Catholic-Anglican Official Dialogue Continues

by Jael SC · May 21, 2016

By Michael Swan – After nearly 50 years of discourse between the Catholic and Anglican communions, the official international dialogue body wants to fine-tune how it studies the differences and similarities between two churches.

ARCIC III hasn’t proved itself yet,” said Anglican Archbishop David Moxon, the archbishop of Canterbury’s representative in Rome and Anglican co-chair of the Third Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. He spoke to Canada’s The Catholic Register following an ecumenical evensong May 15.

This third stage of the dialogue has been meeting since 2011, but has yet to publish a major document. It is currently studying how the church arrives at moral teaching.

The official dialogue sponsored by the Vatican and the archbishop of Canterbury was meeting in Toronto until May 18, when a concluding communique was expected from the meeting of 22 bishops, theologians and support staff. It is the first time the body has met in Canada and, to the knowledge of the participants, the first time in 50 years that the international commission has met during Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit first revealed the global unity of the Christian message expressed in the diversity of languages from around the world. ARCIC has looked at its work since the Second Vatican Council and divided the issues into three categories: areas of agreement, issues on which the churches are still seeking agreement and areas of disagreement.

Despite 80 percent agreement on such questions as church structure, Eucharist, liturgy and ethics, disagreements on ordination of women to the priesthood and as bishops, ordination of openly gay bishops, blessings of same-sex relationships and moves in some parts of the Anglican Communion to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions have derailed or slowed talks over the past decade.

The current topic of discussion at ARCIC is meant to meet these controversies head-on, said Canadian Anglican Bishop Linda Nicholls.

“If we’ve come to so much agreement in ARCIC I and ARCIC II, why is it we’ve arrived in such different places (on sexual equality and sexual ethics)?” asked Bishops Nicholls, summing up the current work of the commission. “We’re almost so close that the last little bit is so hard.”

Bishop Nicholls is also a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue of Canada, which, since it was founded in 1971, has always had at least one member on the international body. The Canadian group scheduled its meeting this year to overlap with the international meeting in Toronto so there could be discussion between the two levels, she said.

In his homily at Evensong in St. James’ Anglican Cathedral, Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham, England, Catholic co-chair of ARCIC III, said tough issues and serious disagreements “cannot be an excuse for doing little or nothing.”

ARCIC is now faced with questions that did not exist at the beginning of the official dialogue, said Archbishop Longley. While there has been a lot of focus on the Anglican storm over same-sex marriage, Catholics have their own issues when it comes to moral teaching, including the reception of “Humanae Vitae,” he said.

The church’s official teaching against artificial birth control has failed to persuade many married Catholics. A 2011 study found that only 2 percent of Catholic women between 15 and 44 in the United States use natural family planning, and a 2014 survey of 12,000 Catholics in 12 countries found that more than 90 percent of Catholics in France, Brazil, Spain, Argentina, and Colombia have no problem with artificial birth control.

Official ecumenical dialogues have traditionally called upon some of the most distinguished thinkers in theology and church history to contribute to their work. Including the 1967 preparatory commission’s Malta Report, the three stages of ARCIC have produced 20 agreed statements, which have included thorough examinations of the theologies of Eucharist, ordination, the church as communion, authority and leadership, and the role of Mary in the church.

But when it comes to how the church actually understands and carries out official teaching, the dialogue may need the help of sociologists and others in the social sciences, said Boston Auxiliary Bishop Arthur L. Kennedy. The dialogue cannot be maintained in a closed room sealed off from the life and culture of the church on the ground, he said.

“We all live in this postmodern culture. It’s in the air that we breathe,” said Bishop Kennedy.-CNS