Allow me to begin with the thesis I have provided in another place. Liturgy is a discipline. It is a discipline both in the sense of an organized body of knowledge, and in the sense of a training exercise that develops, molds, and perfects. The liturgy expresses the theology, anthropology, philosophy and the ethics of the church; it presents a vision of God and humanity, and the relationship twixt the two. The liturgy is the communal spiritual exercise; it is a work prescribed for use at regular intervals, and it is the work that carries the subliminal messages the effect the subconscious where the basic attitudes toward life are rehearsed and affirmed. Liturgy does not discuss a topic, it presents a picture, a vision. That vision is intended to pursue the heart, move the will, take hold and root in the depths. God alone dictates the vision. Humanity must find the actions and words to incarnate and transmit that vision. This is no small or easy task. The acts of communal worship must work together as a unified whole, must present a true, logical, comprehensive, and comprehensible statement. Every element, every word, every movement, must be skillfully and properly plied into a voice the heart can hear, into a touch that stills the senses and moves the soul to the joyous and obedient silence that is the essence of adoration, the groundwork of Christo-centricity. Where, therefore, is the unity of message in declaring Christ our only mediator and guide and then singing to Mary to be for us a mediator and guide?
Given a fondness for the study of religion, I appreciate the place given in various religions to the great mediators. Certain schools of Buddhism provide an admirable discipline of worship built around the intercessions of various saints and Bodhisattvas. Hinduism, with its host of gods and mediators, is a treasure house of disciplines and visions of the Holy. But would it be permitted me in the course of divine service to substitute some of my favourite Hindu hymns from the Rig Veda for the prescribed Hebrew hymns from the Book of Psalms, to name the Triune God as Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma? No! I would not be allowed the hymns and names of other disciplines of worship, of other visions of the Holy. I would not be allowed them because they are deemed to be false or demonic, but because they do not qualify for the exercise of worship and the program of spiritual formation that constitute our unique heritage and vision within the Christian family.
I do not deny that the Romans and others are free to use co-mediators and co-intercessors in the spiritual exercises that constitute their own and unique programs of communal spiritual development. I do not deny that some may find the root of such practice in the idea of the communion of saints, but I must note that making the communion of saints into a type of ancestor worship, or making a saint, a vessel of God’s grace, into an instrument of spiritual obscurement for the immediacy of grace that exists in and is Christ saps of romance and emotion more than of adoration and reason. If the idea of the communion of saints has any meaning, the “saints” whose prayers ought to be requested are the saints around us. But, it is always easier to lift up the eyes in some delusion of mystical union than to reach out for communion with one’s neighbours. I cannot but believe that to interject heterodox material into a program of spiritual direction (as established by the sanctioned books and practices of the church) leaves us vulnerable to the charge of spiritual malpractice, a danger that cannot be ignored.
There are some who fear to speak. That attitude does not make for community. There are some to whom such things matter not; they want merely to relax and be washed over with the sights and sounds of beauty. I do not see that attitude in itself as even being within the realm of religion. The enjoyment of musical theatre is not what communal prayer and spiritual exercise are about. Have we descended into making divine service into musical performance? Have we thrown the church’s prescribed theology and discipline of prayer out the window to accommodate the private devotions of the individual? If we are trying to gather more people to services, would we not better serve our purpose and mission by holding a series of studies or discussions on some relevant topics followed by song and prayer? We are not about the re-creation of antique liturgies, but about the re-creation of lives, lives summoned to newness in a love for-given from eternity. Such re-creation is always formulated and transmitted by the logic of worship, the orthodoxy of the logos.
I cannot comprehend why some clerics, having sworn to uphold the books and doctrines of the Anglican Church of Canada, go off seeking some sort of higher confirmation of their ministry in the names and rituals of another church. Does Rome provide some approbation that our history, crown, parliament, convocation, chapter and synod cannot? I do not understand how such clerics can properly lead, serve, preserve, and pass on a tradition they themselves, at least by omission, disavow. I realize that some see the rituals of the Roman Church as the epitome of western liturgical practice. I realize that in this century many of the rituals imported by liturgical innovators of the last century have been passed on by schools of theology. I realize this movement claims to have rediscovered the English Church’s historical roots, and I realize that what they actually discovered was the English Church’s southern neighbour. I realize that many Anglicans have simply grown up immersed in certain tolerated practices, and that most people, even people exposed to long stays in academia, do not question the programs responsible for their socialization. I do know that anyone who has read the documents of Trent and the Institutes of Calvin knows The Book of Common Prayer is comfortably closer to the mind of Calvin than to the mind of Rome. I realize that being unable to be faithful to Rome, I made my way to Canterbury. I realize that one who suffers the questions, doubts and guilt that are parcel to such a personal reformation, becomes, to some degree, spiritually and psychologically united to the Reformers and prone to their zeal. I realize, having been schooled by Jesuits in the spirituality of Ignatius, the power existing in Rome’s treasures. I realize, one day having put down Ignatius and taken up Cranmer, the profound spirituality laid out in the liturgies of the Prayer Book. But the point is and ever shall be: you cannot mix metaphors, you cannot randomly mix in the ritual acts, doctrines, and names of another, unless, of course, you dare to be reckless, thoughtless, and uncaring enough to offer babble instead of the Word, spiritual chaos instead of direction, scraps of piety instead of a portal of guidance and grace.
If I have spoken of myself, I have done so because communication is about persons and personalities as much as about ideas; our perceptions, our logic, our thoughts are too intertwined into that speck of history we call self to be honestly examined in pure abstraction. A great deal of history, church and secular, and a great deal of theology and philosophy would be very different had our forebears such a mind. I fear the people of this house stand in danger of being deprived their heritage, their due of sound guidance, reasoned direction, and worshipful care. There is a great abyss between the care of souls and the craving for the sounds and gestures of beauty. The psalmist does cry “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness”, but the key word is not beauty, it is holiness. They that would be the servants of holiness must tend to their task. They cannot wander off into some delusion of light and lovely, for the true light and rarest beauty is seldom found where the world would have it. Let Rome have her vespers, her co-mediatrix of all graces. When the sun sets, let it be that in this church our prayer shall always and simply be the joyful worship of God’s Christ, sole mediator and guide, risen and present, immediate and real.