baptismal texts: press comment
Updated Sunday morning
There is some press comment today on the draft baptismal texts published yesterday.
Reports say that “sin” removed in the original trial in January has now been reinstated, and that the response from parishes trialling the texts was positive, with more than 90 per cent saying the congregation had been “more engaged” with the new liturgy and there was praise for its “unchurchy” language.
The Times: Sin makes return in revamped baptism
The Daily Telegraph: ‘Sin’ is back but ‘the Devil’ optional in new Church of England baptism service
The Guardian: No devil in detail of Church of England’s new baptism service
The Daily Mail: Church puts the ‘sin’ back into traditional baptism services
Sunday update: Tim Stanley blogs for the Telegraph Hey, Church of England: if you want to become a Christian, you have to renounce the Devil — an article that contains numerous errors of fact, but which does represent the Church’s dilemma.
(Some of these reports are behind paywalls.)
2 CommentsAdditional liturgical materials for baptism: texts
The baptismal texts to be considered by the General Synod next month are now available on the Church of England website. This material is scheduled to be considered on the afternoon of Sunday 13 July.
Following the period of experimental use, various changes were made by the Liturgical Commission and sent for consideration by the House of Bishops. The text agreed by the Bishops is now published as GS 1958 and includes an Introduction, the proposed texts themselves, and a proposed timetable for authorization. The timetable is:
2014
July — November: Revision Committee meets
2015
February: Revision stage at the General Synod
May: House of Bishops (if no further revision stage)
July: Reference to Convocations and House of Laity (if required)
July: Final approval at General Synod (if no further revision stage)
Additional liturgical materials for baptism
The Agenda for the July meeting of the General Synod is now available and contains the following snippet:
Update (4 June): The Agenda has been revised and the updated agenda is here but it does not yet contain the actual texts to be introduced at the Synod. The timetable for Sunday is the same as in the original agenda.
Sunday 13 July
EITHER
(if Article 7 Reference Meetings are not required)
2.30 pm – 6.15 pm
Archbishops’ Council’s Annual Report 2013
Liturgical Business
Additional texts for Holy Baptism – First Consideration
Churches’ Mutual Credit Union (CMCU): PresentationOR
(if Article 7 Reference Meetings are required)
4.00 pm – 6.15 pm
Liturgical Business
Additional texts for Holy Baptism – First Consideration
Churches’ Mutual Credit Union (CMCU): Presentation
At the moment the papers pertaining to this liturgical business are not available. We’ll add details when this is published.
3 CommentsAdditional liturgical materials for baptism
As reported on the main TA blog the House of Bishops of the Church of England met at Bishopthorpe Palace in York on Monday and Tuesday.
Amongst lots of other business, the Statement issued by the House contains this paragraph:
The House of Bishops received a report from the Liturgical Commission on the use of additional texts for use in services of Baptism following the piloting of new materials in parishes. The House heard that the feedback from the parishes to the use of the texts had been largely positive and welcoming. Following a debate and minor amendments to the text the House voted for the new texts to progress to being debated by General Synod.
This is the normal route for any material which comes under the terms of the Worship and Doctrine Measure 1974, i.e., any material which is alternative to text in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer — any draft is first reviewed by the House of Bishops, and only when agreed by that House is it introduced into the General Synod.
0 CommentsY Cymun Bendigaid
A package containing a new book landed through my letter box a couple of days ago. It was a copy of the newly-authorized version of the Eucharist of the Church in Wales, published just in time for a meeting of the Church’s Governing Body in September.
(The Archbishop of Wales, the Most Revd Barry Morgan, can be seen at the meeting using what looks like a copy of the altar edition of the book in this picture.)
The arrival of this book was a significant moment for me — because I had designed and typeset it. Having laboured long and hard over the text and layout, over page breaks and line breaks, vertical and horizontal spacing, typeface, kerns and ligatures, page numbers and goodness knows what else, here at last was the finished product.
This is always an exciting event: to hold in your hands the result of your own craftsmanship, your own hard work, and to be able to see for the first time whether it has actually worked, whether you have achieved the effect that you wanted — in this case clarity and beauty combining tradition and modernity.
Of course, many people had contributed to this volume, in ways significantly more important than I had. Liturgists had worked on drafts, revision committees and the Governing Body had considered it, and altered it to produce the final authorized text; others had created the cover (by Leigh Hurlock) and the calligraphy (by Shirley Norman); and the printer (Biddles) had produced the printed and bound books. But I shall remember the time spent designing a layout that works, selecting typefaces, playing with type size, and different combinations of bold and italic and roman, caps and small caps, creating custom ligatures (Welsh requires an ‘fh’ ligature which did not exist in the selected face, so I had to design one myself in roman, italic, bold and bold italic), and of course proofreading the text over and over again. Proofreading, especially of the parallel Welsh text, was also done by people at the provincial office of the Church in Wales. All in all, the result is a book to be very pleased with, I think.
And then after all that, despite all the care that has gone into its production, you begin to notice the mistakes. Here and there, dotted around, are little glitches that have escaped the proofreading. It’s amazing that you can proofread a text so many times, both on screen and on paper proofs, and yet the minute you pick up the finished product you find a few more mistakes.
I suppose life is like that — you cannot produce the perfect work, there are always a few little things wrong. At least with a book there is a chance to correct any errors at the next printing! Mistakes in life, on the other hand, very often have to be lived with.
3 Comments