The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) is opening a new phase of dialogue with a meeting scheduled for May 17-27.
A communiqué from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity noted that this new phase of work was mandated by Benedict XVI and the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, at their meeting in November 2009.
The first meeting of the new phase of the commission will take place at the Monastery of Bose in northern Italy.
5 resident in the United Kingdom (1 a onetime TEC theologian)
1 New Zealand
1 South Africa
1 Canada
1 Singapore
1 Australia (consultant)
As an aside, The Rev’d Canon Reverend Mark McIntosh, now a Professor and priest in England, is an American theologian and onetime Episcopal priest. He was one of the drafters of the [url=http://www.episcopalchurch.org/documents/ToSetOurHopeOnChrist.pdf]Episcopal Church’s critical response[/url] to the Windsor Report.
I imagine he has given up his canonical residency in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago. Indeed imagining that TEC acts consistently he could have been seen to have “renounced his orders” when he moved to the COE. Nevertheless it casts a slightly different light on the Archbishop’s view from as recent as May 2010 that Episcopalians are not appropriate members of Communion wide ecumenical conversations since they cannot represent the views of the Communion as a whole.
So, although US theologians were inappropriate in May 2010 to serve on the Communion’s ecumenical committees, nevertheless in January 2011 a US theologian has been invited to serve on ARCIC III.
Make of it what you will.
A waste of time and resources, since it is patently clear that the Anglican Disarray is only in a position to impose on the RCC its own heterodoxy and (literally) heteropraxy in the episcopacy.
homopraxy? lesbopraxy?
I had a feeling this would happen. If Williams is going to play fast-and-loose in getting, basically, a revisionist TEC American to these dialogues, then I wonder the RC Church doesn’t have a problem with such cloak-and-dagger and refuse the talks.
Again, on the Anglican side it seems a process with NO integrity.
The Rev’d Canon Mark McIntosh has been in the COE for a little over a year. He is former chaplain to the TEC House of Bishops and Canon Theologian to Bishop Frank Griswold. The ABC has now invited him to serve on ARCIC III.
Archbishop of Canterbury’s Letter Pentecost 2010
What intrigues me is the absence of Anglican evangelicals. Have they decided they didn’t want to dialogue with the Papists or were they deliberately and systematically not invited to participate?
Membership is by invitation only. The ABC decides who he wants, I imagine after consulting with his staff and the ACO a bit. It’s geographically, theologically and racially unrepresentative of the Communion. But hey – what’s new?