Margot Johnson (ed.): "Thomas Cranmer: 500th Anniversary of his Birth," ...

3. Liturgical Language and Devotion—Gerald Bonner, 30-40. It is rather hard to know where Dr. Bonner is going and the thesis of the essay is not yet clear. He distinguishes between private and public worship, one that informal and spontaneous and the latter being more formal and structured. He discusses some efforts to update modern liturgy with some losses, e.g., the Prayer of Humble Access. Despite the modernizations, the funeral and wedding services of the old BCP, unadjusted, remain popular. He observes that the Church Militant prays as does the Church Triumphant and that our worship is coincident with that above. Also, prayer in a place where prayer (e.g. a Cathedral) has been offered for centuries invokes a sense of historical continuity. Thus far, a series of observations that are isolated and, on first view, unrelated to any governing thesis. It might be the reader and not the author, but we'll see.