www.iarccum.org<\/a>) dedicated to implementing better ecumenical relations.<\/p>\nSuch a small step is a far cry from the early heady days of ecumenism when it was widely assumed that unity was just a few years away.<\/p>\n
Things had moved swiftly after the meeting by Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher and Pope John XXIII in 1960 \u2013 the first time an Archbishop of Canterbury had visited to the Vatican for 600 years. \u00a0Pope John asked when the Anglicans would return to the Catholic fold. Archbishop Fisher replied: \u201cIt is not a question of returning, but going forward together.\u201d His words became the model for a new relationship which was affirmed when John XXIII\u2019s revolutionary Second Vatican Council (1962-65) recognised the validity of baptism by other Christian denominations.<\/p>\n
In a gesture of massive significance, in 1966, Pope Paul VI gave an episcopal ring to Archbishop Michael Ramsey \u2013 which Archbishop Welby wore this week on his visit to Rome.\u00a0 A year later an Anglican\u2013Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) began unity talks. By clarifying old misunderstandings and embracing new scholarship it resolved many of the divisions which had bedevilled the two churches since the Reformation.<\/p>\n
Much of ARCIC\u2019s work is safely banked. When Rome\u2019s top ecumenist, Cardinal Walter Kasper, called a meeting of Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and Reformed churches in 2010 it found, one insider said, \u201cnot one single area of theology in which we do not have some measure of agreement\u201d. \u00a0This was not just a clever repackaging of old disputes. It is a real growth in understanding.<\/p>\n
But until recently ARCIC had hit the buffers. When Rome took an extraordinary 10 years to respond to one key ARCIC agreement many Anglicans lost patience and went ahead with the ordination of women\u00a0and more liberal attitudes to gays.<\/p>\n
In response the Vatican pulled the plug on the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission (IARCCUM). Pope Benedict XVI\u2019s unilateral decision in 2009 to set up an Anglican Ordinariate to poach dissident Anglicans to Rome caused further resentment.<\/p>\n
Yet things have clearly begun to change. Pope Francis and Archbishop Welby have similar visions. Both are no-nonsense characters with a \u201csleeves rolled up\u201d approach to making change happen. Yet both see theological union as crucial. They have no patience with the \u201clet\u2019s agree to disagree on theology and just open a food bank together\u201d approach.<\/p>\n
In Rome Archbishop Welby \u2013 who despite his evangelical background, has a Benedictine spiritual director and has invited a French Catholic religious community, Chemin Neuf, to live in his home in Lambeth Palace \u2013 said that Anglicans and Catholics had to \u201cget away from being quite comfortable with the fact we live separately\u201d. \u00a0\u00a0Without theology, he said, the churches will become \u201cjust another NGO with a lot of old buildings\u201d.<\/p>\n
The renewed talk of unity is more than a pious aspiration. A third round of ARCIC talks has had meetings so far in Bose, Hong Kong, Rio and Durban. They have shifted the focus away from what divides the two churches to \u201creceptive ecumenism\u201d \u2013 what each side has to learn from the other.<\/p>\n
At the heart of their discussions is how the two Communions go about making decisions. There are huge contrasts: Catholicism is heavily centralised whereas in Anglicanism authority is dispersed between many churches in many nations. Division is part of the Protestant DNA. And Anglicans are more divided among themselves now than ever before.<\/p>\n
But Pope Francis clearly wants to change the governance of the Catholic Church so it is less like a mediaeval monarchy and more open to the wisdom and insights of all its members.<\/p>\n
Given the practical difficulties posed by issues of gender and sexuality it is hard to see what unity between Catholics and Anglicans might look like \u2013 certainly not uniformity. \u00a0But if the intellectual difficulties are greater now than 50 years ago, emotionally the two churches are closer than at any time since the reign of Henry VIII.<\/p>\n
Archbishop Welby this week presented Pope Francis with a cutting from the giant fig tree planted in Lambeth Palace by the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Pole (1500-1558). What fruit it will bear, and when, is hard to predict. But hope is a theological virtue. For the past five decades the two churches have been moving on parallel lines. It feels as though, at last, those lines may be once more converging.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
from The Independent<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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