After a painful history

When the leader of the Anglican Communion and head of the Church of England, Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury meets Benedict XVI in Rome on 21 November, the minds of Anglicans and Catholics engaged for years in the arduous ecumenical endeavour will inevitably recur to an identical meeting, forty years ago, between Paul VI and the Anglican leader Michael Ramsey. Then, just after the Second Vatican Council, there were high hopes and great enthusiasm for a possible rapprochement between the two Churches. Today, the priority is to give renewed impetus to a process that is in difficulty. The ordination of homosexual pastors and women bishops, to which many of the more liberal Anglican provinces have given their consent, and the lack of any centre of unity with which Catholics can dialogue: these are the most serious obstacles to the ecumenical process, which has nonetheless made gigantic progress over the last forty years. In the run up to the meeting in Leeds (13-16 November) where the Anglican bishops of England and Wales will meet their Catholic counterparts, we have explored how the Church founded by Henry VIII views this difficult and painful process with two leading Anglican exponents: Michael Scott Joynt, Anglican bishop of Winchester and co-chairman of the English Roman Catholic Committee, which promotes collaboration between the Bishops’ Conferences of the two Churches, and Gregory Cameron, assistant secretary general of the Anglican Communion that represents 77 million Anglicans worldwide. GAY ORDINATIONS. According to MICHAEL SCOTT JOYNT , unions between homosexuals and the ordination of gay pastors represent even more serious obstacles to ecumenical dialogue that the ordination of women bishops. “They are difficult problems not only for ecumenical dialogue”, explains the bishop, who also sits in the House of Lords as a spiritual Lord, “but also within the Anglican Communion itself, where they are causing divisions and hostilities. I think some decisive turning-point will be reached in the next six months, or year, once the various Anglican provinces have replied to the Windsor Report, a report drafted in 2004 that invites them to find a new way of being together”. “The problem of authority remains in any case”, he continues, “even though the document of 1999 ‘The Gift of Authority’ represents important progress” in this direction. Future progress, according to Scott Joynt, will depend on developments in the Anglican Communion, on how far it will succeed in achieving a centre of unity, in spite of the divisions of the present time. THEOLOGICAL OBSTACLES. According to GREGORY CAMERON , “the Church of England is experiencing a time of deep anxiety due to its internal divisions that are also having an impact on ecumenical dialogue”. “It’s difficult to see a future way forward”, explains the spokesman of the Anglican Communion, “but it’s important to maximise the practical opportunities that exist and set aside the theological obstacles that especially regard sexual ethics”. “The problem of authority with the recognition of the jurisdiction of the Pope seems to me the major difficulty and I don’t see many ways out, but perhaps with the Grace of God they do exist. We must have faith in the plan of the Holy Spirit which already in the past has led us through difficulties”. TWO COMMISSIONS AT WORK. The most important steps in dialogue between the two Churches include the work of ARCIC (Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission) on the theological level and that of IARCCUM (International Anglican Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission) since 2000, which has translated the new accords to a more practical level. The first phase of ARCIC, from 1970 to 1981, led to the declarations on the Eucharist, on the ordained ministry and those on authority in the Church; the second phase, from 1983 to the present day, produced the declarations on salvation, on justification by faith, on the nature of the Church and on the role of the Virgin Mary. Today – an inconceivable result if we think of the painful history of separation from the Reformation onwards – Catholics and Anglicans agree on the significance of the Eucharist, on the nature of the ordained ministry and on the identity of the Church as communion. The most important theological obstacles have been removed, as explained by the Catholic Primate of England and Wales, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor a few weeks ago. Also as regards the question of authority, a crucial problem, the most important of this dialogue, an important step was taken with the document ‘The Gift of Authority’, of 1999, produced by ARCIC, in which Anglicans expressed their willingness to consider forms of papal authority. As we approach the end of 2006 the two Churches are waiting for the latest document from IARCUUM with the title ‘Growing Together in Unity’. It is dedicated to how the ecumenical gains that have been achieved since the war can be translated into the practical life of the two Churches. It should be published in the early months of next year.