Does the Episcopal Church teach anything?
The Episcopal Church is not a denomination or
sect. It holds no distinctive doctrines. Furthermore, it allows its
members great freedom in the interpretation of its official teaching and is
extremely tolerant of deviation from that teaching. Nevertheless, it
unequivocally teaches the Catholic Faith—the faith that was generally
held throughout the church during the first millennium, before the Great Schism
between East and West.
It teaches this faith not in formal statements of
doctrine but in its liturgical formularies, particularly in the Book of
Common Prayer. Like the other churches of the Anglican Communion, it lives by a
maxim attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine, a fifth-century theologian: Legem
credendi lex statuat supplicandi, that is, Let the law of praying
establish the law of believing.
The only formal statements of doctrine adopted by
the Episcopal Church in the United States are the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene
Creed.[1]
In the Book of Common Prayer, however, the church affirms other essentials of
Catholic doctrine not expressed in the creeds and rejected in whole or in part
by Protestants.
The Prayer Book rite for Holy Baptism affirms the
doctrine of Baptismal regeneration. Persons who reject this doctrine cannot
honestly pray, “Now sanctify this water, we pray you, by the power of your Holy
Spirit, that those who here are cleansed from sin and born again may
continue in the risen life of Jesus Christ our Savior,” or, “…we thank you that
by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants
the forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of grace.”
The rites for the Holy Eucharist affirm both the
sacrificial character of the Eucharist and the objective presence of Christ in
the sacrament of his Body and Blood.
Every Eucharistic Prayer in the
Prayer Book includes a verbal offering of the gifts:
-
Prayer A : “We celebrate the memorial of our redemption,
O Father, in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Recalling his death,
resurrection, and ascension, we offer you these gifts.”
-
Prayer B: “…we offer our sacrifice of praise and
thanksgiving to you, O Lord of all, presenting to you, from your creation,
this bread and this wine.”
-
Prayer C: “And so, Father, we who have been redeemed by
him and made a new people by water and the Spirit, now bring before you these
gifts…”
-
Prayer D: “Recalling Christ’s death and his descent
among the dead, proclaiming his resurrection and ascension to your right hand,
awaiting his coming in glory, and offering to you, from the gifts you have
given us, this bread and this cup, we praise you and we bless you.”
-
Prayer I: “…we thy humble servants do celebrate and
make here before thy divine majesty with these thy holy gifts, which we now
offer unto thee…”
-
Prayer II: “we thy people do celebrate and make, with
these thy holy gifts which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy Son hat
commanded us to make…”
Eucharistic Prayer D and the Roman Missal’s
Eucharistic Prayer IV are both based on the Alexandrian version of the Anaphora
of St. Basil (4th century). In the points at which they differ, the
Episcopal Church’s version of the Prayer is more faithful to the source.[2]
The Roman Church altered the text to make it express a particular theory of
Eucharistic sacrifice that is traceable only to the fourteenth century.
According to this theory--quite foreign to Thomas Aquinas and earlier doctors of
the Church--the celebrant first consecrates the gifts to be the Body and Blood
of Christ and then offers them—already consecrated—to the Father. In the Roman
form of the prayer the petition for the consecration of the gifts precedes the
account of our Lord’s institution of the Eucharist, and the paragraph following
the institution narrative includes the words “we offer you his Body and Blood.”
These words are not found in the Roman Canon missae or in any other
ancient Eucharistic Prayer. Early writings equate the consecration of the gifts
to be the Body and Blood of Christ with God’s acceptance of the Church’s
sacrifice. Early Eucharistic theology is based on the truth that the Church is
the Body of Christ, and that when the Church offers itself to the Father in the
signs of bread and wine, Christ, in the very nature of the case, offers himself
to the Father. The Church offers itself through, with, and in Christ to the
Father, and Christ offers himself to the Father through, with, and in the
Church. Consecration consists in the identification of the Church’s offering
with his—the identification of the bread and wine on the altar with his Body and
Blood. The words, “we offer you his Body and Blood,” or others akin to them do
not appear in any ancient Eucharistic Prayer because they do not reflect an
ancient understanding of Eucharistic sacrifice.[3]
In contrast to the Eucharistic
Prayers of both the Episcopal and Roman churches, Protestant Eucharistic prayers
consistently omit all reference to the offering of the gifts because the
sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers denied that the Eucharist is a God-ward
act of sacrificial worship.
The Prayer Book’s most obvious
affirmation of the objective presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is a
rubric: “If any of the consecrated Bread or Wine remain, apart from any which
may be required for the Communion of the sick… the celebrant or deacon, and
other communicants reverently eat and drink it, either after Communion of the
people or after the Dismissal.” If the church held that the consecrated bread
and wine were mere tokens of Christ’s presence in the consciousness of the
communicants, it would have no reason to require that the gifts be reverently
consumed.
Several of the Episcopal Church’s
Eucharistic prayers explicitly affirm Christ’s real, objective presence in the
sacrament:
-
Prayer A: “sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for
your people the Body and Blood of your Son…”
-
Prayer C: “Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be the
Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord…”
-
Prayer D: “…sanctifying them and showing them to be holy
gifts for your holy people, the bread of life and the cup of salvation, the
Body and Blood of your Son Jesus Christ.”
The so-called “Prayer of Humble
Access” in Rite I includes the petition, “grant us so to eat the flesh of
they dear Son Jesus Christ and to drink his Blood that we may evermore dwell in
him and he in us.” This petition explicitly affirms that that those who
receive the sacrament without the proper interior disposition nevertheless “eat
the flesh of…Christ and… drink his Blood” even though their reception of the
sacrament does not unite them spiritually with Christ. Implicitly, therefore,
it acknowledges Christ’s objective presence in the sacrament.
The Episcopal Church has
maintained the Historic Episcopate and the three-fold ministry of bishops,
priests, and deacons. The preface to the Ordinal states, furthermore, that “It
is recognized and affirmed that the threefold ministry is not the exclusive
property of this portion of Christ’s catholic Church, but is a gift from God for
the nurture of his people and the proclamation of his Gospel everywhere.
Accordingly, the manner of ordaining in this Church is to be such as has been,
and is, most generally recognized by Christian people as suitable for the
conferring of the sacred orders of bishop, priest, and deacon.”
The Church affirms the authority
of bishops and priests to pronounce absolution and encourages the practice of
auricular confession by providing in the Prayer Book two forms for
“Reconciliation of a Penitent”—one based on Eastern models and the other based
on Western.
The church also affirms the
efficacy of the saints’ intercession in one of the “Additional Prayers” provided
at the end of the Burial Office: “O God the King of saints, we praise and
magnify thy holy Name for all thy servants who have finished their course in thy
faith and fear…and we pray that…aided by their prayers and strengthened
by their fellowship, we may be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in
light…”
The Episcopal Church
unhesitatingly venerates the Blessed Virgin Mary. Its calendar designates
August 15 as a feast in her honor. It also commemorates her explicitly on three
other feasts: The Annunciation, The Visitation, and the Presentation.
The creeds, the collect and
preface of Christmas, Eucharistic Prayer B, and Eucharistic Prayer D explicitly
affirm the virginal conception of Jesus.
Like the rest of the Church until
recent times,[4]
the Episcopal Church takes no official position of whether Mary was conceived
without original sin or whether she was bodily assumed into heaven.
The Episcopal Church requires
intercessory prayer for the faithful departed at every celebration of the
Eucharist. Prayer for the dead—a practice traceable to Christian antiquity—is
not consonant with the Protestant belief that those who die in Christ enter into
the fullness of eternal joy without undergoing any kind of cleansing or
sanctification. Obviously, those who have attained to the fullness of joy in
God’s presence have no need for the prayers of those on earth. Implicitly,
therefore, the church teaches that the faithful departed undergo cleansing and
sanctification before they fully partake of the beatific vision. This is not to
say that God denies them the fullness of his presence for a time to
punish them for their sins. Rather, it is to say that sin, by its very nature,
impedes their communion with God, and that, consequently, they cannot fully
enjoy communion with him until they have been cleansed from sin. The Prayer
Book does not use the word “purgatory” to refer to the process by which the
faithful departed are cleansed and sanctified because some persons associate the
word with the notion of punishment or expiation. Purgation is not, however,
equivalent to punishment or expiation, and the word, of itself, is
unobjectionable.
The Book of Common Prayer, which
can be changed only by action of two successive General Conventions,
reflects the mind of this church. All Episcopal churches are required to
use the Prayer Book, and all who worship according to the Book of Common Prayer
give implied assent to the teaching of the church. Thus the law of praying
establishes the law of believing.
[1]
The
Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, which reflect the views of the
sixteenth-century English Reformers, have been relegated to an appendix of
“Historical Documents” and have long since ceased to be regarded as
authoritative. They Church of England never fully embraced the Reformers’
theology.
[2]
Thomas J.
Talley, “The Windsor Statement and the Eucharistic Prayer,” Worship:
Reforming Tradition (Washington D.C.: Pastoral Press, 1990), 38-46
[3] Aidan Kavanaugh and other eminent Roman
Catholic liturgists have sharply criticized their own church’s alteration of
this ancient prayer. See Talley, op. cit
.
[4]
The Roman
Catholic Church—by papal fiat—proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception only in 1854 and the dogma of the Assumption in 1950.