The Catholic World, Vol. 05, April 1867 to September 1867Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 05, April 1867 to September 1867
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
sacrament of his most precious body and blood."
In this recognition of the true functions of the Christian ministry, the
true character of the worship which ought to be offered in God's holy
temple, we may suppose the ritualists to be pretty well agreed. But
doctrinally, they may be divided into two classes. With the one class, a
gorgeous ritual is merely the gratification of an aesthetic or antiquarian
taste; with the other it is the logical development of an advance in
doctrine. The one class would bring back the practice of the Anglican
Church to what it used to be in old days; the other would imitate the rites
and ceremonies which were followed in the Catholic Church ages before
Anglicanism was heard of.
The second class is, we believe, the more numerous, as it certainly is by
far the more important of the two. Its views are set forth with frankness
and decided ability in the volume which we have already quoted; and we are
certain that no one can read these essays without feeling that the
ritualists are legitimate successors of the tractarians of thirty years
ago, and that there is promise of as much good from the agitation which
they are leading as came from the great movement of Dr. Newman and Dr.
Pusey. "Ritualism," says one of the essayists, "is not employed as a
side-wind, by which to bring in certain tenets surreptitiously, but as the
natural complement of those tenets after they have been long and sedulously
inculcated." The burning of candles and incense is of very little moment,
considered as a mere form, but it is of great moment when it is done as the
ritualists do it for the sake of rendering honor to the real presence of
our Lord. It is of no consequence what order of words or what gestures or
what dress the Anglican minister uses in reading the communion office,
because he has not the priestly character, and if he followed literally the
missal itself, he could not celebrate a valid mass. But if he comes as
close to the missal as he can, by way of testifying that he believes in the
doctrines stated and symbolized in the missal; if he imitates the
ceremonies of the daily Christian sacrifice, in order to show his belief in
the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, that fact becomes of serious
importance, and indicates a genuine progress toward truth, at which every
good Catholic ought to rejoice. The practice of auricular confession is not
new in the Anglican Church; but it acquires additional significance when it
is spoken of, as it is in the Church and the Word, by the name of "the
sacrament of penance," for the Church of England recognizes no sacraments
except baptism and the supper of the Lord.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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