ENGLISH RITUALISM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 78, 24 October 1874, Page 10

ENGLISH RITUALISM.

ritesTand ceeemonies btssembltnq- those of the catholic chtxbch.. The English Ritualists style themselves by a ridiculously contradictoryname—English Catholics. They use almost all our rites, and if yoa. enter their churches or are present at their ceremonies it oan be hardly believed that you are not in a Catholic Church. The altar, which in. England was once but a naked table with a cover and a Bible, is now a rich altar, richly decorated with a cover, candlesticks, candles, flowers, a cross, or even a crucifix. They have their litanies and a rosary. They use incense and our sacred vestments. They cross, themselves, they have the ho)y water; they bend their knees before what they call the Most Holy Sacrament. Their priests are completelyshaven, they dress like ours, and even now they assume the collar ; to thai" you must know them to distinguish them from ours. They say Mass (after their fashion), and recite (si sic est) the canonical hours. They observe most strictly the feasts of the saints, and they speak with great remorse of Lent, of the vigils, and of the guattro tempora, only that here the Eitualist bark is ship-wiecked ou the rock of fasting, which is certainly mentioned at the commencement of the ritual, or prayer book ; but there is a fatal obstacle to it in the gastric juice of the English stomach. Accordingly, they fast very fully and men* tally. They have even their Sisters of Charity and monks. Those Sisters of Charit/ are most excellent women, clothed in black, with a veil on their heads, and they wear even the rosary at their waists. They assist the poor, they visit the sick, they open., schools, thby distribute Bibles. As to the monks, so far as we know, there is only one witu his layman, and he ia the famous Father Ignatius. Thiß is the title of his book, 4C Sermons by Father Ignatius, of the Order of S. Benedict, of Llanthony A.bbey, Monk of the Church of" England," to be had of Brother Henry, Secretary, 38, Hart street, London. Whoever wishes for similar works has only to run over the long columns of the ' Church Times,' and they will be found there. For example, prayersfor the morning, for midday, and for the evening, for meditation, and for confession, the Angelus, the litanies, the name of Jesus, of the Holy Spirit, of the saiats, of the angels, of penitents, of the Holy Sacrament, the rosary of the name of Jesus, prayers for the dead, prayers of S. Gregory on the Passion, the manner of ' administering extreme unction,*etc. They will find there exercises fop the clergy (Protestants), crucifixes to be carried on the person, and the Gregorian chant, and the concordance of S. Anthony of Padua, and the tracts of S. Thomas Aquinas, and a hundred things of a similar sort. There are some who are very angry about these things, and. among them are the Avchbishop of Canterbury, and all the LowChurch party. There are others who laugh at them, and they are the indifferent and infidels. We neither laugh nor are angry, but we meditate seriously this new phase of Anglicanism, which, finding that its life is fading, would desire to graft it on the Catholic trunk, without thinking that a dry branch can never grow or bear fruit. We deplore the strange state of things, but at the same time, looking higher and further on, we raise our hands to God, who is leading by degrees perhaps the most religious part of thai: noble and great nation toward that fold from which it was unhappily separated, Let'uspray for it. — From the ' Yoee. della Verita,' Rome, May 9. '. —-■