Griswold Says Resignation as Co-Chair of Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue Was His Idea
Episcopal News Service. December 5, 2003 [031205-2]
Jan Nunley
Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold says his November 26 resignation as co-chair of a key Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue was at his own initiative, not the result of pressure either from the Vatican or Lambeth Palace.
In its World Church News section for the December 6 issue, The Tablet, a Roman Catholic weekly published in Britain, reports speculation that Griswold's resignation had either been prompted by Cardinal Walter Kasper's failure to attend an Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) meeting November 25-26, or by a meeting between Kasper and the Rev. John Peterson, secretary general of the Anglican Consultative Council.
"Neither Cardinal Kasper's absence from the informal talks nor his meeting with John Peterson were the cause of my resigning as Anglican co-chairman," Bishop Griswold said in a brief statement issued December 5. "I had been planning to resign, possibly after the next meeting, at which time we had hoped to complete the agreed statement on the Blessed Virgin Mary. Being fully committed to the work of ARCIC, I did not want the Roman Catholic response to the ordination in New Hampshire to jeopardize this very important work." Griswold has been one of ARCIC¹s Anglican co-chairs since 1999.
The decision to suspend talks applied only to the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM), established in 2001 to find practical ways to implement ARCIC's agreements, and not to ARCIC itself, which remains the "main instrument of theological dialogue" between the two communions.
The Tablet reported that the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth (UK), Crispian Hollis, prayed that the suspension would be temporary. The publication quoted Hollis as stating that in the IARCCUM conversations "we need to know, on the level of Church, who we are talking to" and that "the Anglicans themselves need to be able to speak in such a way that they are confident of being representative of the whole Anglican Communion," which is difficult given the current controversy within the Anglican Communion over recent actions of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.