It is not the Vatican’s fault that ecumenical relations with the Anglican Communion have soured, Cardinal Walter Kasper has declared. The Anglican Communion’s civil wars over women and gay bishops are the primary obstacles to Catholic-Anglican ecumenical dialogue Cardinal Kasper said in an interview published in L’Osservatore Romano.

Cardinal Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity said in an article published on Nov 15 in the Vatican’s official daily newspapers that ecumenical relations between the Vatican and the Anglican Communion would not be harmed by Anglicanorum Coetibus, the apostolic constitution for Anglicans seeking to join the Catholic Church.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams’ Nov. 19-22 visit to Rome “demonstrates that there has been no rupture and reaffirms our common desire to talk to one another at a historically important moment,” he said.

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In the past two months, relations between the three main Christian churches have moved in more promising directions than perhaps during the past 50 years of uninspiring liberal dialogue. By opening a new chapter of theological engagement and concrete co-operation with Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, Pope Benedict XVI is changing the terms of debate about church reunification. In time, we might witness the end of the Great Schism between east and west and a union of the main episcopally-based churches.

First there was the Rome visit in September by the Russian Orthodox Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk, Moscow’s man for ecumenical relations. In high-level meetings, both sides argued that their shared resistance to secularism and moral relativism calls forth a further rapprochement of Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Declaring that “More than ever, we Christians must stand together”, Hilarion insisted that each side can appeal to shared traditions and work towards greater closeness in a spirit of “mutual respect and love”.

That this was more than diplomatic protocol was confirmed by the Catholic Archbishop of Moscow, Monsignor Paolo Pezzi. In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, he said that union between Catholics and Orthodox “is possible, indeed it has never been so close”. The formal end of the Great Schism of 1054, which has divided the two churches for a millennium, and the move towards full spiritual communion “could happen soon”.

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The recent Anglican-Roman Catholic Bishops’ Dialogue held in Vancouver has produced a joint statement outlining concerns about human trafficking at the February 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver-Whistler.

Calling the Olympic Games “a celebration of human development through sport,” the statement also made it clear that the bishops are united as they “stand together to call attention to the profound social ill of human trafficking.”

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The third phase of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission will begin with the new year.

The decision to move into this new phase in 2010 follows the Nov. 21 meeting between Benedict XVI and the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, a Vatican communiqué reported Saturday.

During that meeting, the religious leaders “reaffirmed their desire to strengthen ecumenical relations between Anglicans and Roman Catholics.”

On Nov. 23, there was a meeting of the committee responsible for preparing the third phase of this commission.

The communiqué explained that “this third phase will deal with fundamental questions regarding the Church as Communion Local and Universal, and how in communion the local and universal Church comes to discern right ethical teaching.”

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According to Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of ecumenism for the Roman Church, the target in particular is groups of dissidents who separately founded small churches beginning in the ’60s, which have come together under the banner of “The Traditional Anglican Communion.” They are made up of people who for different reasons left the Anglican Communion: the revision of the Book of Common Prayer, the admission of women to Holy Orders in some churches of the communion; and the inclusion of gay and lesbian people. Outside this little assembly of churches, there will certainly be some individuals who, for reasons of conscience, will accept this new offer by the Vatican.

That these Christians of Anglican heritage should no longer stay on the fringe of Anglicanism, but may join another part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, can only be a good thing. May God bless them and keep them!

In any case, there has always been comings-and-goings between Roman Catholics and Anglicans, as between these two communions and the Orthodox churches. Of course, all three come from the same church, divided — alas! — in the eleventh century. Though certain key ideas of the Reformation influenced the 38 national churches (called “provinces”) of the Anglican Communion, all three communions came from and continue to keep the catholicity inherited from the first centuries.

Strongly conscious of the evil effects of the various schisms, especially on the credibility of the Gospel that we all are responsible to proclaim, the Anglican Communion took the initiative of launching the ecumenical movement at the dawn of the last century. We had thought that in these last decades some real progress was being made. But the resurrection of the language of assimilation in the latest document can only disappoint all who seek the reconciliation of all Christians, whatever their particular denomination. The Vatican can rest assured that we Anglicans will not create “Roman-rite jurisdictions” for unhappy Roman Catholics!

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Efforts are under way to salvage Anglo-Catholic dialogue following Pope Benedict XVI’s decree setting out new structures to receive groups of disaffected Anglicans into the Catholic Church.

Preliminary talks took place this week for a third round of talks by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (Arcic), which took place days after the head of the Anglican Communion, Dr Rowan Williams, said he had been “disappointed” that the Vatican had given him just two weeks’ notice of its intention to set up personal ordinariates to accommodate Anglicans who become Catholics.

On 21 November he met Pope Benedict XVI for the first time since the plans became public. The official communiqué said Dr Williams’ 20-minute private audience included “cordial discussions” and the men discussed “the challenges facing all Christian communities … and the need to promote forms of collaboration and shared witness in facing these challenges”.

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Admittedly, it was a bit of a surprise.

“It’s a bit of a bruise on us, no question,” Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, told the Anglican Journal. “It came out of nowhere.”
Still, Archbishop Hiltz doesn’t expect the Oct. 20 Vatican announcement opening the door for disaffected Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church””and still retain some of their Anglican traditions””will appeal to many Anglicans in Canada. Nor will it put a damper on ecumenical relations and the 40-year formal dialogue between the two churches, he said.

In fact, Archbishop Hiltz expects the fallout from this announcement to be minimal. “I personally don’t think there are going to be any huge implications from this. We are talking about a very small number of [Anglican] people who will respond to this provision that the Pope is putting in place.”

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The bishops reaffirm their commitment to the ecumenical journey with the Anglican bishops and communities of Australia. They express their gratitude to the Anglican bishops who have similarly reaffirmed their commitment to ecumenical relationships with the Catholic Church at this time.

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Pope Benedict XVI and the Archbishop of Canterbury have said relationships between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion will not be obstructed by a recent Vatican offer to allow disaffected Anglicans to maintain some of their traditions if they convert.

An official communiqué issued after a Nov. 21 meeting at the Vatican between the two Christian leaders said that they reiterated, “the shared will to continue and to consolidate the ecumenical relationship between Catholics and Anglicans.”

A commission preparing a third phase of international theological dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church is due to meet in the coming days, the statement said.

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Asked for the pope’s reaction, the archbishop said, “the main message was that the constitution did not represent any change in the Vatican’s attitude toward the Anglican Communion as such.”

As for the issue of ordaining openly gay men and blessing gay marriages, which a few Anglican provinces have done, Archbishop Williams told Vatican Radio the official policy of the Anglican Communion remains opposed to such practices.

“We have to keep considering this, praying about it (and) reflecting without creating too many facts on the ground that pretend the debate is settled,” he told the radio. At the same time, he said, it must be done in a way that shows how much “we value and appreciate the contribution made already by many faithful gay and lesbian people who serve as clergy and laity in the church.”

Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and Archbishop Williams both said they thought the next topic to be treated by ARCIC would be the relationship between the local and universal church.

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There wasn’t much information in the official communique after Pope Benedict and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams met at the Vatican on Saturday. The terse text mentioned “cordial discussions” about challenges facing Christians, the need to cooperate and their intention to continue bilateral theological dialogue. The only reference to the issue of the day, Benedict’s offer to take alienated Anglicans into the Catholic Church, was mentioned in passing as “recent events affecting relations between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.” Hmm, pretty thin pickings”¦.

The Pravda-like opaqueness of the communique (read it here) prompted me to zoom in on the photographs we got from the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano for any other clues there.

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In reality, it was clearly tense. Relations are strained following the Pope’s recent offer of special conversion terms for disaffected Anglican conservatives unhappy with Dr Rowan Williams’s tolerance of homosexuality and the ordination of women.

The Vatican says the offer was meant as ecumenism. Many Anglicans felt it was a land grab exploiting divisions within their ranks. Dr Williams was criticised at first for his softly-softly response, giving only carefully coded public expressions of resistance to the Vatican’s approach. Anglicans feared their archbishop was a pushover. But judging by icy formalties after yesterday’s encounter, Dr Williams was more forthright in private.

That is the right balance….

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The Vatican has mounted a direct challenge to the unity of the Anglican Communion. It established last month a new legal structure by which Anglicans may enter the Catholic Church. Traditionalist Anglicans, for whom the arrangement was designed, were delighted. But Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was treated unconscionably in the process. Dr Williams will meet Pope Benedict tomorrow in Rome. In the interests of his own authority and the integrity of the Anglican tradition, he should give the pontiff two clear messages.

First, the Anglican Communion is not an arrangement of convenience among disparate parties. In creating the new structure, known as an apostolic constitution, the Vatican acted precipitately. Second, there is an impeccable case for the Church to welcome women priests and homosexual clergy. On these issues that have sharply divided Anglicans, Dr Williams is clearly liberal by temperament. Stating that position openly, regardless of its effect on Anglican-Catholic relations, is overdue….

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Underlying relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion is the Christian duty to work towards unity.

The church word is “ecumenism” – describing the universal values and beliefs that all Christians share.

Forty years ago the Roman Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council seemed to promise a greater readiness to meet other churches half way in achieving greater unity.

But Pope Benedict thinks the Council’s deliberations have been misinterpreted, and he wants to put a brake on the modernisation that has taken place in the Catholic Church in recent decades.

A liberal Catholic and historian of the Church, Michael Walsh, said the Pope’s invitation to Anglicans was part of this plan.

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It is important in the light of some awkward feelings, particularly about the way the news of the Apostolic Constitution was handled, that the Pope and Archbishop restated their intent to continue and consolidate the ecumenical relations between our Churches and drew attention to the preparatory work presently under way for the next phase of the ARCIC official dialogue.

I will be in Rome this week for the Informal Talks between the Vatican and the Anglican Communion. These annual, official, in camera conversations cover our shared agenda as Churches, including our formal ecumenical instruments, ARCIC (the theological dialogue) and IARCCUM (the commission on mission and unity) and other aspects of our joint international relations. The recent private conversations between His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI and His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury appear to have set the tone for fruitful working meetings this week.

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As far as I can make out the whole speech can be paraphrased thus:

1. The ARCIC talks have worked. We’ve made a lot of progress and we agree on all the basics.
2. We agree on the creed and the main points of the Christian faith.
3. Women’s ordination really isn’t such a big deal. We got used to it. You could too.
4. The way we get on is that we all agree to differ. We’re good with that. It works. You should try it.
5. Sometimes we have to make a compromise and so we have flying bishops and ‘impaired communion.’ That works too. It’s not so bad. You should try it.
6. Things are going fine. We don’t know why you guys are still so uptight about women priests and bishops. I’m sure you’ll probably have them one day too, and until then, lets have full communion and you can recognize our orders and we can all do things the Anglican way.

What I can’t get my head around is that Rowan Williams really seems to believe this….

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The Archbishop invoked the Prayer of St Francis at evening prayer in Rome on the eve of his meeting with the Pope. Preaching at an ecumenical service with Cardinal Walter Kasper presiding, at the Oratory of St Francis Xavier, he gave a rare insight into the depths of the his own, personal, intense desire for unity, and continued warm relations with Rome. ‘As we pray for unity between Christians…whatwever we may be, Anglicans, Methodists, Roman Catholics, Armenian, Apostolic Orthodox whatever we may be, give us the Holy Spirit to bind us together, that we may meet one another’s hunger.’

He went on to reference the St Francis Prayer. (The relevant passage is towards the end, about eight minutes into the video.) And while he did not use this passage directly, the prayer has this line: ‘It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.’ Presumably, then, he’s forgiven the Pope. What seems to have been at issue is not so much what was done, as the way it was done. The announcement a couple of weeks ago, with little notice or preparation that he was aware of, left the Archbishop of Canterbury in a state of some discomfiture, not knowing how to respond.

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Both sides have tried to present the offer as a normal step, but the Vatican’s top ecumenical official, Cardinal Walter Kasper, last week revealed Williams had called him in the middle of the night for an explanation when it was announced.

There was no immediate comment from the Anglican side on William’s brief private audience with the pontiff, which was billed as a courtesy call by church officials.

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The biggest unanswered question is how exactly Catholics and Anglicans propose to move towards unity after years of progressive mutual alienation. While the leadership of the Anglican church has embraced women’s ordination and, in the US, gay priests, the Vatican under Benedict has become increasingly proud of its conservatism on these and other issues.

In a lecture last Thursday evening at the pontifical Gregorian university, Williams made an impassioned plea for the Catholic side to recognise they had made giant steps towards reconciling their theological positions. All that stood between them were “second order” questions of ecclesiastical organisation, he claimed. But it is hard to believe Benedict’s Vatican will see things in that light, any more than traditionalist Anglicans do.

This has been one of the archbishop’s most delicate and testing encounters. On Friday he held talks with Vatican officials in which, according to a source in Rome, he repeated his disappointment at the way he had been kept in the dark about the pope’s initiative until a late stage.

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One of the surprising — at least to the journalists who have been calling me today — elements of today’s meeting was that the official Anglican-Catholic dialogue appears to be back on track after some years in the sidings. Benedict XVI and Dr Williams discussed the future of the next stage of the ARCIC process — ARCIC III — whose aim has always been to achieve the unification of the Anglican and the Catholic Churches. According to Cardinal Kasper, the topic is not yet agreed but is likely to be the question of the universal v. the local Church — a subject that will be never far behind negotiations over the new ordinariates.

One of Dr Williams’s most senior advisers, the Rev Canon Jonathan Goodall, will remain in Rome to launch a new round of dialogue designed to build closer ties. (He’s the bearded one on the right 28 seconds into this video). Goodall is well known in Rome, and is a sharp ecclesiologist who has been at Dr Williams’s side throughout the Anglican Communion storms of recent years. This news, taken with Dr Williams’s speech at the Gregorian in Rome on Friday — in which he proposed that the process of cohabitation being worked out by the Anglican Communion could offer a model for Christendom as a whole — suggests there could be some interesting surprises ahead. Is there an Anglican plan being brewed — a ‘Covenant’ that would commit the Churches of tradition (Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox) to working together more closely, recognizing the Pope as the “focus of unity” but not his Vatican I powers? Watch this space.

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…[Dr. Williams on Vatican Radio] added: “Naturally, I wanted to express some of the concerns about the way in which the announcement of the constitution had been handled and received.

“Clearly many Anglicans, myself included, felt that it put us in an awkward position for a time ”“ not the content [of the constitution] so much as some of the messages that were given out.

“I needed to share with the Pope some of those concerns. I think those were expressed and heard in a very friendly spirit.”

He said people were wrong to think that the Catholic Church had been trying to attract Anglicans with “advertising or special officers”.

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Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday morning met privately with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. During the talks, the two men elaborated on the challenges face by all Christian communities at the beginning of this millennium, and the need to encourage forms of collaboration and common witness when addressing them. They also spoke about recent events which have affected relations between the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion, and reaffirmed their common will to continue and strengthen ecumenical relations between Catholics and Anglicans. After his meeting with the Pope, Archbishop Williams spoke to Vatican Radio (about 11 1/2 minutes).

Pope Benedict XVI will today greet Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, for the first time since the Vatican announced the creation of a canonical structure to receive groups of Anglican converts en masse.

The pair will hold a private meeting at the Vatican at a delicate time for relations between the churches. Last month, Pope Benedict unveiled a special structure to allow traditionalist Anglican ministers, including married ones, and lay people to join the Catholic Church. The decree, for the first time in history, allows the creation of “personal ordinariates” in which Anglo-Catholics can preserve their traditions but in communion with the Pope. Anglo-Catholic leaders have generally welcomed the move as an act of generosity. But it has caused unease within parts of the Church of England because some clergy fear it could further undermine the worldwide Anglican Communion.

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[Rowan] Williams’ mood is unlikely to be as upbeat when he meets with Pope Benedict on Saturday, just a month after the Vatican’s surprise announcement outlining historic new procedures designed to help disaffected conservative Anglicans enter the Roman Catholic fold. Both Anglicans and Catholics are now awaiting the first details of exactly how the Vatican will bring in would-be Anglican converts, groups or parishes. “This announcement from Rome is incredibly messy,” says Rev. Jo Bailey Wells, who heads the Anglican Studies department at Duke University Divinity School. “It’s confused and confusing.”

Depending on who you ask, the two faiths are either closer than ever to bridging their differences or are renewing the kind of mistrust and incomprehension that has marked the relationship since the Anglican Church was formed after King Henry VIII’s split from Rome in the 16th century. For those in the 77-million-strong Anglican Church (which includes the Episcopal Church in the U.S.) who are angry at its policy of allowing women and gay priests and bishops, and perhaps attracted by the liturgical and historical links with Catholicism, Benedict’s official door-opening is an unexpected godsend that might just allow for the best of both worlds: hanging onto their Anglican culture and parish life while moving under the doctrinally rigid umbrella of Roman orthodoxy.

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[Rowan] Williams downplayed the significance of the Vatican plan, which he called an “imaginative pastoral response to the needs of some” that “does not break any fresh ecclesiological ground.”

A new Catholic diocese for former Anglicans, he suggested, is more likely to resemble a mere “chaplaincy” than a full-fledged “church gathered around a bishop.”

Williams will meet with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican on Saturday (Nov. 21), on the second-to-last day of a five-day visit to Rome, which has included meetings with various Vatican officials.

Apart from Thursday’s lecture, the archbishop’s only scheduled public appearance here will be at an interdenominational prayer service at a Rome church on Friday (Nov. 20), at which Williams will be the designated preacher.

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The archbishop of Canterbury today pleaded with Roman Catholics to set aside their differences with Anglicans over the issue of female bishops, insisting there was more uniting the denominations than dividing them.

Rowan Williams was giving a lecture in Rome before Saturday’s meeting with the pope, their first encounter since the Vatican’s surprise announcement of a special institution for traditionalist Anglicans wanting to convert to Catholicism.

In his address at the Gregorian University, Williams said the Anglican communion was proof that churches could stay together in spite of their differences.

The communion has teetered on the edge of schism for nearly a decade over the issue of gay clergy but has retained a sliver of fellowship. Williams urged Roman Catholics to continue their 35-year dialogue with Anglicans in spite of theological and ideological divisions.

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Calling Pope Benedict XVI’s arrangement for Anglicans wanting to become Roman Catholics “the elephant in the room,” the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion said the pope’s move was nothing groundbreaking from an ecumenical viewpoint.

Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury spoke Nov. 19 at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University at a conference marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, a pioneer in Catholic ecumenism.

While the archbishop’s address focused on efforts over the last 40 years by the Roman Catholic Church and Anglican Communion to promote full unity, he said he obviously had to mention Pope Benedict’s apostolic constitution establishing “personal ordinariates” — structures similar to dioceses — for Anglicans wanting to enter into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury asked on Thursday whether the differences between Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism are sufficient to prevent Rome’s deeper recognition of Anglican orders.

The Most Rev. Rowan Williams spoke at the Gregorian University at a conference in honor of the late ecumenical leader Johannes Cardinal Willebrands. The archbishop’s office has released a text of his remarks.

The “ecumenical glass is genuinely half-full,” the archbishop said. “For many of us who are not Roman Catholics, the question we want to put, in a grateful and fraternal spirit, is whether this unfinished business is as fundamentally church-dividing as our Roman Catholic friends generally assume and maintain.”

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