Anglican Roman Catholic Dialogue Welcomes Encyclical
Episcopal News Service. August 31, 1995 [95-1214D]
(ENS) After its June meeting, participants in the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue in the United States issued a message welcoming Pope John Paul II's encyclical, Ut Unam Sint. "So often our journey towards full communion to which we are committed seems dark and interminably long," said the message. "We have heard discouraged voices say that we cannot expect unity to be reached at any time in the foreseeable future. We have heard disheartened voices say that our energies and resources would be better invested elsewhere.... Therefore we have enthusiastically welcomed John Paul II's encyclical Ut Unum Sint as a decisive response to the voices of gloom" because it encourages those who "work for the cause of unity," the June 22 message said. Dialogue members were especially buoyed by the pope's emphasis on ecumenism as central to the mission of the church and his argument that no follower of Christ can be indifferent to ecumenism. "John Paul's new initiative has spurred us to recommit ourselves to each other and to the work of unity to which the Spirit has called us," the letter said. It urged Episcopalians and Roman Catholics in the United States to "seek more urgently ways to pray and work and learn together, so that the imperfect communion we now share may be more fully manifest and the day of our gathering together around the table of the Lord may be hastened." Co-chairs of the dialogue -- Bishop Frank Griswold of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago and Bishop John Snyder of St. Augustine -- also wrote a letter of appreciation to the pope for his "profound and encouraging word which supplies fresh impetus to the continuing dialogue between our two communions."