Creeds and Creedal Variants, and Episcopal Eucharistic Prayers

[seeking.IAM]

I’ve never seen an Episcopalian priest wearing a cassock, surplice and tippet...

You've never visited my church.

 

[The Liturgist]

A doctoral student from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church made such a Psalter to complete his program at our seminary. The problem with such projects is the definition of popular music. The bishop gave permission for parishes to use the book as a supplement to the hymnal. My old organist had an extensive choir background and thought it would be wonderful. The problem was, 90% of the congregation didn't know the tunes. Most of them were 19th century folk songs. Let's sing Psalm 86 to the tune of Turkey in the Straw. It was worse than trying to pull off a double chant.

Fortunately the RPCA selected more widely used hymn tunes which most Christians who went to church before the mid 1990s can recognize. The RPCA also sings them a cappela, but I have access to a Hammond organ and an organist. Not very posh, but nicer than a piano. I really don’t like to hear pianos, or guitars, in church services (I think Pope St. Pius X had the right idea about church music in Tra la solecetudina, and venerate him on the basis of that bull, and also divino afflatu). and of course his anti-modernist encyclical. I love modernist buildings like the Seagram building, modernist graphics design, and modernist music, like that of Jerry Goldsmith, but not modernist theology. Also modernist church architecture is often a major failtrain, with some exceptions (the chapel of the USAF Academy in Colorado Springs is awesome, as is Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and the chapel at Harvard Business School, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s religious architecture).

 

[The Liturgist]

You've never visited my church.

Coptic vestments btw consist of a hybrid stole and chasuble, that looks like a fiddleback, except one does not wear a separate stole under it. So if one wears a good zostikon underneath, it works well for high temperature scenarios.

 

[Shane R]

Cassock and surplice is still quite common in many regions. The tippet less so. The academic hood and/or preaching tabs are a sign of a particular churchmanship, mostly. I have never bothered to order a hood.

 

[Paidiske]

I’ve never seen an Episcopalian priest wearing a cassock, surplice and tippet. I believe they exist, in some places, but most Episcopal priests I encounter vest like Roman Catholics.

That's what I would wear for a formal non-Eucharistic service, with some exceptions. (Eg. for a wedding which didn't include communion I would wear a stole, rather than a tippet, because I think a white/gold stole better matches the occasion than a black tippet).

I have my hood, although I really very rarely wear it. Possibly the last time might have been for my induction into the parish here. I've never worn preaching tabs.

 

[seeking.IAM]

My priest is quite sporty. He occasionally wears preaching tabs. He is also quite fond of his biretta, which comes out on special occasions.

 

[Paidiske]

I've never worn a biretta, either. One parish I was at had one in the cupboard, and I was very clear that that was where it was going to stay.

 

[seeking.IAM]

Zuchetta anyone?

 

[Paidiske]

 

[The Liturgist]

That's what I would wear for a formal non-Eucharistic service, with some exceptions. (Eg. for a wedding which didn't include communion I would wear a stole, rather than a tippet, because I think a white/gold stole better matches the occasion than a black tippet).

I have my hood, although I really very rarely wear it. Possibly the last time might have been for my induction into the parish here. I've never worn preaching tabs.

I don’t wear a hood as my cassock lacks one, and sometimes I wear a shirt with a full white clerical collar (of the style popular among Anglicans and Antiochian Orthodox, rather than the smaller clerical collar which is more popular among Romans) when visiting hospitals and doing that sort of thing. My cassock is actually a Byzantine rason, so it lacks a hood and a clerical collar, but it is more comfortable. I also use a Byzantine zostikon, which is just a Greek alb, and a Coptic one in the summer to match the Coptic combination chasuble-stole. These really do not look that different. On extremely hot days I will wear a grey shirt with a clerical collar and then use one of those handy double sided stoles (red and white, and green and purple) from Cokesbury, which mainly supplies Methodists, but I’ve bought stuff from them for years. They also sell the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal, which indicates either some Methodists like it, or some Lutherans use it. Have you heard of Cokesbury outside of our conversations @MarkRohfrietsch?

 

[Paidiske]

No, I don't mean a hood on the cassock, I mean an academic hood. Like in the picture you posted above.

 

[The Liturgist]

Zuchetta anyone?

So actually Syriac priests and Coptic full deacons (as opposed to the readers who are called deacons but are in fact just readers) wear a zuchetta like headgear, black in the former case and white in the latter. The Syriacs call it a phiro, meaning fruit. Monks of both churches, which include bishops, wear “St. Anthony’s Helmet”, a hoof adorned with crosses stiched together, and monks in both churches, as well as Syriac Orthodox bishops, wear this in the liturgy, and not the phiro as far as I am aware (unless they cram one underneath).

I plan on obtaining a phiro along with a full set of Syriac vestments at some point, because they are gorgeous, and amazingly cheap compared to Latin and Byzantine rite vestments, and I am distressed the Chaldean Catholic Church is getting rid of its variant form of the Assyrian episcopal headdress, which in the Chaldean church only the Patriarch wears, so I persuaded an Old Catholic friend of mine who makes headgear to adopt the sash for himself, the other bishop in his church, and the priests in their small but viable dioceses.

 

[The Liturgist]

No, I don't mean a hood on the cassock, I mean an academic hood. Like in the picture you posted above.

Oh, on an academic gown. I wore one of those in the UCC, but never used the hood, and I think I have lost it, which is an embarrassing thing to lose, but oh well.

 

[The Liturgist]

My priest is quite sporty. He occasionally wears preaching tabs. He is also quite fond of his biretta, which comes out on special occasions.

Nice. Black tuft?

 

[The Liturgist]

I've never worn a biretta, either. One parish I was at had one in the cupboard, and I was very clear that that was where it was going to stay.

I don’t think a biretta would look good on you, but I think you could rock a mitre. (The Anglican, Catholic and Armenian style anyway). Or a galero, but those are rare and expensive, however, historically priests could wear black galeros with fewer dangling lanyard-things.

For that matter I don’t think I would look good in a biretta. The biretta really requires a certain geometry of the head to be aesthetically pleasing; the biretta works best on people with really narrow cheekbones, and I, like you, have wider cheekbones.

In my case this led to a superabundance of cheek-pinching both by my own relatives and by loving babushkas during my OCA period.

 

[Paidiske]

Oh, on an academic gown.

Well, that kind of hood, but with cassock, surplice and tippet. That's what I would wear, for example, for choral evensong.

 

[The Liturgist]

That's what I would wear for a formal non-Eucharistic service, with some exceptions. (Eg. for a wedding which didn't include communion I would wear a stole, rather than a tippet, because I think a white/gold stole better matches the occasion than a black tippet).

I have my hood, although I really very rarely wear it. Possibly the last time might have been for my induction into the parish here. I've never worn preaching tabs.

I wear an alb and a stole any time there is an impending service featuring a sacred mystery of the church, and during the celebration of the mystery I am fully vested. (I use that term to include those things the RCs, Orthodox and many Anglo Catholics define as sacraments, but not the term sacrament, to avoid offending anyone else; this is also my proposed ecumenical resolution to the disputed number of sacraments).

 

[The Liturgist]

Well, that kind of hood, but with cassock, surplice and tippet. That's what I would wear, for example, for choral evensong.

Aside from wearing a cassock rather than an academic gown, that is how I vest for such services, unless it was part of a vesperal communion liturgy, or to be followed by communion, such as on Christmas eve. The same applies to morning prayer.

Because the ancient rubrics limit priests to one eucharist per day, my congregations have to take turns on the Eucharist unless one is meeting on a Saturday. Which is sometimes done. Since we appointed ruling elders, I have left scheduling to them, which has added some unpredictability to my life but also improved attendance. They are a useful feature of Congregational and Presbyterian polity, although I suppose in Anglicanism churchwardens do largely the same thing, albeit with less prominence.

 

[Shane R]

Zuchetta anyone?

They are the preferred headgear within my church. The Archbishop gave me one with red piping sometime back. I don't wear it every week but I try to remember to pack it for diocesan stuff.

 

[The Liturgist]

They are the preferred headgear within my church. The Archbishop gave me one with red piping sometime back. I don't wear it every week but I try to remember to pack it for diocesan stuff.

Well that increases my desire for a phiro.