50th Anniversary Brings Warning
Episcopal News Service. July 23, 1981 [81208]
LONDON -- Celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Bonn agreement between Anglicans and Old Catholics was punctuated by warnings of problems in the future of the accord.
A festival eucharist at Westminster Abbey marked the anniversary July 2. Archbishop Robert Runcie of Canterbury and the Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht, Dr. Marinus Kok led delegations through a two-day gathering and concelebrated the Mass.
The preacher at the eucharist was the Rev. Professor Howard Root, Director Designate of the Anglican Center in Rome. He contrasted the mood of 1931 and the current ecumenical mood as "less expectation, less buoyancy, even less hope for Christian unity." "The consequences of centuries... of separation could not be erased so simply or quickly as had been thought," said Professor Root.
There followed a lecture by the Bishop of Chichester, the Rt. Rev. Eric Kemp, who warned that sacramental relations (inter-communion) "carries implications which go much beyond that of simply receiving Holy Communion together." Dr. Kemp cited as examples from the Anglican side of a failure to carry out "an exchange and commitment to one another in respect of major decisions on questions of faith and morals" the acceptance of inter-communion with the Church of South India, the agreement by some Anglican provinces to ordain women to priesthood, and the initial decision to go ahead in England on the Covenant proposals with non-Conformist bodies. There is an urgent need, the bishop added, "to provide adequate, regular, and official organs of consultation."
Among representatives of the Episcopal Church in the United States at the celebration were: the Rt. Rev. John M. Krumm, Suffragan Bishop in charge in Europe; the Rt. Rev. Horace W.B. Donegan, retired Bishop of New York; and the Rev. Canon Edward N. West of New York.