Continuing Home

The ongoing saga of a Continuing Anglican church home, as seen by a member of the laity.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Another time of changes

Sunday was my first time to encounter the "new" Order for Holy Communion. I'll be honest and say my initial response is mixed, but I also think it will be fine.

Moving the Gloria to early in the service... I tend to be a "straight-28" (BCP) Anglican, especially after seeing and living through the changes that led to the Episcopal 1979 "BCP" and beyond, but this is one I can live with. It still doesn't seem to me to be a perfect fit in its new place, but it's much better there than near the end of the 1928 BCP liturgy.

I've said it before and I will continue to say it though I'm not going to make a big fuss over it: "Thanks Be To God," especially after the Epistle, grates on my ears in a big way. That was a '79 innovation (not in the '28 at all) that really requires its prefatory statement, "(This is?) The Word of the Lord," to give it sense. "Here Endeth The Epistle / Thanks Be To God" (we finally made it to the end of the Epistle and are still alive/well/whatever) is IMHO just wrong. But whatever -- this is in many ways simply adiaphora and I guess I'll live with it. After all, I have in previous posts remarked on a church choir that most accurately named itself "A Joyful Noise." A little painful to listen to, until you knew their hearts; they were offering the musical equivalent of the widow's mite, and they knew it. But they were making the offering regardless.

The changes in music on Sunday seem to be a bit more difficult; without bulletin references to the appropriate settings in the Hymnal all I could do was listen. But we will get there in short order.

3 Comments:

  • At 5:36 AM, Blogger Tregonsee said…

    We have just completed a trial period of the 1928 BCP in the main services, and will be using it for the foreseeable future in the Holy Day services. Feels like coming home. Of course, at some point there will be a modernized BCP in terms of language and probably some other stylistic matters, but without the dubious theology of the 1979 BCP.

     
  • At 11:58 AM, Blogger The Miller Menagerie said…

    For the liturgical dorks who are curious about previous positioning of the Gloria, here's the "Sarum Missal Done Into English", which I, personally, consider the authority considering how much it inspired BCPs when missals were foregone during Edward VI's reign and the further alignment of Anglicanism as a Protestant denomination. Here's its Google book, which is a free read: (http://books.google.com/books?id=cyUBAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false). Page 293 has the Gloria, where it is after the Kyrie eleison, and before the Lessons. The rubrics pertaining to the Gloria, can be found at the beginning of the book, on page xlv. The Table of Contents is hyperactive (thankfully!!) so you can also just click from there.

     
  • At 7:51 PM, Blogger palaeologos said…

    I'll add (to the Miller Menagerie's post) that the traditional place in the Western Rite for the Gloria is indeed between the Kyrie and the Collect(s). This is the case in every Western Rite and Use, not just Rome & Sarum.

    I don't have serious problems with the Gloria at the back of the service, other than that it seems a bit misplaced there. If it is, as some argue, a canticle of thanksgiving after the reception of Communion, then why the mini-litany in the middle?

    It seems to me that Cranmer's moving it to the end of the service was polemic : "this ain't your daddy's Mass". I don't know that that's really necessary anymore.

     

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