Last week a rather interesting meeting took place in Rome as Pope Benedict XVI received the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, in a private audience just weeks after the Oct. 20 announcement by the Vatican of the creation of “Personal Ordinariates” for Anglicans wishing to enter into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.
The new policy allows Anglicans to convert to Catholicism but retain many of their Anglican liturgical traditions, including married priests. The Vatican will create the equivalent of new dioceses for these former Anglicans to be headed by a former Anglican priest or bishop.
There were rumors that the meeting could be testy on several levels, but no such animosity surfaced in any way. In fact, those who were saying that the archbishop was upset about being blindsided by the Vatican announcement in October recently found out that Dr. Williams was informed of the proposed “Personal Ordinariates” two weeks before the announcement in October.
Prior to going to Rome and shortly after the announcement in October, Archbishop Williams said that he respected the integrity of those individuals who believed themselves called to be received into the Catholic Church. He said he believed that the Vatican initiative represented an “imaginative pastoral response to the needs of some” but added in his opinion it did not “break any fresh ecclesiological ground.”
Archbishop Williams was in Rome last week to help celebrate the centenary of Cardinal Willebrands, a former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, that was planned well in advance of the Oct. 20 announcement. Preceding his audience with the Holy Father, Archbishop Williams was invited to give an address at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Most of his speech centered on the great progress that has been achieved over the years in Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue. He said joint statements made by the Anglican and Catholic churches since the 1960s showed a “strong convergence” in ideas about what the Christian church should be. He also addressed some of the hot-button issues, such as women’s ordination to the priesthood and episcopacy.
The essence of Archbishop Williams’ speech can be found in this paragraph from his introductory remarks: “Therefore the major question that remains is whether in the light of that depth of agreement the issues that still divide us have the same weight – issues about authority in the church, about primacy especially the unique position of the pope and the relations between the local churches and the universal church in making decisions about matters like the ordination of women, for instance. Are they theological questions in the same sense as the bigger issues on which there is already clear agreement? And if they are, how exactly is it that they make a difference to our basic understanding of salvation and communion? But if they are not, why do they still stand in the way of fuller visible unity? Can there, for example, be a model of unity as a communion of churches which have different attitudes to how the papal primacy is expressed? The central question is whether and how we can properly tell the difference between ‘second order’ and ‘first order’ issues. When so very much agreement has been firmly established in first-order matters about the identity and mission of the church, is it really justifiable to treat other issues as equally vital for its health and integrity?”
The meeting between the pope and archbishop went very well. A Vatican communiqué following the meeting announced that the private audience included “cordial discussions.” They spoke about “the challenges facing all Christian communities at the beginning of this millennium and to the need to promote forms of collaboration and shared witness in facing these challenges.”
The communiqué spoke of the pope discussing “recent events affecting relations between the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion,” with the archbishop. They reiterated “the shared will to continue and to consolidate the ecumenical relationship between Catholics and Anglicans” and spoke of how, “over coming days, the commission entrusted with preparing the third phase of international theological dialogue between the parties (Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission “ARCIC”) is due to meet.”
This third phase will deal with fundamental questions regarding the Church as Communion — Local and Universal and how in Communion the local and universal church comes to discern right ethical teaching. Over the coming months members will be nominated to the commission and a date for its first meeting will be announced.
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