Eucharistic Renewal in Christ of the Slums: a Passiontide Meditation

 

Eucharistic Renewal

As we enter Passiontide and seek to meditate more deeply upon the Lord's rescue of mankind from the darkness and death of sin, we would do well to recall the witness of those who minister(ed) in shadowed places where the Lord Jesus in distressing disguise, as Saint Teresa of Calcutta reminds us, makes His home among the lost and forgotten, those needing the light and bread, beauty and goodness of the Gospel to rescue them from despair.

The place and time where all these ideas and relationships come true is in the Eucharist. Here is the pattern and the power. Here in the Offertory is the time and place to offer all that each life takes on in its special environment of poverty or wealth, of sickness or health. Here, as Charles Williams would say, is the time and place for an exchange – an exchange of my burden for yours, an exchange of our burdens for the light yoke of Christ, an exchange of sin and penitence for forgiveness. And in the Consecration of the bread and wine is an exchange of our bodies for his body, of the Cross for Resurrection, of captivity for freedom, of death for life, of all else for joy. - Paul Moore in The Church Reclaims the City, 1964

Slumming It

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. - St Matthew 25:45-46

There is, in the biography of the Patrimony, a chapter that reads 'slum priests', a chapter about those Anglocatholic clergy who, in the Church of England, were often denied parishes because of their fervor for beautiful liturgy. Their overseers tended to assign them urban parishes in places where few other clergy would venture to serve. Those "high church" clergy were alternately called 'heroic' (for their support for the poor) and 'ritualistic' (in a derogatory sense by "low church" types) for emphasizing solid liturgical principles and enacting beautiful liturgies.

One of the more important byproducts of the Anglo-Catholic movement was a renewed emphasis on ministry among the urban poor. In the late-nineteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church was having great success among Irish immigrants, and the elements of ritual they used were believed to provide consolation and relief from an earthly existence that was often drab and poor. Ritualist priests combined an impressive and effective English liturgy with a genuine pastoral concern, which enabled them to build up great parishes in industrial cities like London, Manchester, and Birmingham. "Slum priests" such as Charles Lowder SSC and Alexander Mackonochie (and Robert Dolling, Arthur Stanton and Lincoln Stanhope Wainright) were men of great sanctity whose example inspired subsequent generations of English clergy to serve the urban poor.

That particular episode in the Patrimony mirrors the emphasis given to the preferential option for the poor lauded in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church:

This love of preference for the poor, and the decisions which it inspires in us, cannot but embrace the immense multitudes of the hungry, the needy, the homeless, those without health care and, above all, those without hope of a better future.

That principle is "not limited to material poverty but encompasses cultural and spiritual poverty as well" (paragraph 57 Centesimus annus 1991).

The strong doctrinal theology preached by the Tractarians had by now found its expression in contexts very far removed from the Universities. From the very first, the call to holiness - individual and corporate - had been at the heart of the Tractarians’ teaching. It was inevitable that their attentions would turn to the social and evangelistic problems of the industrial working class. Young men who had sat at Pusey’s feet found themselves called to work in new and demanding slum parishes. The ritual innovations of they were accused were entirely rooted in the desperate pastoral needs they encountered. Miss Sellons’s Devonport Sisters of Mercy worked with the clergy of St Peter’s Plymouth in the cholera epidemics of the late 1840s, and petitioned the parish priest, Fr George Rundle Prynne, for a celebration of the eucharist each morning to strengthen them for their work. So began the first daily mass in the Church of England since the Reformation. Similarly the clergy of St Saviour’s, Leeds (a parish Pusey had endowed), laid what medicines they had on the altar at each morning’s communion, before carrying them out to the many dozens of their parishioners who would die of cholera that very day.

These slum churches and their priests are far too many to mention, but their audacity and their piety are to be marveled at. The Church of England, at this time, looked upon ritual as a wicked aping of a Papist Church. Vestments were horrific to most, and yet in places such as the mission church of St George’s in the East, thuribles were swung, genuflecting was encouraged, the sign of the cross was made frequently, devotion to the blessed sacrament was taken for granted. Confessions were heard, holy anointing was practised. Here a group of priests, led by Fr Charles Lowder, were carrying through their interpretation of the Tractarian message. The poor must be brought the ministry of Christ, in the celebration of the sacraments and the preaching of the gospel.

Beauty and holiness were to go into the midst of squalor and depression, as a witness to the Catholic faith in Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, present and active in his world. And, perhaps most significantly, the sick and dying were to receive this sacramental presence as far as was possible. Deathbed confessions, the oil of unction, even, occasionally, communion from the reserved sacrament became the priests’ weapons against, for example, the appalling East London cholera epidemic of 1866.

http://www.puseyhouse.org.uk/what-was-the-oxford-movement.html

Slum priests brought hope to the poorest of the poor when others dared not to venture where hope was needed most. Perhaps, in our own day, we in the Ordinariate would do well to honour their charism by being true to that element of the Patrimony which seems so desperately needed throughout the world.

Integrity

John Newman as an Anglican priest, and later as a Roman Catholic cardinal, spoke for the conservative grounding of the (Oxford) Movement. He affirmed much that was present in the liberal and progressive spirit, “so much that was good and true: the percepts of justice, truthfulness, sobriety, selfcommand, benevolence”; he also spoke of its dangers “that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another.” Newman, and the Anglo Catholic slum priests, would share a fear of the results when faith is seen as simply a matter of taste and is relegated to the private life of people with no implications for society. - The Anglo Catholic Inner-City Experience, Gallagher, p.8 

Hope Shared

Ordinariate communities emphasize truth, goodness and beauty through liturgical and pastoral service at a time when the Church, and certainly the entire world, desperately needs hope. Concrete signs of hope, of actual engagement, that restore hearts, are needed to enable people to be resilient when despair would have them surrender to self deception and self destruction.

In 1933 W.G. Peck wrote “The Social Implications of the Oxford Movement.” Peck saw the Movement’s view of social life as grounded in an incarnational, sacramental, and Trinitarian context.

• The doctrine of the Trinity affirms that the personal – social principle is God’s nature and that a person’s spiritual life was to be found in that principle.
• The sacramental life of the church sets forth the principle of a co-operative community in which society if thoroughly and completely personal, and personality is thoroughly and completely social. The Eucharist is the redemption of our social life. - Gallagher, ibid.

Ordinariate communities, which tend to be smaller than diocesan RC parishes and therefore more approachable than larger faceless parishes, excel by offering people the opportunity to discover they are not alone, that they can find themselves in Christ and be bound together in a community of hope defined by liturgical beauty and theological orthodoxy that together communicate the wisdom of God for joyful living and the goodness of fellowship and familiarity, a community of godly living and shared purpose. That is, a community of intentional Christianity which is, without any prefix (e.g., traditional, orthodox, evangelical, conservative, charismatic, etc., and certainly not liberal or progressive), the lively lived Catholic Faith.

Recommended Reading

• https://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/1124858/21460002/1357162646483/The+Anglo+Catholic+Inner+City+Experience+.pdf?token=MkCDKKe1hUfh7SzA6wev7EgloiA%3D