Recently I read the excellent work by Canon Michael Kennedy of the Church of Ireland’s liturgy committee which in my honest opinion is a brilliant introductory commentary to the Irish Book of Common Prayer (2004). I will write a little review in a couple of days but would like to focus on another connected matter. After reading the chapter on “Holy Communion” and the vestments that should be worn I found myself disagreeing with the good Canon. For Canon Kennedy the cope should be worn during the Eucharist
[i], but I feel that rather than a cope it is the chasuble the presider should wear. Now of course I’m only a lay man and indeed new to Anglicanism but surely the cope is obstructive when one is trying to slide around the table in a small altar area from the North to the East when receiving the elements? Surely trying to preside at the Eucharist and kneel for prayer in a cope worth a few thousand pounds
[ii] is not only lumbersome but also increases the risk of damaging the cope itself?
Now a very good reverend from a church very near to me got chatting with me about the use of a chasuble. Being from the low church tradition (is there anything else in Ireland) he proceeded to tell me that the chasuble is a Roman Catholic vestment, banned under canon law
[iii]. As a Roman Catholic vestment if a Church of Ireland minister were to wear one it would be an endorsement of the Roman Catholic Sacrifice of the mass and a rejection of the reformer’s views. Now while I’m not one to fight against canon law of the church I do have to question how canon law works. Where not candles on the altar, crosses on the altar, altar frontals, stoles, cassock-albs, paschal candles, incense, a burse and veil, processional crosses, amice and alb, mitres, copes,
[iv] wafers, and even that “devil’s kist o whistles
[v]” the church organ not all banned under canon law? Some like wafers (except in the case of intinction for the sick) and incense
[vi] are still banned (though they are used quite openly by some congregations) but in this modern day the “dirty rags” (burse and veil) and that “Roman Catholic THING” (the altar cross) are quite common, just as almost all the clergy have migrated from the North of the Lord’s table to the once banned West. But with many including Canon Kennedy openly calling for a rethink on the prohibition of wafers
[vii], incense
[viii] and even an Eastward facing Eucharist one wonders if these will remain banned for long.
But anyhow the chasuble is banned, but why?
The Church of Ireland (in a recent publication
[ix]) tells us that it was not started at the reformation, but is instead a continuation of the Church of Ireland founded by Satin Patrick in the 5
th Century. It reformed its’ beliefs at the reformation but is still the same church of Patrick, thus it is catholic and reformed. If that is true then surely it stands to reason that the Church of Ireland has an historic right to use the causable in worship? True the chasuble was the civil garment of the Roman world and as such the early Christians but as a specifically liturgical vestment (rather than a simple civil one) the first mention of the chasuble is from an ancient Irish Druid prophecy regarding the coming of Saint Patrick
[x]:
"Adze-head [this is apparently an allusion to an Irish form of the tonsure] will come with a crook-head staff; in his house head-holed [chasuble] he will chant impiety from his table [the altar]; from the front part of his house all his household will respond, 'So be it! So be it!'"
(Now If you think I’ve read too much into that you should see Rome which adds information on how the above links eastward facing masses and attendant clerics into the mix)
Now this may not seem like much in English but I am reliably informed that this phrase “house head-holed” is a translation of the Celtic “casal” which is amazingly like the latin word “casula” (yip it’s causable in English) which St. Isodore informs us is "a garment furnished with a hood, which is a diminutive of casa, a cottage, as, like a small cottage or hut, it covers the entire person".
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| St. Mary's (Anglican) Church, Dorset |
Over the centuries within the Irish church the chasuble would undergo some modifications in order to allow the presider more freedom of movement, but one thing remained until the reformation period... the use of the chasuble. With the reformation, the Church of Ireland’s subjection to the British parliament meant that when the Church of England rejected the chasuble as being foreign to it, the Church of Ireland was forced to give it up too, even though the rejected chasuble was more Irish than any other vestment.
By the time came around that the Church of England embraced the chasuble it was too late, the disestablishment had taken place and a fear of anything “Roman” had crept into the Irish church and thus St. Patrick’s “casal” remained banned in St Patrick’s own church and does so to this day.
As Canon Kennedy says “The use of traditional garments gives a sense of historical continuity to the act of worship” and “The traditional Eucharistic vestments... go back much further, to the period of Late Antiquity. Symbolism is important and the use of robes [and other Eucharistic vestments] is a reminder that the orders of ministry go back, ultimately, to the early church (the Preface to the traditional ordinal claims to the time of the apostles)” and avoiding the Church of Ireland’s own traditional vestments leaves the result of an impaired tradition and continuity.
Isn't it time that the issue of vestments is finally laid to rest (one way or the other) with “matters of what is worn in church to be disengaged from theological controversies which are no longer relevant”
[xi] as they have “to a large extent been resolved in Agreed Statements of the relevant inter-church bodies.”
[xii]? Or should we continue to ban things for looking “Roman” regardless of whether or not they actually are?
[i] BCP 2004 Commentaries, M.Kennedy - Ecclesiastical Apparel - section 1, Page 8 [vii] BCP 2004 Commentaries, M.Kennedy ,Page 12 [viii] BCP 2004 Commentaries, M.Kennedy, Page 14 [ix] APCK booklet – “Irish and Universal” [x] Catholic Encyclopedia [xi] BCP 2004 Commentaries, M.Kennedy [xii] BCP 2004 Commentaries, M.Kennedy
