Yes, I discovered the passage from MacCulloch and I do agree with his perspective. It appears there was a purposed evolution in the development of Cranmer's liturgy, as Dom Gregory Dix forcibly argues in The Shape of the Liturgy.
From what I have read over the years, I too have come to the conclusion that Cranmer converted to radical reformation, low Calvinist or Zwinglian, views on the Eucharist in the earliest stages of the protestant revolt and intended to use the 1549 as an incremental step, an interim rite, towards the attainment of a Eucharistic rite that conformed more closely to his theology. The centre of the 1552 Communion Service is the reception of the Blessed Sacrament as an act of subjective personal faith (receptionism), all other foci, such as the Consecration and Canon, the objective aspects of the sacramental action (Real Sacrifice and Presence), being reduced and downplayed to the greatest possible extent. The 1549 was intended, I think, to be a temporary and transitional liturgy meant to ease Catholics along the lines of his liturgical and theological reform, ironically, not terribly unlike the effort of the Anglican Communion in the 1960s and 1970 to promulgate a new liturgical order through a series of draft transitional liturgies (England: Series I, II, III - America: Liturgy of the Lord's Supper 1967, the Grey Book, the Green Book, the Zebra Book, etc.).
The reversals and revisions of 1559, 1604 and certainly 1662 did not conform as closely as 1552 to Cranmer's ultimate vision. Personally I still believe the 1549, as transitional and impermanent as it was intended to be, is still the finest Anglican liturgy in all history and the most expressive of traditional Catholic sacramental and Eucharistic doctrine. It more carefully perpetuates the 'hermeneutic of continuity,' reform based on Tradition, than any other Anglican Eucharistic rite, based as it is primarily on the Sarum Use and the Eastern Liturgies. Mercifully for us, the Scottish-American rites of 1764-1789 adopt 1549 as their basic theological and structural paradigm instead of 1552-1662. The 1928 American Book best recaptures the spirit of 1549 of any modern Anglican liturgy, with the exceptions, perhaps, of Scotland 1929 or South Africa 1954.
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4 comments:
Father Chad,
I'm afraid you and I couldn't be further apart on this one. Dix and his scholarship on ++Cranmer are more polemics than true scholarship, and he is second only to MacCulloch in having a poor understanding of ++Cranmer's patristic scholarship itself. It reminds me of Trevor-Roper's hatchet job on ++William Laud. I failed to digest the snake oil from either gentleman.
For an antidote to such stuff I'd recommend the volume "Thomas Cranmer: Churchman and Scholar" edited by Ayris and Selwyn. Within it is an essay that changed my mind from the Dixian thesis and pointed out it flaws: Basil Hall's "Cranmer, the Eucharist, and the Foreign Divines of Edward VI."
dh+
My own feeling after reading MacCulloch's biography on Cranmer and reading "Worship and Theology in England" is that Cranmer's hand was unnaturally forced by the polemics of Gardener. When the 1549 BCP came out, Gardener demonstrated that the new rite was completely catholic, thus making Cranmer react rather over zealously and "unauthentically", if you will, by revising the BCP. I got the sense in reading the biography that there was a great rivalry between Cranmer and Gardener.
Cranmer wasn't given enough time to "cook" because he was cooked on the stake by Mary! Had he lived, I think his vision of reformed English Catholicism would have come to perfect fruition.
Some (like Dix) have argued that Cranmer became completely Zwinglian in his sacramental theology. Horton Davies disagrees, saying that he only went so far as to become rather Calvinistic in his eucharistic theology.
Chad+
What is it that you like about the Scottish book of 1929 (I've not seen the South African book) that you think superior to the 1928? I'm not arguing with you, just curious what you like about it over the 1928.
pax.
MLW+
Dear Mike+
I believe the 1929 Scottish BCP is certainly equal to, but not necessarily superior, to the 1928 American BCP, in that it preserves the wonderful Non-Juring liturgical tradition, with elements from the 1637 Laudian Prayer Book, to the Liturgy of 1718, to the 'Wee Bookies,' to the 1764 Prayer Book utilised by Bishop Seabury. Its Eucharistic rite preserves the best of the Scoto-Catholic tradition in Anglicanism. It also incorporates many feast days of Our Lady, the British Saints, and the Western calendar conscipuously missing from the American Prayer Book. Overall I tend to apprecaite it as splendid compendium of what is best in the old Non-Juring 'British Catholic' High Anglican tradition. God bless you!
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