In a speech at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Williams was gracious in referring to the Vatican’s new policy, which he called the “elephant in the room.” The policy was an “imaginative pastoral response” to requests by some Anglicans but broke no new doctrinal ground, Williams said.
He spent the bulk of his speech describing the progress that had been achieved so far in decades of Vatican-Anglican ecumenical talks and questioning whether the outstanding issues were really all that great.
The ones who are breaking “new doctrinal ground” are in the CofE and TEC – and not in a positive way. I suspect the Pope will consider the “outstanding issues” as they are rapidly developing to be of some magnitude.
I have to wonder why on earth the CoE would even [i]want[/i] to achieve unity with Rome? What does it matter? Seriously, from an Anglican perspective, what’s the point?
Bernini – Some (albeit) few may genuinely aspire to corporate reunion because of Christ’s desire “they all be one” though I think that’s impossible. But the function of Anglicanism as a bridge or via media between Rome’s hierarchy and doctrine and much of Protestantism’s individualism and evangelical zeal is an appealing pose. It gives/gave Anglicanism a point of differentiation or distinct role that no other organization has/had, even if it is largely faded IMHO (most anglo-cats have left, and the center of gravity among the dissenters/resistance is more thoroughly Reformed). My 2 cents.
I’m afraid the ABC is still living in his academic world and disregarding the facts of the situation. The ABC is right in the sense that if one were to judge the differences between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion by what the ARCIC documents say, then the differences are not that great and conceivably could be bridged.
But you can’t judge how close the Catholic Church and the AC by the kinds of ecumenical statements that ARCIC has come up with because such statements are meaningless to the AC. You can only judge the distance by what the Anglican churches are actually doing, and on that basis the distance is great and getting greater all the time.
As far as TEC is concerned, at least, ARCIC statements are meaningless. ARCIC statements are not binding on anyone in TEC and TEC feels free to ignore them. In fact, I doubt it ever would occur to anyone in TEC even to look at the ARCIC statements for an expression of what TEC or the AC supposedly teaches.
Some Anglicans seemed to think that the RCs had misunderstood or misinterpreted Anglicanism – such that we, in fact, agreed on many more things than our historic frosty relations might indicate. So ARCIC proceeded by suggesting that we may in fact be able to agree on much with the RCs on a communion theology of the church, on sacramental life, on marriage etc. The hope was for visible union – if we could agree on the central things that were thought to separate us, what reason could there be for remaining disunited when such disunity was experienced by many as a scandal to faithful witness to Christ.
So ARCIC proceeded and indeed found much common ground often by avoiding the language of our historic disputes and finding a new “register” (to use the ABCs term) in which unity might be expressed – in particular on ecclesiology and sacramental theology. However women’s presbyteral ordination was experienced by the RCs as an obstacle (not completely catastrophic at first since women were not ordained in the COE until 1992). In addition the Vatican was much frostier to the ARCIC I reports than had been expected – precisely because they avoided expressing clearly their agreement in specific enough language. The Anglican penchant for unity through equivocation met the Vatican’s desire for clarity about quite what had been agreed. Finally, and I think rather to the surprise of the RCs, the authority of ARCIC within Anglicanism has become unclear as recent events have raised the question of the ability of the Communion authoritatively to come to shared understandings at all.
“As far as TEC is concerned, at least, ARCIC statements are meaningless….In fact, I doubt it ever would occur to anyone in TEC even to look at the ARCIC statements for an expression of what TEC or the AC supposedly teaches.”
I don’t know about that. My sponsoring parish just did an adult ed series on the agreed statement on Marian doctrine. And a morning prayer parish at that! It was a great conversation and people came away feeling closer to Rome than they thought we were (and these, as I said, are at a morning prayer parish where corporate reunion with Rome is not exactly a coffee hour conversation).
FWIW the statements are agreed between the theologians and bishops who author them, but as yet ARCIC II texts have not been agreed by the Communion or by the Vatican. The statement of Mary in particular came in for some tough criticism from some Provinces.