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Reviews The Book of Common Prayer of the Church of Ireland, 2004 Columba Press, Dublin Anglicanism is the new pluralism. At our best, the ‘rainbow people of God’; at our worst with little seeming to hold us together except, in Michael Perham’s immortal words, ‘the chorus to Shine Jesus Shine.’ The Church of England has chosen to reflect liturgical pluralism by making available a range of resources known as Common Worship, whereas the Church of Ireland, reflecting it’s own history and contemporary opportunities for mission has taken the brave step of revising and issuing a single prayer book. On Trinity Sunday this year, Irish Anglicans began to use the 3rd version of the BCP since disestablishment, available in a variety of versions, including Gaelic. This has been accompanied by a huge push to ‘sell’ the book, with a range of educational, practical and background material and resources, such as the Church’s own version of the Revised Common Lectionary, ‘The Word of the Lord’, and suggestions for using the new BCP for daily and small group prayers. The impression is that this one has to last! The Book has received a warm welcome, with two exceptions, one irritating, the other unfortunate. Press attention has focused on a small number of misprints and omissions, graciously acknowledged by a small errata slip; (but look out for ‘thy shalt not cover thy neighbours wife’.) Reactionary forces both within Ireland and as far
afield as the correspondence columns of the Church Times have questioned the book’s right to its title, ignoring both liturgical history, where constant revisions still kept the name up until the 1960s, and also the fact that Cranmer himself could hardly be said to have regarded 1549 as anything other than a work in progress! Perhaps what such opposition struggles with is that the book, now the only one legally to be used for worship in the C of I, includes both traditional and contemporary language rites, as in the main CW volume. This is a book which signifies unity, a book which confidently builds on the principle that prayer and belief are intertwined. Enormous care has been taken over the words that are here. Traditional Language rites are freed from the tyranny of their sixteenth century rubrics, giving an impression of words as a springboard for prayer, rather than a straightjacket. The book is loyal to world-wide Communion consultations in ways that CW ignores; thus instead of the Liturgy of the Word/Sacrament’, we have ‘Gathering as God’s People’, ‘Proclaiming and Receiving the Word’, ‘Celebrating at the Lord’s Table’ and ‘Going out as God’s People’- titles that may cause those of us still looking over our shoulders to Rome to shuffle a little nervously, but which have about them an authenticity and integrity. Eucharistic Prayer H in Common Worship is beautifully re-worked as Prayer 3 here, losing the original’s clumsiness in its desperation to be brief. Never a Prayer I thought I could use until now. To see the heading ‘The Great Silence’ printed as the response to receiving Communion is heartening. If you look hard enough, you can find the odd unrenewed Reformation twist. We give thanks for the ‘spiritual food of the body and blood of Christ’, and the 39 Articles and Athanasian Creed still linger to bite the unsuspecting, though fortunately hidden well beyond the Psalter. Curiously the book reprints the introductory Prefaces from every BCP right back to 1549 – I think this used to be called unity by inclusion. Detailed comparisons with CW are inevitable. Decisions over founts and the texture of paper mean that the 800 pages of BCP 2004 cover a lot more than the slightly larger CW main book, without losing anything in visual quality. Beautifully produced, the cover features a version of a traditional Irish cross pattern, its four arms presumably a reference to the four provinces, rather than being pulled in four different directions.
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Page 5 and 6: and wine during the service, and it
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Page 11 and 12: REFLECTIONS ON PRIESTLY SPIRITUALIT
Page 13 and 14: The development of our spirituality
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Page 17: Postscript AARON Holiness on the he
Page 21 and 22: Come and Receive Light: Meditations
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