While perhaps not known online for being especially moderate or
nuanced, like many High Church Anglicans I have mixed feelings about the
500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. On the whole I'd have
to come down on the side that it did more harm than good, and the
splintering of Christendom, setting European Christians against each
other, surely must be seen as a tragedy. I have no use at all for the
radical, iconoclastic, egalitarian, proto-republican wings of Protestantism.
(Neither did Luther.) At the same time, I can't quite condemn it as
unequivocally as my staunch Roman Catholic friends do. I certainly would
not want to be without the distinctive Lutheran and Anglican choral
traditions, and include many Protestant royalty among those I admire in
European history. I think I've always been clear that it's more
important to me whether one is loyal to his King or Queen than whether
he calls himself a Protestant or a Catholic. I don't think any work of
music better captures my ambivalence than this B Minor Mass by the
greatest of all Lutherans, Johann Sebastian Bach.
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3 comments:
I'd posit that the distinct German and English choral traditions would have developed regardless of the break from Rome. Had the reformation never happened, Trent likely would not have been convened, and the various national differences in the liturgy would have persisted, leaving open the opportunity for the different choral traditions.
You know where I staunchly disagree with you, both forcefully and respectfully. The differences between protestant and and Catholic doctrines of justification alone warrant quite a heavy consideration: the fate of your immortal soul hangs in the balance. I can understand your argument of indifference due to ecclesiology (though again, I disagree), but not where the four last things are concerned.
I don't know. I see the use of the vernacular (which ironically I oppose in a RC, Vatican II context) as integral to the Anglican and Lutheran musical traditions as we know them. And I think Western Civilisation is richer for it. The same cannot be said of the Novus Ordo. I can't see Rome permitting the liturgical use of English or German prior to when it did--nor, in a way, do I think she should have. Hence my conflicted position.
Counterfactuals are hard.
In the unlikely event that Lutherans could be reconciled, I'd be in favor of having forms of the Roman rite, similar to the current Anglican Use, that would preserve their cultural traditions. Though I'm staunchly Roman myself, I understand the strengths of the Orthodox model of national liturgies. We're all Christians after all, and their distinct traditions, particularly art and music, should be preserved where they are compatible with the truth.
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