Primate, Pontiff Share Ministries Views
Episcopal News Service. August 18, 1976 [76279]
LONDON -- A correspondence between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope makes clear the pontiff's concern that the Anglican Communion's move toward ordaining women to the priesthood will raise "grave difficulty" in the continuing Roman Catholic/Anglican dialogue.
Archbishop Donald Coggan opened the exchange last summer in a letter to Pope Paul VI which hailed the progress of that dialogue and informed the Pope that there was a "slow but steady growth of a concensus of opinion within the Anglican Communion that there are no fundamental objections in principle to the ordination of women to the priesthood."
In his reply five months later the Pope restated the Roman Catholic Churcn's position that "it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons."
He cited among these, the apparent example of Christ choosing only men to be apostles and the Church's tradition in following that example, and went on to state: "We must regretfully recognize tnat a new course taken by the Anglican Communion in admitting women to the ordained priesthood cannot fail to introduce into this dialogue an element of grave difficulty which those involved will have to take seriously into account."
In a later exchange, Dr. Coggan stated his belief that "unity will be manifest within a diversity of legitimate traditions because the Holy Spirit has never ceased to be active within the local churches throughout the world." He added that what may appear as legitimate expression to one party may seem beyond the boundary to another and noted that the issue of women's ordination was being explored with that question in mind.
In the Pope's reply he noted the Archbishop's opinion about the likelihood that the at least some of the churches of the Anglican Communion "will proceed to admit women to the ordained priesthood." He spoke of "the sadness with which we encounter so grave a new obstacle and threat... along the path of reconciliation. "
Talks continued, while this correspondence was going on, between the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity and the office of the Anglican Consultative Council.