Prayer for the Departed

Discussion in 'Liturgy, and Book of Common Prayer' started by Toma, Sep 10, 2012.

?

Do you pray for the departed?

  1. Yes.

    8 vote(s)
    72.7%
  2. No.

    3 vote(s)
    27.3%
Multiple votes are allowed.
  1. CatholicAnglican

    CatholicAnglican Active Member

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    Traditionally High Church Anglicans called the Faithful Departed (The Church in Waiting) I just call it Purgatory
     
  2. Aaytch Barton

    Aaytch Barton Active Member

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    I am not aware of anything in the Bible mentioning prayers for or to the dead except as respects a description of superstition. For example, those attending to the crucifixion of Christ thought they heard Jesus calling out to Elijah, but in fact he was crying out to his Father "My God My God why hast thou forsaken me?" In the Church age, there is no evidence of prayer for the dead until the second or third century. As for Anglicans, there remained occasional prayers for the departed in the 1549 BCP, as a holdover from the medieval period, but they were removed in the 1552 edition. Specifically the Prayer for the Church was changed to the Prayer for the Church Militant. One might also read the Homily on Prayer which condemns it, and also Article 22 which condemns the doctrine of Purgatory and invocation of saints (the dead). Purgatory, as you know, is associated with notions of indulgences. Prayer for the dead was not reintroduced among Anglicans until the 19th century. One should note that in the 1662 Funeral Service, we commit the dead to the ground, his soul having already departed, whereas in later revisions it says we "commend the soul of our brother departed" and "accept our prayers on behalf of the soul of thy servant departed, and grant him an entrance into the land of light and joy..." (American 1928). In other words, the theology changed, and a return to authentic Anglicanism (if in fact that's what anyone wanted to do, which they don't) would entail re-removal of prayers for or to the dead.

    Note the un-superstitious attitude of yesterday's Collect which is a prayer to God, not for or to the dead, but rather that He would utilize the services of the departed for His own Glory and to defend the Church Militant: "O EVERLASTING God, who hast ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order; Mercifully grant, that as thy holy Angels alway do thee service in heaven, so by thy appointment they may succour and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
     
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  3. The Hackney Hub

    The Hackney Hub Well-Known Member

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    Aaytch, it's not really correct to say that prayers for the departed were absent from Anglicanism before the Oxford Movement. The Non-jurors, High Churchmen, and Hobart all publicly advocated prayers for the dead in the intermediate state. What changed in the 19th century was the reintroduction of a concept of purgatory.
     
  4. Toma

    Toma Well-Known Member Anglican

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    This is evident in our own Canadian Prayer Book of 1962. Three optional prayers were added at the funeral service:

    Relativists say that we must accept whatever is in the BCP because it's our formulary, rather than accept or reject things based on faithful Biblical reasons. The Church slowly slinks away into the shadows of authoritarianism again...
     
  5. Adam Warlock

    Adam Warlock Well-Known Member

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    How is that relativism?
     
  6. Scottish Monk

    Scottish Monk Well-Known Member

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    I continue to thank everyone who has participated in this thread. In two weeks my cousin and I make to trek to the mountain family cemetery. As you recall, we have added a new marker for her grave--my great grandmother dates on this earth are 1862-1905. Please suggest whatever songs, scripture, and, of course, prayers you think appropriate.
     
  7. Aaytch Barton

    Aaytch Barton Active Member

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    You're absolutely right. It took hardly any time at all after Cranmer's death for the tide to turn. I will disagree with you however that "prayers for the dead in the intermediate state" and a "concept of purgatory" are categorically different. I also disagree with your view that the age of Laud and the age of Newman are categorically different. The latter is simply a more mature version of the former.
     
  8. The Hackney Hub

    The Hackney Hub Well-Known Member

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    Explain away.
     
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  9. Aaytch Barton

    Aaytch Barton Active Member

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    Me thinks he (Laud) doth protest too much. Look no further than Augustus Toplady for demonstration that Laud opened the door through which Wesley walked, and it takes no genius to see that the same Arminianism is the foundation of the Oxford Movement.
     
  10. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Arminianism wasn't the foundation for the Oxford Movement.
     
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  11. The Hackney Hub

    The Hackney Hub Well-Known Member

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    Romanticism was.
     
  12. The Hackney Hub

    The Hackney Hub Well-Known Member

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    Scholars have shown that Laudian churchmanship is radically different from Tractarianism, Peter Nockles is a must read.
     
  13. Aaytch Barton

    Aaytch Barton Active Member

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    From MacCullough, "The Myth of the English Reformation"

    "The myth of the English Reformation is that it did not happen, or that it happened by accident rather than design, or that it was halfhearted and sought a via media between Catholicism and Protestantism; and the point at issue is the identity of the Church of England. The myth was created in two stages, first in the middle years of the seventeenth century, and then from the third decade of the nineteenth century - in either case, by a 'High Church' party within the Church: first, the Laudians or Arminians, later the Tractarians or Anglo-Catholics. These parties largely consisted of clergy, with the particular motive of emphasising the structural Catholic continuity of the Church over the break of the Reformation, in order to claim that the true representative of the Catholic Church within the borders of England and Wales was not the minority loyal to the Bishop of Rome, but the Church as by law established in 1559 and 1662."


    I would continue, but it's long and others have posted on the subject at length, here for example is a way to get the sense of MacCullough's thesis: http://reformationanglicanism.blogspot.com/2010/12/macculloch-diarmaid.html
     
  14. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I'm sorry to MacCullough if it was he who said it, but here it is: the content in the quote is plainly and simply retarded.

    The ones who created the myth that the Reformation didn't "really" happen were the Puritans, because they viewed the Divines as quasi-papist anyway. As late as in a recent Reformed podcast I listened to, they claimed that nothing really changed in England after the Reformation (trying to vindicate the Puritans' insurrection and sedition).

    Whereas in actuality, it was the high and 'catholic' Bishop Bramhall who sternly championed the Reformation as the great cleansing, which expelled Roman errors and allowed the restoration of the pure and apostolic Church of Christ.
     
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  15. Aaytch Barton

    Aaytch Barton Active Member

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  16. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I know he's a big authority. But so is Bart Ehrman. So what?
     
  17. highchurchman

    highchurchman Well-Known Member Anglican

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    According to Peter Heylin in his history of the reformation,' Ecclesia Restaurata', both Ussher and Hall, Calvinist inclined prelates, changed their affiliation from Calvinist to Anglican Catholic prior to the Civil War! Certainly this is expressed in the pamphlet wherein The ideas of the Anglican fathers of the Later Reformation highlight the Anglican teaching on the Lady Mary! 'Anglicans & Mary'.
    As well, Dean Field, who is regularly noted as being influenced by Calvinism, in his book,'On the Church',(5 Books,) doesn't back up your claims. He was an Elizabethan scholar and his idea of theology was in many places as Catholic as could be wished for, in fact he rubbishes people ,(such as myself,) who refused to accept that Rome wasn't catholic and was simply a sect as did Laud.(I changed in the fifties at College after reading his book.
    That there was an upsurge in calvinism in the Elizabethan Church, in its early days, is in escapable, but the faith is held by the Church collectively, not by individual bishops clergy or laity .Eliza proclaimed her Catholicity and that of the Church wherein she was a member, quite clearly and openly. The drawback there was the attitude of the nobility and middle classes, to returning the loot stolen by these people to the Church! Anglicanism is studied in a shallow and very unacceptable fashion on these boards, it deserves a deeper study, as does Elizabeth. She stole from the Church, as did her father & brother, but with her gains she bribed the upper classes! It was when the challenge came from the calvinists in 1639, that the Nobility in many cases deserted the Anglican Church and supported parliament thus losing for the Church in England, the so called Civil War! I must mention, that if there is one weakness manifest on these threads, it is not rudeness or bullying, it is the fact that most people do not seem to understand the doctrine of the Church as understood for some 1900 years.
     
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  18. Aaytch Barton

    Aaytch Barton Active Member

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    If you are going to insist that Ussher was broken by Laud and Bramhall, not only politically but also in his personal Calvinistic faith, I won't argue. That thesis accords well with mine, that the Arminians (multiple sub-species) have simply won the war for the heart of the Anglican Church. That war was lost long before the English Civil War. The cornerstone was laid with the martyrdom of Cranmer.
     
  19. highchurchman

    highchurchman Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Cranmer held to the catholic Faith of the first thousand years,Rev,Scripture and the Councils are you suggesting that he would have changed his mind if he'd lived, I don't see why? Besides, the Highchurch men /Laudians were very clearly Catholics, Armininism is not?
     
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