The next meeting of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission will be held
in Hong Kong from May 4th to 10th, focusing on the critical
questions of ethical decision making within the two Churches. Following informal talks
here in Rome on Monday, the co-chairmen of the dialogue group, the Catholic Archbishop
of Birmingham in the UK Bernard Longley and the Anglican Archbishop of New
Zealand, David Moxon said they were optimistic about building on the extremely
positive results of the previous meeting held at the monastery of Bose in Northern
Italy last May, as Philippa Hitchen found out…..
Listen:
That 10 day
meeting in Bose marked the start of a new phase of ARCIC, the third since the official
dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans began in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.
Unbeknown to the vast majority of people in the pews, these scholarly discussions
have produced substantial agreement on many subjects, from Eucharistic theology to
ordination, ministry and Marian devotion. Despite this progress and much practical
cooperation between the churches at local level in many countries, public perception
continues to portray the leaders of the two communities at loggerheads over issues
of papal primacy, the ordination of women or homosexuality and ministry. But that
may be about to change, says Archbishop Moxon, since the Bose meeting provided a new
key to help overcome these apparently insurmountable obstacles…..
"It was an
unexpected outcome, a positive breakthrough which led to a transformation of the meeting
and unlocked doors which we had previously thought were closed to us, and that transformed
the meeting into a new kind of momentum and a new sort of hope..."
Catholic
co-chairman AB Bernard Longley, shares that sense of optimism following the first
round of ARCIC phase III. After 20 years spent in ecumenical work in the UK, he hopes
the receptive ecumenism model may just provide a breakthrough at this international
level....
"I can recognise very clearly what Archbishop David is talking about...there
was a real excitement at Bose that we had begun something in a climate which had not
been so propitious to ecumenical dialogue ....and clearly my own work on ecumenism
at local level is something I'd want to bring in as we prepare for next year's synod
on new evangelisation...."