Communion with Rome

Redeemer alumnus Michael Trolly left a Haloscan comment to my post, Another Catholic Rite?, that I found sufficiently intriguing to warrant reproducing immediately below, with responses:

Yurkus' description of variations within the Latin Church could have added that an Anglican Use within the Latin Rite has been approved in the US; this preserves elements of the Book of Common Prayer within the Latin-rite mass. (There is some hope in the future of an Anglican Rite as a self governing church in communion with the Vatican, on the same basis as the Eastern Catholic Churches.)

One wonders whether the coming reconfiguration of Anglicanism may end up sending a much larger contingent of would-be "Anglican-rite" Christians to Rome or Constantinople than just the few who have been lapping at the banks of the Tiber in recent years. I am struck by how infinitessimally small the various eastern-rite churches are. An Anglican-rite church in communion with Rome could conceivably number in the millions after the coming crack-up.

Also, a group calling itself the "Nordic Catholic Church" has recently been established by Lutherans with help from the Polish National Catholic Church (they also have connections with some traditional Anglican churches.) They might potentially seek some sort of recognition from Rome; the PNCC has had an ongoing dialogue with Rome for a number of years now, and PNCC members are allowed to receive communion in Catholic (i.e. "Roman" Catholic) churches.

Here is an interview in Touchstone with Roald Flemestad about the formation of the Nordic Catholic Church: Out on a Limb in Norway. As institutions, the European Old Catholics are not in communion with Rome, so it's not clear that moving towards the PNCC will bring these dissident Norwegians there either, at least formally speaking. But if the "back door" route Trolly mentions really does exist, then that might provide an avenue for others as well. My understanding is that Orthodox Christians as individuals are also understood by Rome already to be in communion, even if their churches are not.

I mention all of this because it suggests that a "Genevan" rite or use (i.e. permitted variation from another rite) might be a realistic ecumenical hope, if a group of Reformed Christians wanted to go down that route.

I must admit to having made this suggestion mostly tongue in cheek. My sense of the matter is that the establishment of intercommunion between Rome and individual eastern-rite churches was not preceded by intersynodical study committees bent on sorting out myriad doctrinal issues that might stand in the way of reunion. It was effected simply by the eastern-rite churches recognizing the jurisdiction of the Pope, along with acceptance of the filioque clause in the Creed. Was there agreement in all details concerning, say, purgatory and the Marian doctrines? I frankly doubt it.

Yet the Reformed Churches — or at least the more confessional of these — have largely defined themselves over against Rome, for better or worse. Simply establishing intercommunion with the Pope would leave unanswered any number of issues, the least of which would be the extent of the Old Testament canon. (It is striking that some of the eastern-rite Catholic churches accept a larger OT canon than even that established by the Council of Trent. Is Trent normative only within the Latin rite?) It is difficult to imagine a Genevan-rite Catholic church which would not entail an outright repudiation of the very reason for the existence of the Reformed churches, namely, the Reformation itself! Any move towards Rome will be a matter of individual conversions to the Latin rite, and not a Genevan-rite church in communion with Rome.

Your (Dr. Koyzis') adaptation of the CRC eucharistic liturgy does strike a certain chord with me... since the first time I read the text for the "Service of Word and Sacrament" in the CRC hymnal, I've wanted to see a Reformed eucharist celebrated this way. To be "as close as possible" to the universal worship tradition of the church while properly expressing distinctives of a particular tradition or denomination is a tremendous way for protestants to contribute to ecumenical dialogue. I would love to see this idea put into practice.

The CRC used to use a liturgy with 16th-century origins that was excessively didactic and contained little that was recognizable in the larger liturgical tradition of the church catholic. This despite the claim in the fronticepiece of the Genevan church's La Forme des Prieres et chantz ecclesiastiques that its liturgy was "selon la coustume de l'Église ancienne." In 1968 the CRC moved to adopt what in other traditions would be called a eucharistic liturgy more in conformity with this catholic tradition, including the sursum corda, &c. My own adaptation is intended to follow in this path, but with the selected metrical psalms "plugged" into the liturgy in the appropriate places. As to how this looks in practice, it depends on the individual congregation.

Two decades ago I composed settings for part of the "ordinary of the mass", including a Sanctus and Memorial Acclamation. These were sung at South Bend (Indiana) Christian Reformed Church, as well as at two Presbyterian (USA) churches in Indiana and Michigan, for several years. By now I probably have settings for a complete mass, although they still need a lot of work to bring some coherence to the whole.