Write, if you have any answers to the questions listed at the end of this section, or would like to add to the answers below.
Your answers
While away visiting relations, we arrived at a cathedral for the Sunday eucharist only to discover that it had been replaced by a “Civic Service”. A verger directed us to a church near by that had a eucharist at the same time and was packed with refugees from the regular cathedral congregation — something we felt to be deeply shocking.
Should not cathedrals and churches keep the Sunday eucharist in its proper place, and hold such special services as ecumenical events in the afternoon?
It is hard to make a point when in agreement with the questioner. I suppose that there must have been an 8 a.m. said communion in a side chapel to comply with canon law.
The idea that there must be a main Sunday eucharist goes back at least to Justin Martyr, who set out in outline the standard format of his day, AD c.160, remarkably like ours in Common Worship. He was writing about what was already well-established.
I used to attend a cathedral that had three Sunday-morning services: 8 a.m. said communion, 9.30 a.m. sung eucharist with a proper breakfast in the hall, 11 a.m. choral matins. The sung-eucharist people believed themselves to be the only true worshippers! The latter was the one in which civic pomp took place.
Christopher Haffner (Reader)
East Molesey, Surrey
Your questions
What authority do the various versions of the National Anthem have?
M. A.
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