C of E Liturgical Guide trashes traditionalists, Syriac Orthodox Saints

https://www.churchofengland.org/pra...n-worship/common-material/new-patterns-worshp

This supplemental book to Common Worship, the appalling attempt to replace the 1662 Book of Common Prayer which has caused so much devastation to our beloved mother church in England, caught me off guard even by Common Worship levels of horror.

I was looking to try to find a peculiar introduction to the confiteor used by the controversial former vicar of the Savoy Chapel in Choral Evensong, when I discovered this book gives examples of four fictional churches, three of which “get it right” by breaking with Anglican tradition, and one of which, St. Dodo’s, is used to mock traditional Anglicans of all backgrounds and churchmanship. Look at these gems:

So illegal liturgical improvization is officially encouraged. Meanwhile we are mocked for seeking to conserve the rich heritage and liturgical patrimony of traditional Anglican music (as if Victorian hymns are old; this is an absurd proposition considering the oldest hymns in the Book of Common Prayer are 4,000 years old, the Te Deum Laudamus was composed by Sts. Ambrose and Augustine, and the bulk of Assyrian, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox liturgical hymns were composed between 300 and 1200 Anno Domini, by St. Ephrem, St. Romanos, St. Jacob of Sarugh, Catholicos Elios III of the Church of the East (better known as Abu Halim), and of course, the legendary Palestinian and Byzantine monks at the Mar Sabbas and Studios monasteries; even in Anglicanism much of the most popular music is plainchant some of which dates back to the 500s under St. Gregory Dialogos, the old Anglican tradition of the priest intoning the confiteor at Evensong in monotone is the oldest form of music in the Western Church, antiphony and melody not being popularized in the West until the famed vigil of St. Ambrose to keep the Arians out of one of his parishes, and Anglican favorites like the Great Service by William Byrd date from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

Let us continue with a few more horrors:

Liturgical puppets, mimes, tableau and dance, right after the denunciation of Victorian hymnody by the likes of Sir Arthur Sullivan and Samuel Sebastian Wesley. You can’t make this stuff up.

Asking questions about the propriety of novel liturgical texts one is unfamiliar with, and which are not actually in the official Book of Common Prayer, is apparently worthy of derision and mockery. This is Orwellian.

And of course the author can’t help but bash traditional music again, this time calling out one of the most beloved hymnals by name:

But it gets worse: this work actually is racist, and it traduces a saint, an early church father much beloved by the persecuted Syriac Christians in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. Unintentionally racist, but in today’s “woke culture” of “mocro-aggressions” that is an excuse that most liberal modernist Anglican clergy would not accept, so I feel obliged if nothing else to point it out:

You see, there actually is a St. Dodo. Specifically Mor Dodo, a 6th century Syriac Orthodox bishop of Tikrit, a Maphryana or Maphrian, the second highest ranking bishop in the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, equivalent to the Archbishop of York in the Church of England. The Maphrianate was a title given to the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop who served as Primus Inter Pares of the bishops of the eastern dioceses, those in the Persian Empire rather than the Roman Empire, in Mesopotamia, Persia and the Gulf of Arabia (whereas the Patriarch was Primus Inter Pares of the whole church, but due to its vast size and the fact that, unlike the Byzantine or Coptic churches, it straddled two rival empires in a constant state of war, his ability to effectively lead the church was greatly diminished outside of the Roman provinces of Syria and Asia Minor, the traditional homelands of the Syriac Orthodox). The Maphrian was given this title to differentiate him from his Nestorian counterpart, the Catholicos of the East, and St. Dodo protected the Orthodox from Nestorians and helped to exert pressure which eventually led to the Catholicoi of the East renouncing Nestorianism and becoming allies with the Maphrians, for example, the famous friendship between St. Gregory Bar Hebraeus, the 12th century Maphrian, and the Assyrian Catholicos, who rather than seeking to undermine the Orthodox with Nestorian heresy, was his best friend, and led a funeral for St. Bar Hebraeus when the Maphrian reposed on the way from Tikrit to his monastery, in an Assyrian (Church of the East/“Nestorian” town).

Mor Dodo, who was baptized David, was much beloved as like St. Gregory Thaumaturgus and other saints of the church, he, through his faith in Christ and great humility, performed miracles like those of the Apostles, healing the sick and feeding the sheep entrusted to him. Dodo is an Aramaic (West Syriac) word meaning “Beloved.”

So this book not only trashes traditional Anglicans like us, and traditional church music, and an extremely pious early church father who cured the sick and helped defeat the heresy of Nestorius, but also trashes the persecuted Syriac Christian communities of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, by (inadvertently) mocking their religion and also a popular Syriac nickname, associating it with stupidity. It is also cruel and insensitive in light of the tragedy that was the extinction of the Dodo Bird.

Frankly, despite being generally opposed to wokeness, I am tempted to complain to the Church of England, because perhaps if the people who wrote this travesty are called to account for racial insensitivity and traducing an early church father, they might also come to realize how insensitive they have been to all of us who are liturgical traditionalists.

 

Liturgyworks I really do appreciate what it is you are trying to do. Having spent my entire life in the Church of England I am afraid your efforts will come to nought. They may only give you high blood pressure and a stomach ulcer. I recently wrote to an archdeacon to learn what is happening to an Anglo-Catholic parish that has a very long tradition of faithful life in my city but the priest there has retired. She (yes, I am afraid this sacerdotal office is occupied by a woman) does not have the courtesy of replying.

Recently, there was a two-part documentary of the BBC TV channel BBC2 about that appalling paedophile bishop Peter Ball. The documentary explained one of the reason's why Ball was able to abuse young men, ruin their lives and drive some to suicide, for so long and after he was caught and convicted why he continued to be supported by the church was down to the sense of self-entitlement and sheer arrogance of the hierarchy. During the documentary the Church of England claimed its culture had changed and that such events would not happen again.

I have very serious doubts. I see no change in the attitudes of the Church of England's hierarchy. They retain their sense of entitlement and remain utterly arrogant. Another Peter Ball could just as easily happen in the church today. the hierarchy care nothing about what we the great unwashed in the pews think. They know better than us and will continue to do what they want including making the most appalling changes to the liturgy.

Looking what is happening in other Anglican churches, many Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church I can see no safe harbours. I think I and many other faithful believers will be tossed around in the storms until we perish.

 

Fortunately there are pockets of resistance in the C of E, unlike the ECUSA, such as Forward in Faith / The Society, and The Prayer Book Society, which provides a helpful directory of all parishes still using the BCP.

But an overall arrogance in the hierarchy akin to that in TEC would sadly explain the callous smear of traditionalists and its accidental trashing of the persecuted Syriac Orthodox and Assyrian Christians and the much venerated St. Dodo of Tikrit. I left the United Methodist Church in part because no one seemed to care about the plight of persecuted Christians in the middle East, and the minister at the liturgically traditional parish I was attending turned out to be an Arian homosexual.

 

Yes, we are lucky that we have that but for how long I know not. I know of a parish where the priest has retired after many years faithful service. It is not clear what is going to happen: Whether a new priest will be recruited or if, as I suspect, the bishop will try to destroy the parish. Although I've contacted the diocese they arrogantly ignore me. My own parish was treated this way and my wife and I have to travel to go to church now.

The latter does not surprise me. Although I hear Anglo-Catholicism draws homosexuals it is not something I have noticed. I am surprised to learn of someone, especially a traditional priest, believing in the heresy of Arianism.

 

That is really sad. We need to pray that doesn’t happen. You should also contact traditionalist groups in the C of E to help lobby on your behalf I think.

This was a rural United Methodist Church, with an ageing congregation of largely ranchers, and a traditional low church order of worship as one finds in those few UMC churches that still only do traditional hymns with a choir, organ and congregation, and which have not placed percussion instruments in the apse.

That said, the experience drove me into Syriac Orthodoxy, because I was also frustrated by the fact that Methodists my own age did not care about the plight of persecuted Christians. And from there I began to connect with traditional Anglicanism as well, on the basis that Orthodox, traditional Anglicanism as a liturgical church with an episcopal hierarchy really strikes me as being Western Orthodoxy (and indeed, John Wesley was an Anglican priest whose theological work in my view helped bridge the gap Rome had created with the Eastern churches, and the UMC would be quite a bit more appealing if his theology and the hymns composed by his brother, as well as his Sunday Service Book - an adaptation of the Book of Common Prayer, which he considered to be the best liturgy, for the needs of Americans, still prevailed, but traditional liturgical Anglicanism basically has this almost Wesleyan synthesis).