IMAGE: CNS photo/Paul Haring
By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A new document driven by a fresh
approach taken by the official Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue commission
reflects a major development in ecumenism where difference is not cause for
suspicion or reproach, but is used as an enriching opportunity for mutual
listening, learning and conversion.
This notable change is seen in the
first agreed statement from the newest and third phase of the Anglican-Roman Catholic
International Commission, known as ARCIC III. The statement, “Walking Together on the Way:
Learning to Be the Church — Local, Regional, Universal,” was
released to the public July 2 after seven years of joint meetings and
consultations.
In their introduction, the
Catholic co-chairman, Archbishop
Bernard Longley of Birmingham, England, and the Anglican co-chairman, Anglican Archbishop David Moxon, the
archbishop of Canterbury’s representative in Rome, wrote that the
document sought to develop the issues of authority and ecclesial communion
“in a new way.”
Understanding how the Catholic
Church and the Anglican Communion structure authority and exercise authority in
communion on the local, regional and global levels are key for understanding
how each body discerns its teaching and practices on critical issues in ethics
and moral theology.
It is also key for understanding
and addressing questions, debates or divisions experienced internally within the
churches. Which means the document also seeks to inform, enrich and help not
just the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion on an ecumenical level, but
also in dealing with their own internal debates and tensions.
This first agreed statement from
ARCIC III “represents a significant methodological and substantive
step-forward for Anglican-Roman Catholic formal ecumenism,” and it is also
“in service of ecclesial reform within both Anglican tradition and
Catholic tradition,” Paul
Murray, professor of theology at Durham University in the United Kingdom
and Catholic member of ARCIC, told Catholic News Service.
The commission members
representing the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion focus on their
“respective felt difficulties within their own ecclesial cultures,
processes, structures and associated ecclesiologies, and ask how these
difficulties might be helped by a process of receptive learning from relative
strengths in the theology and practice of the other communion,” he said
July 2.
This “receptive
learning” lies at the heart of what has been called “receptive
ecumenism,” that is, a method in which the churches stop asking what the
other needs to learn from them and begin asking what they need to learn from
the other. It is more about self-examination, inner conversion and discerning
what the Lord is calling for rather than convincing or judging one’s partner in
dialogue.
This method has its roots in how
St. John Paul II saw dialogue as not simply an exchange of ideas or a removal
of obstacles, but an “exchange of gifts.”
“This implies more than
ceasing to judge the other tradition as mistaken or problematic but discerning
what is graced” and can be “gratefully received,” the document
said in its introduction.
The document marks the start of a
new phase that emerged after the official Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue
experienced a six-year hiatus.
Since ARCIC II finished its work
in 2005, the Anglican Communion began experiencing strong internal tensions
over the ordination of women as priests and bishops, the blessing of gay unions
and the ordination of openly gay clergy. Differing positions on those moral
issues also created a sense that Anglicans and Roman Catholics were growing farther
apart rather than approaching unity.
As such, now-retired Pope
Benedict XVI and Archbishop Rowan Williams, the now-former archbishop of
Canterbury, England, and head of the Church of England, had identified two
critical areas for ecumenical exploration in their 2006 common declaration:
“the emerging ecclesiological and ethical factors making that journey more
difficult and arduous.”
The two leaders authorized the
new phase of the dialogue at their meeting at the Vatican in November 2009, just
one month after Pope Benedict announced his decision to erect personal
ordinariates for allowing former Anglicans to enter full communion with the
Catholic Church while preserving elements of their distinctive Anglican heritage,
including a certain amount of governing by consensus.
Rather than put the brakes on
dialogue, it gave both sides a chance to get a different look at the heart of
lingering questions about authority and how decisions on moral issues are made.
The two leaders asked ARCIC, which held the first of the new round of meetings
in 2011, to focus on the church as communion, local, regional and universal,
and how, in communion, the local, regional and universal church come to discern
“right ethical teaching.”
At 34,000 words, the resulting
document represents a detailed exploration of what structures, channels or
practices exist that seek to give all the baptized — lay, religious, clergy,
bishops — a voice or a role in how decisions are made.
While the commission has left
the question of “the discernment of right ethical teaching” for its
next document, “this exploration of the nature of communion has become
vital in the light of current debates within the churches,” the document
said.
Communion is essentially about
having the right balance among the different members of the body of Christ.
That would mean no excessive demand for autonomy by the local members — such
as parishes and dioceses — and no excessive demand for centralization by the
“trans-local” — such as national bishops’ conferences, regional
federations, the Roman Curia or the papacy.
In his five years as pope, Pope
Francis has already shown several major ways he is seeking to eradicate
“clericalism” and expand ways the voice of “the people of
God” gets heard at the top, for example, with presynod questionnaires and
encounters; he is also shifting more weight from the Roman Curia to episcopal
conferences by returning oversight of liturgical translations to them and
citing their documents in his teachings.
Current issues — not detailed
in the document but in the forefront of debate in the Catholic Church — that
depend on the right use of authority and legitimate diversity include policies
on Communion for Protestant spouses of Catholics and guidelines for the
interpretation of “Amoris Laetitia,” Pope Francis’ apostolic
exhortation on the family.
In a Catholic commentary
published on the website of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity along with the
document, Father Ormond Rush, an Australian theologian, highlighted a number of
ways the document could contribute to “Catholic self-understanding and
practice.”
“There are many parallels
between the receptive learning possibilities for the Roman Catholic Church
proposed by” the latest ARCIC document “and Pope Francis’s vision for
renewal and reform according to the Second Vatican Council. In other words, the
Anglican tradition has much to offer in making the Council a reality.”
A number of elements in the Anglican
tradition — with its added emphasis on the mission of the laity, the power of
the regional and the benefits of debate as something to be welcomed, not feared
— “can assist the Roman Catholic Church to be more faithful to the vision
of the Second Vatican Council,” he wrote.
Murray told CNS, “In the
longer term this is the way that will take us to full communion because what
will happen is that the differences between Anglicans and Catholics will
ultimately cease to be communion-dividing differences but will be an
ecumenically-enriching differences and communion-building differences. It is a
growth to full communion by living in and through diversity.”
– – –
Contributing to this story was Simon Caldwell in Manchester,
England.
– – –
Follow Glatz on Twitter: @CarolGlatz
– – –
Copyright © 2018 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.
