After Decades of Dialogue, Anglicans and Roman Catholics Wrestle with Divisions
Episcopal News Service. April 30, 1993 [93084]
David Skidmore, Director of Communication for the Diocese of Chicago.
The Anglican and Roman Catholic scholars, clergy and religious stood shoulder-to-shoulder around the altar as Episcopal Bishop Frank Griswold of Chicago consecrated the bread and wine, using the words form the Book of Common Prayer.
Gathered for Eucharist at the Center for Development of the Ministry at St. Mary's by the Lake Seminary outside Chicago, the ad hoc congregation of 17 church officials and theologians -- representatives to the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue in the United States (ARC-USA) -- served as a poignant measure of how much distance had been covered in 28 years of ecumenical dialogue and how much more remained.
Since Vatican II in 1962, enormous strides have been made towards bridging nearly 500 years of separation. An Anglican Center within shouting distance of St. Peter's in Rome has been operating for 27 years as a resource center and Anglican "embassy." The two churches have joined forces on economic and social justice initiatives, and since 1965 they have been engaged in a painstaking series of talks aimed at achieving full communion between the churches. The talks, conducted under the aegis of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), have addressed the sacraments -- the Eucharist and baptism -- as well as ordination and authority. In the current round (ARCIC II) salvation and moral issues (contraception and remarriage) are being examined.
Despite mirror images of liturgies, a common understanding of baptism and essential agreement on the nature of the Eucharist, the two communions still find the path to unity thwarted by differences over authority and the ordination of women. Unwilling to yield on these emotionally charged issues, the Vatican has balked at crossing the symbolic Rubicon to a sharing of Eucharist with Anglicans, the one area the two communions are closest in agreement. In the spare upper-room chapel at St. Mary's, that division was underscored as Roman Catholics deferred on taking communion. Two churches: of one kind but still two natures.
The 17 representatives had gathered at the seminary in March to discuss Eucharistic prayers and the Anglican Center in Rome, and to draft a response to their two communion's official responses to the ARCIC I final report on the Eucharist, ministry and ordination, and authority released in 1982.
While the Anglican response in the form of a resolution from the 1988 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops was positive in tone, describing the ARCIC I statement as "consonant in substance with the faith of Anglicans," the Vatican's response came as a cold shower.
Released in December 1991, nearly a decade after receiving the ARCIC final report -- and just as ARCIC entered the next phase of talks on salvation and the nature of the church -- the Vatican response to ARCIC I concluded that substantial agreement on all the issues addressed by ARCIC was still a dream, and that "there still remain between Anglicans and Catholics important differences regarding essential matters of Catholic doctrine."
In reviewing the responses, the ARC-USA group spent considerable time wrestling with the nuances of such seemingly straightforward and innocuous phrases as "substantial agreement," "substantial identity," and "consonant in substance" -- terms employed in the ARCIC I report and by both communions to describe the doctrinal match between the ARCIC statement and the tenets of their faith.
While the Lambeth response appears to regard the ARCIC findings as compatible with Anglican belief, said ARC-USA in its report, the Vatican has adopted a narrower stance, preferring to read the ARCIC phrase "consonant in substance" as meaning "full and complete identity" with Catholic doctrine.
The Vatican response statement that clarifications are needed in the ARCIC I language to "assure that these affirmations are understood in a way that conforms to Catholic doctrine" is a significant departure from the ARCIC I approach endorsed by Pope Paul VI and later by Pope John Paul II who described it as venturing "behind the habit of thought and expression born and nourished in enmity and controversy," said ARC-USA.
The tendency to rely on doctrinal language as interpreted by church authorities to define the faith of the church is putting the cart before the horse, according to ARC-USA. "What always must be kept in mind is that the saving faith of the church is the concrete faith of the people of God, which the official formulations of the faith are intended to support," it continued.
But therein lies the problem. How can a faith be interpreted except through words? And secondly, on what basis can official views be judged more authoritative than those of a church's members? One way around this conundrum, said ARC-USA, is to test doctrine by how the members experience their faith since doctrines are intended to interpret a church's communal life. That seems to suggest, said ARC-USA, "that shared sacramental life must precede or at least accompany attempts to compare doctrines on sacraments."
In any event, the report said, the debate over the meaning of the expression "substantial agreement" is not sufficient reason for the continued division between the churches. "The reality confronts us with our need for continuous repentance of our willingness to be divided; and continuous conversion toward the unity Christ offers us with one another...," the report concluded.