Strong hints that the path towards unity with Rome was not
blocked emerged at a conference in St Albans last Saturday.
In a speech that was both open and nuanced, Cardinal Walter Kasper, President
of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity at the Vatican,
talked of new interpretations of some of the chief sticking-points: papal
authority, eucharistic doctrine, apostolic succession, and the 1896 papal bull
that declared that Anglican orders to be invalid.
Cardinal Kasper shared a platform with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Revd Elizabeth Welch, a former Moderator of the United Reformed Church. For his
part, Dr Williams said that ecumenism was not simply negotiating our way to a
formula that we can just about live with. . . Effective, real unity in Christ
is when we share in prayer and mission at depth.
About 900 people attended the day-long conference, which had been two years in
the planning and was entitled May They All be One. . . But How? The Rt Revd
Joe Aldred, a Bishop in the Church of God of Prophesy, preached at evensong.
The chief focus, though, was on Cardinal Kasper, speaking exactly one month
after a papal encyclical restating the ban on intercommunion for Roman
Catholics.
The Cardinal suggested that the Churches were entering a new phase in the
journey towards unity. True enthusiasm in the decade after the Second Vatican
Council had been replaced by disenchantment coupled with what he
called ecumenical activism conferences, meetings and symposiums that had
produced countless documents. Who can read all this stuff, and, indeed, who
wants to? the Cardinal asked.
What was needed now, he said, was a period of spiritual ecumenism, a unity in
faith, during which the Churches could assimilate the lessons learned in the
past few decades.
Far-reaching consequences
Cardinal Kasper warned against a mechanical interpretation
of the apostolic succession. To stand in the apostolic succession is not a
matter of an individual historical chain, but of collegial membership in a
collegium which, as a whole, goes back to the apostles. This interpretation
had far-reaching consequences for other Churches, he said. Succession was
thus not a question of an uninterrupted chain, but of the uninterrupted
sharing of faith and mission.
Dr Kasper spoke of a re-evaluation of Apostolicae Curae, the bull of Leo XIII
which declared that Anglican orders were null and void; though he said that a
final solution can be found only in the larger context of full communion in
faith, sacramental life and shared apostolic vision.
After the conference, however, he said: I think it should not be so difficult
to come to almost a partial recognition of the episcopal ministry on both
sides. We are no longer at the position of Leo XIII with his bull. A partial
recognition is there. The Pope gave the Archbishop a gold cross I have only a
silver cross and this is a symbol which is meaningful. And he has a ministry
of oversight, episcope, that is not the same, because we are not in full
communion, but we are in a high degree of profound communion.
However, Cardinal Kasper indicated that the Vatican was still worried by the
degree of comprehensiveness in the Anglican Communion. Comprehensiveness is
a good thing, but it should not be exaggerated. Pluralism should not become a
new beatitude added to the sermon on the Mount.
In conversation he said that dialogue was made much more difficult by the
existence of different groupings in Anglicanism (though we will not interfere:
this is a problem for the new Archbishop), citing lay presidency, the
ordination of women, and ethical problems such as abortion and homosexual
partnerships. (He did not mention women priests in his conference address.)
Dr. Williams urged people to see the ecumenical in the light of Jesus’s
own eternal movement to the depths of the Father. The ecumenical task was to
commend the attractiveness of Christ in each other’s traditions, recognising
the same eternal prayer being made, the same eternal gifts being given. For
too long the Churches had been saying, Don’t listen to him, listen to me.
Mission, said Dr Williams, meant saying Don’t listen to me, listen to Christ,
and listen to Christ there.
The Archbishop asked for the development of shared contemplation. Much could be
gained by sitting in silence with someone for quite a long time. He
acknowledged the grief and frustration caused by disagreement about the
eucharist, in which resided the deepest association with Christ’s movement to
the Father. Our inability to share that with one another is inevitably
proportionately more painful.
But he said that the eucharist was not the sole sacrament, and the Churches
recognised each other’s baptisms the sacrament, if you like, of the
neighbour. While waiting for full communion, he urged people to come together
in contemplation, pilgrimage, festival and service.
Elizabeth Welch spoke of her experience in setting up the ecumenical
church in Milton Keynes. There was now a level of trust and openness which
binds us up in our divisions.
She noted several elements that were working against unity. Falling
congregational numbers encouraged the strengthening of denominational identity.
Energy goes into making mission happen, rather than in finding ways in which
it might be done more effectively in unity with others.