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Morning Prayer and the Church of Ireland – a Reformation tradition?

THIS ARTICLE assesses a tenacious but seldom-remarked tradition of the Church of Ireland: the practice of Morning Prayer as the principal service of public worship on Sundays. The tradition is rooted in the laity’s adverse reaction at the Reformation to an innovation in the new Book of Common Prayer (BCP): regular lay communion in the context of corporate public worship. In response, the authorities concentrated on promoting corporate worship without insisting on Communion. The tradition continued into modern times for very di erent reasons and is most recently expressed in the Liturgical Advisory Committee’s present proposal for ”An Order for Morning and Evening Prayer for use on Sunday”. When initiating liturgical revision of the traditional church services, a major concern of Archbishop Cranmer and his colleagues was to promote frequent lay communion in both kinds as part of the Protestant move towards parish worship which balanced Word and Sacrament. Cranmer’s problem was that, while Mass had been celebrated regularly as the church’s central act of worship, the laity only went to confession or received communion once a year at Easter. Otherwise, they were distant bystanders in the nave at a spectacle performed behind a screen by the priest in the chancel.

* Full article available in printed copies.

Steven G Ellis

is Emeritus Professor at NUI Galway, where he taught history for forty years, including the Tudors and the Reformation; he is also a Church of Ireland lay reader.