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By
the turn of the century the Tractarians had grown in influence and numbers and
much care was being lavished on the sung eucharist which in many churches had
become the only sung service on Sunday morning.
Unfortunately, just as the
first translators of the Latin breviaries had gone to corrupt modern French
sources, so the 'Ritualists' followed and copied contemporary Roman furnishings
and customs which are now considered even by the Romans as over-ornate and
decadent.
The present century saw the beginning of much research into the
history and principles of the ancient liturgies and though the work is by no
means ended the general plan is clear.
By the unearthing of the simple beauties
of the Sarum Use a national liturgy was given into the hands of those who
wished to use it while a general pruning took place, at any rate theoretically,
in the Roman Use;
in liturgical change, however, movement is slow and prejudice
tenacious, and those 'Catholics' who had become familiar with the ornate and corrupt
Roman service were loth to turn to the simplicities either of Tridentine Rome
or of pre-Reformation Sarum.
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During
the reigns of Edward VII and George V the 'Catholic' movement grew enormously
and its ideas began to filter outside its own parishes.
As ever, the majority
of churchgoers were set against change, but many churches tried a compromise on
Sunday morning, though a few ousted sung matins and lost their congregations;
in some a sung eucharist was tried on great festivals, or once a month, or on
alternate Sundays;
in others both services were sung every Sunday with half the
congregation at each, a tiring business of two and a half hours continuous work
for clergy, choir and organist, and calculated to drive growing choirboys from
church for ever.
More recently, especially in parishes where all social types
are found, the experiment of a parish communion at an earlier hour, say 9.50,
has been successfully attempted:
the music is kept congregational, hymns are
liberally inserted instead of the propers, a nave choir is formed to lead the
singing—which gives the organist unrivalled opportunity to meet his critics—and
the busy housewife is able to hurry back in time for cooking the equally
important 'Sunday Dinner'.
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Such
new departures were all made within the framework of the Prayer Book;
both low
and high extremists, however, were trying other experiments not to be found
within its pages.
Many churches retained the eighteenth and early nineteenth
century practice of singing the eucharist as far as the Prayer for the Church
Militant, when to the pointless accompaniment of a hymn the choir and people
filed out leaving a scattered remnant to continue the service said;
this
arrangement could be preceded at discretion by matins, and it may be noted that
Frere recommended that matins could be used as a preparation for the eucharist, Benedictus of matins being used as the mass introit and followed by Our
Father.
He never of course suggested that the people should leave before the
canon.
The idea is interesting, but besides making a very long service,
especially if sung, it duplicates the section headed in the 1928 Book The
Ministry of the Word, so that with the epistle and gospel there are four
lessons.
Other churches which might be characterised as 'low modernistic' made
up their own services, shuffled the canticles into different places and sang
their social service hymns from Songs of Praise.
At the other end a
handful—a growing handful in some dioceses—went more and more Roman by
inserting lengthy passages of the Latin mass and omitting many portions of the
English mass, so that the silent congregations got no help from their too
protestant Books of Common Prayer.
Little new bits of ritualistic refinement
were added and devotional services, sung before the reserved Elements, were
tacked on to evensong.
The Book of Common Prayer was indeed becoming less and
less useful in the very low and the very high services, but the trend of
thought in both types of church showed that there was a growth in devotion to
the church and a developing social awareness which were not met by the
protestant and unenthusiastic Book of 1662.
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