Louis Weil looks back on his work shaping the liturgical life of the Episcopal Church through his involvement with the development of The 1979 Book of Common Prayer— and looks forward to the future of the church and its liturgical life. Through stories and first-person anecdotes, Weil does “narrative theology” as only he can. Although most points of reference are to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the book is aiming at a more fundamental level—not just Episcopal or even Anglican liturgy, but liturgical rites as such: how do they “do what they do”?—or NOT do when they are done badly! “Liturgical Sense” is two dimensional: both the “common sense” of liturgical rites and also their “aesthetic sense.” It is Dr. Weil’s contention that in American culture we have an inherent inability to “think symbolically.” Dr. Weil seeks to encourage a return to “liturgical sense” across the church.

LITURGICAL SENSE

CHURCH PUBLISHING INCORPORATED

Contents

Chapter One

The origins of this book lie in my experience with students during a half-century as a teacher of liturgy. As my style of teaching developed, I found it quite natural to draw upon my experience as a worshiper and as a person who has participated in liturgical celebrations in a wide variety of contexts. In that experience I have quite often simply been an ordinary Christian in a pew on Sunday morning, but always with my eyes wide open as to what I was seeing and hearing in that particular celebration.

I have learned that it makes an enormous difference if a priest is the presider, or an assisting minister, every Sunday. The perspective shaped in that context can inhibit an awareness of the view from the congregation. Generally speaking, clergy may be expected to know what is intended in the rite, but what is it that the people see? As we shall observe in this book, what the people see is sometimes quite different from what is intended.

In the context of the classroom and in my work with seminarians, I have always been aware that the students were candidates for ordination for whom a course in liturgical studies must include an orientation toward their own future ministries. After ordination they would have pastoral responsibility for the liturgical norms of the community to which their bishop would assign them. It was in this context that I came regularly to draw upon my own experiences as a worshiper, and to point out both the positive and the negative aspects of countless liturgies in which I had participated over the years.

Thus, in my teaching I chose not to speak only at a theoretical level in which a teacher might be concerned primarily with reference to historical or theological data. As appropriate, I aimed at placing the wide range of liturgical issues within the context of actual liturgical experience. Sometimes these were quite positive examples of what one might describe as good liturgical models upon which a pastoral norm might be based. Similarly, when I described a poor liturgical model, I was able to analyze with the students why this model was not effective, or even how it embodied a theological understanding which actually contradicted the theology of the Church as to the meaning of the rite. This method brought home to them an awareness that the parish priest is not merely repeating the authorized words found in the Book of Common Prayer, but is also, in the ritual choices that are made, embodying the theology in which the rites were grounded—or potentially, even if unintentionally, subverting that theology.

This approach was nurtured in me through the experience of my own seminary formation with regard both to the theology of the sacraments and the understanding of liturgical worship which is the foundation of the prayer book tradition in Anglicanism. At the time of my own seminary training, these two aspects of the liturgy were actually taught in two different contexts. The attention given to sacramental theology played a relatively minor role in the basic course in theology.

What is most striking to me in this is that when, for example, Baptism was discussed in class, no reference whatever was made to the rite of Baptism as found in the then-authorized American Book of Common Prayer of 1928. Similarly, the Eucharist was discussed, again not in great depth, without reference to the text of The Order for Holy Communion as it was being celebrated throughout the Episcopal Church, including our seminary community each morning in the chapel.

I have asked myself countless times why sacramental theology was given little attention, and why what was taught did not make reference to how a sacrament was celebrated in the prayer book rites. I think that at least part of the answer is that there was a general feeling that, after all, "we know what Baptism is; we all know what Eucharist is ... and we know what Ordination is." But the extraordinary flowering of research on the sacraments during the past few decades has shown us that both historically and theologically we had only an impoverished sense of the rich complexity of these rites and their meaning in the history of Christianity.

When I look back on the approach to the teaching of liturgy that was standard during my seminary years through the lens of my personal experience as a teacher of liturgy, I find it quite amazing that the two primary sacramental actions of the Church were not discussed with any reference to how the Church actually embodied the theology of these two "dominical sacraments" in our liturgical celebrations. There was a kind of disconnection, which of course I accepted at the time as a seminarian, but which I came to reject in my own ministry as a teacher. Years later, in conversations with clergy who had attended seminaries other than my own, I learned that the approach I had experienced was characteristic of the general approach to the teaching of liturgy across the Episcopal Church at that time.

Although the curriculum at my seminary did include a required course which was titled "Liturgics," many other schools did not require even a basic course in liturgical studies. When I inquired about this, I was told that in some places liturgy was seen as a matter of "practical theology"—thus not an academic subject with which the seminary faculty should be concerned. It was expected that a newly ordained deacon would learn these practical aspects of ordained ministry during the one-year curacy that was then normative upon completion of the three-year seminary program.

Other aspects of liturgical study, such as the historical evolution of the liturgy in the life of the Church, including the developments and conflicts about its theological meanings, might be available as electives for seminarians for whom this was an area of special interest. But when it came to what a presider or officiant might actually do in matters of ritual practice, most of the newly ordained would be shaped by the particular manner and style of the rector at the parish where they were assigned, from whom they would learn how the rites were to be done—at least in that particular parish. To be frank, often the rector's own seminary training in liturgy had left him, in this regard, with little more than his own preferences.

Among Anglicans, the primary intention was always a kind of liturgical obedience to the particular rite, not only the authorized words of the rite, but also the rubrics within the rite. Although those rubrics tended to be rather minimal in the various versions of the Book of Common Prayer as authorized in the provinces of the Anglican Communion, they were considered as obligatory as the texts themselves as an expression of prayer book conformity which a candidate promised at the time of ordination. For clergy formed in this tradition, fidelity to the rubrics was seen as their primary obligation with regard to the performance of the rites of the Book of Common Prayer. This absolute conformity was generally obeyed in principle more than in practice, since, as I observed again and again in visits to different parishes, adherence to the Book of Common Prayer was interpreted to mean an adherence to the local model, that is, to "the Prayer Book as we do it here." But the principle of prayer book conformity itself operated as a powerful symbol of Anglican unity.

In conversations with Roman Catholic priests of my generation, I discovered that their liturgical formation had as its focus the learning of the canon law concerned with the liturgy, as well as the authorized rubrics for each sacramental act that a priest was to perform. The goal of this focus on liturgical law and rubrics was intended to give the assurance to the priest (and to his bishop!) that he was conforming to the intention of the Church in sacramental celebrations so that validity was assured. With regard to the celebration of the Mass, the rubrics had developed as an elaborate and precise pattern, which was an integral requirement for the priest in his task to fulfill that intention.

For many of the ordained, this understanding of their ritual obligations had significant impact upon their whole approach to the liturgical rites. The effect of this for both Anglicans and Roman Catholics, although for different reasons, was to limit liturgical practice to a very narrow range of the practices of the Church as embodied at various times and in various contexts. In other words, liturgical practice—the ritual models that have been used by ordained pastoral leaders over the centuries—has been very diverse. Knowledge of this is one of the liberating effects of the historical study of the liturgy. One learns through such study that everything in the liturgy carries a history, an evolution that has been shaped through a wide range of factors, not merely theological, but also historical and cultural, and even through the accidents of history.

In this book we shall explore a series of subjects related to the general area of ritual eucharistic practice. This will permit us to observe how the "rubrical mentality" developed most significantly as the Church shifted in its understanding of ordination from a model of service to the people of God, to a model of sacramental power which was limited to the ministries of bishops and priests. This shift tended to isolate the ordained priest from the lives of the people alongside whom, in the earlier model, the sacramental rites had embodied and nourished their shared life of faith.

We shall be examining in this book how the role of a priest, primarily in the context of a eucharistic celebration, developed in ever more elaborate and dominant ways so that this great common act of faith of the whole people of God became, in effect, the private devotion of the priest which the lay people might be permitted to observe but in which they had no integral role. Then we shall see how the issues related to the sacramental role of a priest were transformed in the sixteenth-century English Reformation and were subsequently modified through a new advent of ritualism in the nineteenth-century. Finally we shall consider how these questions are being approached with a new orientation in our own time as the Church rediscovers the authentic nature of liturgical prayer.

Chapter Two

With the completion of the process by which the Episcopal Church prepared its new edition of the Book of Common Prayer, and at the time of its final authorization at the General Convention of 1979, the pastoral need for another, complementary, type of liturgical book arose. This second type of liturgical book would not have the same official status that is accorded by Anglicans to their respective versions of the Book of Common Prayer in the provinces of the Communion around the world. Even within the Episcopal Church, this second type of book would appear in many different versions, versions reflecting the wide range of ritual customs that are characteristic of Anglican liturgical practice. This second type would deal with questions about how the newly authorized book was to be used, how the various rites were to become embodied in local liturgical practice.

Ritual guides became a familiar complement to liturgical practice in the English Church from the seventeenth century in particular. By and large, these books were a defense of Anglican liturgical practice in response to the heated criticisms of the Puritans with regard to any use of fixed forms in worship. Such liturgical guides did not have the official or legal status of the authorized use of the Book of Common Prayer, but they were widely influential in establishing normative models in Anglican liturgical practice.

There were and are, of course, many clergy who never consult this type of book. They presume that the prayer book itself will contain a sufficient indication of how the rites are to be done, as expressed in the rubrics found in each rite. But for a great many clergy as well as for laity who are interested in the Church's worship and who perhaps are involved in liturgical planning, such books can serve as an important resource. These books offer what might be called a further development of the rubrics printed within the rites. They are a kind of expansion of the rubrics and are expressive of the particular liturgical preferences or style of their author. In some cases, a book may suggest quite minimal gestures with regard to how a rite is to be celebrated. In other examples, the ritual style that is modeled can be a very elaborate expansion of the rubrics, which are themselves characteristically brief. The rubrics generally do not spell out ritual choices in detail if for no other reason than the buildings in which the rites will be celebrated vary enormously in design, often imposing serious restraints upon how a rite will be performed.

Another characteristic of ritual manuals is that they will often simply reaffirm ritual models that were commonly used in connection with an earlier version of the prayer book, or only with very slight variations or modifications. For ordained clergy, this would probably be the most natural pattern to follow. When priests have celebrated a rite for many years using a particular pattern of ritual gestures, it is easy to presume that these gestures will continue in use. That pattern, whether simple or elaborate, has, through repeated use over many years, become their natural "body language" as liturgical presiders. The only modifications may be in connection with the spoken texts, which are now authorized in the new book.

In other cases, however, one may find a new approach as to how the ritual questions are to be engaged. This has been particularly true with regard to the American BCP of 1979. The reason for this change is that the people who drafted the new rites were doing more than a minimal revision of the earlier 1928 Book of Common Prayer. During the previous several decades, the impact of what is called "the Liturgical Movement" had begun to have a significant influence upon how liturgical ritual itself was to be understood.

Whereas earlier versions of the prayer book had embodied a liturgical model in which the ordained priest was the major and dominant agent in the liturgical action, the Liturgical Movement had awakened Christians in all of the liturgical churches to the root meaning of the word "liturgy"—that the liturgy is the common action of the whole People of God, and not merely an act of the ordained which the people observe. This was one of the most significant principles of the Liturgical Movement, and one that we are still seeking to realize in its full implications. Along with this recovered liturgical principle, it was inevitable that questions would be raised about the role of the ordained ministers. Many people were, for example, accustomed to referring to the priest as the "celebrant" at the Eucharist. But this custom was questioned when it was realized that all of the assembly, all of the gathered people, are the celebrants of the liturgy. The people are then active participants in the liturgical action rather than passive observers of what the clergy do. The role of the priest is therefore more that of a "presider" over the liturgical action which all—the full assembly including clergy—are gathered to celebrate together.

When the word "presider" first began to appear in parish bulletins for the Sunday Eucharist, it often provoked a negative reaction—on the surface for a very good reason. The word "presider" (or occasionally "president") suggested an image of a leader of an organization, or perhaps of a chairman at a meeting of a Board of Directors. This use of the term is certainly familiar to us. But then it was discovered that in fact the title "presider" is the earliest term known to us to be used in the Church for the person who would be the pastoral leader of the community, usually the bishop. The ministry of presiding at the Eucharist and at other sacramental rites was grounded in pastoral care, in general oversight of the local community.

To see the "presider" in relationship to the gathered people for a common action calls for an important shift in the general understanding of the nature of the liturgy itself. The earlier understanding of the liturgy, in which the ordained priest was the dominant figure, had shaped the liturgical sense of both clergy and laity for many centuries. The usual posture of the celebrant during that period was with his back to the people, standing while the people now knelt, so that the people could not even see the gestures he used during the course of the Eucharistic Prayer.

During this same extended period, there occurred an important theological shift that placed an increasing emphasis on the role of the priest along with a decline in the participatory role of the gathered laity. This emphasis on the priest as the one—the only one—who "confects the Sacrament" and who was often the only communicant, contributed to an increasing elaboration of the priest's ritual gestures, particularly in the context of the Eucharistic Prayer. It had become virtually his private prayer. Whereas the earliest evidence indicates that the posture of the presider was simply one of raised hands during the proclamation of the Prayer, this powerful simplicity had given way gradually to an extremely complex pattern of signs of the cross and pointing to or touching the elements of bread and wine.

As candidates for ordination were either instructed by the rector of their home parish, or else by a faculty member, in the ritual actions of the Eucharistic Prayer, there was no model that could be called "normative," since these patterns often varied enormously. Clergy who were inclined toward a more Catholic sense of ritual tended to use ritual gestures with much greater frequency than those whose orientation was more within the Evangelical tradition.

The problem that often arose, whatever model a priest had adopted, was that, as I observed time and time again, this model became a lifetime commitment. Differences in the size of a church building, or the character of a particular liturgical celebration or event, or even the difference of a simple said celebration as contrasted with the primary liturgy of a Sunday morning—these had little if any impact on what gestures a priest did when he presided at the liturgy. When the Episcopal Church affirmed the ordination of women, I hoped at first that women might offer a fresh understanding of the presider's role, but in general they adopted the same norm as the ordained men in my experience.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from LITURGICAL SENSEby LOUIS WEIL Copyright © 2013 by Louis Weil. Excerpted by permission of CHURCH PUBLISHING INCORPORATED. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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