Posted on 10/09/2007 1:43:29 PM PDT by Claud
It was an historic occasion a week ago in the Basilica of St. Mary Major. For the first time a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Catholic Church chanted Solemn Evensong in a Papal Basilica. What a beautiful and moving time of prayer it was. His Eminence, Bernard Cardinal Law presided and preached a marvelous sermon. We have visited him with groups of our students before, and he is always tremendously gracious. In addition to over a hundred pilgrims, Archbishop Myers of Newark and Bishop Vann of Fort Worth were in attendance.
It was a very interesting experience to hear our traditional Evensong in the ancient Roman basilica. The Preces and Responses were the 16th century Merbecke setting, harmonized by Thomas Tallis. The Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis were sung by the choir using the lush setting by A. Herbert Brewer, and they also sang as an anthem the gorgeous anthem by Ralph Vaughan Williams, “O How Amiable.” Our music director and organist, Edmund Murray, worked wonders with the music. And as an added point of interest, it was like “old home week” for him and for Cardinal Law, since Mr. Murray had taught music to the seminarians in Boston, and had worked with the Cardinal on many occasions, before moving to Texas.
Seeing the Cardinal incensing the altar during the ever-so-Anglican sounding Magnificat was a very moving experience for me. I couldn’t help but think, “Our liturgy has finally arrived!” Hearing the deep and sonorous voice of the Cardinal leading us in the General Thanksgiving (…we thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks…) made me realize that the best way to preserve our Anglican way of worship is within the Catholic Church.
What an occasion. Historic Anglican prayers, gorgeous music, all offered to God in one of the most venerable basilicas in Christendom. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Ping!
Thanks for the post!
England used to be the jewel in the crown of the Roman Catholic Church. I pray it may be so again. I am working on my old man, a retired Anglican minister, who now belongs to a high-church continuing-Anglican parish that is about as close as you can get to Catholicism without actually swimming the Tiber.
Is he in TAC? He may well come along for the ride if Hepworth gets his wish! :)
Hey, we sang “O How Amiable” last Sunday!
We were nosebleed-high Anglicans.
But why not have the theology and good leadership too?
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It will be a sad day if Anglo-Catholics abandon their roots in the Reformed Catholicism of the Reformation—for which her founders were burned to death—to submit themselves to the unreformed human tradition of Rome.
For the sake of music in Basilicas?
My goodness, do you think the motivation here is as shallow as all that?!
And as for as Anglo-Catholic denying their roots in the Reformation...they'd probably argue that they are going back to their roots...and much deeper roots than 16th century.
What is the difference between Solemn Evensong and Vespers?
Neat! :)
Which touches on a question I’ve been wondering about....I know Anglican churches are big on hymnody. Now do they use them as, for want of a better word, pseudo-Propers? Like is there some standardization of *this* hymn *here* for *this* Sunday/feast.
Or is it simply coincidental that your parish and the AU used the same hymn?
One’s Anglican and the other’s “Roman”.
The Anglican Reformers' fruits have been bitter. Unfortunately, it was always a political denomination at heart, and once the radicals seized control of the political machinery, its doom was sure.
So we turn back to the inspired, authentic tradition directly descended from the Apostles. . . . the tradition that the Anglicans abandoned.
(Plenty of Catholics were burned too. Being the guest of honor at a barbeque does not, in and of itself, demonstrate virtue or theological probity.)
( . . . the fact that it's a very typically Anglican and very lovely anthem probably has more to do with it. It's a "show piece" for any choir with a soprano section that's capable of sustaining their line . . . )
So, basically it is not the first time a Cardinal has chanted evening prayer in one of the Papal basilicas.
There were lots of folks burned, hanged, drawn and quartered on both sides in England during the reformation period. John Fisher, Thomas More and Edmund Campion are just a few who come to mind. No doubt reformed seminaries will take a different position, but too often the seminaries and sunday school classes present only a Protestant or a Catholic perspective. I believe that we were instructed to be on churhch, and have greater fears of Anglicans abandoning their Catholic roots and to embrace full bore sectarianism.
The Roman church should be applauded for providing an alternative for a remnant of the Anglican diaspora who would frankly be shunned by some of the more Protestant jurisdictions.
Evensong in the Anglican church has accumulated a wealth of tradition over the years that it's been separated from Vespers. For one thing, there's a lot more music. The order of service is different, too.
Here is the Order of Evening Prayer that forms the bones or structure of Evensong. Basically everything except the Scripture readings is chanted or sung. The service always includes the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis (Song of Simeon) as well as a sung or chanted Psalm (sometimes two), the Introit and responses are often chanted as well.
This Evening Prayer is from the '28 BCP, a similar form is mostly used for the Anglican Use Rite.
This is wonderful. I find our glorious anglican anthems to be ever so much more moving when they actually mean something and aren’t just pretty words to pretty music in a church that doesn’t believe in anything.
That is why I asked what is the difference between Evensong and Vespers.
For one thing, there's a lot more music.
That may be true for the post-Vatican II Vespers, but it is not true for the pre-Vatican II Vespers. I have been chanting Sunday Vespers according to the Roman Breviary of 1962 once a month for the past 10 months. It is pretty much 45 continuous minutes of chanting (Gregorian, of course).
There are some preliminary prayers and then five Psalms each preceded and followed by an antiphon. For Sunday the Psalms are 109, 110, 111, 112, and 113. Then a scriptural reading, capitulum, which is chanted by the priest or the one leading the prayer. A hymn follows the capitulum. The Magnificat, preceded and followed by an antiphon, is next. The collect is chanted by the priest and the closing prayers follow.
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