USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 26
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Keble's sermon began the "Oxford" or "Anglo-Catholic" movement, with himself as its poet, and with Isaac Williams, Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford, and John Henry Newman, as other leaders. Eventually, Newman and a few others despaired of reforming the complacent established Church, and in the 1840's seceded to the Roman Communion. The alarm they aroused resembled the fear of Congregational Connecticut when Samuel Johnson and his friends became Episcopalians in 1722. The panic was a serious roadblock to the Catholic movement, because many feared that the Church was being infiltrated by "disguised Romanists."
Many American High Churchmen shared the alarm but few were surprised at Keble's protest. Some even said that Seabury and Hobart Churchmen had anticipated the "Oxford Movement" by stressing episcopacy, the sacraments, and the Church's spiritual
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character. Connecticut High Churchmanship soon began to give the movement leaders like Jackson Kemper, Samuel Farmer Jarvis, and James DeKoven, the head of Racine College in Wisconsin. At first the movement stirred little or no apprehension, although a few priests and laymen, like the Barber family of Connecticut, had already seceded to the Roman Church.
CONTROVERSY
In the 1840's the uneasiness increased. Newman's Tracts for the Times and his "extreme" friends seemed to favor features of "Romanism," including confession to the priest and an elaborate ritual, and began to use certain disturbing expressions about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. (See Chapter Seventeen, under The Oxford Revival) Some people were alarmed by the re- vival of monasticism in the Church of England, in the founding of a sisterhood, the first since the abolition of monasteries by King Henry VIII three centuries before.
Disturbing incidents occurred and agitating books appeared. The Rev. Samuel Farmer Jarvis, scholarly son of Connecticut's Bishop Jarvis, surprised many readers by a note which he attached to a sermon preached to the Board of Missions in 1836: "We have no right to banish from our communion those whose notions of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament rise to a mysterious change by which the very elements themselves, though they retain their original properties, are corporally united with or transformed into Christ."8
This scholar and historian is believed to have been the first American High Churchman to mention specifically the doctrine of the Real Presence.
A few years later Episcopalians were deeply stirred by a violent controversy over the ordination of Arthur Carey. He was an alumnus of the General Theological Seminary in New York, and had made favorable comments on Newman's later Tracts that seemed to lean towards Roman Catholic doctrine. There was a spate of heated pamphlets, editorials, and debates in conventions, and Bishop Onderdonk of New York was harshly assailed for or- daining Carey. A few years later Bishop Eastburn of Massachusetts started an uproar by declining to visit the Church of the Advent in Boston, because he was offended by "advanced" ritual.
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These episodes provoked comment in Connecticut, and by 1850 the Diocese was thoroughly excited. Suspicion of the "new divinity" - which was not really new - was not allayed by the defection to the Roman Church, in 1851, of the Rev. Edward J. Ives, a leading Connecticut High Churchman. Alarm was the greater because it was not realized that, as later analysis revealed, many of the defectors had not been brought up in the Episcopal Church, and very few of them were of Connecticut origin.
Opposition to "extreme" tendencies already had been voiced by The Calendar, the diocesan newspaper, in a series of articles understood to express the views of Bishop Brownell. In 1850 he felt compelled to address the Convention on "Certain Theological Tendencies and Errors." A few defections, he said, had not shaken general loyalty because they had been due to honest and respectable conviction. Quite different was the disloyalty that bored from within to "Romanize" the Church. No priest should allow his capricious individual interpretation of doctrine to affront the Church's "general understanding" by advocating "Romanism" or cold rationalism. The latter, the prevailing contemporary error, had crept in from Protestant groups, but was corrected by the Church's "more evangelical teaching and worship."
Certain Roman doctrines and practices attracted candidates for the ministry, who should avoid perverting "Catholic Unity" to mean a visible center at Rome, rather than one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one salvation through mediation and atonement. It was easy to criticize the separations of the Reformation, and forget the abuses of power that caused them. Insinuating stress upon com- pulsory individual confession and priestly absolution was repugnant to the spirit of the Episcopal Church. It would encourage over- bearing priestly power and lax laymen eager to "purchase for- giveness and salvation" by a mild penance. Churchmen should follow the harder way of self-discipline and vigilance.
The esthetic thrills of elaborate ceremonial might inculcate false doctrines, especially respecting the real fleshly rather than spiritual presence of God in the elements of the Eucharist. Yearning after greater holiness, often sincere, could lead to an ascetism false to the reasonable worldly duties of mature men and women. Longing for monastic devotion might be merely emotional and disregard the temptation to indolence.
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"Pure religion," said Bishop Brownell, "is founded in an un- feigned love to God and to mankind. As such, it must be an active principle. It exhausts not itself in solitary meditations, nor in elaborate ceremonial observances. It is best demonstrated by sincere devotion, in the public and private worship of God, and by an unfeigned obedience to all the Divine commands, while pursuing the active duties of life."9
The Bishop deplored heated and uncharitable controversy, and advised Churchmen to refrain from censoriousness while ex- posing dangerous tendencies. A committee of Convention con- sidered the address and proposed resolutions commending it and favoring its publication. Only five out of sixty clergymen and two out of thirty laymen were opposed; a few priests refused to vote, perhaps from resentment at the evident intention to compel a statement of their opinions.
RITUALISM
The Anglo-Catholic movement continued to make strides in the 1850's, especially after the founding of Christ Church, New Haven. By the 1860's the accompanying agitation troubled Bishop Williams, who was a High Churchman but resented "ritualism." At a special meeting of the House of Bishops in 1866, he discussed The Law of Ritualism, a highly controversial book by Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, who favored Gothic churches and defended "advanced" ceremonies. Altar candles, incense, reverences to the altar or the Eucharistic elements, and special Eucharistic vestments were roundly condemned in a declaration signed by twenty-eight bishops, including Williams, and Jackson Kemper of Wisconsin, formerly rector of St. Paul's, Norwalk. It was written by Bishop Coxe of Western New York, formerly rector of St. John's, Hartford.
At the General Convention in 1868 Williams was one of a committee to report on ritual. In the stormy session of 1871 he stood firmly on the Old High Church side, between the Low Churchmen and the "Ritualists," along with Bishop Coxe and with the Rev. E. E. Beardsley of St. Thomas's, New Haven, in the House of Deputies. A committee, including three Old High Churchmen, recommended the prohibition of incense, crucifixes, processional crosses, altar candles, Eucharistic vestments, the elevation, the
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mixed chalice, the ablutions, lay servers, and all reverences to the altar, except as directed by the Prayer Book.
This was less an attack upon ritualism than a defense of episcopal authority, which was being openly flouted by radical ritualists. A canon adopted by the bishops declared the ritual standard to be the Prayer Book and the Church of England canons in use in America before 1789, and referred all ritual disputes to the diocesan. The bishops sanctioned another canon forbidding the elevation of the Eucharistic elements, any ceremony not pre- scribed by the Prayer Book, celebrations without communions, and unauthorized hymns, prayers, epistles, or gospels.
The committee of the House of Deputies was headed by the Rev. William Cooper Mead of Norwalk, an astute politician and an archfoe of ritualism. After a joint commission reported to the Deputies, debate raged intermittently for two days. Mead moved to substitute the much more stringent provisions of the bishops' report. The opposition, led by the Rev. James DeKoven, persuaded both orders to reject them, and although a majority favored the joint commission's original canon, it failed for lack of concurrence of both orders. The outcome was a pair of innocuous resolutions condemning all ceremonies expressing doctrines foreign to the Church. Whatever it thought of the result, the Diocese of Con- necticut generally felt a surge of pride in the distinguished par- ticipation of Connecticut Churchmen in the brilliant and exciting debates.
The next few years discouraged a confidence that carefully chosen words had laid the disturbing spirit. In 1874 the steady spread of "ritualism" inspired Bishop Williams to mention "some matters which concern the integrity of the Church and the purity of the Faith."10 He reproved "advanced" Anglo-Catholics who decried the middle way of the English Reformation as a dishonest and cunning compromise. It was, the Bishop held, a positive re- turn to undefiled faith and Apostolic order, bringing doctrine, dis- cipline, and worship to the test of Holy Scripture and the primitive Church. It was no shift to please the extremes of Rome and Protestant Dissent, but an appeal to the early great Councils against additions to, and subtractions from, the primitive faith. Churchmen should never mistake opinions for doctrines, super- ficialities for essentials. The restless and undisciplined temper of
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the times undervalued the sacredness of Christian doctrine and denied the shaping influence of belief upon man's life.
A yearning for Christian "unity" minimized differences and encouraged a vague, sentimental wishful thinking; underrated the Prayer Book and recklessly demanded its alteration in either a Roman or a dissenting direction. Proposed changes should be tested not by supposed accomplishment, but by their nature. "Ritualism" involved no dangers unless it should invite perversion of doctrine, implying unrestrained individualism and inviting anarchy. The Bishop added: "Uniformity of ritual, in a National Church, with reasonable room for diversity, is surely a thing to be desired. . . If there is to be no rule or law in this direction, we may as well lapse into Independency at once." The Convention re- vealed Diocesan sentiment by heartily approving the Bishop's views and commending them to the General Convention in 1874.
That highly charged gathering received memorials for and against "ritualism," and considered proposed canons to curb it. The Deputies' committee on canons, led by Doctor Mead of Connecticut, offered a rule prohibiting incense, the crucifix, and elevation or adoration of the Eucharistic elements. The extreme "Lows" pro- posed still stricter prohibitions but were voted down. DeKoven fought all ritual legislation but he and his friends could not prevent the forbidding, under penalty of disciplinary action, of the elevation or adoration of the elements and all other acts not authorized by the Prayer Book rubrics.
MONASTICISM
The same Convention argued the subject of reviving mo- nastic life. It had already appeared in America in the Society of St. John the Evangelist (Cowley Fathers) for men, and the Order of St. Mary for women. In spite of determined attacks upon them, the General Convention refused to forbid orders, and they slowly won their way into respect by self-sacrifice and good works.
Connecticut felt the impulse towards monasticism less than some other dioceses. The Cowley Fathers established a training house for novices in Bridgeport, where they soon had eight pro- bationers under the care of Arthur C. Hall, who later became Bishop of Vermont. Later, in the same city, the Sisters of the Tabernacle served the Church of the Nativity.
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Several priests educated in Connecticut were prominent in the revival of religious orders. One of the earliest was William Walter Webb, who attended Trinity College, Hartford. He served as a lay-reader at Grace Chapel (now Grace Church) on New Park Avenue, where he revealed his view of the Eucharist by painting "Till He Come" on the retable of a little altar that is still in use. Webb wrote the first book on moral theology for the clergy of the American Church. He became president of Nashotah House seminary in Wisconsin, 1892-1907; in 1906 he was elected as coadjutor-bishop of Milwaukee, and later succeeded as diocesan. With six other Philadelphia priests, in 1891 he organized "The Companions of the Holy Saviour," which in 1896 became definitely a religious order. They originated at the Church of the Evangelists in the rectorship of Henry R. Percival, and Webb served in St. Elizabeth's, a daughter parish. The Companions seceded to the Roman Church in 1908 but Webb did not follow them.
Closely associated with Webb and the Companions was the Rev. Joseph G. H. Barry, who came from Berkeley Divinity School as a somewhat extreme High Churchman. He became dean of the cathedral in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and in 1906 succeeded Webb as president of Nashotah House. He believed in clerical celibacy, routine confession, and non-communicating attendance at the Eucharist, but was loyal to the Episcopal Church and parted from the Companions, who tried to dominate Nashotah.
Connecticut has been associated also with the Order of the Holy Cross, founded by Father Huntington in New York City in 1881. In 1907 Father Sill, O. H. C., founded the Kent School for Boys in an old farmhouse by the Housatonic River. Members of the Order have lived and taught there at times. Father Sill, clothed in his habit and smoking his familiar pipe, was the headmaster for over forty years.
At the present time there is no house of any religious order for men in the Diocese of Connecticut.
Resolutions and addresses could not banish enriched ritual or discourage religious orders, which have been found to be com- patible with loyalty to the Church. They are, in fact, not con- tradictory to Old Connecticut Churchmanship, but rather are out- growths from its devotion to the Eucharist and the life of prayer. Defections have been comparatively few, because the "advanced"
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Anglo-Catholics generally do not consider these things as deviations from the Church's ways. "High" ritual has made only modest pro- gress in Connecticut; it has appealed to a small minority, and few parishes have become Anglo-Catholic in this restricted sense.
Some "ritual lawlessness" persisted, and as late as the 1940's occasional eccentricities provoked a pointed rebuke from Bishop Budlong. He indicated the corrective in the loyalty owed by clergy and laity to their vows. Freedom to allow diversity of outward observances, he said, does not mean wilful license to violate the canons and the Prayer Book rubrics. Many objectionable cer- emonial practices have arisen not from abuse of the liturgy but from sheer lack of taste. Bishop Acheson once rendered an opinion on such lapses in a Convention address that few were likely to forget. "I refer to the stilted, stage wedding style of entry of some choirs, the halting step, or again the swing from side to side, the duck waddle or the bandmaster style of carrying the cross with stiff elbows and hand before the nose, and at times, reversed palms. O Tempora, O Mores - How any clergyman can endure these things is beyond comprehension!"11 One parish, for a time, even used Latin in the liturgy, which was generally considered as sin- gular rather than dangerous.
The Diocese has learned to take such things without undue excitement as departures from good taste and common sense, rather than from sound churchmanship. And even in the early years of this century, "ritualism" already had begun to seem less significant than Catholic Christian unity, and the Church's relation as a spiritual fellowship to a world crying out for the religion of personal and social redemption. Nobody perceived this more clearly than Bishop Brewster, who trusted in the deep loyalty of Old Con- necticut Churchmanship. Throughout a long episcopate he en- couraged the emergence from that old tradition of a broader and a more democratic Catholic faith.
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CHAPTER TWENTY
BROADER CATHOLICISM
THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE WHOLE CHURCH
C ATHOLIC Christian unity based upon the priesthood of the whole Church is the ideal that Connecticut churchmanship has followed in what Bishop Brewster called the "seething ferment" of this present century. He perceived the need of emphasizing not a uniform ritual or theological formulas, but the republic of God and the commonwealth of Man. The world needed, he said, not speculations, but simple faith in the old Catholic creeds and a reasonable authority to correct individual judgment when mere individualism would not suffice. Judged by such a desperate need, wrangles about religious orders, vestments, genuflections, and incense seemed petty and irrelevant.
Under Brewster's firm intellectual touch, the Diocese awakened to the supreme importance of faith in the Incarnation. During the subtle and perplexing debate about the Virgin Birth in the 1920's, he set Connecticut firmly on the Creed as the ac- cumulated testimony of Christian experience, resulting from freedom of inquiry. True Catholicism should not fear the re- sponsibility of thinking and interpreting, he maintained. Affirmation is more likely to be right than denial, even though ultra-liberal Protestantism then seemed to consider denial as a great adventure. Affirming a confidence in men can be an adventure of faith in Christ. This faith is "not a mere deposit to be preserved in detachment from personal and present-day living," and is more significant than knowledge about Him. In writings and addresses the Bishop shifted the question from "What is the correct ritual?" to "What is the Catholic faith and how is it expressed?"1
Like The Watchman nearly a century before, Bishop Brew- ster maintained that the faith of Catholic Christendom is not a philosophy, but a continuing way of life expressed in the fellowship of the Church. To him this was the real inner meaning of the
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Catholic Revival in the 1830's, expressed in Connecticut's traditional conviction that the Church is a necessary extension of the In- carnation through the ministry of the sacraments. Such a conviction seemed to him urgent in the false intellectual sophistication of the 1920's, when a vague and superficial "liberalism" undervalued the institutional expression of religion.
The "Church" Brewster defended did not imply an exclusive and autocratic ecclesiasticism. Amid the intemperate debate that raged around 1913 about changing the Church's name, he and his people had held that "Catholic Church" means a cosmopolitan faith in Christ, as valid in this century as in the romantically pictured Middle Ages. The people began to see his vision of an inclusive Church, with a mission to reconcile the fragments of Christendom and to redeem human life from social degradation.
The Church could not be truly Catholic and social simply by stressing pronouncements and rigid forms. Encouraged by the Bishop, after 1910 the Diocese experimented with popular, informal preaching services to supplement the liturgy, to reach the "un- churched," and to teach the essentials of the Catholic Faith. These services favored more evangelistic preaching and a growing trend towards simple, congregational music.
Departure from the often-criticized formality of Connecticut churchmanship reflected a democratic trend in secular politics and the Social Gospel movement in religion. Democratic Catholicism inspired Bishop Brewster's masterly and thrilling address to the Diocesan Convention of 1905, on The Priesthood of the Whole Church. His theme was a fellowship of clergy and laity in joint service, a "holy nation" with every citizen a priest. This has been the shaping spirit of modern Connecticut churchmanship, especially among the laity.
Bishop Brewster's teaching stressed these principles: The priest, designated to perform peculiar functions, receives his power from God through the bishop in ordination, and from the laity through their testimonials of his worthiness. Through confirmation the layman receives an ordination to the Church's universal priest- hood. Clergy and laity are distinct but not separate, for their priesthoods are complementary. The clergyman's service in the liturgy and the sacraments is not exclusive, but instrumental for and representative of all. He does not speak solely for himself,
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and says "I" only in the Creed, his personal confession of faith. The laity join with him in the offering of worship to God, which must not be obscured by over-elaborate music and ceremonial. Worship should be common, especially in the Eucharist, where the priesthood of all the people is expressed in offering worship, alms, bread, wine, and self. "Such a service it is!" said the Bishop, "Priest and people join together in one sublime service of earth and heaven."2
The priesthood of the whole Church, the Bishop continued, has been obscured by the encroachments of temporal power and overbearing clerical authority, and by the too frequent contentment of the laity with a substitute religion. The layman's citizenship in the republic of God confers duties of fellowship, worship, sacrifice, and service, including faithful and efficient management of the Church's temporal affairs. In this respect the laity should set a much-needed example to secular government. Respect for regular giving would banish financial schemes of questionable taste and morality, which obscure and degrade the Church's true nature - fellowship in the Holy Spirit, not worldly "clubbiness." The de- voted layman can spiritualize his parish by regarding it as more than a business and social convention.
Bishop Brewster's ideal of citizenship in God's spiritual commonwealth indicated also the obligation to redeem public life. During the progressive political reform movement of the early 1900's, it encouraged a higher standard of service to the State in battling corrupt influences and promoting civic righteousness. The Bishop used to say that no Anglo-American Churchman should complacently blame political crookedness upon the foreign-born "voting blocs" and the "bosses."
His conception of the lay priesthood has recovered the long-lost spirit of the mediaeval Franciscan movement, which was essentially a layman's venture for God. It has opposed materialism, commercialism, selfishness, greed, luxury, hatred, and class strife. The priestly view of life has illuminated the services of countless laymen and women, who have fulfilled their sacred vocation and made a deep impression upon the Diocese. For many years they have been remembered by a reading of their names in Convention, by prayer, and at the corporate Communion. Bishop Acheson's sensitive appreciation of noble personal devotion challenged the
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Diocese to be worthy of the many real saints who have been known only in their communities. He strove to enlist the services of young men and women and exhorted the clergy to appeal for the devotion of self, pledged in baptism and sealed by confirmation.
EDUCATING THE LAY PRIESTHOOD
Years of patient education of the laity undergirded the increased appreciation of Catholic churchmanship and of Diocesan unity. Convinced that the cornerstone of instruction was the Prayer Book, Bishop Williams in the 1890's encouraged a special committee to further its wider distribution. Assisted by hundreds of clergymen and laymen, the committee distributed or sold thousands of copies of a cheap edition.
Merely having the Prayer Book was no substitute for regular religious instruction, especially in preparation for confirmation. That became painfully obvious in the skeptical period after World War I, when a militant secularism and poor Church School in- struction caused heavy losses among recent confirmands. As Bishops Brewster and Budlong pointed out, the Catholic Faith is an inquiring and understanding state, requiring those who enter its fellowship to know what they are doing. Upon too early and too little instruction Bishop Budlong laid the blame for the con- firmands' shaky loyalty, and their failure really to participate in parish life. "Do we initiate them into a group who demonstrate that religion is an opiate to lull the conscience, to weaken the will, to blind the eyes and to divert attention from the glaring selfishness rampant in the world?"3
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