Next round of ARCIC set for May in Hong Kong
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...."
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