VATICAN CITY (AP) The Vatican is publicly stressing its progress in forging closer ties with the Anglican Communion despite deepening divisions over homosexuality that cloud this weekend's visit by the archbishop of Canterbury.
In a statement released Wednesday, the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity outlined what it said was continuous progress in bringing the two churches together, making no mention of the explosive decision of the U.S. Episcopal Church to elect its first openly gay bishop in August.
The archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, holds his first official meeting with Pope John Paul II on Saturday, when he will get a readout of the Vatican's reaction to the U.S. decision. He convenes an emergency meeting of the Anglican Communion's 38 church primates to discuss the matter in two weeks.
In its statement, the Council on Christian Unity noted Williams' predecessor, Archbishop George Carey, had frequently called on the pope six times over the course of his 11{-year term, more than any of his predecessors combined.
``These exchanges of visits are a clear sign of the desire of the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church to continue to operate together toward the goal of full communion,'' the statement said. It added that both churches had also formed two joint commissions that have reached agreement on several theological issues over the years.
Those initiatives stemmed from the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, which called for new ecumenical initiatives with the Anglican Communion. The Anglicans split from Rome in 1534 over the pope's refusal to grant King Henry VIII an annulment.
The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the 77 million-member global Anglican Communion.
After the Episcopal Church confirmed V. Gene Robinson as its first openly gay bishop in August, several overseas bishops threatened to sever ties with the Americans, and conservative Episcopalians within the United States threatened to break from their denomination. U.S. conservatives will gather in Dallas next week to discuss their next move.
Publicly, the Vatican has kept silent about the vote's impact on Catholic-Anglican relations, in an apparent attempt to not prejudge the outcome of this weekend's sensitive meeting. But privately, Vatican officials concede the decision is a new issue, although not one that will sever relations.
The head of ecumenical affairs at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Stephen Blaire, has gone further, though, saying the decision had ``serious implications'' for Anglican-Catholic ties and had created ``new ecumenical challenges.''
Those relations were already strained in 1992, when the Church of England decided to ordain women. At the time, the Vatican, which reserves the priesthood for men, called the decision a ``new and grave obstacle to the entire process of reconciliation with the Catholic Church.''
That decision also divided the Anglican Communion, and several hundred Anglican priests defected to Catholicism as a result.
The Anglican bishop of Rochester, England, Michael Nazir-Ali, who is a member of the two official Catholic-Anglican commissions working through ecumenical differences, said the issue of homosexuality touches an even deeper nerve among Catholics and Anglicans than that of women's ordination.
In a recent interview, he said that from the Anglican point of view, the decision on women concerned a question of merely ordaining them to the same apostolic ministry as men.
``This new question is a question about (Biblical) revelations and its relationship to moral order. So it touches more deeply, I believe, on concerns in the churches,'' he said.
Nazir-Ali said if the two churches are going to continue their dialogue through this latest obstacle, ``they need to do this in a different way than the ordination question.''
``There are always obstacles in ecumenical discussions,'' he added. ``The history has been the overcoming of obstacles.''
Indeed, at the time of Williams' enthronement in February, John Paul didn't gloss over the fact that divisions remained and that overcoming them would be difficult.
But in a message to Williams, the pope stressed: ``We are still on that path and irrevocably committed to it.''