Q.: You said recently that most of our disagreements are about power and prestige rather than dogma or doctrine. What exactly do you mean?
Archbishop Welby: ”¦We exist in different church communities, different ecclesial communities around the world and the longer that goes on, the more our different communities embed their own institutions and put down roots. Some of them have been putting down roots for centuries and that makes it harder and harder for us to say, well, actually, perhaps we need to reimagine what it means to look like the church and to surrender some of the things that give us our sense of identity in the cause of Christ. There are very fundamental and extremely important doctrinal and dogmatic differences that we have between us and they have to be worked on, as they are with Rome and the Anglicans with ARCIC, and we take those extremely seriously. It’s absolutely essential that those are worked on. But we need to make sure we’re working on them in the context of churches and ecclesial communities that say no sacrifice is too great to be obedient to the call of Christ that we may be one.
Q.: ”¦ Neither you nor Pope Francis seem remotely interested in power and prestige. Does this mean therefore that we can expect some kind of surprising healing or reconciliation in the near future?
Archbishop Welby: God has given you, and given us all, a great Pope. And he’s a great Pope of surprises”¦ and I think people are inspired and uplifted by what they see in Pope Francis, as I am. I think he’s a wonderful person. Surprises? Yes, I think there’ll be one or two surprises. We’re hoping to produce a few surprises.
Read or listen to it all (just slightly under 9 1/3 minutes).
So, the ABoC will soon be in a confessional, seek forgiveness and absolution from the Pope, say no on women and gay bishops, and reunite the CoE with Rome, in order to promote church unity.
Right.
Would that might happen, but here was a man who could have reconciled with the Global South of his own Communion last week, and passed on the opportunity in favor of maintaining distinctives much less pronounced than those between CoE and Rome.
[blockquote] The trip to Kenya was wonderful. I went principally to express my solidarity with people and churches in Kenya, following the terrorist attack in Nairobi. It happened to be the weekend leading into the GAFCON meeting, and I met their leaders and that was a great privilege. [/blockquote]
Wel, he only happened to bump into them in the airport, so there really wasn’t much time to reconcile with them. 🙂 If somebody took all those words to distance themselves from even having talked with me, I would not be expecting much from them soon. At least when he meets with the Pope, he doesn’t say he happened to be in a Holiday Inn in Rome and bumped into the Pope at the free breakfast buffet.
[blockquote]no sacrifice is too great to be obedient to the call of Christ that we may be one[/blockquote]
Is that an intellectually consistent position for a Protestant church?