THE SOCIETY OF SAINT BONIFACE

MICHAEL MORETON

Introduction: Origin

The Society of St Boniface was founded in connexion with the twelfth centenary celebrations of the martyrdom of St Boniface. The year of his martyrdom remains uncertain in consequence of the vague chronology of the sources. The monastic, Fulda tradition opts for 754, while the cathedral, Mainz tradition opts for 755. The latter tradition was followed in the Diocese of Exeter, and so it was in 1955 - a year inaugurating new relations between Anglicans and Roman Catholics in this part of theworld - that the Society was founded.

The Society had two co-founders. One was a trilingual parish priest, P D Godfrey, vicar of Barnstaple. The first time I met him was in his study, and I noticed that the Hebrew Bible and the Creek New Testament were open on his desk. The other was a distinguished patristic scholar, Dr T G Jalland, Head of the Department of Theology in the University of Exeter, and author of a massive biography of St Leo the Great, and a Bampton Lecturer in the University of Oxford on the subject of The Church and the Papacy. Among Bampton Lectures it has been a best seller. He was a tireless advocate of the alliance of gown and town, and of academe and parochia.

Trilingual scholarship and patristic theology have continued to contribute, as we shall see, to the character of the Society.

I The object of the Society

This was from the first simply stated, and it has remained unchanged: 'To assist priests in the practice of the Catholic faith, in study and pastoralia'.

It was in origin a North Devon society. North Devon was regarded as the Siberia of the Diocese, where priests sharing a common Catholic mind were isolated. The Society brought them together. In the course of time, however, members were dispersed to other parts of the Diocese, and so the Society now has a diocesan basis,

Its members have included a bishop, an archdeacon and a parish priest who both became bishops, a few prebendaries in the Greater Chapter of the Cathedral Church, and several rural deans. So it may be said that we are socially respectable.

II The principles of membership

The object of the Society is articulated in a number of principles which form the basis of our membership. From the outset these principles referred to three areas of life: the daily office, the mass, and the discipline of confession.

(i) The daily office

This certainly meant at our foundation morning and evening prayer in the Book of Common Prayer. These offices included the recitation of the Apostles' Creed morning and evening, and of the Quicunque Vult about twelve times a year. These credal formularies, together with the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed in the eucharist, provide the patristic framework of Anglican theology.

In recent years, with the revision of the Roman daily office and the use of the vernacular, some of our members have come to use the Liturgia Horarum. Either way, however, it is a matter of principle with us that the prayer of the Church is the foundation of the prayer of the priest.

(ii) The eucharist

There are indeed three principles involved for us in the celebration of the eucharist.

(a) When the Society was founded, the eucharistic revival in the Church of England had by no means influenced all parishes. It was therefore a principle for us that the eucharist should be 'the chief Sunday service' - ie not mattins. This principle, adopted by our members from the first, is now scarcely in dispute. But another is, viz. 'the doctrine of the eucharistic sacrifice'. Accordingly our basis of membership has been modified in this way. With the first essay in the revision of the eucharist in the Church of England, draft Second Series in 1965, the basic oblation formula, 'we offer unto thee this bread and this cup', from The Apostolic Tradition attributed to Hippolytus, was adopted. But Evangelicals, first in the Church Assembly, then in the General Synod, secured its rejection. It nevertheless remains for us an essential principle in the celebration of the eucharist. Indeed it is the deliberate exclusion of the eucharistic sacrifice from the ASB which has led us back to the use of the one patristic eucharistic prayer in Western Christendom, viz. the Roman Canon. Its authority is in itself, in its antiquity and continuity of use; and in addition its paragraphs form the basis of the prayer of consecration and oblation in the BCP.

(b) The use of eucharistic vestments had long been opposed in the Church of England. But equally Catholics had long maintained that their use was governed by the ornaments rubric in the BCP: 'Such ornaments of the Church and of the ministers thereof ... shall be retained and be in use as were in this Church of England by the authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI'. Accordingly the Society from the outset insisted 'the literal interpretation on of the ornaments rubric'. In recent years however the Canons of the Church of England have been revised to allow 'an alb with the customary vestments' (B 8.2); and so we have rephrased our principle to make it clear that we mean 'the use of traditional eucharistic vestments'.

(c) Thirdly, the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament forms one of our principles. Reservation was bitterly disputed in the last century by Evangelicals on the grounds of their concept of the subjective presence of Christ in the eucharist. In the period between World Wars I and II the bishops appeared to allow reservation from the time of the celebration in church specifically for the ensuing communion of the sick. For us, however, the eucharistia remains objectively the body of Christ, and its reservation should be unlimited. Hence our principle, 'The reservation of the Blessed Sacrament for the whole as well as for the sick'.

(iii) Confession

As for the third area of our basis of membership, the discipline of the priest, we are committed to 'the use of the sacrament of penance', in accordance with the provision of the BCP .

Such were the principles of membership of the Society from foundation. But in January 1981 we judged it necessary to add two further principles:

(i) The first was the acceptance of 'the Catholic tradition of Holy Orders', embodied in the Preface to the Ordinal attached to the BCP. Accordingly, while accepting the Anglican order of deaconesses, introduced in the 1860s, we remain opposed, in the spirit of the Prayer Book Ordinal, to the admission of women to the Holy Orders of deacon, priest and bishop.

(ii) We also uphold, in accordance with Catholic tradition and the express language of the solemnization of matrimony in the BCP, 'the indissolubility of marriage'. We have seen in our time re-marriage after divorce spread rapidly in Anglican congregations, invading even the ranks of the clergy.

III Meetings

Our meetings take place, once a month, in different churches and houses in rotation. They include three parts: mass, the exegesis of the Greek New Testament, and a paper contributed by one of our members.

The mass is always a solemn mass, sung, with lights and incense, in which everyone plays a part whether in the sanctuary or in choir. We take it in turns to be the principal celebrant.

In regard to the Greek NT, a passage is read, translated and expounded. Everyone has a turn, clockwise, in contributing to the exposition. We have by now studied most of the books of the NT, and we are at present half way through Luke.

The papers range over the whole theology syllabus, and vary frcm the short introduction to the full length lecture. Again, they are discussed clockwise.

I should not omit to mention our hilarious, with beer and cider, packed lunches, usually hilarious, and tea at the end.

Conclusion

I should like to conclude by returning to the object of the Society with which I began. While we have certainly not ignored the controversies of our time, we are not essentially a political or a polemical society, or even a 'party' at all. The Society aims at fostering the spiritual, intellectual and pastoral interests of priests in the Diocese of Exeter who stand in the legitimate Catholic tradition in the Church of England. We exist 'to assist priests in the practice of the Catholic faith, in study and pastoralia'.

Michael Moreton is a founder member of the Society. This is the substance of a paper he read on the 3 July 1995, when the Bishop of Plymouth, the Right Reverend Christopher Budd, was present as a guest.

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