When Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams meets with Pope Benedict XVI here on Nov. 21, the two men will be making the latest gesture in a four-decade-long effort to achieve unity between their churches.
But some Catholics and Anglicans fear the future of that endeavor could be jeopardized by the Vatican’s plans, announced last month (Oct.), to make it easier for Anglicans to convert to Catholicism. Former Anglicans, many of whom are upset by their church’s growing acceptance of female clergy and homosexuality, will be allowed to join special Catholic dioceses while retaining many of their traditional prayers and hymns, and to a limited extent a married priesthood.
Williams, spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, will visit Rome for five days (Nov. 18-22) of meetings and events aimed at “keeping alive the ecumenical endeavor,” said his Vatican envoy, the Very Rev. David Richardson.
“We don’t see it as in any way a comment on the ecumenical conversations,” Richardson said of the Vatican’s move, which he called a “pastoral response” to the requests of disaffected Anglicans. “It’s a side issue for ecumenical dialogue.” Richardson noted that Williams’ visit to Rome was scheduled before the Vatican rolled out its welcome to Anglican dissidents.
oh to listen in to that one!
#1 RPP – leave some space on the wall for me.
Prayers for Archbishop Rowan and Pope Benedict as they meet this coming week.
Does the Pope’s offer give the FIF folks more leverage in the current Synod process?
Anglican/RC unity will be jeopardized? It’s a bit late for that. The real question now is not our willingness to unite with the RCs but our will to be united as Anglicans. Is there a “we” at all? If the Communion isn’t a church but some kind of parachurch organization as the TEC leadership and others suggest then uniting with it is and always has been a complete nonsense.
#3 phil swain says:
I know nothing about the C of E/Synod politics except what I read here, so I will defer to the commenters here who are far more familiar with it than I — but in abstract, I could see that playing out either way.
On the one hand, you might have people in Synod saying to themselves, “Uh-oh, now the Anglo-Catholics can be out the door on a moment’s notice if they don’t like it here; we’d better be sure to keep them happy so they don’t bolt.”
On the other hand, you might have people thinking, “Well, I was feeling bad for the A-Cs, and thinking that we should make some provisions for them; but look, now they’ve got a safe harbor in Rome any time they want to take it, so they’re all right. We can go ahead in the direction we were going with a clean conscience now.”
Re #5
Ross,
There is of course one other possibility. The liberals in Synod may just take their cue from those in TEO and say to #$%& with them. If they don’t like it they know where the exits are.
In ICXC
John
I heartily agree with driver8 (#4). “We” Anglicans aren’t ready to engage in ecumenical discussions with other Christian groups until we’ve clarified the nature of our own unity in Anglicansim (or faced the stark reality of our utter lack of authentic unity).
The best thing that we can do to foster unity with our fellow Christians of all sorts is to resolve our intractable and seemingly irresolvable theological differences among ourselves as Anglicans. Until then, such noble efforts as the ARCIC are merely a waste of time at best, and a complete farce at worst.
David Handy+
In response to some earlier comments on this thread, it might be helpful to remind ourselves of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advent Pastoral Letter of 2007:
[blockquote]The Communion is a voluntary association of provinces and dioceses; and so its unity depends not on a canon law that can be enforced, but on the ability of each part of the family to recognise that other local churches have received the same faith from the apostles and are faithfully holding to it, in loyalty to the One Lord incarnate, who speaks in Scripture and bestows his grace in the sacraments. To put it in slightly different terms, local churches acknowledge the same ‘constitutive elements’ in one another. This means in turn that each local church receives from others and recognises in others the same good news and the same structure of ministry, and seeks to engage in mutual service for the sake of our common mission.[/blockquote]
Sections 1 – 3 of the Anglican Communion Covenant have now been received by the ACC last May; they are there on the entire Communion’s table for all to see; they will be part of our Church’s identity into the future. In effect, they outline what are the criteria enabling us to [i]recognise[/i] those characteristic Anglican things among us. Even if section 4 has proven a temporary stumbling block for some – a small yet apparently influential minority, it should be clearly said! – we must be clear that Section 4 authorises us what to do with our mutual recognition; it details the behavioural consequences of this kind of acknowledgement and recognition and accountability. For we need to note well: there is quite simply no Covenant without such a consequential Section 4. The overwhelming vote – @ 47 to 17 with 1 abstention re Resolution A – not to hive off this Fourth Section from the other Three at ACC 14 in Jamaica was perhaps the single most clear result of the day’s plenary proceedings devoted to the Covenant on the 8th of May. So watch this space next month when the JSC meets.
The question of “recognition†leads to another crucial point, picked up by #s 4 & 7. For recognition impacts not only upon ourselves as a Communion of world-wide Anglican Churches. Without such a device as the Covenant, other parts of the universal Church simply would not know who speaks for whom, and who acts for whom, and by what authority. Our last ten years of Anglican life have been closely watched by our fellow Christians across the ecumenical spectrum. Key spokespersons from other churches have been invited quite deliberately in recent years to address key institutions of the Anglican Communion, like Lambeth or the Primates Meetings. Just so, we need to note that both Kasper and Dias will meet with Williams in Rome. All of which tells me that the Covenant Track 1 is not quite dead yet. Prayers indeed for this entire delegation!
#8 A wise comment. JSC however is a disfunctional and unrepresentative body. The reality is that if S.4 does not survive JSC undiluted [or is even beefed up] then RW will have completed the process he brought to fruition at Jamaica of nobbling his own Covenant, and it will be time for the Primates to take over his functions viz-a-viz the Communion, as the Global South recently alluded to.
What will the small white liberal provinces over-represented on JSC do I wonder? If they continue to wag the tail of the Communion they will just be by-passed as has begun in the last 4 years.
It is not possible to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.
Prayers for all.
By the way, that is not a threat, but a prediction.