Patrimony

We deny to claim "any Superiority to ourself
to defyne, decyde, or determyn any Article or Poynt
of the Christian Fayth and Relligion,
or to chang any Ancient Ceremony of the Church
from the Forme before received and observed
by the Catholick and Apostolick Church."

Norman Simplicity

Norman Simplicity
Click image for original | © Vitrearum (Allan Barton)

Thursday, January 29, 2015

"Old School"

The phrase “Prayer Book Catholic” has come to characterize those Anglo-Catholics who not only use the Book of Common Prayer but believe it to be the liturgy par excellence for Catholic worship and teaching the Catholic faith. This is opposed to those Anglo-Catholics who only ever use the prayer book out of necessity but see it as at best incomplete and feel the need to gussy it up with affectations from the liturgies of Rome, the East, or wherever. Prayer Book Catholics believe that Anglicanism is Catholic by its very nature. In that respect, they are the inheritors of the old High Churchman tradition which stressed fidelity to the prayer book as a matter of faith, not simply discipline.

2 comments:

  1. Shouldn't most of the times you use the word Catholic here be with a small c? I've been through three confirmation classes in my life, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and RC, and each said the same -- RC is the only usage where capital C is correct. The Thirty-nine Articles appear in the BCP, and up to 1979 they were binding. Those deny the real presence in the eucharist and deny the authority of the Pope, both definite elements of RC belief. The BCP is not Catholic with a capital C. I still remember wording from it fondly after RC mass, but unless I can find an Ordinariate mass nearby with Catholic usage, I just remember it fondly.

    I think it's important to keep these things clear. I had an e-mail exchange with a silly ex RC religious, now "continuer" who insists he teaches full Catholic teaching from the BCP. If he could keep this stuff clear, he wouldn't be so silly.

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  2. This is a "re-post": as in all such re-postings, I preserve the thought and expression of the original author (sometimes noting misspellings, sometimes correcting them, almost always removing notes). The (embedded) hyper-link takes one to the original and there one may choose to dispute with the author. I don't always agree 100% with what I re-post: it is just a place where I keep my notes, so to speak.

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