Posted on 11/19/2006 3:59:56 PM PST by sionnsar
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- When the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury meets Pope Benedict XVI, divisions within the Anglican Communion are expected to grab more attention than the barriers to Anglican-Roman Catholic unity posed by the ordination of women bishops and attitudes toward homosexuality.
Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, leader of the Church of England and spiritual head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, will visit Rome Nov. 21-26.
He is scheduled to meet privately with Pope Benedict and with Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, as well as with other Vatican officials and with Catholic and Anglican groups in Rome.
The Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion continue to make public commitments to joint witness even as new issues appear to make their eventual unity more difficult.
The decision by several member churches of the Anglican Communion to ordain women priests and the decision of some to ordain women bishops, to ordain openly homosexual men and to bless gay unions have created a serious barrier to full union with the Roman Catholic Church.
The moves also have threatened to fracture the Anglican Communion as entire Anglican provinces and individual dioceses and parishes refuse to recognize the authority of bishops who approve the practices.
The tensions have led many people to wonder how Roman Catholics and Anglicans can continue their dialogue and to ask whether full visible unity is still the goal.
"We are in agreement with the Anglicans that Christ wills his church to be one, so we are not authorized to say the goal of our dialogue is no longer full unity," said Canadian Father Donald Bolen, an official at the Christian unity council.
"Can we see a clear path to full communion in the near future? No. But that does not lessen our commitment to work together to seek progress where we can," he said.
The fact that the Vatican sees the thorny questions as involving issues deeper than women bishops or gay unions was reflected in a speech Cardinal Kasper was invited to give to bishops of the Church of England in June as they prepared to discuss ordaining women bishops.
A month after Cardinal Kasper's visit, the Church of England synod adopted a statement saying the ordination of women bishops was "consonant" with the Anglican faith, leading to the formation of a committee to draft the necessary church legislation and recommend ways to provide for Anglicans who would not recognize the validity of a female bishop's ordination.
In his speech to the bishops, Cardinal Kasper reiterated Catholic Church teaching on the equality of men and women, but also the church's belief that it has no authority to ordain women to the priesthood and episcopacy.
In addition, he said, a decision by the Church of England, the mother church of the Anglican Communion, to ordain women bishops would indicate a new direction by the entire communion. The controversial decision not only would threaten the unity of Anglican bishops, but make full union with the Roman Catholic Church "disappear into the far and ultimately unreachable distance."
The question goes deeper than whether a woman can be a bishop, because "where mutual recognition and communion between bishops does not exist or no longer exists, where one can therefore no longer concelebrate the Eucharist, then no church communion, at least no full church communion and thus no eucharistic communion, can exist," Cardinal Kasper said.
Special arrangements such as providing nonterritorial bishops to Anglican faithful who do not recognize their female bishop's leadership "can only cover over the breach superficially; they can paper over the cracks, but they cannot heal the division; one can even go one step further and say that, from the Catholic perspective, they are the unspoken institutionalization, manifestation and virtual legitimating of an existing schism," the cardinal said.
Despite the difficulties, Pope Benedict and Archbishop Williams are expected to discuss concrete ways for the official Roman Catholic-Anglican theological dialogue to move forward.
In addition, the Vatican and the Anglican Communion are preparing to release in early 2007 a document summarizing the points of faith and doctrine their communities hold in common and indicating concrete ways for Anglicans and Roman Catholics to witness together to those beliefs.
The document was prepared by the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission.
Archbishop Williams' visit marks the 40th anniversary of a historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and Anglican Archbishop Michael Ramsey of Canterbury and of the establishment of the Anglican Center in Rome.
The center houses the archbishop's personal representative to the Vatican and offers a variety of activities promoting Catholic-Anglican dialogue and study.
One issue Pope Benedict and Archbishop Williams agree on strongly is the need for a common Christian witness in an increasingly secularized world, particularly in Europe.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. Interesting.
Are you speculating upon an "Anglicn Rite" similar to the "Eastern Rite"? I believe the Vatican nixed that idea.
This week!
No. A document is coming before the Pope that will create something akin to a personal prelature for the former Anglicans.
An opening for true Anglicans (not the whiskeypagans) to move forward with reconciliation with the Catholic Church would be a very positive thing. A formalization of Anglican Use Catholic rite (example, a number of Anglican Rite Catholic parishes in Texas and scattered elsewhere in the US) would be something that I, a former Anglican now Catholic, would welcome.
In any case, true Anglicans are closer to the Church than they are to the whiskeypagans, and are closer to the Church than the CINO-rad-lib groups.
How many members of the Episcopal Church are there in this country? (NYT reporter)
About 2.2 million. It used to be larger percentagewise, but Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children. (Schori)
Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children? (NYT Reporter)
No. It’s probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion. (Schori)
Of course, at that rate I guess there won't be any Piskeys left before long. Unlike those tacky, ill-educated Catholics and Mormons who are busy cluttering the earth...
Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children? (NYT Reporter)
No. It’s probably the opposite. (Schori)
You don't know how close you are to the truth here. When I was on vestry, we always began our meetings with a happy hour. Our old rector would bring out a bottle of Macallan's Scotch and pour each of us a glass. Then we'd start after we had sufficient time for "attitude adjustment". We hardly felt the pain.....
That was probably the only way anybody could get through it without having an outbreak of homicidal rage. Or a raging fit of the giggles.
Ha! So true, so true.
Yeah, sneaky us! The thing that always amazes me is how clueless folks like the bishoppette actually boast about the fact that they are underbreeding themselves out of existence.
They will underbreed themselves out of existence and we "breeders" will still be around. Same thing with the Orthodox/observant Jewish people. They also have large families while the libs underbreed as well.
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