Of the various forms of Classical
Protestantism which have survived to our day, the one deemed most
"Catholic" has been the Church or England, both in its
architecture and its rites. In reality, this is a false
perception brought about by the catholicizing influence of the
Oxford Movement from the middle 19th Century.
The original schism between Henry
VIII and the Catholic Church initially brought about no
changes in the liturgy, but merely the seizure of property from
the Church to fill the coffers of Henry's treasury and enrich his
friends. The true origin of the Anglican Church began after
Henry's death under the boy king Edward VI. Finally freed
from his rapacious master, the arch-apostate bishop Thomas
Cranmer began a campaign to de-catholicize the Anglican
Church by "reforming" the liturgy. In doing so, he
severed the schismatics in England not only from communion with
the Holy See but with the Church of all time. The first step in
the official "reform" of the liturgy was the
publication of the Book of Common Prayer in 1549. With its
publication, Cranmer managed to extinguish Apostolic Succession
and to deny – at first implicitly but, in later editions,
most explicitly – transubstantiation and the Real Presence in
the Eucharist.
Cranmer's program was not his
original idea. Rather, he was influenced by one of the most
ubiquitous, insidious, and little mentioned figures of the 16th
century: Martin Bucer. Originally a Dominican priest,
Bucer became an early advocate of the "reform" in
Germany. He lived in Strasbourg and actively agitated for the
protestantization of the Church in that area.
Bucer eventually had to leave
Germany and went to France and Switzerland where he became a
major influence on the young "reformer" John Calvin
at a critical point in Calvin's career. Bucer expounded a merely
symbolic meaning to the sacraments – especially the
Eucharist.
The Reformed Liturgy
It was Bucer whom Cranmer called upon to help him
"reform" the Anglican liturgy. Eventually, Bucer came
to England and he held sway at Cambridge University assisting in
the composition of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer (BCP)
and its planned revision until his death in 1551. After the death
of Edward VI, when Queen Mary restored England to the
Catholic Church, albeit briefly, the remains of Bucer were
disinterred and burned publicly at Cambridge for his part in the
destruction of England's faith and liturgy.
The original 1549 BCP was a
"simplified" translation of the Latin text of the Sarum
usage into vernacular English with the overt references to
sacrifice "suppressed." The basic rite of communion
remained unchanged. Altars were still used with both the priest
and the people facing to the east. The faithful came up and knelt
at the altar rail to receive the host. To the ordinary layman,
not much seemed to have changed.
However, the 1549 BCP also
contained a revised rite of ordination (ordinal) for deacons,
priests, and bishops, which completely suppressed any notion of
the minister as offering sacrifice and in fact implied that all
three offices differed only nominally from each other. The three
rites were virtually identical. The four minor orders were
suppressed. This Edwardine Ordinal has always been held by the
Holy See to be insufficient to confect Holy Orders. This point
was forcefully asserted by Pope Leo XIII in the Bull "Apostolicae
Curae" in 1896 in which he drew the final conclusion
after careful study that the defect of intention in the 1549
Ordinal rendered any attempt at ordination by subsequent Anglican
rites to be "absolutely null and utterly void."
The 1552 BCP revision —thanks
to Bucer's direct input— was far more radical. Cranmer and
Bucer intended by the new rite to deny any difference between the
minister and the people. They also wanted to deny the sacrificial
nature of the Eucharistic rite, and the Real Presence of Christ
in the Eucharistic Species. To those ends, several things were
done. Altars were replaced with free standing tables. The
minister faced the congregation over the table during the entire
ceremony. He was not a priest mediating between the people and
God but the leader of the congregation leading them in a rite
that proceeded from the authority of the community as a whole.
Kneeling was held to a minimum because this was a sign of
difference between minister and people and because it implied
worship of the Eucharistic elements. The congregation stood
during the "consecration" of the eucharistic elements
just as the minister did. Reception of Communion was done
standing, into the hand, and under both species for everyone,
both minister and laity. The Eucharist was not reserve. What was
not consumed was often used later deliberately for regular eating
and drinking in order to scoff at the scruples of the Catholics.
The original draft of the 1552 BCP
was sent to Parliament for ratification. Not everyone in
Parliament understood what was being done and why. They were just
told that the three year-old BCP was obsolete and needed further
revision to "keep up with the times". Some objections
were raised and some changes were made in the text before the new
BCP revision was passed. One thing in particular was that the
people were allowed to kneel for communion as an option.
The Black Rubric
After Parliament's final vote, Cranmer illegally added what
became known as the "Black Rubric" to the text. This
rubric was inserted as a footnote where permission was given for
kneeling during Communion. The rubric stated that while one might
kneel for communion, this did not imply any worship of the sacred
Species as if they were truly the Body and Blood of Christ.
In 1553, Cranmer promulgated
"The Forty Two Articles" of the Anglican Church
imitating the Lutheran "Augsburg Confession." Later,
these would be reconfigured by pseudo-bishop Matthew Parker as
"The Thirty Nine Articles" under Queen Elizabeth in
1563. In both sets of articles, the Catholic doctrine of
transubstantiation was specifically condemned. The Thirty Nine
Articles teaches a variation on Luther's view of
consubstantiation and condemns the views of Zwingli, Calvin, and
Bucer. Revisions to the BCP in 1558, 1604, and 1662 were seen as
more "catholic" and these were proximate causes of the
Puritan rebellions which culminated in the "Glorious
Revolution" when William of Orange seized the throne and
deposed the rightful Stuart heirs. Thereafter it would be written
in the English Constitution that only a Protestant could be King
(or Queen) of England.
The similarity of our
contemporary reforms
The implications of the above history are sobering for Catholics
in the period after the reform of the Roman Missal in 1969.
Although not specifically called for in the new Missal or by the
document on the liturgy, "Sacrosanctum Concilium,"
from the Second Vatican Council, many of the changes wrought by
Cranmer and Bucer to deny the priesthood, the sacrificial nature
of the Eucharist, and transubstantiation have become commonplace
in Catholic liturgical practice. These changes did not alter the
validity of the Mass, nor do they necessarily imply the denials
that Cranmer and Bucer intended. Nevertheless, one would think
that an astute liturgist with a sense of history would understand
what they had signified in the past and would have been very
reluctant to add them to a Catholic rite.
There is a trend now among
fully-believing Catholics to return to the practice of kneeling
for Communion, receiving on the tongue and under one kind. As the
Catholic people return to a reverence for the Eucharist, which is
commensurate with the reality of transubstantiation, perhaps we
will remember what Cranmer and Bucer tried to do and modify our
practice to refute them.
This article was originally posted
in St. Catherine Review.
