Brother Stephen of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank blogs at Sub Tuum and has authored this piece on potential liturgical developments in the Anglican personal ordinariates.  It is reproduced here with his kind permission.

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The discussion of what sort of liturgy will and should be used in the new Anglican ordinariates is emerging in earnest in various fora. This morning I was struck by the parallels between the evolution of the Cistercian Rite over the last 500 years and the liturgical situation among Anglo-Catholics interested in the ordinariates. I think the Cistercian experience may hold both salutary caution and a constructive example for those who are looking for a liturgical way forward in the new world of Anglicanorum Coetibus. This is an off-the-cuff thought piece that I offer for what it’s worth.

To Sarum or Not to Sarum: Is That the Question?

If you were to attend Mass at a Cistercian Abbey you would be likely to find servers in albs, the chalice being mixed at the credence, and, in a place or two, a hanging pyx over the altar. Does this represent some fondness for Sarum? No, it is simply what is or was done in the Cistercian Rite, which has its roots in the Rite of Lyon. Much of what one often thinks of as distinctly Sarum was actually quite common to many of the other European rites and uses.

On the Continent, many customs shared with the Sarum Use either died on their own as fashions changed or were finally wiped away by the influence of the Tridentine reforms and 19th Century ultramontanism through the work of men like Dom Gueranger. It seems likely that Sarum and the other English uses would have suffered the same fate. Bit by bit, we Cistercians lost communion under both species, the great pall, and a number of other pieces of hardware and their attendant customs over the centuries.

One also has to look at the broader cultural factors in these changes. As Cistercians became more prosperous—and a quick rundown of the holdings of the English abbeys alone tells that story nicely—it was hard to fight a certain amount of embellishment and modernization. Stained glass, sculptural ornamentation, silk vestments, and organs, all made their impact on Cistercian simplicity as they became ubiquitous in the wider Church. What similar developments would have taken place in England that remained unreformed? It’s hard to imagine that the Baroque—always an anathema to a certain type of Anglo-Catholic—would not have had an even stronger influence in a still Roman Catholic England than it did on a Reformed one as seen in the works of Wren. The Ambrosian Rite certainly looks as comfortable in the Baroque as it must have in the Romanesque.

Simply “going back” to a Sarum Use lifted from 500 years in the mothballs and translated into traditional English is as fraught with perils and potential eccentricities as more recent attempts to create modern liturgies with uncertain roots in the past. Both the Roman and Anglican liturgies have continued to evolve since the 16th Century. Issues of interrupted organic development, whether the development was broken in the distant or recent past, require careful consideration.

Unity in Diversity: Defining a Patrimony

The evolution of the Cistercian Rite after both the Council of Trent and the reforms that followed Vatican II may hold some useful insights for those attempting to define the liturgical boundaries of the Anglican Patrimony and to create liturgical documents that allow for a legitimate and workable diversity within the proposed Anglican ordinariates.

In the Cistercian case, one might well compare Trent to the trauma of the Reformation since, even though we were allowed to keep our own rite, Roman influence steadily crept into our books and uses under the influence of the new standardized product being used by so much of the rest of the Church.

Following Trent, there were those houses that adopted the new Roman Books and those who held tenaciously to the old Cistercian books. The liturgical battle raged for nearly a century and, in the end, a compromise was reached maintaining much of the old and incorporating a good bit of the new. This "1662 Prayer Book" of the Cistercian Order lasted for more than three centuries, but the tension between sensitivity to the wider Church and fidelity to the Cistercian patrimony remained unresolved and was exacerbated by international politics and political factions within the Order. The older uses obtained in some congregations' and houses while others became increasingly Romanized, particularly in adopting a more elaborate aesthetic in their churches, vestments, and sacred objects. With time, the Order known for its transitional Gothic, woolen vestments, and simple chant gave admittance to the Rococo, cloth-of-gold, and the sounds of the occasional orchestra, yet even in these houses recognizable Cistercian practices survived side-by-side with innovation.

Following Vatican II, there were those within the Order who favored a wholesale adoption of the new Roman Rite, those who saw this as an opportunity to restore the ancient Cistercian Rite free of Roman influence, those who wanted to make no changes in present practice, and those who hoped for some middle course. These groupings probably sound familiar to Anglo-Catholics. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the Order of Cistercians (“Common Cistercians” like my own house) and the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (the Trappists) share a joint Liturgical Commission.

The draft Missal of 1969 attempted to bridge these various parties. It restored several practices from the pre-Tridentine Cistercian liturgy, made some concessions to modern use, and preserved a number of distinctly Cistercian texts and practices. In the end, and partially as a consequence of the years of liturgical reform that preceded it, a single new Missal agreeable to all could not be created and, in 1971, the two orders adopted a brief statement of points allowing for liturgical unity in diversity—something else familiar to Anglo-Catholics.

The 1971 statement allowed for the possibility of the use of the new Roman Missal (note the grammar) provided that the Cistercian Calendar, distinct Cistercian texts, and a minimum of distinctly Cistercian customs were maintained. Nearly 40 years on this has means that across the two orders you will find a range of practice from houses with an ultra-modern Roman ceremonial and contemporary English texts to places like Spring Bank where it’s mostly Latin with much bowing and prostrating and on to Mariawald, which has returned to the pre-Vatican II books.

The Calendar became another place for diversity. In the 2010 Ordo for January 22, there are six options for how the day is to be kept depending on the congregation and house, ranging from a feria to a solemnity with six different saints who might be feted, depending on whether you’re in Vienna or rural Wisconsin. For better or worse, this arrangement can hold its own with the bedlam of Anglican calendars currently in use from the various Prayer Books and Missals.

Is this ideal? No. Does it uphold the early Cistercian belief in common texts and similar customs? No. Did it allow the two orders to stay together and protect the minority of houses who wished to keep a more traditional rite? Yes. And, perhaps most importantly for its ramifications for Anglo-Catholics, it forced the two orders to define the minimum threshold of the Cistercian Patrimony.

In the end, here’s the minimum of what the Order’s patrimony was understood to include (more or less):

1. The Cistercian calendar with its distinctive saints and rankings of feasts.
2. The Cistercian collects, epistles, and gospels where they differed from the Roman ones.
3. Cistercian chant tones and melodies and distinctive pieces of music in the graduale and breviary.
4. These distinct liturgical practices:

a. A profound bow instead of the genuflection prescribed in the Roman rite;

b. The custom of making a large sign of the cross at the Gospel;

c. The practice of carrying out certain rites in silence such as kissing the Gospel book and the washing of hands;

d. The ancient practice of preparing the wine and water in the chalice before bringing them to the altar.

Did this please everyone? No. There are those who would like to see even these practices go and those who believe that these are not enough of a guaranteed minimum, but it has proven a workable compromise. I suspect any final distillation of the liturgical portion of the Anglican Patrimony will have similar elements and tensions.

A Pragmatic Approach

My years as an Anglo-Catholic lead me to believe that liturgical life in the ordinariates will require a similarly pragmatic solution. If Anglicanorum Coetibus had been issued 15 years ago, I would have fought valiantly for Percy Dearmer and the Prayer Book. If it had come five years ago, I would have sided with the English Missal and Fortescue. I was undeniably an Anglo-Catholic at both periods.

My master’s thesis was a study of the social politics of the 19th Century Anglo-Catholic customaries as a nascent Anglo-Catholicism fought an inconclusive but highly polemical intramural battle over what it meant liturgically to be an Anglo-Catholic. A decisive outcome enforcing liturgical uniformity that is agreeable to both a large majority of Anglo-Catholics and to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seems equally unlikely today and, as then, would probably waste precious energy that could be better used putting congregations on a solid footing.

A most-Anglican, tolerant pragmatism guiding a conversation about the principles defining the minimum parameters of the Anglican Patrimony may well prove the way forward rather than beginning with concrete proposals of texts. Perhaps such an approach would at last allow the cotta to lie down with the surplice and the cappa and chimere to be friends.