those choosing the Extraordinary Form of the Mass ... are nostalgic for a fictional simpler time

Really? The majority of EF attendees in this area are under the age of 40. NONE of them would have been 'born to' the EF Mass--ergo, no "nostalgia" or "simpler times" are operative.

"You are correct as far as that goes."

eqe29k, Ratzinger's support of the new Mass goes very far, because that is the question where this started: the actual rite itself. I believe that the Mass should be chanted, but it is not required. The issue is the text in this discussion. And your comment reinforces what I was saying: JPII and XVI wholeheartedly supported the new form of the Mass. That has nothing to do with what kind of music they preferred. Their preferences guide and are identical to mine.

I asked a priest who had been through all this what guidance he would offer, and he said, first, read the documents of the Council. But he recommended heartily the young Ratzinger's Theological Highlights of Vatican II. Fr. Ruff may prefer Gelineau, but I think this book is full of insight. The priest pointed to his description of the opening Mass, and he was right: 2 or 3 paragraphs of brilliant insight.

Kenneth

No one leaves early at Walsingham.
I dare say that that holds for the entire Ordinariate.
It's in our genes not to leave before The Mass Is Ended -
and even then not to do so hurriedly.

I'm sure that I'm not the only one for whom departure is tinged
with a slight bit of sadness to be leaving.

Even Hindemith's gebrauchsmusik was better music (albeit not liturgically useful) than, say, that of the Jebbies of St Louis.

Oh, that's one huge horse pill to swallow fur mich.

I have been 'nostalgic' all my life for a variety of periods before that dreadful year of 1789, or sometimes the Victorian epoch. Nostalgists don't realise, though, that we ourselves would be people we probably wouldn't like to be if we lived 'back then' - we would hate Jews, we would have a variety of colourful or fearful superstitious beliefs, we would hate the French if we were Germans, or the Germans if we were French, we would have our share in the mutual hatreds of Protestants and Catholics, we would be contemptuous of other cultures and races, we wouldn't mind that our soldiers were out massacring Indians, we would be stinky and sweaty, we would have bizarre beliefs, no modern medicine, no 'conveniences' of any kind that we take for granted - indoor plumbing, for instance. When the sun went down it was candles or darkness. We might be illiterate and uneducated. We might well be one of the great majority of people who likely never heard the music that we love. It wasn't all well-dressed courtliness or exciting tournaments.
They did, though, know how to dress!
Modern costume (especially that for men) is colorless and Boring.

Yes, MJO, but would you say that your choice of Liturgy and liturgical music are driven from a sense of nostalgia? That's not what I pick up from your postings... and that is my point to the earlier comment - that the choice of the EF is somehow largely reduced to mere nostalgia. My personal experience with people attending the EF over the years does not demonstrate that. Sure, there are individual cases of nostalgic people here and there... but largely, it appears to me that people choose the EF for the spiritual good that they derive from that Liturgy. The OF is perhaps more tricky to assess... there are some who have only ever known the OF, so obviously it is not so much a choice for those individuals as it is simply practicing the Faith as they've been taught. But there are certainly those who feel (strongly) that the OF is more representative or conducive to their expression of faith, and most definitely choose the OF as a result.

To my mind, simply assessing those who attend EF as "nostalgics" on the one hand or those who attend the OF as "intellectually lazy" on the other may be convenient but does not at all represent the complexity of the choice... and is not very helpful to discussing the different forms. Just a thought.

we would be stinky and sweaty, we would have bizarre beliefs, no modern medicine, no 'conveniences' of any kind that we take for granted - indoor plumbing, for instance. When the sun went down it was candles or darkness

Ah, but you would have trackers.

I like here and now and have no desires to go back in time. I think I would just encounter earlier versions of the same disagreeable goofs.

Dictionary.com:

typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.

That's the FIRST definition (truncated a little).

So people under the age of forty do NOT attend the EF for "nostalgia." Maybe because they think that the EF offers more order....or more food for thought....

100+ years ago, when Communion after Mass was the norm, I wonder how many left Mass early?

I can't speak to that, but 60+ years ago at the mid-day Mass I normally attended quite a number of people men left early. If they had not the priest would have been unable to get through the crowd to the sacristy.

a troll posing as a scholar

Well, there are a lot of posers in the Church. Some wear collars. Nothing new under the sun, eh?

However, the matter is somewhat more complex than the Test Act and a number of other items that one could use to close the matter of sacramental theology in the Anglican Church.

It has been said, and smartly so, that 'the law is the mirror of our sins'. A 'law' such as the Test Act, or some of the embarrassing Thirty-nine Articles, etc., by its very promulgation testifies that there always have been and are significant numbers of Anglicans, both clerk and lay, who believe in the real presence as defined by 'transubstantiation'. There are also significant others who believe fervently in the real objective presence, but who, like the Orthodox, shy away from defining precisely something that is a 'Holy Mystery'.

There has always been a 'Catholic party' in the post-Henrician Church of England. Elizabeth I, herself, was of this persuasion and used to urge the priest in her Chapel Royal to 'heave it higher, sir priest' at the consecration. A study of Archbishop Laud, the Caroline Divines, and a steady stream of others leading right up to Newman (who did not happen in a vacuum) will attest to this. Legislation such as the Test Act to stamp it out was routinely ineffective.

One cannot read the Prayer of Consecration of the 1929 American BCP and have any doubt but that it means the objective presence of our Lord. Those who don't believe this have to go to considerable (and often comical) lengths to aver that it doesn't mean what it says plainly. Sadly, the Anglican Church has never officially come down on one side or the other in this matter. It prefers to make room for many tinctures of faith under its broad tent.

Of greater and more complex import is the sad fact that, regardless of their orthodox beliefs, the Anglicans haven't valid orders by which to realise what they believe they are doing. This should not be an occasion of gloating and sneering (as some Catholics foolishly, very foolishly, do), but, rather, of sadness at the futility of their cousin's predicament. Too, I am not sure that we should presume to 'put God in a little box of our making', It may be that he, in his mercy and wisdom, somehow accepts what is offered to him in good faith. About this we cannot know. But, certainly, the spiritual Schadenfreude which many Catholics seem to delight in in this matter is, to say the least, spiritually imprudent.

As for the Lutherans, well, insofar as that they have not even a pretense of orders their case is more rickety than that of the Anglicans. I have met and known of many Lutherans who believe firmly and precisely in transubstantiation (and a host of other Catholic beliefs). Regardless, though, of their genuine beliefs they haven't valid orders to make real the very thing that they 'believe' to be taking place. Here, too, only a spiritually proud Catholic would dare indulge in spiritual Schadenfreude over a matter that is truly sad. We should only hope that God, in his love and mercy, will bring some good of it.

It is, but it was an act of Parliament aimed at keeping Catholics and other non-conformists out of public office, so it shows that the anti-sacramental faction of the C of E was dominant enough at the time to get its will through Parliament. It doesn't seem to be a doctrinal statement of the Church of England itself. Nobody cites the Test Acts after the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles as milestones of Anglican doctrine. Or, if I'm mistaken about that, please let us know.

bizarre statement

Well said.

If you are only going to allow the OF, then what do you do with the dozen or so Eastern Catholic rites that are very different than the OF?
I think of the EF as kind of belonging in that group.

As to the question of Lutheran orders and that quote of Luther’s re the Mass, one has to remember that the same man said (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, art. 24) “At the outset we must again make the preliminary statement that we do not abolish the Mass, but religiously maintain and defend it. For among us masses are celebrated every Lord's Day and on the other festivals, in which the Sacrament is offered to those who wish to use it, after they have been examined and absolved. And the usual public ceremonies are observed, the series of lessons, of prayers, vestments, and other like things.” http://bocl.org/?AP+XXIV

The passage quoted from his Tischrede (remarks he made hanging out at table) reflects his anger at the Mass *as then practiced* and the obstacle it presented to the laity, who mutely adored what they did not comprehend, and rarely, if ever, received the body and blood of Christ. I have heard worse from old Boomers griping about the Mass pre-V2....

At Luther’s last celebration of the Eucharist before he died, he was very weak and ill to the point that he dropped the chalice after the elevation. He got on his hands and knees, and did his best to immediately lick up [what he believed to be] the Blood of Christ. And finally, his last words were, in Latin, the Compline responsory “In manus tuas....Redemisti nos....”

As to the question of orders, the few serious Lutherans remaining do worry themselves about it. Some claim episcopal succession via 16th-century (Roman Catholic) Swedish bishops who left to begin the (Protestant) Church of Sweden; others invent the idea that apostolic succession means teaching what the Apostles taught and holding to the forms of worship and practice they passed down (particularly the Mass and baptism), and as long as that is retained, all is well. Many get tired of this and swim the Tiber or the Bosphorus.

The infamous Thirty-nine Articles are quoted ad nauseam by those Catholics who love to shake a finger at Anglicans who would dare pretend that their church is anything other than some sort of spiritual fraud. I've always thought that they rather felt that they had to do this lest (heaven forbid) there should be anything approaching genuine faith and belief elsewhere than in communion with Rome. I'm sorry! There is. There is, to be sure, not the fullness of the Magisterium and the defense against error which accompanies it, not valid priestly orders, but there is genuine faith, fervent faith, and, often, quite orthodox sacramental belief to which, unfortunately, an ingenuine clerical order cannot confer the benefits. This is sad. Very sad; and no occasion for that brand of immature Catholic spiritual pride, a pride which its subjects carry very dangerously on very thin spiritual ice. Pride and self-congratulation goeth before the fall - as it is said.

These Thirty-nine Articles are and always have been an embarrassment to those Anglicans of Catholic persuasion. They are not binding on anyone's conscience and represent only the confessional bias and paranoia of their XVIth century heretic authors.

One of the more onerous of them, quoted in an above comment, asserts that the Blessed Sacrament was not ordained to be lifted up, carried about, and reserved, nor, as would follow, adored.

AND SO IT WASN'T -
And that is the beauty of it.

This Article, so far as it goes, is quite correct. It might, in fact, be harmless until one examines the mind-set and motives of those who asserted it. Setting aside their foolish wading into water that was over their heads, the statement, at face value, presents us with nothing but what is true. In contemplating that, in examining it, we can enrich our own understanding, our own faith, and our own practice with regard to the Blessed Sacrament.

Our Lord said 'this is my body', 'this is my blood', and 'do this in remembrance of me'. That's all. Nothing in the entirety of scripture about bowing and scraping, making 'low legs', lifting it up, carrying it about, reserving it, and adoring the sacramental realities.

So, why do we do these things? We do them, not because we were commanded to, not because it was ordained that we do it, but because, of our own initiative, we have from the beginning done these things because we love this Sacrament, we love its presence, we love that our Lord said that these species were Him, his Body and his Blood. He gave and gives them to us for spiritual food, and leaves us to honour them as how we may, as how we feel we should respond with his Objective Presence in our midst. It would seem, then, that we do these things with his sacramental presence NOT because we were commanded to, but because, aided by God and out of our great love for it we perceive that it is meet so to reverence it. This is our very human response to so great a Gift - to a Sacrament which is always 'Emmanu-el', God with us.

In doing such homage to the Blessed Sacrament we eat of it not only by physically consuming it, but we 'eat' and feast upon it with our eyes, our intellect and understanding, and all our spiritual senses. It being Christ himself, there is no obeisance, no utterance of praise, no worshipful posture which is more than his due.

The error of the reformers who authored this Article was not in pointing out that scripture gives no warrant for the manners by which the Church honours the Blessed Sacrament, but in their mistaken sola scriptura stance, a position which in the light of the Church's history is eccentric to say the least.

At any rate, Anglo-Catholics (in their millions) have ever considered this Article an embarrassment and have paid it no mind. Most Anglicans of any stripe are hardly aware of these Articles. They certainly are not binding on anyone's conscience.

_________________________

Lex credendi lex orandi -
More worthy of quoting as typical of Anglican faith might be this 'Prayer of Humble Access', which Cranmer adapted from a Sarum eucharistic prayer. It appears in the eurcharistic rites of all BCPs and in the Ordinariate Use after the Our Father and the Pax -

WE do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great
mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs
under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is
always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat
the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his Blood, that
our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls
washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore
dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

There is not so eloquent and beautiful an assertion of Real Presence and inherent 'transubstantiation' in EF or OF.

There is not so eloquent and beautiful an assertion of Real Presence and inherent 'transubstantiation' in EF or OF.

Leaving aside that value judgment, let's recall it's based on a Sarum source—and remember that the Sarum Use is basically the Extraordinary Form with (as Fr. Fortescue has pointed out) a few minor differences here and there. In those days, such minor differences were normal and expected.

(And yes, the Sarum is 99% in Latin. Identical EF Canon, etc. etc.)

- - -

Regarding “shaking a naughty finger,” I'm not really able to speak to that.

But I'm told the Anglican foundational document (Thirty-Nine Articles) is still printed today in Anglican Books of Common Prayer:

Article 25 says there are only two sacraments (Baptism and the Lord's Supper), and that Holy Orders is merely a state in life mentioned in Scripture, but not founded by Christ, and for which God ordained no visible sign or ceremony.

Article 28 says that the means whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Lord's Supper is faith (i.e., no special power of the priest is required).

Article 31 says that the one Oblation is that of Christ on the Cross, and that the idea of a priest performing a sacrifice at Mass is a blasphemous fable and a dangerous deceit.

Regarding “anything other than some sort of spiritual fraud,” again, I'm not able to speak to that, or who said it. But, boy oh boy—the statements put out by the Anglican church through the centuries seem crystal clear, no?