Category : Ecumenical Relations

Anglican Division over Same Sex relationships Harming Talks With Vatican

The Anglican Communion’s divisions over sexual ethics have harmed its ecumenical dialogue with Rome, the head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity has claimed.

Speaking to the Pope and 123 cardinals in a private meeting at the Vatican on Nov 23, Cardinal Walter Kasper said that while relations with the Orthodox and some Evangelical groups were improving, talks with the Anglicans had stalled. “What we held to be our common heritage has begun to melt here and there like the glaciers in the Alps.”

Cardinal Kasper’s address, published in L’Osservatore Romano, noted that recent years had seen openness to dialogue with Rome from the “ecclesial Communities born from the Reformation.”

“A certain agreement has been reached in the realm of the truths of faith” and “in many places, there is fruitful collaboration in the social and humanitarian sphere” characterized by “mutual trust and friendship,” motivated by a “profound desire for unity.”

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Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, * Religion News & Commentary, Ecumenical Relations, Other Churches, Roman Catholic, Same-sex blessings, Sexuality Debate (in Anglican Communion)

Avery Cardinal Dulles: Saving Ecumenism from Itself

The principal instrument of ecumenism over the past half century has been a series of theological conversations between separated churches. Proceeding on the basis of what they held in common, the partners tried to show that their shared patrimony contained the seeds of much closer agreement than had yet been recognized. Rereading their confessional documents in light of Scripture and early creeds as shared authorities, they produced remarkable convergence statements on traditionally divisive subjects such as justification, Mariology, Scripture and tradition, the Eucharist, and the ordained ministry. The achievements of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), the Groupe des Dombes, and the World Commission on Faith and Order in its Lima paper on baptism, Eucharist, and ministry deserve our admiration. I personally stand by the ecumenical ­statements that I have signed, including those of the Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue and of Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

And yet, valuable though it was, the convergence method was not without limitations. Each new round of dialogue raised expectations for the future. The next dialogue, at the price of failure, was under pressure to come up with new agreements. The process would at some point reach a stage at which it had delivered about as much as it could. It would eventually run up against hard differences that resisted elimination by this method of convergence.

When the dialogues attempted to go beyond convergence and achieve full reconciliation on divisive issues, they sometimes overreached themselves. Although not all would agree, I think the much vaunted Lutheran-Catholic Joint Declaration on Justification by Faith, signed in 1999, exaggerated the agreements. After stating quite correctly that the Lutheran and Catholic dialogues of previous decades had come to a basic consensus on the doctrine of justification by grace through faith, the Joint Declaration goes on to assert, more dubiously, that the remaining disagreements could now be written off as “differences of language, theological elaboration, and emphasis,” and therefore as not warranting condemnation from either side. It even described these differences as “acceptable.”

In my judgment, some of the unresolved differences are more correctly classified as matters of doctrine. Is the justified person always and inevitably a sinner worthy of condemnation in the sight of God? Are human beings able, with the help of grace, to dispose themselves to receive sanctifying grace? Can they merit an increase of grace and heavenly glory with the help of the grace they already have? Do sinners, after receiving forgiveness, still have an obligation to make satisfaction for their misdeeds? On questions such as these, Lutherans and Catholics seem to give incompatible answers. Nothing in the Joint Declaration persuades me that such differences are mere matters of theological speculation or linguistic formulation.

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Posted in * Religion News & Commentary, Ecumenical Relations, Other Churches, Roman Catholic

Death and rebirth are needed if the visible unity of the church is to be achieved

Pentecostal theologian and scholar Cheryl Bridges-Johns proposed a radical reinvention of the ecumenical movement in a keynote address delivered on the third day of the Global Christian Forum which takes place 6-9 November in Limuru, near Nairobi, Kenya.

Bridges-Johns, a professor at the Theological Seminary of the Church of God in Cleveland (Tennessee), US, sparked a vivid discussion with her lecture, which elaborated on a statement from the 1961 New Delhi assembly of the World Council of Churches : « the achievement of unity will involve nothing less than a death and rebirth of many forms of church life as we have known them ».

For Bridges-Johns, what is dying is « the old ’mainstream’ ecumenical paradigm, » as « the structures built to create and sustain the visible unity of the church are no longer viable ». As a result, « a new form of ecumenism is needed that is able to embrace the challenges of world-wide Christianity ». The Global Christian Forum « represents such an effort ». It is one instance of « a number of new ecumenical tables » that have arisen over the last decade or so.

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Posted in * Religion News & Commentary, Ecumenical Relations

Growing Together in Unity and Mission: Building on 40 years of Anglican – Roman Catholic Dialogue

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Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, * Religion News & Commentary, Ecumenical Relations, Other Churches, Roman Catholic

Christopher Wells: Christian Unity

Obviously Rome’s ecumenical lexicon remains a stumbling block to many Christians””presumptuously authoritative hence annoyingly authoritarian to most mainline protestants; misguided hence largely irrelevant, albeit praiseworthily “clear,” to many Orthodox and evangelical protestants; and by turns agonizingly attractive and repulsive on varying points to many catholic-minded Anglicans and Lutherans, among others. And in every case it is a struggle to listen to Rome’s soundings with at least a measure of equanimity, if not gratitude per se. For she teaches without being asked, as it were, supposing that she has a brief that extends to the whole of the Christian world, and beyond.

I would argue, however, that the Roman Catholic Church rightly adopts this posture precisely on account of its commitment to visible catholicity; whence the message is a gift, albeit at times a painful one”” not only to receive, but, we should presume, to offer. For the avowed end of Catholic teaching is communion-in-love, a goal and a vocation that is irreproachable on gospel grounds. Who, then, would fault our Roman friends for attempting to lead all of us together?

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Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, * Religion News & Commentary, Ecumenical Relations, Episcopal Church (TEC), Other Churches, Roman Catholic

Benjamin Balint: One site in Jerusalem unites, and divides, Christians

Last month, Pope Benedict XVI addressed what he called “the delicate situation” in the Middle East. He told a Vatican meeting of the Aid Agencies for the Oriental Churches that “peace, much awaited and implored, is unfortunately greatly offended.” Although the pope’s words were meant to refer to strife in Iraq and Israel, they also may be taken to describe the delicate, oft-broken peace in Christianity’s own holiest site in the region.

Ever since it was built by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine in 335 on the hill of Golgotha, where his mother, Helena, claimed to have found the remains of the True Cross, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem’s Old City has enjoyed little peace. The historian Eusebius records that the original structure, “an extraordinary work,” was crowned by a roof “overlaid throughout with radiant gold.” But Constantine’s marvel was razed by the Persians in 614, reconstructed, and then destroyed again by Caliph Hakim of Egypt in 1009. Rebuilt by Crusaders in the 11th and 12th centuries, the building evolved into the motley collection of shrines, chapels and grottos that greet–and sometimes disappoint–the visitor today. The critic Edmund Wilson said it “probably contains more bad taste, certainly more kinds of bad taste, than any other church in the world.”

The architectural mishmash reflects the overlapping theological resonances of the spots contained under one roof. As Amos Elon notes in his book “Jerusalem: City of Mirrors,” the church marks the site of “Christ’s alleged prison, Adam’s tomb, the Pillar of Flagellation [to which Jesus was bound], ‘Mount’ Calvary [the Latin name for the hill where Jesus was crucified], the Stone of Unction [where his body was washed in preparation for burial], Christ’s sepulcher and the Center of the Earth, as well as the site of the resurrected Christ’s meeting with Mary Magdalene.” No wonder Pope John Paul II called it “the mother of all churches.”

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Posted in * International News & Commentary, * Religion News & Commentary, Ecumenical Relations, Middle East

Christian Leaders Mark 50 Years of Ecumenical Movement

Marking 50 years since a prominent ecumenical gathering in Oberlin, Ohio, representatives from a host of Christian denominations this week wrapped up a five-day conference promoting a new wave of interdenominational unity.

Speaking to 300 attendees from 80 different Christian denominations and organizations, the Rev. James Forbes compared the effort, which was organized by the National Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Commission, to a revival.

“If there ever was a time for a new Great Awakening to happen in our nation, the time is now,” Forbes said, telling ecumenists that they were “the salt of the earth.”

According to the National Council of Churches, the modern ecumenical movement can be traced to a 1957 conference in Oberlin, the first to include Catholic representatives.

This year’s conference gained a special urgency after the Vatican’s recent assertion that Protestant denominations are not churches “in the proper sense.”

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Posted in * Religion News & Commentary, Ecumenical Relations

Clerics downplay papal controversy

Although the Vatican said Protestant denominations “cannot be called ”˜churches’ in the proper sense,” it recognized the Orthodox communities as true churches because they have apostolic succession and “many elements of sanctification and of truth.”

But it also said the Orthodox Church is harmed by the “defect” or “wound” of not recognizing the primacy of the Pope. The Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches separated nearly 1,000 years ago in the Great Schism of 1054.

The Rev. Paul Albert, pastor of St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Church in Sylvania, said that from the Orthodox perspective, “We are a councilor body and no one patriarch speaks with infallibility. The authority is Christ, and he is in the midst of his church.”

He said the Orthodox Church has a different interpretation than do Catholics of Jesus’ statement in Matthew 16:18, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”

“Peter was not in any way above the other apostles and that misinterpretation by Rome has been the source of a lot of problems,” Father Paul said.

Some church leaders see the latest controversy as a chance to promote their own beliefs.

Just as Catholics don’t consider the Southern Baptist Convention to be a church, “evangelicals should be equally candid in asserting that any church defined by the claims of the papacy is no true church,” said the Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., in an online blog. He is president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.

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Posted in * Religion News & Commentary, Ecumenical Relations, Other Churches, Pope Benedict XVI, Roman Catholic

Anglican-Methodist Covenant faces challenges

British Methodists say the Anglican-Methodist Covenant is facing challenges that some here might call a “bumpy patch.”

Signed in 2003, the covenant agreement sets out plans for greater cooperation between the two traditions. Commenting on a report about its implementation during the 2007 annual conference, British Methodist officials say the process has yielded “some encouragements and some disappointments.”
The role of women in church leadership and the role of bishops themselves are among issues that still have no formal agreement between Anglicans and Methodists. The British Methodist Church has no bishops.

United Methodist Bishop William Oden, ecumenical officer for the denomination’s Council of Bishops and a representative to the British Methodist Conference, expressed concern about the covenant’s progress.

“It seems (the covenant) is stalled at the moment when U.S. United Methodist and Episcopal relations are going forward,” Oden told United Methodist News Service, referring to progress in dialogue between those denominations. “The Church of England is busy with other issues, and British Methodists seem to have backed off.”

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Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, * Religion News & Commentary, Anglican Provinces, Church of England (CoE), Ecumenical Relations, Methodist, Other Churches

ELCA Presiding Bishop Responds to Vatican Statement on Nature of the Church

In his written response issued July 11, [ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark] Hanson said that while the Vatican’s statement doesn’t change any existing statement “it does, however, restate known positions in provocative ways” that are under discussion in the current U.S. dialogue.
“It is no surprise that the Roman Catholic Church asserts that in it subsists the Church of Christ; surely every Christian church body makes the same assertion, for it is only because Christ’s Church survives in and lives through the community we call ‘Church’ that we preserve and promote the apostolic faith,” Hanson wrote. “However troubling such exclusive claims may be, we recall the Second Vatican Council’s ‘Decree on Ecumenism’ which affirmed that the separated churches and ecclesial communities are used by the Spirit of Christ ‘as means of salvation.'”
Hanson pointed out that the ELCA upholds the “Augsburg Confession,” a 16th century foundational document which states that the Church is the “assembly of saints in which the Gospel is taught and the sacraments are administered rightly.” He wrote that the Church is “wounded by the division that exists among Christians.” However, Hanson stated that the ELCA is not deficient in its self-understanding as ‘Church.’
The “anguished response of Christians” throughout the world to the Vatican’s statement shows that what may have been meant to clarify has caused pain, Hanson wrote.

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Posted in * Religion News & Commentary, Ecumenical Relations, Lutheran, Other Churches, Roman Catholic

London Times: If it isn’t Roman Catholic then it’s not a proper Church, Pope tells Christians

The document said that the Second Vatican Council’s opening to other faiths ”“ including “ecclesial communities originating with the Reformation” ”“ had recognised there were “many elements of sanctification and truth” in other Christian denominations, but had also emphasised that only Catholicism was fully Christ’s Church.

The document said that other Christian faiths “lack elements considered essential to the Catholic Church”.

The disappointment of the Anglicans was evident in the response of Canon Gregory Cameron, Dr Williams’s former chaplain in Wales and a leading canonical lawyer and scholar who is now ecumenical officer of the Anglican Communion.

Canon Cameron said: “In the commentary of this document we are told that ”˜Catholic ecumenism’ appears ”˜somewhat paradoxical’. It is paradoxical for leaders of the Roman Catholic Church to indicate to its ecumenical partners that it no longer expects all other Christians merely to return to the true (Roman Catholic) Church, but then for Rome to say that it alone has ”˜full identity’ with the Church of Christ, and that all others of us are lacking.”

He said Anglican bishops had indicated in 1997 that such a position constituted “a major ecumenical obstacle”.

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Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, * Religion News & Commentary, Ecumenical Relations, Other Churches, Pope Benedict XVI, Roman Catholic

A Clarification on the Doctrine of the Church

Fifth Question: Why do the texts of the Council and those of the Magisterium since the Council not use the title of “Church” with regard to those Christian Communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century?

Response: According to Catholic doctrine, these Communities do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These ecclesial Communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery[19] cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called “Churches” in the proper sense.[20]

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Posted in * Religion News & Commentary, Ecclesiology, Ecumenical Relations, Other Churches, Pope Benedict XVI, Roman Catholic, Theology

Kentucky Religious heads want continued ecumenism

From the Louisville Courier Journal:

Louisville religious and political leaders welcomed the Most Rev. Joseph Kurtz as archbishop and said they hoped he will continue in the same manner of Thomas Kelly, who led the archdiocese for the past 25 years.

Bishop Edwin F. Gulick Jr., of the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky, welcomed Kurtz to Louisville and called it “exciting” that Kurtz, who headed the Diocese of Knoxville, Tenn., has worked closely with Kelly in the past.

“This bodes well for the archdiocese, and I look forward to getting to know him as a friend and colleague,” Gulick said.

“I trust that Archbishop Kelly’s ministry in ecumenism, which is one of the hallmarks of his life and ministry, will continue to flourish under the new archbishop’s leadership,” Gulick said

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Posted in * Religion News & Commentary, Ecumenical Relations

Communique from the Anglican – Lutheran International Commission

(ACNS)

The Third Anglican ”“ Lutheran International Commission (ALIC) held its second meeting at White Point, Nova Scotia, Canada between 14 and 20 May, 2007, under the chairmanship of the Rt Revd Fred Hiltz, Anglican Bishop of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and the Revd Dr Thomas Nyiwé, President of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Cameroon.

The Commission has been established by the Anglican Consultative Council and the Lutheran World Federation to continue the dialogue between Anglicans and Lutherans on the worldwide level which has been in progress since 1970. ALIC intends to build upon the work reflected in The Niagara Report (1987), focusing on the mission of the church and the role of the ordained ministry, The Diaconate as an Ecumenical Opportunity (1995), and most recently Growth in Communion (2002), the report of the Anglican ”“ Lutheran International Working Group (ALIWG), which reviewed the extensive regional agreements which have established close relations between Anglican and Lutheran churches in several parts of the world.

The Commission first met in 2006 in Moshi, Tanzania where it set up working groups. At the White Point meeting the working groups continued their work and presented papers on a variety of topics, including the following: the status of Lutheran-Anglican relations in various regions of the world, the state of the question regarding the historic episcopate, emerging opportunities for joint mission and diaconal ministry, the state of interchangeability of ministries throughout the world, cooperation in theological education, a critical analysis of ecclesiology and the language of unity. The Commission also explored ways of developing these themes in its future work.

The Commission welcomed the Lutheran World Federation’s recent Lund statement on “Episcopal Ministry within the Apostolicity of the Church”. It views this statement as a useful reference point for its own ongoing discussions on the ministry of episkopé, and commends it for study in the context of Anglican ”“ Lutheran dialogue.

The Commission also had extensive discussions on the proposed draft for “An Anglican Covenant” and offered a response from the perspective of the document’s potential impact on ecumenical relations between the two communions. This response has been forwarded to the Covenant Design Group. The Commission encourages the Lutheran World Federation to respond to the Covenant draft.

As a result of its deliberations on the ministry of diakonia, the Commission plans to include in its future meetings a block of time devoted to strategies that will help our churches work more closely together in common witness to address issues such as HIV-AIDS and poverty.

The Commission took action to enable the All Africa Anglican ”“ Lutheran Commission (AAALC) to move ahead with its mandate, and anticipates a report from the AAALC at its next meeting.
The meeting was hosted by the Anglican Communion in cooperation with Bishop Fred Hiltz. The Commission was welcomed by Bishop Raymond Schultz, National Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, and received a greeting from the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, Archbishop Andrew Hutchison. Commission members visited The Little Dutch Church, the oldest standing building of Lutheran origin in Canada and now associated with the Anglican parish of St. George in Halifax, as well as the Cathedral Church of All Saints of Halifax, and historic St. John’s Church in Lunenburg, the centerpiece of the World Historic District of Old Town Lunenburg.

The Commission is planning to meet next year (2008) in Norway. We give thanks to God for the vocation of Anglicans and Lutherans to bear witness to the love of God revealed in Christ in their common service to the world, and we pray that God will bless and guide the life of both Communions in this work.

The members of the Commission are:

Anglicans:

The Rt Revd Fred Hiltz, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (Co-Chair)
The Revd Dr Charlotte Methuen, Hanau, Germany and Oxford, England
The Rt Revd Musonda T S Mwamba, Gaborone, Botswana
The Revd Professor Renta Nishihara, Tokyo, Japan
The Very Revd William H Petersen, Columbus, Ohio, USA
The Revd Dr Cathy Thomson, Brisbane, Australia

Consultants:

The Revd Canon Dr Alyson Barnett-Cowan, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The Revd Dr Günther Esser, the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht (unable to attend)

Co-Secretary:

The Revd Canon Dr Gregory Cameron, Anglican Communion Office, London, England

Lutherans:

Revd Dr Thomas Nyiwe, Ngaoundere-Adamaoua, Cameroon (Co-Chair)
Professor Dr Kirsten Busch Nielsen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Revd Angel Furlan, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Revd Dr Cameron R Harder, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Landesbischof Jürgen Johannesdotter, Germany (unable to attend)
Revd Helene Tärneberg Steed, Cork, Republic of Ireland

Consultants:

Professor Dr Kenneth G Appold, Strasbourg, France (Acting Co-Secretary)
Rt Revd Dr Ndanganeni P Phaswana, Soweto, South Africa

Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, * Religion News & Commentary, - Anglican: Primary Source, -- Reports & Communiques, Ecumenical Relations, Lutheran, Other Churches