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.
“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”
Words fail me. The current morass of the Anglican Communion and the whole of its problems are due to “cohabitation” with the spirit of the age. That the Pope would consider this a model for “unity” is an Olympus Mons height of arrogance! or that invincible ignorance on display in regard to Christian sexual teaching since Jesus and the whole issue of WO.
But it was worth a grin.
RE: ” . . . a model for Christendom as a whole . . . ”
Yes indeed — let’s offer to the world what we have done for TEC and the Anglican Communion as a whole. That will be a real seller!
This product cannot fail to inspire!!
“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.” — one does wonder what is going on behind the scenes. The only way for this to work would be the credible anglican covenant Kasper has called for. It is encouraging to hear that Jonathan Goodall will be central to the next season.
I’m not sure whether this article could be described as delusion or just plain idiocy. Or perhaps just a rather sad Comical Ali like attempt to portray things as business a usual even as the bombs land on Baghdad. America magazine is; like the Bitter Pill and NCReporter; becoming an irrelevant relic of a fading era best forgot.
How can this work? Anyone? How?
It can’t work. That’s the point. Our liberals cannot face reality and as such retreat into fantasy.