ECUMENISM
Anglican Communion: difficult unity Solving the problems that recently caused serious controversies within the Anglican Communion, opposing those who refer to the long religious tradition and those who decided to introduce innovations that negatively affected the Communion. This is the purpose of the “Anglican Communion Covenant”, presented by the archbishop of Canterbury and primate of the Anglican Communion Dr. Rowan Williams. In an online video message the archbishop underlined that it took many years to draw up the document and that it was sent only now to all provinces for formal consideration for adoption. Dr. Williams said that in order to endorse the “Anglican Communion Covenant” province representatives must not undertake initiatives that could divide the faithful. These include proselytizing initiatives of religious in provinces or Countries without previous agreement, the ordination of openly homosexual priests, the preparation of a liturgy and imparting blessing on marriages between same-sex couples. Furthermore, the “Anglican Communion Covenant” envisages the creation of the Standing Committee, tasked with solving disputes and suspending membership of provinces whose action is incompatible with the Covenant. However, archbishop Williams exhorted Anglican bishops to inform the faithful that the “Anglican Communion Covenant” doesn’t set out “a procedure for punishments and sanctions”. In the video message, Williams acknowledges, “In recent years in the Anglican family, we’ve discovered that our relations with each other as local churches have often been strained, that we haven’t learned to trust one another as perhaps we should”. Citing the fourth and final section of the covenant text, Archbishop Williams called it “the most controversial, because that’s where we spell out what happens if relationships fail or break down”. Williams said the document does try and sort out how we will discern the nature of our disagreements. One of the first to comment on Dr. Williams’ message was John Howe, evangelical bishop in central Florida. The religious underlined that the last part of the document envisages the possibility for the member of each province to freely choose whether to adhere or not according to the “two-track” system that distinguishes those Anglican provinces that decide to opt into the Covenant from those provinces that decide to reject the final part of the document. Bishop Howe said this option will enable to preserve a formal unity also with Episcopalians that decided in favour of the ordination of homosexual pastors and the celebration same-sex couples marriage. Taizé: the next meeting in RotterdamDuring the prayers recited on the night of December 31st in Poznan (Poland) before 30thousand young people arrived from all over Europe to attend the meeting animated by the Taizé community, fr. Alois announced that the next European youth meeting will take place in Rotterdam (The Netherlands), upon the joint invitation of the Catholic Episcopal Conference of The Netherlands, of the PNK (Protestant Kerk Nederlands, the main Protestand church in The Netherlands), from December 28 2010 to January 1st 2011. He also announced the other destinations of the pilgrimage of faith on earth due to be held in 2010: in Oporto, Portugal, February 13-16; in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, on the joint invitation of the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches, September 3-5; in Oslo and Trondheim, Norway, September 17-19; in Santiago, Chile, for the next international meeting for the youth of Latin America, December 8-12 2010. Kek: the letter of Moscow’s PatriarchateA letter of congratulations from Moscow’s Patriarchate to French metropolitan bishop Emmanuel for his election as new President of the Conference of European Churches. In the message, archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsky, head of the Department of Moscow’s Patriarchate for external relations, also expressed the wish that with the new orthodox leadership, KEK may devote greater attention to “orthodox religious witness” and make the Conference “efficient instrument and platform for inter-Christian cooperation and dialogue”. In the letter the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church conveyed the concern of his Church for the “tendencies of liberalization of church practice and revision of moral teaching in some European Protestant communities”. “We can’t ignore the fact that liberal innovations are being treated as a norm while Orthodox believers are often blamed for their backwardness and intolerance” the archbishop pointed out.
