical translator.
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The "new" edition of a Sarum Missal I spoke of a week or so ago, is now available either from the lulu.com link provided or directly from the Nashotah House Mission Bookstore.
While not everything one could hope for, it is a tremendous improvement over anything else currently available. It is large format, spiral bound (so it lays flat), the Epistle and Gospel are fully printed for Sundays and most major feasts and it includes the venerable Roman Canon (with an optional "Epiclesis" from the Orthodox usage). The translations of the farced Kyries are the best I've seen as well. The compiler is obviously not trying to make any money with this venture, only to encourage use and study of the Sarum Use. You'll like the price at $34.98US.
Link to lulu.com:
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-divine-liturgy-of-the-sarum-rite/4925407
Link to Mission Bookstore:
http://www.nashotah.edu/bookstore.htm
Some of us interested in Anglicanorum Coetibus would like to retain the option of the mass used by the missionaries sent by Pope Gregory to the shores of England all those centuries ago.
I don't know if I'm very clear about what you mean, but that Mass would have been the Gregorian Sacramentary (containing the Roman Canon). I think most of us would find that usage very austere.
See http://pagesperso-orange.fr/civitas.dei/winch.pdf
This is a work by an old friend of mine (who died quite a while ago) who was a former Roman Catholic convert to Orthodoxy. This was an attempt dating from 1988 at reconstructing the Mass of Ordo Romanus Primus and the Gregorian Sacramentary for use in a western rite Orthodox context.
If you want a very austere variant of the Roman rite, try the Carthusian rite.
Don't forget that Pope St Gregory the Great and St Augustine of Canterbury (sent by the former on mission to England) were both Benedictine monks.
Back in the nineties, some heretical "Catholics" in Germany were advocating what they called the "Missa simplex" – which was to consist of precisely four parts: one Scripture reading; a very short Eucharistic Prayer (based on Hippolytus, but not even as lengthy as E.P. II, without even a Preface and the Sanctus); the Lord's Prayer; and, I think, a Blessing after Communion. To think that such is the radicalization of some Catholics… apparently what passes for Mass in some parts of Switzerland is abhorrent, and only in the loosest of senses in communion with Rome.
Thanks be, the Church has come a long way from these evil postconciliar delusions – look at how Benedict has freed the traditional Mass from its supposed shackles; and we look forward to the new, improved Anglican Use. What non-Catholics often don't understand is how the Pope himself is nowhere near as able to make things happen and to get others to follow him as those outside might imagine – the Holy Father knows that the restoration of the Church after these decades of dissent and confusion will be slow and difficult.
I was interested in Fr Chadwick's comment above – the article he links to proposes a first millennium form of the Roman Rite, which interestingly enough is what you get when you keep only the parts sung at High Mass (plus the Secret, Canon and Libera nos of course). I recall a traditionally-minded writer arguing that such a perfectly Catholic, if austere liturgy would be a true reform of the reform, if it were allowed alongside the full-blown Traditional Mass.
(In passing, may I say that, having attended both Low and High Mass in the Dominican Rite, it is a very pleasing Use, nicer even than a Roman version, and I understand it is very similar indeed to the Sarum Rite.)
And of course, every scholar worth his salt knows that the Roman Canon, far from being in bad Latin or thrown together all absurdly, is in fact older than all the main Eastern Liturgies, having been conserved very carefully, and has a very ancient two-part structure, in common with only a few other surviving anaphoræ. A quick look at its successive clauses will reveal that the whole exhibits a pleasing chiastic (or "onion-ring") structure, a format beloved of the Greco-Roman world and common in the New Testament.
Oh, and Fr Chadwick, as your article mentions, that noted Englishman, Carolingian liturgist and deacon, Blessed Alcuin of York, is said to have been the man who inserted the words "for whom we offer or" (pro quibus tibi offerimus vel) into the Canon.
The Roman (Gregorian) Canon is a beautiful and comprehensive piece of work which should continue to be cherished. Surely it should be an option in any new Missal resulting from TAC unity with the Holy See. Contrast it with the Novus Ordo! The 1549 Anglican Canon comes close to it in its expression, and both of these (along with the Novus Ordo) have the Epiclesis before the Hoc est, which is where it belongs! I have used it (it is in the Anglican Missal, but not in the American), and look forward to using it again. The truncated "new liturgies" of TEC are a sad substitute for this classic. And the 1928 Canon? The late, great Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston said in the 1960s that it could be a compromise between the Roman and, then, Episcopal liturgies.