Heart speaks to heart during Archbishop of Canterbury's visit to Chicago
Episcopal News Service. June 26, 1996 [96-1508]
David Skidmore, Communications Officer of the Diocese of Chicago
(ENS) On his first official visit to the Diocese of Chicago, May 20-24, Archbishop of Canterbury George L. Carey challenged the Episcopal Church to look beyond internal concerns and serve Christ in the world, and challenged Chicago's religious leaders to an honest and open dialogue over issues that stand in the way of a "full, visible unity."
In an address to diocesan clergy the first morning of his visit, and in his Eucharist sermon that noon in St. James Cathedral, Carey urged Episcopalians to "look on, look up and look out" in living out their faith, and to avoid becoming absorbed in "single issue problems." Noting the contributions the Episcopal Church has made through its relief work and leadership in ecumenical dialogues, the archbishop encouraged the diocese to "share that generous-mindedness for which you are well known."
Intent on promoting his message of interfaith cooperation and revival of Christian social and moral consciousness, Carey often found those concerns overshadowed by more topical issues during his question and answer sessions with the press, students and clergy. On the minds of most was the May 15 ruling by the Court for the Trial of a Bishop exonerating Bishop Walter Righter, retired of Iowa, of heresy charges for having ordained a non-celibate gay man to the diaconate.
"I am sad personally that it came to trial," Carey told over 50 Seabury-Western seminarians May 22. "We must always avoid this kind of thing because it is a no-win situation. No one has won anything. If anything, the church has lost."
The trial court's decision to dismiss charges against Bishop Righter for having held and taught doctrine contrary to that of the church was "a very sensible, a very wise judicial appraisal," said Carey, in that the court adopted a narrow interpretation of the canons, and cautioned dioceses to refrain from unilateral actions.
The ruling also served to remind Episcopalians that their actions are not independent from the life of the communion's other 36 provinces. "No diocese is actually autonomous, independent," he said. "What happens in one diocese could actually ricochet and affect other dioceses."
Addressing the issue during his meeting with diocesan clergy the previous day, Carey cautioned supporters and opponents of ordination of homosexuals against using the ruling as ammunition in the debate. It would be better, he said, if the church agreed to a moratorium on debating the more contentious issues like homosexuality because of the danger of them dominating the church's agenda to the detriment of more pressing concerns.
As for his perspective on the participation of gays and lesbians in the life of the church. Carey said he subscribes to four principles: "First, homosexuals are loved by God. Second, we've got to resist homophobia. Third, there should be no witch-hunts. And fourth, we've got to handle this issue in the light of scripture, and then in the light of the church and traditions as well."
At the press conference at St. Edmund's Church on the final day of his visit, Carey reiterated that platform, and his desire for "a go-slow policy" on deciding whether church doctrine permits the ordination of homosexuals. Pressed by a reporter for the Church of England's position on the matter, Carey said that clergy in the Church of England are expected to conform to a House of Bishops report that lists two options: marriage or celibacy. "We say in that report that practicing sexuality among homosexuals is not what we desire to see from our clergy. But we do not intend to discipline people," he added. "We treat this very much as a pastoral matter."
On the issue of women priests, Carey said the Church of England is seeing "a very confident female ministry emerging" nearly four years after the General Synod voted to ordain women to the priesthood. Over 1,800 women have been ordained priests in that span and the ranks of those opposed to women priests are thinning out. In the London diocese, he noted, three of the six bishops will now ordain women to the priesthood where as only a few months ago there was only one. The church, however, still must decide on opening the episcopate to women, a decision, he said, that will again have to go through the synod.
Carey also spoke on women priests in his address at the interfaith service at St. Edmund's Episcopal Church, May 23, citing the November 1992 decision as an example of the accommodating nature of Anglican polity. "There is not one diocese in England where women are not welcome and there is cover for every clergyman or parish that does not recognize the ministry of women as priests."
While physically trying, the event-packed schedule -- which included five major addresses and a half-dozen less formal presentations -- proved something of a tonic for the archbishop thanks to the engaging spirit of the diocese's clergy and laity. At each of his stops, whether preaching a Eucharist sermon in St. James Cathedral, fielding questions from seminarians at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, sharing his African experiences with students at an Episcopal boys school on Chicago's West Side, or challenging Chicago's religious leaders to enter a dialogue in which "heart speaks to heart," Carey moved with vigor and spoke out forcefully.
Inspired by the spirited worship and ministry he witnessed, Carey told reporters that "I will go home renewed and probably exhausted as well by the energy of the people I've met here."
Throughout his visit, Archbishop Carey stressed the need for generosity, tolerance and mutual accountability, both within Anglican circles and ecumenically. For Episcopalians in particular, he praised their generosity of temperament and resources, and encouraged them to strengthen their participation with the 70 million members of the Anglican Communion.
"God has blessed you with remarkable talent and ability and riches, and that must never be underestimated," Carey told 850 diocesan members at the outdoor banquet May 21. Speaking to the exuberant crowd under a cavernous white canvas tent stretching the length of the street bordering the diocesan center and cathedral complex, Carey encouraged them "to constantly look over the parapet at the world in which you live and in which God has entrusted you with so much."
At each of his appearances, Carey challenged the Episcopal Church and the interfaith community to a more conscious effort at healing divisions and assuring the moral and social welfare of society. With students of Seabury-Western and Northwestern University, and particularly with Chicago's religious leaders at the St. Edmund's service, Carey praised the spiritual and theological diversity of the Anglican Communion and its ability to accommodate dissent and yet live in unity. Historically. Anglicans -- particularly in Europe and North America -- "have had to learn to live with complexity, diversity and intensive communication," said Carey in his address at St. Edmund's. "They have developed a growing awareness of being learning communities with each strand within the church listening, and learning and growing together."
The evening before he spoke to the same theme at Northwestern University's Alice Millar Chapel. A knack for compromise has been the great strength of the Anglican tradition, he said, and as a result the church has developed a comprehensive doctrine and structure that incorporates the four major expressions of Anglican faith and polity: catholic, evangelical, liberal, and charismatic. "We do not believe that any church possesses the entire Christian truth and that no single tradition can claim to be the sole repository of divine revelation."
Openness to query and debate gives Anglicans the unique ability to serve as interpreters and mediators in ecumenical dialogue, said Carey, particularly between Catholic and Protestant traditions, and between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. This gift reflects the spirit of tolerance which Anglicans have incorporated in their faith and life, a quality that goes beyond a mere tacit acceptance of differences to the willingness to live and work with those of other faiths.
Yet the capacity for tolerance, mediation and interfaith collaboration must not be taken to mean that Anglicans are prepared to sublimate or dilute their essential identity as Christians, cautioned Carey. "Dialogue and friendship with other faiths does not mean that we sell our soul to a lowest common denominator of faith or to mushy religious-sounding vagueness," he said. "I do not believe that all religions are the same and I certainly do not believe that Jesus Christ is merely one great religious figure among others."
Reciprocity is among the foundation stones for any true interfaith collaboration, noted Carey. This principle, embodied in Article 18 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, grants freedom of thought and religion to everyone, he said, and the freedom to change their beliefs. Noting that Muslims, Hindus and other faiths are free to worship and proselytize in the West, Carey argued that "this must apply equally to the rights that Christians should have in places where they are in a minority."
Carey's passion on this point comes from a personal encounter with religious discrimination during his visit to Sudan last October, an incident he related during several of his talks. Because of the rift between the Egyptian and Sudanese governments, Carey's flight out of Cairo for Sudan was forced to make an intermediary stop in Saudi Arabia. On the approach to the Red Sea coastal city of Jidda, Saudi Arabia, Carey was told to remove all religious insignia, including his clerical collar and pectoral cross. After landing, their party was taken to the British compound where an ecumenical prayer service had been scheduled. But due to Saudi regulations, the service could not be advertised as a religious event. So it was billed as a meeting of the Welfare Committee, P and C (for Protestant and Catholic). "Now there is the great scandal," said Carey in his remarks to diocesan clergy the first morning of his visit. "It seems to me that until the Muslim community is prepared to face up to that this will continue to be the problem."
This is not to say Christians should set preconditions for dialogue, but only to be clear about our responsibility to our own tradition, stressed Carey. Christians and Muslims, representing the world's two largest monotheistic faiths, share a major challenge quelling extremism and religious-inspired terrorism, he said. And it is important for Christians to appreciate the struggle Islamic societies are having adapting to secularism. "Maybe what we can do is to travel with them, sharing our story on what it is to actually come to terms with modernity in our time."
At the interfaith service at St. Edmund's, Carey targeted his message of ecumenical bridge-building more specifically to the Roman Catholic Church. Speaking from the high pulpit of the Romanesque style church -- until the 1940s the home of the former Greek Orthodox Church of St. Constantine -- Carey said he stood firmly with the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission's (ARCIC) statement that visible unity is an essential goal of ecumenical dialogues.
"I want to state categorically my commitment to the full, visible unity of the Church of God. That must be our eventual goal however many turns the river will take to get us to it, he said to the 20 religious leaders seated in the sanctuary, among them Joseph Cardinal Bemardin, archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.
Praising the Second Vatican Council's 1963 document, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church -- known by its Latin name Lumen Gentium -- as "a springboard for theological dialogue," one which envisioned Christianity "as the people of God in pilgrimage with a common purpose and common Lord," Carey also pointed out the continuing stumbling block posed by the assertion of papal primacy and the status of the Roman Catholic Church as the one true repository of the faith. "No matter how charitably," Pope John Paul invited the rest of the Christian community to explore the implications of Petrine ministry in his recent encyclical Ut Unum Sint, said Carey, the statement in Lumen Gentium that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church under the oversight of the pope and his bishops remains a significant problem for churches outside the Roman Catholic fold."
The Roman Catholic Church has taken encouraging steps in recognizing the legitimacy of other ecclesial bodies, noted Carey, "but dialogue which starts from the premise that unity is only possible if it is agreed that the Catholic Church is 'more church' than the rest of us is a very formidable problem."
Cardinal Bernardin, in his response to Carey's address, acknowledged that the Lumen Gentium statement of the primacy of the Catholic Church remains a sticking point in Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogues, as do the different understandings of papal authority and the eligibility of women for holy orders. But the Lumen Gentium, he pointed out, also states that many aspects of sanctification and truth can be found outside the Catholic Church.
"While the Catholic Church may, indeed, hold that it is 'more church' in its own understanding than its partners," said Bernardin "nevertheless, it is challenged by the further teaching of Lumen Gentium that there is also 'more church' than is contained in the Catholic Church."
Christian ecumenical efforts were not the only targets for Carey's frank insights. At the Northwestern University symposium, his focus turned to the challenge posed by moral relativism in secular society. Before an audience of 100 university and seminary students and faculty. Carey delivered a sharp criticism of "the privatization of morality," which he described as the tendency to shape moral judgements according to individual opinion. The idea of eternal truths inspired by God "is fast disappearing from much of our popular culture," he added, as is "the idea that people in positions of authority should be listened to with particular respect by virtue of their office."
Shared values are essential "if society is to survive," said Carey. There are areas of our private lives where society has no business mandating conduct, he acknowledged, places where we are allowed to be free from constraints. "At the same time," he added, we must reject the idea that morality can be switched on and off like a light switch. I do not accept the thesis that what somebody does in his or her family life is necessarily irrelevant to what they do and how far they can be trusted in other walks of life.
We should have no trouble as a church, or society, he said, in expecting "moral consistency."
The impact of the Archbishop of Canterbury's visit, the diocese's first since Carey's predecessor Archbishop Robert Runcie paid a three-day visit 15 years earlier, was summed up by Bishop Frank Griswold at the press conference at St. Edmund's.
Praising Carey for his "ministry of encouragement" to the diocese, Griswold observed that "it is very easy for us to become quite parochial and focus only on what we perceive to be our issues and concerns. So having him speak about Rwanda and the Sudan and Northern Ireland reminds us that we are part of a larger world, and a larger community seeking in a variety of ways to manifest the values of the Gospel."
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