Discuss!The archbishop of Canterbury today pleaded with Roman Catholics to set aside their differences with Anglicans over the issue of female bishops, insisting there was more uniting the denominations than dividing them.
Rowan Williams was giving a lecture in Rome before Saturday's meeting with the pope, their first encounter since the Vatican's surprise announcement of a special institution for traditionalist Anglicans wanting to convert to Catholicism.
In his address at the Gregorian University, Williams said the Anglican communion was proof that churches could stay together in spite of their differences.
The communion has teetered on the edge of schism for nearly a decade over the issue of gay clergy but has retained a sliver of fellowship. Williams urged Roman Catholics to continue their 35-year dialogue with Anglicans in spite of theological and ideological divisions.
He said: "The various agreed statements of the churches stress that the church is a community, in which human beings are made sons and daughters of God.
"When so much agreement has been established in first-order matters about the identity and mission of the church, is it justifiable to treat other issues as equally vital for its health and integrity?"
Those issues included papal primacy, female clergy and the relations between the local and universal church in making decisions. "Is there a level of mutual recognition which allows a shared theological understanding of primacy alongside a diversity of canonical and juridical arrangements?" he wondered
Williams challenged Roman Catholic thinking on female bishops, saying there was no proof that their ordination damaged the church.
For his part the "ecumenical glass" was "genuinely half-full". Catholics and Anglicans had achieved "striking" agreement on the broader questions. All that stood between them now were the "second order" issues of church organisation.
In an explicit but fleeting reference to the pope's move last month, Williams said it was an "imaginative pastoral response, but did not break any new ecclesiological ground." His speech was aimed at reviving dialogue between Anglicans and Catholics. But it also carried an implicit threat that there would be little point in continuing if the Catholic side continued to insist that the obstacles were insuperable.
Williams said: "The question is whether this unfinished business is quite as fundamental as our Roman Catholic friends believe."
He seemed tense, biting the sides of his fingers while he listened to the speaker who followed. His anxiety is understandable.
Bishop Brian Farrell, the secretary of the Vatican department that deals with ecumenical dialogue, told him: "You have certainly presented us with a challenge."
• This article was amended on Friday 20 November 2009. We said Rowan Williams was due to meet the pope on Sunday. The meeting is on Saturday. This has been corrected.
15 comments:
I really don't know what to say about this...
Maybe I'm angry, but I just can't describe exactly what I think about this speech.
This is one of the more surprising statements from Dr Williams:
In terms of the relation of local to universal, what we are saying here is that a degree of recognizability of 'the same Catholic thing' has survived: Anglican provinces ordaining women to some or all of the three orders have not become so obviously diverse in their understanding of filial holiness and sacramental transformation that they cannot act together, serve one another and allow some real collaboration.
"act together, serve one another and allow some real collaboration." At its best, you could say that of the "interfaith movement". I think Christ prayed for a little more than that in his Church. Consequently, more than that is found in the Catholic Church and those who heard him will have known it isn't their's to give away.
I think it might be salutary to ponder the response of a major contemporary Roman Catholic theologian (whom everyone here will readily identify):
'Rowan Williams' speech is a glorious statement - majestically mature theology that shows up the pettiness of curial obsessions, without using a single ungracious word. At long last Anglicanism has given its reply to years of petty carping from the Vatican. The reply is just common sense at one level: "Cannot we agree to disagree fraternally about minor matters?" On another level it reflects the full tide of ecumenical dialogue over the last century and the mind of one steeped in New Testament ideals and praxis of koinonia.
Is anyone in the Vatican, even Cardinal Kasper, capable of responding to this with equal breadth and wholeness of vision?'
This, also, is a challenge for the blogger of this blog and all his readers.
What a traumatic time for our separated brethren, I truly feel for them at this time, it makes me quite sad. We must pray.
What evil nonsense uttered by Rowan.
There's nothing majestically mature about bending one's knee before the zeitgeist of a world drenched in the mind-rot of liberalism.
John, in all charity, you really need either your head read, or to say a lot of honest, earnest prayers. See, religion is NOT about egocentric humans imposing their will on God by deconstructing divine revelation because we don't like it.
John,
Are you an idiot or deliberately disingenuous?
John no doubt picked up the remarks of that malign "Spirit of Vatican II" (aka Joseph O'Leary, SJ) from "Thinking Anglicans," where that shopworn old spirit, much in need of an exorcism, has taken to hanging out.
Indeed it does sound like something the heretical old fool would say. I wish he'd just put us out of his misery and formally convert to Anglicanism.
Do you know what I have the hardest time with? The lofty self-importance of the Anglican Bishop. Yes, the Anglican Communion is a worldwide body, but the sheer numbers in England and the US reveal the liberal wing of this Communion is shrinking, and is a cancer within itself that continues to be enabled. I recall hearing once: there are more Catholics in the Diocese of Los Angeles than in the entire Episcopal Church. Kinda puts into perspective for me the significance of the statements made by this Archbishop. I find these separated brethren, my former church home, being led down a path that will never bring them to true unity with Rome.
The Catholic Church has had women in ministry since the beginning, but they have never been in the priesthood because they cannot be. This distinction is critical: either there are two sacramental participations in the unique priesthood of the Lord Jesus or there are not, and Protestants teach that there are not. For them, only Baptism confers a participation in the priesthood of Christ, and this sense every Christian is a priest. This is what the Catholic Church has ever called the royal priesthood of all the baptized. But from among the baptized, the Catholic Church teaches, some are called by the Lord Jesus for a second sacramental participation in His priesthood, and this is conferred by ordination to the presbyterate and episcopate. Only men are capable of receiving this second participation in the priesthood of Christ because in this sacrament the human instrument stands in the place of Christ as both head and bridegroom of the Church, and in the orders of both grace and nature, women cannot be bridegrooms.
It is for this reason that any Christian community, like the Anglican Communion, which professes to believe in two different sacramental participations in the priesthood of Christ and which subsequently concludes that women can and should be both presbyters and bishops in the Church has by that fact revealed itself to be not a Christian communion but a gnostic sect. Dr. Williams is simply and profoundly wrong: This is not a second order issue in any sense; rather, it goes to the very heart of the sacramental economy which is intrinsic to the transmission of the Gospel.
This address in Rome by the Archbishop of Canterbury will, I suspect, be seen in future ages as evidence of the definitive departure of the Church of England from faith not just in Catholic Christianity but in revealed religion. We should all be grateful to Dr. Williams for his candor.
Fr. Jay
Bravo! Your comment both invigorates and saddens because it is spot on.
KB
'John, in all charity, you really need either your head read, or to say a lot of honest, earnest prayers.'
'Are you an idiot or deliberately disingenuous?'
These sentiments have anything of any sort of goodness, let along Christianity, in them?
Associate Professor Tighe,
Are you seriously suggesting that O'Leary's academic output is inferior to yours?
The answer to the above comment is so blindingly obvious it doesn't even desrve to be dignified with a response.
No, just his sanity and fidelity to the Catholic Faith and Church.
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