Posted on 02/18/2007 5:09:43 PM PST by kalee
Radical proposals to reunite Anglicans with the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope are to be published this year, The Times has learnt.
The proposals have been agreed by senior bishops of both churches.
In a 42-page statement prepared by an international commission of both churches, Anglicans and Roman Catholics are urged to explore how they might reunite under the Pope.
The statement, leaked to The Times, is being considered by the Vatican, where Catholic bishops are preparing a formal response.
It comes as the archbishops who lead the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion meet in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in an attempt to avoid schism over gay ordination and other liberal doctrines that have taken hold in parts of the Western Church.
The 36 primates at the gathering will be aware that the Pope, while still a cardinal, sent a message of support to the orthodox wing of the Episcopal Church of the US as it struggled to cope with the fallout after the ordination of the gay bishop Gene Robinson.
Were this week’s discussions to lead to a split between liberals and conservatives, many of the former objections in Rome to a reunion with Anglican conservatives would disappear. Many of those Anglicans who object most strongly to gay ordination also oppose the ordination of women priests.
Rome has already shown itself willing to be flexible on the subject of celibacywhen it received dozens of married priests from the Church of England into the Catholic priesthood after they left over the issue of women’s ordination.
There are about 78 million Anglicans, compared with a billion Roman Catholics, worldwide. In England and Wales, the Catholic Church is set to overtake Anglicanism as the predominant Christian denomination for the first time since the Reformation, thanks to immigration from Catholic countries.
As the Anglicans’ squabbles over the fundamentals of Christian doctrine continue — with seven of the conservative primates twice refusing to share Communion with the other Anglican leaders at their meeting in Tanzania — the Church’s credibility is being increasingly undermined in a world that is looking for strong witness from its international religious leaders.
The Anglicans will attempt to re-solve their differences today by publishing a new Anglican Covenant, an attempt to provide a doctrinal statement under which they can unite.
But many fear that the divisions have gone too far to be bridged and that, if they cannot even share Communion with each other, there is little hope that they will agree on a statement of common doctrine.
The latest Anglican-Catholic report could hardly come at a more sensitive time. It has been drawn up by the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission, which is chaired by the Right Rev David Beetge, an Anglican bishop from South Africa, and the Most Rev John Bathersby, the Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane, Australia.
The commission was set up in 2000 by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey of Clifton, and Cardinal Edward Cassidy, the president of the Vatican’s Council for Christian Unity. Its aim was to find a way of moving towards unity through “common life and mission”.
The document leaked to The Times is the commission’s first statement, Growing Together in Unity and Mission. The report acknowledges the “imperfect communion” between the two churches but says that there is enough common ground to make its “call for action” about the Pope and other issues.
In one significant passage the report notes: “The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the ministry of the Bishop of Rome [the Pope] as universal primate is in accordance with Christ’s will for the Church and an essential element of maintaining it in unity and truth.” Anglicans rejected the Bishop of Rome as universal primate in the 16th century. Today, however, some Anglicans are beginning to see the potential value of a ministry of universal primacy, which would be exercised by the Bishop of Rome, as a sign and focus of unity within a reunited Church.
In another paragraph the report goes even further: “We urge Anglicans and Roman Catholics to explore together how the ministry of the Bishop of Rome might be offered and received in order to assist our Communions to grow towards full, ecclesial communion.”
Other recommendations include inviting lay and ordained members of both denominations to attend each other’s synodical and collegial gatherings and conferences.
Anglican bishops could be invited to accompany Catholic ones on their regular visits to Rome.
The report adds that special “protocols” should also be drawn up to handle the movement of clergy from one Church to the other. Other proposals include common teaching resources for children in Sunday schoolsand attendance at each other’s services, pilgrimages and processions.
Anglicans are also urged to begin praying for the Pope during the intercessionary prayers in church services, and Catholics are asked also to pray publicly for the Archbishop of Canterbury.
In today’s Anglican Church, it is unlikely that a majority of parishioners would wish to heal the centuries-old rift and return to Rome.
However, the stance of the present Archbishop of Canterbury over the present dispute dividing his Church gives an indication of how priorities could be changing in light of the gospel imperative towards church unity.
Dr Rowan Williams, who as Primate of the Church of England is its “focus for unity”, has in the past supported a liberal interpretation of Scripture on the gay issue. But he has made it clear that church unity must come before provincial autonomy. A logical extension of that, once this crisis is overcome either by agreement or schism, would be to seek reunion with the Church of England's own mother Church.
The divide
The English Church broke from Rome in 1534 as part of the Reformation
The trigger in England was Henry VIII’s wish to remarry. The Pope had said that his marriage to Anne Boleyn was illegal
Henry had been a devout Catholic. But when he turned on the Catholic Church he seized its land and cash and destroyed its religious heritage in Britain
Centuries of suppression continued until Catholic emancipation and the restoration of the hierarchy in the 19th century
The Catholic Church has accepted married priests from other denominations. What I wonder is whether this will happen with similarly conservative churches that have allied to the Episcopal church, like the Lutheran church.
I'm going to mention this to our priests Tuesday night. Our church is having a dinner that night and I'll see what they have to say about all this.
One of our priests was formerly an Episcopal Priest. The other one has always been an Anglican priest.
"....But it will require lots of patience from the Orthodox...)"
We can wait. It will take a while for you to learn to speak Greek (or Russian or Serbian or Arabic or...)! :)
LOL, not the kind of patience I meant.
But... are Scots Gaelic and Farsi not sufficient? *\;-)
The Church of Rome has been "continuing" for 2000 years.
Don't worry. Won't happen. Most Episcopalians, no matter how conservative, aren't interested in becoming Roman Catholics. Are you? I doubt it, if you're a typical Episcopalian.
(My second attempt to reply -- something went haywire first time...)
The issue of married priests has, I think, been answered already.
Divorce and remarriage is another issue altogether. I cannot speak with any confidence about any jurisdictions other than PECUSA / ECUSA / TEC / What-We-Call-Ourselves-Today and my own, but the former jursdiction has been very sloppy over the past 4 decades about divorce and remarriage, and I doubt Rome would accept a number of priests on that basis. (I doubt Orthodoxy would either, and so I ask K. to speak to this issue.)
The proposed unification would leave an awful lot of Episcopalians (and others) behind, which is one reason I do not think it will happen.
Even the anglo-catholic TAC has not managed this yet. Add in the Evangelical wing and the (sub-Evangelical?) Charismatic wing of the American church, and it seems clear it won't happen.
But what do I know? I'm a chronicler, not a pundit.
Yes, it's bizarre - to "annul" a marriage is to say it never existed in some objective sense; but to say that about a longtime marriage that produced children is pretty farcical. Didn't one of the Kennedy kids insist on an annulment, but his Episcopal-raised wife balked? (They had kids if I recall). The absurdity of the annulment process is a result of the RC church trying to hang on to its traditional ban on divorce while also hanging on to its flock, many of whom - in this modern age - get divorced. The result is a mishmash that doesn't make sense.
You wrote: "Sorry to disappoint, I'm not coming. I'm in a Continuing Church."
What exactly are you continuing to?
I posted this because I think the timing of it is very interesting in light of the Primates meeting in Tanzania. I also wonder if this was part of the discussion when the Archbishop of Canterbury met with the Pope.
I am not anti-Rome, but I'm not in the churches being discussed in this article.
You wrote: "I'm not going to pretend that a marriage before wasn't valid or was made under some kind of coercion or something."
Who would ask you to pretend? No one. And are you saying it would be okay to leave behind a VALID marriage? So pretending (which no one asked you to do) a marriage is invalid bothers you, but breaking a valid one doesn't? Strange indeed.
"I have a relative who went through this process (annulment) after being married to his wife for ten years. His 4 children were not pleased."
I know someone who got an annulment after 26 years and 9 children. And yeah, her marriage was invalid. It turns out her husband was already married to someone else!
"But... are Scots Gaelic and Farsi not sufficient? *\;-)"
Farsi might cut it today, but since the Council of Whitby, Scots-Gaelic has sort of been off the radar, with all due respect to my Kerry ancesters who came here speaking that angels' tongue! :)
Interesting article.
Married Anglican priests have remained married and become Catholic priests. I believe we have two in our Archdiocese.
I would not want to touch the divorce/annulment issues at this time.
I recall that the rector at ChristChurch Plano is divorced and remarried. I don't think that would fly in the RC church.
I am not yet Catholic, but I have studied this issue a bit, and it seems clear to me that the Catholic definition of annulment is widely misunderstood. My understanding is that annulment is a process whereby the divorced person comes to terms with the terminated marriage, and his or her part in that, repenting of whatever sins they are guilty of. Finally, the official annulment is NOT a statement that the marriage never happened, nor does it at all deny the legitimacy of the children, if any, of the union. It is a religious, not a legal declaration, which states that the marriage was not a sacramental marriage in the eyes of God. One common reason is immaturity on the part of one or both parties to the marriage, which, as most people who have been divorced, and have honestly come to terms with that experience can attest, is frequently the case.
What a freakingly stupid and arrogant question from one who hangs out and posts nasty snarky remarks on Anglican threads. Go ask your great high pope, Vlad.. He can tell you. Maybe your cardinal can. Maybe your bishop can. Maybe your priest can. I guess you can't.
Are your superior authorities so high & mighty & inaccessible that you have to rely on informational responses from non-Catholics? Or do you trust non-Catholics more than Catholics?
Everye you post, I learn more and more about your Roman Catholic church. It's not a very pretty picture that's forming here. At the rate it's going one of these days I might even be persuaded the (IMHO canard that) one of your popes took the low road with Hitler.
I sincerely hope that is not the case. There are some Roman Catholics for which I have much respect, WFB for example, -- but I also see that that church also permits without correction quite arrogant twits in their midst.
vladimir998 is a perfect example of why I will never become Roman Catholic (were I even looking to change), and exactly what I present to those who indicate an interest in that direction.
If you really desire to undergo unChristian abasement and abjection, go here... and see what you're headed into. If kissing the toes of the arrogant self-righteous is what you desire, go ahead. If you want real salvation, re-think. The likes of vladimir998 is what you're going to encounter in the Roman church, and it doesn't look very Christian to me.
Power. It's all about power. And that church has established a major record about being powerful.
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