By R. William Franklin

For more than 30 years we have been engaged in an official dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church to define the theology and structure of a catholicism of the future which might allow Anglicans and Roman Catholics to live together in full communion.

There has been much progress in this search, above all official agreement on a common theology of Eucharist and priesthood. But the past 12 months have shown mixed results. In a commentary released last summer, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Vatican Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, stated that Pope Leo XIII's judgment that Anglican orders are "null and void" is to be afforded an infallible status, an opinion which blocks the realization now of even interim eucharistic sharing.

But there has been a stubborn refusal this past year to give up the dream of a wider catholic fellowship which might join Anglicans with Roman Catholics. The Lambeth Conference of 1998 "warmly" endorsed continuing the official dialogue with Rome, while noting that the question of Anglican orders must remain on the theological agenda. In February, the Archbishop of Canterbury re-dedicated the splendid new headquarters of the Anglican Centre in Rome.

Now in this Pentecost season the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) has released its latest agreed statement, "The Gift of Authority: Authority in the Church III" [TLC, May 30]. The statement is a short book of 43 pages and divided into 63 sections of theological reflection on the subject of catholic authority. The larger theme of the statement is particularly appropriate for Episcopalians to reflect on during Pentecost: God's "yes" to humanity, and humanity's response of "Amen" back to God.

The statement explores the specific ways Anglicans and Roman Catholics believe that the community of faith continues to say "yes" back to God. The ministry of authority in the church - which Jesus begins to transfer to the apostolic band at Pentecost - is above all described in the statement as one which helps humanity to hear God's "yes" in the Spirit, and enables humanity to make a response of "Amen" back to God's "Yes."

There are three significant, even controversial, aspects of the agreed statement. First, "The Gift of Authority" once again commits our two churches to the ultimate goal of full communion. Both churches are here strongly encouraged now to take bold steps which move us concretely toward that goal. Here is the official text: "There is no turning back in our journey towards full ecclesial communion. In the light of our agreement the Commission believes our two Communions should make more visible the koinonia we already have. Theological dialogue must continue at all levels in the Churches, but is not of itself sufficient."

Second, the statement breaks new ground in articulating as an explicit part of the catholic faith the role of all the faithful in the church's ministry to teach, even to teach infallibly. The statement contains this provocative sentence: "Doctrinal definitions are received as authoritative ...within the sensus fidei of the whole people of God. When the people of God respond in faith and say 'Amen' to authoritative teaching it is because they recognize that this teaching expresses the apostolic faith and operates within the authority and truth of Christ."

This emphasis upon participation of all the faithful in governance could have important consequences within our Communion as well as within the Roman Catholic Church. The statement asks both churches to think seriously now about new forms of joint exercise of lay/ordained authority.

Third, the statement asks the Anglican Communion to consider entering into a new relationship with the authority of the Bishop of Rome. It suggests that conciliar authority - the authority of the whole people of God - in a full catholic model of Christian life must be balanced with the exercise of international primacy, and it suggests that the only possible locus of this primacy, even for Anglicans, must be in the office of the Bishop of Rome.

What is new in "The Gift of Authority" is the proposal that Anglicans enter into an interim period of association with the papacy even before full communion is achieved.

I believe that "The Gift of Authority" comes at a timely moment in the life of the Anglican Communion. Lambeth 1998, with its endorsement of "The Virginia Report," invites us now to study the ways and means by which international primacy might be exercised within the Anglican Communion.

"The Gift of Authority" reminds us that our own evolution as a world communion cannot take place in isolation from the great Latin Church of the West, with which we shared full communion for a thousand years.

As Bishop Frank Griswold, our Presiding Bishop now to become co-chair of ARCIC, reminds us, the catholicity of the church and the unity of the church already exist in the mind of God, and it is not up to us to create them. It is our task, however, to yield up our various traditions to the motions of the Holy Spirit, who throughout salvation history draws from what is Christ's and makes it known to us, in the reality of our relationships in fellowship with one another, including our relationships with Christians not of the Anglican fold.

R. William Franklin is the dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale.