Anglican archbishop expects "significant progress" at ARCIC talks
(Vatican Radio) As the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission meeting continues
its work in Durban, South Africa, the head of Rome’s Anglican Centre says he expects
“significant progress” at the 10 day meeting. Archbishop David Moxon, who serves as
the Anglican co-chair of the ARCIC III talks that run from May 12th to
20th, also told Vatican Radio that new collaboration in mission has brought
the dialogue to “the verge of something quite new which will bear real fruit” The
theme for this fourth phase of the current ARCIC talks is to explore the Church as
Communion, local and universal, and how, together, they come to discern correct ethical
teaching. Just before his departure for Durban, Archbishop Moxon sat down with Philippa
Hitchen to talk about the goals of the meeting and his own hopes for the future of
Anglican-Catholic relations..
Listen:
Archbishop
Moxon says he hopes the 10-day encounter will design the shape of the next ARCIC report
which is half way towards completion. The report, he says, will be about 3 things:
what we do have in common and why, what we don’t yet hold in common but can see potential
for agreement, and where we do disagree and can’t see potential for agreement. On
all three levels, Archbishop Moxon says he expects significant progress at this meeting.
Alongside that, he adds the report will be looking at Receptive Ecumenism which is
a method of approaching each other in collaboration and mutual learning and support,
like for example the recently established Global Freedom Network which is a good example
of this methodology.
The Anglican co-chair goes onto say that the report unlikely
to be completed for another 3 or 4 years but at the end he says “I would think that
it will be a document that not only ecumenists are interested in…but (it) will contain
a shared theology on the way we make ethical decisions, a shared theology on joint
mission, a kind of manual even for mutual collaboration on the ground at home.”
Asked
about recent comments from a former Archbishop of Canterbury about the lack of progress
that ARCIC has achieved over the past 40 years, Archbishop Moxon replies that his
words are “a challenge that we should take seriously.” But he argues that the recently
restarted network IARCUUM showcases all the progress that has been achieved – “and
that is 80% agreement on core doctrine which no-one out on the street would think
has been accomplished! We have an agreement on the Eucharist, we have an agreement
on Baptism, we have an agreement on the priesthood, essentially, and we have agreement
on the Church as communion – these are things that didn’t exist 30 years ago. We can
co-preside at each other’s weddings, we can share ecumenical Liturgies of the Word,
Ash Wednesday liturgies – impossible 40 years ago. So God walks through history a
decade at a stride and you can’t measure this in a year at a time….
Archbishop
Moxon adds that “we’re on the verge of something quite new which will bear real fruit
and that is joint collaboration in mission” which will start to drive ecumenism. Key
to this development, he says, is Pope Francis’ homily at St Paul’s Outside the Walls
last January during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, during which he said we
must walk together now as if unity was a reality….”I think that’s opened the door
to a whole new way of understanding each other” Archbishop Moxon concludes.