Friday, April 25, 2008

A Return to Sarum

English or Roman Use?

:A Return to Sarum

by Anselm Lewis

"While you stick to the old Church of England ways you are respectable—it is going by a sort of tradition ; when you profess to return to lost Church of England ways you are rational ;—but when you invent a new ceremonial which never was, when you copy the Roman or other foreign rituals, you are neither respectable nor rational. It is sectarian."—J. H. Newman to Henry Wilberforce. Life of J. H. Cardinal Newman, by W. Ward. 1912. I. 235.

Unlike Mr. Wyatt I do not seem to have many of the doctrinal objections which he seemed to have against the Church of Rome, we do however share a common dislike for the Romanizers. It is thus so that I have used the name of his original tract as the title of my own little work here. When here is spoken of "The English Use" it is not meant the Book of Common Prayer or anything to evolve therefrom as while it is true that they were fashioned after the Sarum Missal they were not motivated by catholic thoughts and ideas but instead were manufactured something in the vain of Protestant ideology. We can for certain Cranmer openly condemned veneration of Saints in a rejection of orthodox ideals in the 39 Articles, and thus removed invocations to the Saints from any prayers which he might have borrowed from the Sarum Missal. What then is meant here by The English Use is that Liturgical tradition which existed in the English Church before and shortly after the break with Rome. Those who desire The English Use do so not for political or nationalist reasons (the reason which the BCP was created), but out of a search and love for authentic English Catholic Spirituality. This is to say the expression of a specific spirituality which has inherit to it a certain culture and way of life, which in our present age reaches beyond national boundaries speaking not to people of this or that country, but instead to this or that particular soul as the way in which God most desires this or that soul to Worship Him. We can take for instance the now common existence within the Latin Church the two Uses called Tridentine and Novus Ordo of which the current Pope has permitted those under his care to experience regularly that Liturgy which is most spiritually beneficial to each individual within the jurisdiction of the Pope. It is upheld then by those who seek to restore to its wholeness the Anglican Church as she existed before the Schism that a more complete ceremonial law is required than is provided at this current time, and that it is not proper to abolish the authentic spirituality of the Anglican Church.

It cannot be said for certain if those who sought to revive The Pre-Reformation English Church had as their final intent the complete restoration of the pre-schism Liturgies, this however now seems to make little difference when taken into account the knowledge they possessed at the time, and that in reality this must be the natural development of things. It was thought then that the ceremonies of the Roman and English Church before the schism were of little difference and thus they in honesty began to adopt into the Prayer Book Roman customs. As time advanced and scholarly work began to arise on the subject the differences which existed began to appear and the natural turn of things should have been to move from the Roman Practice to the more authentic English practices. It is without a doubt in some part due to a sense of Roman inferiority that many stayed with the Roman Use and why even at their abominable Liturgical Deformation some adopted the novel Novus Ordo Liturgy.

It should be said of these detestable Romanizers that if in truth the Lord has called you to that particular spiritual life then by all means may you go with our blessing and in the peace of the Lord. We though cannot tolerate by any means this deliberate subversion of our particular spirituality and that it is illegitimate and an act of treason to falsely impose the spirituality of one Church on another Church. Let us observe that unlike us who it has taken since 1662 to realize the error of our reformed Liturgy it has only taken the Latins a half century to realize and begin to correct the error of their ways. And that if then the Romanizers wish to be truly useful and use the Church of Rome as an example of the actions of which we the Anglican Church should follow let them then lead the charge on the restoration of our ancient customs.

The greatest objection to the return to The English Use seems to be that we cannot introduce it into the life of the Church without causing great disruption. However if we should ever take the lead from Rome Liturgically on anything it should be with its example of summorum pontificum in which the Latins have seemed to masterfully created a way for the traditional Latin Liturgy to reemerge even along side of the bastard Novus Ordo. By creating an option and requiring new Priests to be trained in The English Use it cannot be doubted that we will see similar results as the Latins have within the very short time which summorum pontificum has existed.

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