Runcie Predicts a Wider Ecumenical Role for Next Archbishop of Canterbury
Episcopal News Service. May 10, 1990 [90020_Z]
Jerry Hames, Editor of Episcopal Life
WASHINGTON, D.C.-- A change in Canterbury's role from the heart of British Anglicanism to a center of. ecumenical unity for Europe was forecast by Archbishop Robert Runcie during his last official visit to the United States in late April. "I think that we shall have to see Canterbury more as a European city than an old English colonial city," he said during an interview on his four-day visit.
"The Anglican Communion may not need England, but the Anglican Communion needs Europe, the heartland and cradle of Christian institutions," Runcie said.
Runcie visited the Washington National Cathedral to address a North American conference of cathedral deans and to dedicate a bronze compass rose, the emblem of the Anglican Communion. It was set into the marble floor in the sanctuary of the cathedral.
Runcie, who will retire in January, said the growing ecumenical discussions accompanying the political changes that are sweeping Eastern and Western Europe have ramifications, especially for his successor. "It may be that my successor will spend less time in trying to achieve a kind of coherence of the Anglican Communion -- I reckon it has been pushed as far as it can go -- and concentrate more on ecumenical unity," he said.
Runcie said that he believes that it may be more readily acceptable for some parts of the Anglican Communion to accept Canterbury's leadership as a European city than a center for the old colonial empire. It has been a paradox, he said, that he has had to give more time to the welfare of the Anglican Communion, even as more and more of its member churches assumed growing independence.
"There have been divided issues within the communion over political involvement, ecumenical activity, and the ordination of women," Runcie said. "There also has been occasions that have called for crisis management because some of the newly autonomous churches have been fragile in their experience and vulnerable to a hostile political atmosphere."
Runcie also commented upon growing tension within the Church of England between those who value links within the communion and those who now say, "We can't do much about the Angiican Communion; let's concentrate on Europe."
It would be a pity if the English church were to weaken its links with the communion, yet it is important to give the Church of England a "more European flavor," said Runcie. He was recently in Geneva for what he described as "fascinating" ecumenical talks that included representation from the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches. "We are part of that world, or ought to be," he said.
The compass rose was given to the Washington National Cathedral by the Canterbury Cathedral Trust of America and the Friends of Canterbury Cathedral in England in commemoration of the cathedral's completion this September. It was set in the marble floor directly in front of the Glastonbury Cathedra, a chair used by the bishop of Washington and constructed in 1900 with stones from the Glastonbury Abbey.
The compass rose, adopted as the emblem of the communion in 1954, was designed by the late Rev. Canon Edward West of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City.