This explanation will be the first of articles on the traditional form of the Mass that we use at Morningside, and I will use the term ‘Mass’ as that is our Parish usage.
The traditional form, goes back to the work of St Gregory the Great in the 6th Century, and is the basic shape used by Cranmer in his first Book of Common Prayer (BCP) in 1549. He radically changed that in 1662, but since 1900 there has been a return to the traditional shape.
Archbishop Reginald Halse, in his 1946 booklet Adoremus for parish worship in the Diocese of Brisbane for Sundays, mentions that as three hundred years have passed since the 1662 BCP it cannot be used as it stands. The reality was that many modifications had already become common practice, but were not in the BCP.
A great Anglican authority is Dom Gregory Dix, an Anglican Benedictine monk, in his unparalleled book The Shape of the Liturgy which in 1945 awakened proper liturgical scholarship – and as the title suggest, there is a basic structure and form to the Mass, which we need to understand. Other conclusions to Dix’s findings have now caused a new edition of this classic work,
So, this explanation will certainly help anyone in coming to the Anglican Parish of Morningside for the first time, and to see how the traditional form is offered. However, anyone interested in Christian worship will find it helpful. The explanation will follow the celebration of the Sunday Sung Mass, for that is the basic form. The celebrations of a said service derive from that fuller sung Sunday celebration.
Father Martyn Hope