Friday, January 29, 2010

Churchmanship pond differences

Correspondents in the Church of England are bemused that, for years, the traditional Anglo-Catholic kingpin in the Canadian House of Bishops was a woman.

In Canada, Evangelicals do Morning Prayer from the BCP twice a month. In England, they have free-form services of the word and, when the bishop looks the other way, lay presidency. All of this assumes the universal 8 or 8.30 low celebration. St Paul's, Bloor Street, has an additional one Tuesdays at ten minutes past noon, for the laudable evangelical purpose of attracting downtown employees who can't make it to church on Sunday mornings.

In Canada, Anglo-Catholics typically (but not invariably) use the BCP or the BAS "Toronto Rite" developed at St Mary Magdalene. Vatican II hasn't really kicked in. Even at SMM, which has largely adopted the modern Roman Rite, you will still see burse and veil, a mark of "middle of the road" and not pure laine Anglo-Catholic churchmanship in England. A lay subdeacon in dalmatic and maniple assists and the choirs sing the sequence after the Alleluia verse. Given the thinness of Anglo-Catholic parishes here, "FiF" and "AffCath" types (in attitude: the formal organizations have no real presence here) tend to coexist in the same parishes. (As far as I am aware, only Toronto and Montréal have more than one Anglo-Catholic parish, unless St David of Wales, Vancouver, remains as such).

9 comments:

Fr. Aaron Orear said...

If you mean what cities have more than one A-C parish, you're probably right. Niagara, astoundingly, has three avowedly A-C houses, plus some that are a lot more catholic than they know.

G said...

Indeed, going by diocese that is the case. When I visited St James the Apostle, Guelph, it was more "high," but I gathered it was a case of a congregation less "advanced" than the rector. I'm hoping to visit St Barnabas, St Catharine's, soon.

St Paul's, Dunnville, lost its last (SSC) rector to the Diocese of Gibraltar (nice work if you can get it!) and things like the rosary seem to have been discontinued. I've not been to St Luke's since the living was revoked.

Anonymous said...

Who are you talking about in your first paragraph?

G said...

The Rt Revd Victoria Matthews, sometime Bishop of Edmonton, now translated to the see of Christchurch, in the tikanga pakeha of the province of New Zealand.

Whit Johnstone said...

Interestingly enough, the daily eucharist I attended at St. James' Anglican Cathedral seemed less protestant to this Methodist then the Catholic mass at St. Michel's I had attended some days previously, despite the female celebrant and chalace offered to the laity at the Anglican eucharist.

I think that this was because the Catholic service featured an excellent if short sermon, and was celebrated versus populam, while the Anglican service at St. James was ad orientum and had no homily. The fact that the priest went through the liturgy in a sort of rapid mutter didn't help much either!

G said...

My mother, baptised as an adult in the heady days after Vatican II, had precisely the same complaint about Low Mass at the Cathedral.

Whit Johnstone said...

I should add, in all fairness, that the prayers for "our queen" at the Anglican cathedral jarred me more then they should have! I remember thinking "she's not MY queen... not yet, anyway, and she may well never be" and looking up at the tattered battle-flag above the altar of the side chapel were using (I think it was a Canadian blue ensign) askance.

I will definitely be more cautious about mixing American patriotism with pity in the future, after being so turned off by encountering such things in another nation.

Anonymous said...

Have you actually ever met or spoken at length with BVM?

Isaac Thorpe said...

S. David of Wales Vancouver has gone into a little bit of a tail spin since Fr. Penrice retired (remembered as the last priest in the Diocese who was openly against the OoW.), as the current rector, though a former curate at S. James has led the parish considerably down in an attempt to survive, but it hasnt worked either... so they appear to be in some sort of partnership with a First Nations group to stay viable, but am unsure of how successful it will be. There are a couple of parishes with rather A-C rectors (my own at Holy Trinity, White Rock is former SSC) but are in moderate to high parishes (ie chasubles, stations, reserve, big six).