Dear People, Neighbours, and Friends of St. Thomas’s,
This past week, I received one of the most gratifying compliments ever given. A parishioner wrote, “I must say that you are a very unusual priest. In my experience, members of the clergy don’t like to be challenged, especially by lay folk!”
This was in response to how I replied to what might best be described as a “Letter to the Editor” taking exception to some of the things I spouted off about in last week’s edition of the Thurible, except that, appropriately, its author sent her criticisms only to me rather than to everyone else but me! It was refreshingly direct.
I asked her whether I might indeed publish it as a Letter to the Editor, but she did not want her name associated with it publicly. Instead, she gave me permission to excerpt from it with my own replies interspersed, as I think it stands as a good example of the sort of teaching and learning many of us want to foster at St. Thomas’s, where the priest is both the teacher and the student, especially since (as we saw previously with another parishioner’s erudition on medieval liturgy and the placement of the Nicene Creed therein), many, perhaps even most, of my parishioners could certainly teach me a thing or two! And, God willing, I can be a good teacher for you, trusting that if there’s anything good or edifying (or even mildly amusing) that I can provide, you will take it in the spirit of Christian charity with which I intend to give it.
Rather than using circumlocutions to honour this parishioner’s desire for privacy, I am going to re-name her Sophia. Further, I’m going to be coy and say that you ought not to assume that “Sophia” is a woman. Or perhaps she is. In any event, as I wrote to her, “I want people to know that when they do engage with what I write, they will be heard, and not in a condescending manner, but in a way that engages substantively with the content… To paraphrase the Psalter, ‘when a wise woman reproves me, it is kindness’” (cf. Psalm 141:5). Sophia began:
Dear Fr. Humphrey,
Like you, I do not possess academic expertise concerning the particular forms of worship contained in the 1962 Canadian Book of Common Prayer. However, I must take issue with some of the statements that you made in your letter of last Saturday.
First, I must question your categorizing the omission of some of the imprecatory Psalms or parts thereof in the Canadian BCP as being on par with other productions that have omitted all references to the Holy Trinity or to miraculous occurrences.
Surely you will have found by now that there are still plenty of imprecatory verses left in the Canadian Psalter. To cite just a few examples: 31:20 “Let the ungodly be put to confusion, and be put to silence in the grave”, 35:6 “Let their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the Lord pursuing them”, 59:13 “Consume them in thy wrath, consume them, that they be no more”, 83:17 “Let them be confounded and dismayed for ever; let them be put to shame and perish”, 129:6 “Let them be even as the grass growing upon the house-tops, which withereth afore it be plucked up”.
To this I replied (and I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t use quotation marks for my own prior words and simply recount it here as the dialogue it was):
I think my letter suffered from the pressures of being written without time for additional reflection and editing. Such is the nature of a weekly “column,” which is essentially what my letter is. It’s not always op-ed, of course, but since my aim is to get people thinking, or rather to get thinking people more engaged in the common life of St. Thomas’s, I’m more than willing to be corrected publicly so that I have the honour of thanking that person and showing that we are—or at least aim to be—a learning community. As to your points specifically, here are a few reflections:
I think you’re quite right that the rhetoric I used drew a false equivalency. The examples you give … demonstrate that convincingly. What I did want to raise in the reader’s mind was not only the question of whether the BCP is guilty of this tendency, but to open up the question of to what degree we might ourselves be guilty of this in the way we read scripture, mentally editing out material we find repulsive or vexing, rather than engaging with it and asking where God is living and active in the text. Had I the time to reflect and edit, I hope that is the tack I would have taken. As you write:
The question is not one of wholesale excision of imprecation, but of restraining the degree of imprecation expressed.
You are spot on here. This is the real question.
Let me make it clear that I entirely agree that the deletion of these imprecatory passages was a mistake that ought to be reversed.
However, I disagree with your imputation of “the rationalist tendency to exclude anything that offends one’s own preconceived notions of what is, and is not, credible” to the compilers of the Canadian BCP. As I have pointed out above, imprecation per se was evidently not at all incredible to them.
I replied: My imputation was probably an unfair one to make regarding the compilers. I do wish to challenge us to engage in our own process of evaluating the degree to which we ourselves tend to exclude anything based on our preconceived notions, something we all do, but are more or less aware of depending on the circumstances. The extent that we are open to others challenging our preconceived notions is a measurement of our desire for continued learning, and God willing, growth in charity and holiness of life.
I also disagree with your contention that the compilers thought that “nice Christians are incapable of unseemly thoughts, feelings, and desires”, and that “the victors in the war also wanted to reassure themselves … that they (we) could never be so inhumane”. From my point of view, I consider this interpretation to be extremely unlikely. When work began on the 1962 Canadian BCP in the 1950s, many of the generation involved in it would have had first-hand experience of fighting in a world war. Many of them would have personally witnessed horrors and atrocities committed not only by the enemy, but by combatants on their own side. It seems inconceivable to me that those of that generation could have had any illusions about the general “niceness” of people.
Yes, upon reflection, I agree that this accusation is misplaced, and entirely unfair.
My view is that the reason for excising certain verses of the imprecatory psalms was that they would have evoked, all too unsettlingly, hatreds and passions of which the readers would have had personal experiences. Those coming out of a war scenario would have had been all too well aware of the dark undercurrents running through the human soul. C.S. Lewis, writing in 1958 (quoted in the essay by Fr. Chris Dow that you cited), was clearly familiar with such emotions, since he had to admonish the readers of his book that praying the imprecatory Psalms was not a licence for indulging in one’s own private hatreds.
The above points come across very well in the Chris Dow essay, and also in the brief excerpt from a paper that was passed on to me from my seminarian [Daniel McCarley, showing that these concerns about the imprecatory psalms date all the way back to English Anglican reflection on the Boer War and World War I.]
In contrast, it was in a later generation, in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the BAS was being produced, that a sunny view of humanity was actually prevalent. It was a time of economic prosperity, comparatively peaceful conditions worldwide, and general confidence, optimism and complacency. It is true that the BAS does contain the Psalter unabridged, but on page 701 in the introduction it is admitted that “not every psalm or section of a psalm has been suggested for public recitation in the various lectionaries in this book”. So the Psalter has in fact been “censored” in the BAS as well as in the BCP; just more quietly.
I agree, and I appreciate your pointing out that censorship can take an even more pernicious form that the explicit form reflected in the 1962 BCP. In many ways, one has to admire the intellectual honesty reflected in the 1962.
And so, dear readers, such was the nature of the refutation and the retractions I happily offer for your reflection this week. I can’t wait to read the emails taking me to task for this letter!
Yours in Christ’s service,
