It is not my intention today to speak of the difficulties that the ecumenical path has encountered and continues to encounter. Those difficulties are well known to everyone here. Rather, I wish to join you in giving thanks for the deep friendship that has grown between us and for the remarkable progress that has been made in so many areas of dialogue during the forty years that have elapsed since the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission began its work. Let us entrust the fruits of that work to the Lord of the harvest, confident that he will bless our friendship with further significant growth.
The context in which dialogue takes place between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church has evolved in dramatic ways since the private meeting between Pope John XXIII and Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher in 1960. On the one hand, the surrounding culture is growing ever more distant from its Christian roots, despite a deep and widespread hunger for spiritual nourishment. On the other hand, the increasingly multicultural dimension of society, particularly marked in this country, brings with it the opportunity to encounter other religions. For us Christians this opens up the possibility of exploring, together with members of other religious traditions, ways of bearing witness to the transcendent dimension of the human person and the universal call to holiness, leading to the practice of virtue in our personal and social lives. Ecumenical cooperation in this task remains essential, and will surely bear fruit in promoting peace and harmony in a world that so often seems at risk of fragmentation.
At the same time, we Christians must never hesitate to proclaim our faith in the uniqueness of the salvation won for us by Christ, and to explore together a deeper understanding of the means he has placed at our disposal for attaining that salvation. God “wants all to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4), and that truth is nothing other than Jesus Christ, eternal Son of the Father, who has reconciled all things in himself by the power of his Cross.
Excellent response to the AB of C’s pluriform drivel, especially this:
“In fidelity to the Lord’s will, as expressed in that passage from Saint Paul’s First Letter to Timothy, we recognize that the Church is called to be inclusive, yet never at the expense of Christian truth. Herein lies the dilemma facing all who are genuinely committed to the ecumenical journey”.
Says it all–thank you, Your Holiness.
Well, the only alternative to an inclusive “pluriform” relationship between Rome and Canterbury is an exclusively “moniform” relationship. Is anybody under any illusion that the only possible single “form” for this would be Latin Rite Roman Catholicism? If Anglicans are not going to be “pluriform” about the divine right of the Pope to exercise immediate ordinary jurisdiction throughout the Church, we have no excuse not to immediately submit ourselves to Rome. Those who would advise that course of action can hardly claim to be “committed to the ecumenical journey,” in any common sense of the term.
“Is anybody under any illusion that the only possible single “form†for this would be Latin Rite Roman Catholicism? If Anglicans are not going to be “pluriform†about the divine right of the Pope to exercise immediate ordinary jurisdiction throughout the Church, we have no excuse not to immediately submit ourselves to Rome”.
No, and ok!!!
🙂