"The Fond du Lac Circus"

In the period from roughly 1890 to 1970 relations between some Orthodox and some Anglicans became, at times, very close indeed.  In Europe, from the 1870s onward the Russian Orthodox Church in particular interested itself in the Old Catholic Churches, those groups of formerly Roman Catholic clergy and laity in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland (and later elsewhere) that rejected the definitions of Vatican I in 1870 on the infallibility and universal jurisdiction of the papacy — the Dutch Old Catholic Church originated earlier, in the 1720s, as a result of a split in the Dutch Catholic community — and in 1889 organized itself into the “Old Catholic Union of Utrecht,” and because of the strong and sympathetic interest in the Old Catholics of elements in the Church of England, this common “anti-papalism” had the effect of furthering contacts between Anglicans and Orthodox, contacts which had been initiated in the 1850s through the efforts of some of the “Oxford Movement” Tractarians and their Anglo-Catholic successors, but which had been occasional in occurrence and largely fruitless in results.  In America, Episcopalians by and large, and especially those of an Anglo-Catholic outlook, sought the friendship of the Orthodox and often assisted Orthodox communities in tangible ways, and so earned a good reputation amongst the Orthodox, particularly the Russians.  This friendship was not a disinterested one on the Episcopalians’ part, as they often sought from the Orthodox support and even recognition of their own claims to embody a non-papal form of “Western Catholicism,” and since the Episcopalians who made most of the Orthodox tended to be those of a most strongly Anglo-Catholic viewpoint, such as Charles Chapman Grafton (1830-1912; Bishop of Fond du Lac from 1889), leading Orthodox clergy tended often to take them as representative of Anglicanism as a whole.  When Reginald Heber Weller (1857-1933) was consecrated as Bishop-Coadjutor of Fond du Lac on November 8, 1900 Bishop Tikhon and two of his clergy attended the event as guests, and a photograph of the assembled Episcopalian bishops and a Polish Old Catholic bishop vested in copes and miters, together with the three Russians was circulated by indignant Protestant Episcopalians (who tried to prosecute Grafton and the other bishops for violating the rubrics of the Prayer Book at the service) under the title of “the Fond du Lac Circus.”  It was some four years later that Bishop Tikhon sent his inquiry regarding the use of the Prayer Book by convert Episcopalian clergy and parishes to Moscow.  One of Bishop Tikhon’s assistant bishops, the Lebanese Raphael Hawaweeny (1860-1915), whom he consecrated in 1904 as Bishop of Brooklyn, and who was canonized by the Orthodox church in America in 2000, in 1910 issued a decree allowing members of the Orthodox faithful who were in “emergency situations” or who lived in regions where Orthodox priests were inaccessible, to have recourse to the ministrations of Episcopalian clergy — although late in 1912 he wrote a pastoral letter formally to revoke this permission, on the grounds that his further study of Anglicanism had convinced him that the “loose teaching” of Anglican theologians and the variety and indefiniteness of Anglican doctrinal stances demonstrated that the Episcopal Church was a Protestant body, and also because, as he claimed, Episcopalians had begun to proselytize Orthodox laypeople to join Episcopal churches (his letter can be found here).

From a different perspective, Frederick Joseph Kinsman (1868-1944), the Church Historian and Episcopalian Bishop of Delaware from 1908 to 1919, when he resigned and became a Catholic, recorded in his religious autobiography Salve Mater (1920) — recently reprinted — some of the embarrassments of leading Episcopalians in their dealings with the Orthodox when the latter, taking them at their word about the “Catholic nature” of Anglicanism, requested that Episcopalians make their prayers and liturgies more explicit on such matters as prayer for the dead, invocation of the saints and sacramental efficacy and the Eucharistic Presence.  In subsequent decades, down through the 1940s, many Orthodox churches or patriarchies declared their “recognition” of Anglican Orders, by which they meant that Anglican churches had preserved the form and structure of the Church to a sufficient degree that if any Anglican church or the Anglican Communion as a whole should profess the Orthodox Faith and seek to unite with the Orthodox Church then those Anglican clergy deemed suitable to continue as clergy subsequently would not need to be ordained.  It did not mean what many Anglicans, then and subsequently, and some hopeful Continuing Anglicans today, seem to wish it to mean, that the Orthodox Church — or, rather, some Orthodox churches — had accepted Anglican churches as “sister churches,” real “churches” in the eyes of the Orthodox, or at least “real churches” to the same degree as the Orthodox view the Catholic Church (or “papal communion”) as “real.”  Fortunately, however, this essay need not deal further with that powerful delusion, save to note, first, that the Gadarene descent of Anglican churches into the abyss of WO and SS from the 1970s onwards has disabused the Orthodox of their illusions about the nature of Anglicanism (see this as an example), and, second, that the Orthodox do not seem inclined to treat any Continuing Anglican bodies as anything like the residuary legatee of Anglican orthodoxy.

Returning to the critique of the 1892 Episcopalian Prayer Book produced by the Holy Governing Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was subsequently translated into English and published under Anglican auspices as Russian Observations upon the American Prayer Book (Alcuin Club Tracts XII) translated by Wilfrid J. Barnes and edited and annotated by Walter Howard Frere (the latter an English liturgical scholar and later Bishop of Truro in the Church of England) in 1917 (and which may be read here) it is a polite but critical examination of its subject from an Orthodox perspective; and it is remarkable how uncritical, and often approving, of its critique Frere (an anti-papal somewhat Orthodoxophile Anglo-Catholic) showed himself to be.  The critique deals, in its first section, with the Holy Communion rite, the Ordination rites (the longest section), the Baptism rite, Confirmation, Matrimony, the Sacrament of Penance and the Sacrament of Unction (or the absence of any rites for these last two) and then, in its second, with a number of general observations, most notably concerning the lack of any prayers for the dead in that Prayer Book.  As regards its critique of the Eucharistic rite, all that concerns us here, it makes two critical observations, first, the lack of any clear indication of a belief in, or explicit petition for, the “change” of the elements of bread and wine into the body and Blood of Christ and, secondly, the lack of any clear statement or even indication that the Eucharist is “a sacrifice for the living and the dead.”  (The Prayer of Consecration of the 1892 Prayer Book was identical to that of the 1928 book, although in 1892, as in 1789, the “Prayer of Humble Access” came between the Preface and Sanctus and what was specifically termed the Prayer of Consecration, beginning with “All Glory be to thee …“ etc.) The authors go on to conclude in this section that while there is nothing in the Prayer Book rite that explicitly contradicts these two beliefs, a denial of them can be as easily read into them, or by implication extracted from them, as their affirmation, and so calls for their being made clearer in any version of the BCP adapted for Orthodox use.

Nothing came of these Russian reflections; for that, we must fast-forward to 1977 and the aftermath of TE”C”’s decision in September 1976 to capitulate to the Zeitgeist (of which it had long been enamored) and accept WO (a “fall” which in my view was far more decisive than its 2003 decision to accept SS [sanctified sodomy], the latter being merely one of the ineluctable consequences of the former).  Among the consequences of this decision was that of the Church of the Incarnation in Detroit, Michigan to leave TE”C” and to seek admission to the Western Rite Vicariate (WRV) of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.  The WRV has been founded in 1958, and from its beginning it employed an English translation of the Roman Catholic “Tridentine Mass” (and other offices), altered, as in a 1963 paperback The Missal for Use of Orthodox (sic) in my possession, to remove the filioque clause from the Nicene Creed and to introduce the epiclesis (or petition to the Holy Ghost to transform the elements of bread and wine) from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom into the Roman Canon after the Words of Institution (two “paragraphs” later, after the Unde et memores and the Supra quae and before the Supplices te rogamus of the Canon).   Now a form of service was compiled (by whom I have been unable to determine) and produced originally in the form of a booklet entitled The Divine Liturgy Commonly Called The Mass in 1977.  Without going into the matter of its antecedents in detail (for the focus of this article, as of that to which it was originally intended to be an appendix, “Thoughts on an Anglican Use Mass," posted on March 8, 2010, was the Eucharistic Prayer, or anaphora, not the rite as a whole), one can observe that the rite was a “Missal-style” Anglican Eucharist, beginning with the Asperges, the dialogue between celebrant and servers, the Introit, Collect for Purity, Summary of the Law, Kyrie, Gloria, and the rest of the “Mass of the Catechumens” (as it is termed in the booklet) and so onto the “Mass of the Faithful” with its Offertory, Secret(s), Orate Fratres, then what is there termed  “Canon of the Mass part1” which is actually the Anglican “Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church,” then “The Communion Devotions” (which is actually the bidding “Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you …” followed by the congregation’s response and the celebrant’s absolution and the “comfortable words,” all of Anglican provenance), Sursum Corda, Proper Preface, Sanctus, “Canon of the Mass part 2” (to which we shall return), the Lord’s Prayer, Pax, Agnus Dei, Prayer of Humble Access, Communion (beginning with the Agnus Dei), Prayer of Thanksgiving, Postcommunion Collect(s), Dismissal, Blessing and Last Gospel.

“The Consecration Prayer” (as “Canon of the Mass, part 2” is subtitled) follows, but please note that for convenience sake I shall paste in the copy found online here in Orthodox Wikipedia, which is textually identical to the version found in the 1977 booklet mentioned above; however, its title and rubrics have been rewritten in what I may term here “Orthospeak,” using Byzantine Rite rather than Roman Rite terminology.  Where these things differ, I shall insert those in the 1977 booklet in parentheses after those found in the online version.

CANON OF THE EUCHARIST

(CANON OF THE MASS, part 2)

Consecration (The Consecration Prayer)

All glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou, of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who (by his own oblation of himself once offered) made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious death and sacrifice, until his coming again:

The bell rings once.

For in the night in which he was betrayed, he took bread; and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take, eat, this is my Body, which is given for you; Do this in remembrance of me.

The bell rings thrice for the offering of the Host.  (The bell rings thrice for the elevation of the Host.)

Likewise, after supper, he took the cup; and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of this; For this is my Blood of the new Testament, which is shed for you, and for many, for the remission of sins; Do this as oft as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of me.

The bell rings thrice for the offering of the Cup. (And it rings thrice again for the elevation of the Chalice.)

Oblation (The Oblation)

Wherefore, O Lord and heavenly Father, according to the institution of thy dearly beloved Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, we, thy humble servants, do celebrate and make here before thy Divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy Son hath commanded us to make; having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension; rendering unto thee most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same.

Epiclesis (The Invocation)

And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us; and of thy almighty goodness, vouchsafe to send down thy Holy Ghost upon these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be changed into the Body and Blood of thy most dearly beloved Son. Grant that we, receiving them according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood. And we earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness, mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; most humbly beseeching thee to grant that, by the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we, and all thy whole Church, may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion. And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee, that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him. Be mindful also, O Lord, of thy servants who are gone before us with the sign of faith, and who rest in the sleep of peace, especially N. and N. (Here, the names of the departed are remembered.) To them, O Lord, and to all who rest in Christ grant we pray thee a place of refreshment, light and peace. To us sinners also, thy servants, confiding in the multitude of thy mercies, grant some lot and partnership with thy holy Apostles and martyrs (John, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicitas, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucia, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, and with all thy Saints) into whose company we pray thee of thy mercy to admit us. And although we are unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto thee any sacrifice; yet we beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty and service; not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offenses, through Jesus Christ our Lord; by whom, and with whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honor and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end. Amen.

This is the Prayer of Consecration of the PECUSA Prayer Book (probably, as explained below, that of 1928 rather than 1892) revised according to the critique made by the Holy Governing Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1904.  The first of its two criticisms of the BCP rite, its lack of any explicit “change” of the elements of bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood, was dealt with by changing the wording of the 1928 Book’s “Invocation:”

And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us; and, of thy almighty goodness, vouchsafe to bless and sanctify, with thy Word and Holy Spirit, these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine; that we, receiving them according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ’s holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood.

to:

And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us; and of thy almighty goodness, vouchsafe to send down thy Holy Ghost upon these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be changed into the Body and Blood of thy most dearly beloved Son. Grant that we, receiving them according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood.

although it seems to me a defect that the second sentence of the 1928 “Invocation,” which originated in Cranmer’s 1552 rite as a denial of the identity of “these they gifts and creatures of bread and wine” with “his most blessed Body and Blood,” and which is a kind of “anti-epiclesis” immediately following upon a genuine epiclesis, was not either reworded or removed entirely, the more so as the “exordium” or introductory portion of the 1928 Prayer of Consecration was replaced by the exordium of the 1764 Scottish prayer — an exordium which had itself been replaced by that retained in 1892 and 1928 from the 1789 PECUSA BCP. (I myself suggested a rewording based on the 1929 Scottish Episcopalian BCP in my earlier article.)  Even more so is this the case as the same petition occurs again in very similar wording only two sentences later in the prayer (“… humbly beseeching thee, that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ …” etc.).

The second criticism, concerning the lack of any indication of the Eucharist as a sacrifice offered “for the living and for the dead,” was met by inserting this prayer:

“Be mindful also, O Lord, of thy servants who are gone before us with the sign of faith, and who rest in the sleep of peace, especially N. and N. (Here, the names of the departed are remembered.) To them, O Lord, and to all who rest in Christ grant we pray thee a place of refreshment, light and peace. To us sinners also, thy servants, confiding in the multitude of thy mercies, grant some lot and partnership with thy holy Apostles and martyrs (John, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicitas, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucia, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, and with all thy Saints) into whose company we pray thee of thy mercy to admit us.”

which is simply the Memento etiam (“Be mindful also …“) and Nobis quoque peccatoribus (“To us sinners also …“) petitions from the Roman Canon inserted into this prayer.  The first is simply a prayer for the dead, perhaps originally a diaconal proclamation which may not have become part of the Canon until the Sixth Century, and the second, which immediately follows it in the Canon, perhaps originally a prayer offered by the bishop and concelebrating presbyters and deacons on their own behalves, might have been included as well in response to another criticism expressed in the Russian Church’s 1904 critique, one concerning its “general defect” of “the absence from the Anglican service of any confession of faith in a living and real bond existing between the earthly and heavenly parts of the Church.”  A detailed examination of the prayer will demonstrate that its compilers worked from the 1928 Episcopalian BCP rather than that of 1892, for whereas in 1892 the wording of the petition immediately preceding these insertions from the Roman Canon ran ”that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in them, and they in him” that of 1928 altered its ending to “that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him,” and the wording of the 1977 adaptation follows the latter.  To recapitulate, then, this 1977 Western-Rite Orthodox Eucharistic Prayer revises its 1928 Episcopalian original by (1) replacing its opening exordium with that of the Scottish Communion Office of 1764 (and so undercutting Cranmer’s insistence that the only Christian sacrifice is that which Christ offered once, in the past, on the Cross), (2) altering its Cranmerian “Invocation” by dividing into two petitions, the first an explicitly consecratory epiclesis in the Byzantine fashion, the second an incongruous retention of the substance of Cranmer’s 1552 petition (which I have termed an “anti-epiclesis”) that those who receive the bread and wine may also “partake” of Christ’s Body and Blood (actions which for Cranmer were not necessarily connected with one another) and (3) inserting two petitions from the Roman Canon to provide an explicit statement of the Eucharist as a sacrifice for the living and the dead as well as an assertion of the continuing close connection of the living and the dead in Christ and in the Church (both of which Cranmer had come to deny by 1552).  Later on, in 1995, at the explicit request of the Patriarch of Antioch, two Byzantine-rite pre-communion prayers of the laity (“I believe, O Lord, and I confess …” and “Of thy Mystical Supper …”) were inserted in the rite immediately before communion and after the bidding “Behold the Lamb of God …” and its response “Lord, I am not worthy …”

Strangely, however, when in 2009 The Book of Common Prayer (subtitled The Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church in the English Parochial Tradition according to Orthodox Catholic Usage), an attractive and beautiful book, appeared, there were further changes of a puzzling nature to its Eucharistic Prayer.  (Other changes in the rite appear to be matters of style and “lay-out").  In the first place, the exordium of the includes elements of both the 1764 Scottish and the 1928 PECUSA prayers.  It runs:

All glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only son, Jesus Christ, to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who made there (by his own Oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world …

where the 1928 American runs “who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice …” (etc.) and the 1764 Scottish “who (by his own oblation of himself once offered) made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice …” (etc.).  Later on in the Prayer, in the petitions taken from the Roman Canon, the first, the Memento etiam is translated differently than in the 1977 version — this may be a matter of style, although I prefer that of 1977 — while the ensuing Nobis quoque peccatoribus is abbreviated and paraphrased in its beginning as “And vouchsafe to give unto us some portion and fellowship with …” (etc.) which seems as undesirable as it is unaccountable a change.  I have been given to understand since my original posting of “Thoughts on an Anglican Use Mass” on March 8 that these changes, or some of them, may represent no more than the singular and eccentric usage of one particular Western-Rite Orthodox priest and parish that by regrettable inadvertence was published as the “canonical” version, and that this shall be corrected in the future.  In the light of this new information, I am obliged to qualify my statement in the earlier posting concerning the Eucharistic Prayer of the Liturgy of St. Tikhon as affording “a striking example, as I see it, of how not to do this sort of thing.”  Most of the “flaws” or “objectionable features” that I had in mind were the work not of the compilers, but of the botcher(s) who were responsible for the version that was unfortunately published in 2009.  And yet I cannot withdraw it entirely, because the wording of the 1977 “epiclesis” (or “invocation”), which was unaltered in 2009, does seem cumbersome and objectionable.  Far better than “And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us; and of thy almighty goodness, vouchsafe to send down thy Holy Ghost upon these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be changed into the Body and Blood of thy most dearly beloved Son. Grant that we, receiving them according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood” would have been something like “And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us; and of thy almighty goodness, vouchsafe to send down thy Holy Ghost upon these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be changed into the Body and Blood of thy most dearly beloved Son to the end that all who shall receive the same may be sanctified both in body and soul, and preserved unto everlasting life,” of which the final part is drawn from the Scottish 1929 rite.

I will end by drawing interested readers’ attention to what appears to be a different, and seemingly independent, and rather more radically comprehensive, adaptation of the 1928 PECUSA Eucharistic Prayer for Orthodox use, and yet one that preserves unaltered then opening exordium of 1552/1789/1928:

“The English Liturgy”

Should any readers be able to provide information about its origin, authorization (by what jurisdiction?) and contemporary use I would be most grateful.

In Town Again?

Finally, I wish to acknowledge my debt to Benjamin Joseph Andersen of Lancelot Andrewes Press, who kindly sent me a copy of his M.Div. thesis, "An Anglican Liturgy in the Orthodox Church: The Origins and Development of the Antiochian Orthodox Liturgy of St. Tikhon," which he submitted in May 2005 at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary of Crestwood, N. Y.  It has been invaluable to me, and I hope that he will accept whatever criticisms that I have made in this article in an indulgent manner.

“The Anglican Use of the Roman Rite:” this phrase indicates that whatever form of liturgy this will be, it will take the form of a subset of the Roman Rite, and not a separate “Anglican Rite.”  There has been a good deal of terminological and historical confusion in these areas.  One often sees in the context of the Latin Church references to the “Ambrosian Rite,” the “Braga Rite,” the “Carthusian Rite,” the “Cistercian Rite,” the “Dominican Rite,” the “Lyonnaise Rite,” the “Mozarabic Rite,” the “Sarum Rite” and the like, but this seems to be a confusion of the past four centuries (or a little more), reflecting the dominance of the 1570 codification and reform of the “Roman Rite of Rome” as the “Tridentine Rite,” which was to replace all other variants save those that could document 200 years of history.  All of these “rites,” save the Ambrosian Rite and the Mozarabic Rite, are or were, variants of the Roman Rite, and so more properly termed “uses” (as, in England, with the “Use of Sarum,” the “Use of Bangor,” the “Use of Hereford,” the “Use of Lincoln” and the “Use of York” before the 1540s); only the Carthusian and the Braga (that of the Portuguese diocese of that name) uses survive today in their integrity (the Carthusian “unreformed,” the Braga “reformed”) although occasionally one encounters celebration of the old Cistercian and Dominican Mass “rites.”  The Ambrosian Rite of Milan (and neighboring areas) is either a very ancient variation of the Roman Rite, which since at least the Fourth Century has been subject to both Gallican and Eastern influences, or an originally distinct rite that has undergone waves of “romanization” from a very early date, while the Mozarabic Rite, which until recent decades, when it was revived (and “restored,” that is, “reformed”) in the Spanish monastery of San Juan de Silos and in several parishes in Toledo that were Mozarabic until the 1490s, was celebrated only in a side chapel in Toledo Cathedral, is an entirely distinct rite from the Roman.

One strong implication of “Anglican Use” is that it will have no other Eucharistic Prayers (EPs) or “Prayers of Consecration” than those found in the Roman Rite.  The Mozarabic Rite aside, none of these other “uses” or “rites” — call them what you will — had any other than the Roman Canon; this was so even of the Ambrosian Rite, although for Maundy Thursday and Holy Saturday only it had versions of the Roman Canon into which substantial proper prayers for those festivals were inserted, a practice unique to Milan. (The 1970s “reform” of the Ambrosian Rite introduced two new EPs, additional to the three new EPs introduced into the Roman Rite in 1969.)  I have to say that I agree with the distinguished English Anglican liturgist and historian of the Early Roman Rite, Geoffrey Grimshaw Willis (1914-1982), regarding his dislike of these banal and (as he thought) un-Roman disfigurements of the Roman Rite (see his outspoken “The New Eucharistic Prayers: Some Comments,” The Heythrop Journal, XII:1 [January 1971], pp. 5-28), and if the reports are right that in whatever reconfigured Anglican Use Mass is eventually promulgated by Rome the “contemporary English” Rite II will wholly disappear, and with it these EPs, I would judge it no loss.

And well it should disappear, along with the 1979 Psalter.  An Anglican Use based on, and following the pattern of, the 1979 Episcopalian Prayer Book makes no sense on a world-wide basis.  Moreover, since the lame and dreary ICEL translation of the Roman Rite liturgical books is soon to be replaced by one occupying a distinctly higher linguistic “register,” it makes little sense to use any other “contemporary English” than that in use in the Roman Rite itself.  However, if one of the advantages of the Anglican Use of the Roman Rite is, from a “Benedictine” vantage, to inspire and in its distinctive way exemplify a “reform of the 1960s ‘reform‘” of the Roman Rite in the direction of resacralization and a recovery of lost ground, then it makes much more sense that it should be one distinctive and consistently traditional thing, in style as well as substance, than an attempt to be all things to all Anglicans.  Those Anglicans whose liturgical sensibilities are “contemporary” may well prefer to seek out the more elevated version of the Roman Rite which I hope will soon make its appearance.  This is leading us fairly clearly towards the “Missal tradition” of Anglo-Catholicism in the last century, the effort that produced the English Missal, the American Missal and the Anglican Missal.  To adopt or adapt one of these — my own tastes incline me more towards the English Missal — would produce a coherent and dignified rite, and would eliminate once and for all the bizarre phenomenon of the 1970 Roman Rite Offertory in ICEL English thrust into the midst of the “Cranmerian English” Rite I.

Still, and despite what I wrote above, I have speculated at times about the possibility of alternative “Anglican-like” EPs, perhaps for weekday celebrations or for certain set days on which the length of the Roman Canon, especially if said or chanted aloud, might be an inconvenience.  I am going to avoid (with one partial exception) Twentieth-Century Anglican EPs, and likewise the “mainline” 1552, 1559, 1662 English rite, and its derivatives, as inadequate for Catholic purposes — by which I mean, impossible for the Catholic Church to accept the use of which as a valid EP [1].  The leaves the 1549 English rite, and the Scottish Episcopalian tradition from 1637 onwards down through 1764 to 1929, with the American Episcopalian tradition from 1789 to 1928 as a side-branch of this.

As to the 1549 rite’s EP I have never been able to understand its attraction for some Anglo-Catholics.  I accept the reading of Cranmer’s theology underlying that prayer as fundamentally Reformed (in the Swiss sense) that has been advanced by Anglican scholars such as Dom Gregory Dix (1901-1952) and Professor Edward Craddock Ratcliff (1896-1967) — the former a well-known Anglican Benedictine monk and Anglo-Papalist, the latter the holder of various academic posts in Cambridge, Oxford and London, culminating as Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and who was on the verge of entering the Orthodox Church at the time of his death — even if expressed in the most ambiguous of ways and in very “traditional,” that is, “Western-Catholic-looking” — forms.  An EP of such an ambivalent, if not heretical, nature would certainly not be suitable for Catholic use.  The 1549 EP is also, very clearly, an attempt at “reforming” the Roman Canon, the traditional and unique EP of the whole Western Church for centuries before the Sixteenth Century, save in the Mozarabic Rite, as well as (until the time of the post-Vatican II “reforms”) the unique EP of the Roman Church, and it seems to be that an EP conceived with the presumption of setting to right the presumed errors of the Church of Rome, the prima sedes and mater et magistra of all churches, is to act very much as Ham did towards his father, Noah, and with even less occasion to do so.  Like Geoffrey Grimshaw Willis, I admire the Roman Canon for its unfathomable antiquity, as perhaps the oldest EP in continual use in Christendom, alongside that of Addai and Mari in the Semitic Christianity of the Catholic Chaldeans and the “Nestorian” Assyrians, the roots of which probably extend back into the Third Century or earlier.  Of course, as a Ukrainian Catholic I cherish as well the marvelous, and typically Hellenistic, integration of form and content in those EPs such as those of St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom, St. James of Jerusalem (possibly the work of St. Cyril of Jerusalem), and many others (most of them preserved in Syriac versions) which form one of the great glories of Christendom, and which were possibly the gift of the Church of Antioch, on the crossroads of the Hellenistic and Semitic worlds, to the Christian world — and which had so beneficent an impact on Anglican high-churchmen in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, to whose work we must now turn.

The ill-fated Scottish Prayer Book of 1637, which occasioned the overthrow of episcopacy in Scotland in 1638 and began the process which culminated in the outbreak of civil war in England in 1642 and the temporary downfall of the monarchy there and the execution of King Charles I, rearranged the sequence of prayers around the eucharistic consecration in the 1559 English Prayer Book (the mild revisions of 1604 did not touch the Communion Service) to give a fuller, and more traditional looking, EP, although their wording was not altered.  When episcopacy was restored in Scotland in 1661, the Prayer Book was not, and it was only after the reabolition of episcopacy in 1689 that, in the years immediately after 1700 the remaining Scottish Episcopalians began to adopt set liturgical forms, some of them the 1661 English Prayer Book service, others the 1637 service, and still others their own rearrangements or revisions of the 1637 service.  In this they were influenced to a considerable degree by the liturgical revisions of the English Nonjurors, although the never went so far as the main body of the English Nonjurors, who in 1718 substituted for the 1661 Prayer book EP a translation of the long anaphora found in the Liturgy of St. James of Jerusalem.  In 1764 a group of Scottish Episcopalian bishops produced a revised “Communion Office” whose use subsequently became general among Scottish Episcopalians.  There were, however, a number of “English Chapels” in Scotland which were under the authority of the Church of England and followed the 1661 Prayer Book, and after these were transferred to the Scottish Episcopal Church from the 1840s onward a determined attempt was made to replace the 1764 Communion Office with that of the 1661 English liturgy as the normative one.  The 1764 service was never abolished, but various canons enacted in 1863 and in force until 1912 effectively marginalized its use — but then the tide turned, and in 1929 the SEC adopted a Prayer Book, the EP of which was a moderate revision of that of 1764.  This remains the official Prayer Book of the SEC, although since the 1970s it has effectively been replaced by a more anodyne set of “contemporary Anglican” style of services, issued in 1970 and 1982.  Meanwhile, however, and as a result of the consecration of Samuel Seabury on November 14, 1784 by bishops of the SEC and of Seabury’s promise to attempt to secure the adoption of the 1764 Scottish Communion office as that of the the newly-formed Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, in 1789 the Episcopal Church adopted a modified version of that 1764 service — “modified,” it has to be said, in a more Protestant and “Cranmerian” direction — which, as modified in 1892 and 1928 (neither of these modifications affected the wording of the EP, although that of 1928 removed the “Prayer of Humble Access” from its position between the Sanctus and the Prayer of Consecration, where, following its position in the English 1661 rite, it had been placed in 1789 to a position after that Prayer and the immediately ensuing Lord’s Prayer; in the 1637 and 1764 Scottish rites, as in the English 1549 rite that Prayer also was positioned subsequently to the EP and Lord’s Prayer) remained the official rite of the Episcopal Church until 1979.

The texts of these three EPs can be found here:

• 1764 Scotland
• 1789 USA
• 1928 USA
• 1929 Scotland

for those who wish to consult or compare them at this point.  What I will now do is to present excerpts from these three prayers, make a few comparative remarks, and then, as one rushing in as a fool where angels fear to tread, to produce a melded version of the 1764 and 1929 EPs which may seem to some suitable, and almost ideal for use in any Anglican Use liturgy.  I will thereafter, in a subsequent post, go on to consider the EP of the “Liturgy of St. Tikhon” which has been used in the 1970s in some “Western Rite” parishes of the Antiochian Orthodox Church in North America, which affords a striking example, as I see it, of how not to do this sort of thing.

Passing over the dialogue, preface(s), sanctus, we come to the beginning of the prayers, the exordium preceeding the Words of Institution:

Scotland 1764:

"ALL glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou of thy tender mercy didst give thy only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption; who (by his own oblation of himself once offered) made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world, and did institute, and in his holy gospel command us to continue a perpetual memorial of that his precious death and sacrifice until his coming again."

Scotland 1929:

"ALL glory and thanksgiving be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption; who, by his own oblation of himself once offered, made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memorial of that his precious death and sacrifice until his coming again."

and America 1789/1928:

ALL glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou, of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious the death and sacrifice, until his coming again."

The Scottish EP of 1929 adds “thanksgiving,” I suppose out of a sense of the meaning of the Greek word “eucharistia,” but it seems needless, and seems also to spoil the flow of the prayer itself, and it restores “thine only Son” as in all earlier versions from 1549 onwards.  In altering the Cranmerian phrase concerning the Lord’s death on the cross “who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered)” — which was restored to its original form in the 1789 Episcopalian EP — to “who (by his own oblation of himself once offered) made,” however, the Scots made a significant change.  Cranmer’s “there” associates Christ’s self-offering and sacrifice exclusively with his death upon the cross, and underlines this by “one oblation” and “once offered;” the Scottish Episcopalian bishops, following in this the developed early Eighteenth-Century theology of the Nonjurors, that Christ offered his self-sacrifice at the Last Supper when consecrating the bread and wine to be the representative tokens and perpetuation of his sacrifice, and what followed on the cross was the consequent slaying of the already self-offered victim, removed the “there” and softened the “one oblation” to “own oblation.”  The original Cranmerian phraseology, if it is susceptible of a Catholic gloss, which I doubt, could be given one only in the face of its framer’s intentions and its own historical sense; the Scottish variant removes the Cranmerian edge, and can be used more easily, even though I have to admit that I find the parenthetical phrase lumbering and orotund.

In all three versions the Words of Institution follow immediately; then “the Oblation:”

Scotland 1764:

"Wherefore, O Lord, and heavenly Father, according to the institution of thy dearly beloved Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, we thy humble servants do celebrate and make here before thy divine majesty, with these thy holy gifts, WHICH WE NOW OFFER UNTO THEE, the memorial thy Son hath commanded us to make; having in remembrance his blessed passion, and precious death, his mighty resurrection, and glorious ascension; rendering unto thee most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same."

Scotland 1929:

"Wherefore, O Lord, and heavenly Father, according to the institution of thy dearly beloved Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, we thy humble servants do celebrate and make here before thy Divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy Son hath commanded us to make; having in remembrance his blessed passion, and precious death, his mighty resurrection, and glorious ascension; rendering unto thee most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same, and looking for his coming again with power and great glory."

and America 1789/1928:

"Wherefore, O Lord and heavenly Father according to the institution of thy dearly beloved Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, we, thy humble servants, do celebrate and make here before thy Divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy Son hath commanded us to make; having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension; rendering unto thee most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same.”

which are identical (although the capital letters in the 1764 version demonstrate the importance that the Scottish bishops attributed to what they saw as the moment at which the consecrated elements were offered to God as the great Christian sacrifice, itself a memorial of Christ’s historical sacrifice), save for the addition of a common feature of Eastern EPs, “and looking for his coming again with power and great glory,” in the 1929 Scottish EP.

Next, and finally, “the Invocation:”

Scotland 1764:

"And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us, and of thy almighty goodness vouchsafe to bless and sanctify, with thy word and holy Spirit, these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may become the body and blood of thy most dearly beloved Son.

And we earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness, mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanks giving, most humbly beseeching thee to grant, that by the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we (and all thy whole church) may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion.

And here we humbly offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice unto thee, beseeching thee, that whosoever shall be partakers of this holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious body and blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, and be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in them, and they in him.

And although we are unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto thee any sacrifice; yet we beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty and service, not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offences, through Jesus [Christ] our Lord: by whom, and with whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honour and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end. Amen”

Scotland 1929:

"And we thine unworthy servants beseech thee, Most merciful Father, to hear us, and to send thy Holy Spirit upon us and upon these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that, being blessed and hallowed by his life-giving power, they may become the Body and Blood of thy most dearly beloved Son, to the end that all who shall receive the same may be sanctified both in body and soul, and preserved unto everlasting life.

And we earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness, mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, most humbly beseeching thee to grant, that by the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we and all thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion.

And here we humbly offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee, beseeching thee that all we who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, and be fulfilled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us and we in him.

And although we be unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto thee any sacrifice; yet we beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty and service, not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offences, through Jesus Christ our Lord; by whom, and with whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honour and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end. Amen.”

and America 1789/1928:

"And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us; and, of thy almighty goodness, vouchsafe to bless and sanctify, with thy Word and Holy Spirit, these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine; that we, receiving them according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ’s holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood.

And we earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness, mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; most humbly beseeching thee to grant that, by the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we, and all thy whole Church, may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion.

And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee, that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.

And although we are unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto thee any sacrifice; yet we beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty and service; not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offences, through Jesus Christ our Lord; by whom, and with whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honour and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end. Amen.”

I have presented each one of these in full, standardizing, however, the arrangement of the paragraphs, which differs in each of these liturgies, and separating the final three paragraphs in each one from the first, since in these final paragraphs the variations between them are matters of phrasing and, in one case, word choice.  By contrast, the differences between the first paragraphs of each version are significant and striking.  The 1764 EP’s invocation is in large part a return to Cranmer’s wording in his 1549 rite — where, however, it came before the Words of Institution, and was not identified as “the Invocation.”  It ran, “Hear us (o merciful Father) we beseech thee; and with thy Holy Spirit and word, vouchsafe to bless and sanctify these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the Body and Blood of thy most dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ,” from which we can see how the “may be unto us” of the 1549 rite has been strengthened to the “may become” of 1764.  The American revisers 1789 simply substituted Cranmer’s “receptionist” words from his 1552 rite for that version, thus enabling to be more clearly susceptible of a Reformed Protestant reading, in which Christ’s presence to communicants need not be associated with any special presence in with or under the eucharistic elements, or with any transformation of the elements.  The 1764 invocation was frequently criticized, in the Nineteenth Century and beyond, for its abruptness; the 1929 Scottish revision added to it a statement of the purpose of the transformation, a feature of many eastern EPs, and they also recast its earlier part as well, seemingly to make it resemble more closely the wording of the epiclesis (a Greek word meaning “invocation”) of many of those same eastern prayers.  There is no reason to prefer, in a Catholic context, any of the peculiarities of the American version, but as the 1764 and 1929 Scottish EPs have strengths and weaknesses, perhaps we can keep the 1764 version but “tweak” it towards 1929.

This, then, is what I have come up with (words and phrases in bold represent variants from the 1764 rite):

"ALL glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption; who (by his own oblation of himself once offered) made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world, and did institute, and in his holy gospel command us to continue a perpetual memorial of that his precious death and sacrifice until his coming again. For in the night that he was betrayed, he took bread; and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and gave it to his disciples saying, Take, eat, THIS IS MY BODY, which is given for you: do this in remembrance of me. Likewise after supper he took the cup; and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of this, for THIS IS MY BLOOD, of the new testament, which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins: do this as oft as ye shall drink it in remembrance of me.
Wherefore, O Lord, and heavenly Father, according to the institution of thy dearly beloved Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, we thy humble servants do celebrate and make here before thy Divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy Son hath commanded us to make; having in remembrance his blessed passion, and precious death, his mighty resurrection, and glorious ascension; rendering unto thee most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same, and looking for his coming again with power and great glory.

And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us, and of thy almighty goodness vouchsafe to send thy Holy Spirit to bless and sanctify these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may become the body and blood of thy most dearly beloved Son, to the end that all who shall receive the same may be sanctified both in body and soul, and preserved unto everlasting life.

And we earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness, mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, most humbly beseeching thee to grant, that by the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we and all thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion.

And here we humbly offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee, beseeching thee that all we who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, and be fulfilled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us and we in him.

And although we be unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto thee any sacrifice; yet we beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty and service, not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offences, through Jesus Christ our Lord; by whom, and with whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honour and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end. Amen.”

In both the Scottish rites, the prayer of Consecration is followed by the equally lengthy Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church, which would come better earlier, if used in that form at all.  Some may think that the omission of any intercessory paragraph from "my" Anglican EP, and in particular the lack of any petition for the pope and the "ordinary," is a defect in need of remedy.

[1] I am aware that this assertion needs elaboration and defense, perhaps especially in the light of Rome's acceptance of the theoretical validity of the anaphora (EP) of the East Syrian Liturgy of Addai and Mari, which lacks the Words of Institution.  I hope to discuss this further at a later time.