Friday, October 20, 2017

Why I don't use the Book of Common Prayer

The title of this post is likely to put the backs up of many of my fellow Anglican Catholics as well as many of those who identify as Anglican from outside the Continuing Church. I must beg your indulgence. As it is, I heard the following interchange:

A: I use the Anglican Breviary.
B: The only Anglican Breviary is the Book of Common Prayer. Use it.

I found B's response arrogant, blinkered, patronising and unhelpful. It added nothing to the discussion rather than an air of authoritarianism that made me want to reply, "No. I will not use the BCP because of your attitude." As it is, I do not use the Book of Common Prayer for what I believe to be good reason.

I hope that my previous postings have made it clear that I follow the school of thought within Anglican Catholicism which regards the 1549 Book of Common Prayer as the standard of liturgical worship, but subordinate to the doctrine of the Primitive Church as was intended by those who compiled it. I do believe wholeheartedly that the BCP is uniquely Anglican and wholesome for any Christian in their conversation with God. However, the BCP does point outside itself to encourage those who continue the Catholic Faith through the lens of English and Anglophone History to make spiritual progress through Mass, Study, Office and Devotion.

And that's where I sort of come from. My history is entwined with the 1662 BCP. While I make no apology for my Anglican Papalism which came from a parish built on the work of one of the first Bishops to take up the Ordinariate, my choral life was centred around the BCP at Choral Evensong and (occasionally) Choral Mattins. My life at University and having to deal with the lumping-together of Anglican and Free-Church worship meant that I recovered some of my sanity by recourse to the BCP. However, I found it a book that pointed outside itself, as you would expect a book of prayer to do.

However, I discovered that the 1662 BCP is not as full as it should be. The truncated Eucharistic Canon, the truncated hagiography, the desire to hold Catholic teaching with a form of Calvinism, all of these made it difficult for me to continue to just use it for my offices. Couple that with my Benedictine Oblation, and you may perceive that I find a better conversation through the use of the Monastic Diurnal. Yes, it is true that the genius of the BCP is Benedictine. However, that the ferial offices of the Hours doesn't change over the week does make it easier to memorise large chunks of the psalter. I am, like many other Benedictines, able to say the Office of Compline completely from memory which does help after a busy day.

Yet, that is the desire of the BCP, that great chunks of Holy Scripture and tradition get absorbed into the system. I have my daily scripture reading from the lectionary for my study and my Mass is in keeping with the English Translation with the Gregorian Canon following the English Missal which is bound up with the Collects and Readings, and all translations from the Book of Common Prayer of 1549. I baptise using the 1549 Rite which is effectively the old Western Rite.

Essentially, there is a wealth of material that comes from and is consonant with the 1549 Book of Common Prayer which is all consistent with the Catholic Faith that the Church in England received once delivered to the saints. Now, the CofE has their modern liturgical text called "Common Worship" which has so many Eucharistic Prayers, so many rites for this, that and the other. What it lacks is the consistency that the BCP has in how it points beyond itself and allows the Continuing Church to be a truly Broad Church without overstepping the bounds into Liberal and Modernist Heresy.

I recently set myself the task of working one week solely with the 1662 BCP that I grew up with just to see how I would cope with it. While it brought back memories of singing the wonderful alto line in Adrian Batten's Evening Service from the Fourth Service, I found myself up against the brick wall of the Reformation. Anglican Catholicism and I go back further than that. Of course, the material of the Book of Common Prayer does too, but it is so bound up with that turbulent time, and excises so much in the way of the prior Catholic devotion, that I simply could not continue save only in the spirit of its creation.




I hope, then, I have acquitted myself of any charge of despising what is certainly a truly Anglican and beautiful resource, even if I don't use it. I bow to its unifying principle and recognise it in my Offices of Lauds and Vespers. If there are those who will denounce me for not being an Anglican because I don't use it, I remind them that I am not an Anglican - I am an Anglican Catholic and the Anglican Catholic Church accommodates a generous but firm latitude when it comes to Liturgical Worship.

And, again, to B, I say. "No! Sha'n't!"

What a naughty boy I am! ☺

5 comments:

Fr Anthony said...

As one who uses the Sarum liturgy, either in English or its native Latin, I find a lot of thought in what you say. It is a difficult subject, as the BCP is a symbol of Anglican identity with many people, but there are the brick walls like the 39 Articles and the truncated Eucharistic prayer. I have written a number of articles on my own blog about the notion of Anglican identity. I prefer to think in terms of "Northern Catholicism", "English Gallicanism" or "tidied-up medieval Catholicism" to set it apart from Protestantism, Swiss and German Old Catholicism and post-Tridentine Roman Catholicism. We can't recreate the past or refuse history, but we can take inspiration of these models of Christianity in our own culture and civilisation.

Fr Anthony said...

I have just written "Reflections on the Prayer Book" https://sarumuse.wordpress.com/2017/10/21/reflections-on-the-prayer-book/

Perhaps it isn't the stuff for some of the "hylics" on Facebook, but ideas are developing.

Osmund Kilrule said...

A cradle RC once told me that he found his way to the treasure of the Western liturgical tradition partly through the BCP Office. This was in pre-Summorum Pontificum and pre-Internet days when he was starving on a diet of the Liturgia Horarum. He is now a supporter of the Ordinariate and of Anglican "Patrimony".

JPOutlook said...

Isn't use of the Book of Common Prayer mandated by the canons?

Warwickensis said...

According to Canon 12.2, I am bound to say the Office of daily Morning Prayer and daily Evening Prayer. The BCP is not mandated explicitly. Given that the standard of worship is the BCP and that which conforms to it, my Monastic Breviary makes good sense. In fact, I say more or less everything that a user of the BCP would say and more.

As Eric Morecombe would say, I am saying all the right prayers, just not necessarily in the "right" order.