POPE BENEDICT XVI IN U.K. Visit to the Archbishop of Canterbury
Your Grace, It is a pleasure for me to be able to return the courtesy of the visits
you have made to me in Rome by a fraternal visit to you here in your official residence.
I thank you for your invitation and for the hospitality that you have so generously
provided. I greet too the Anglican Bishops gathered here from different parts of
the United Kingdom, my brother Bishops from the Catholic Dioceses of England, Wales
and Scotland, and the ecumenical advisers who are present. You have spoken,
Your Grace, of the historic meeting that took place, almost thirty years ago, between
two of our predecessors – Pope John Paul the Second and Archbishop Robert Runcie –
in Canterbury Cathedral. There, in the very place where Saint Thomas of Canterbury
bore witness to Christ by the shedding of his blood, they prayed together for the
gift of unity among the followers of Christ. We continue today to pray for that gift,
knowing that the unity Christ willed for his disciples will only come about in answer
to prayer, through the action of the Holy Spirit, who ceaselessly renews the Church
and guides her into the fullness of truth. It is not my intention today to speak
of the difficulties that the ecumenical path has encountered and continues to encounter.
Those difficulties are well known to everyone here. Rather, I wish to join you in
giving thanks for the deep friendship that has grown between us and for the remarkable
progress that has been made in so many areas of dialogue during the forty years that
have elapsed since the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission began its
work. Let us entrust the fruits of that work to the Lord of the harvest, confident
that he will bless our friendship with further significant growth. The context
in which dialogue takes place between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church
has evolved in dramatic ways since the private meeting between Pope John XXIII and
Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher in 1960. On the one hand, the surrounding culture is growing
ever more distant from its Christian roots, despite a deep and widespread hunger for
spiritual nourishment. On the other hand, the increasingly multicultural dimension
of society, particularly marked in this country, brings with it the opportunity to
encounter other religions. For us Christians this opens up the possibility of exploring,
together with members of other religious traditions, ways of bearing witness to the
transcendent dimension of the human person and the universal call to holiness, leading
to the practice of virtue in our personal and social lives. Ecumenical cooperation
in this task remains essential, and will surely bear fruit in promoting peace and
harmony in a world that so often seems at risk of fragmentation. At the same time,
we Christians must never hesitate to proclaim our faith in the uniqueness of the salvation
won for us by Christ, and to explore together a deeper understanding of the means
he has placed at our disposal for attaining that salvation. God “wants all to be
saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4), and that truth is nothing
other than Jesus Christ, eternal Son of the Father, who has reconciled all things
in himself by the power of his Cross. In fidelity to the Lord’s will, as expressed
in that passage from Saint Paul’s First Letter to Timothy, we recognize that the Church
is called to be inclusive, yet never at the expense of Christian truth. Herein lies
the dilemma facing all who are genuinely committed to the ecumenical journey. In
the figure of John Henry Newman, who is to be beatified on Sunday, we celebrate a
churchman whose ecclesial vision was nurtured by his Anglican background and matured
during his many years of ordained ministry in the Church of England. He can teach
us the virtues that ecumenism demands: on the one hand, he was moved to follow his
conscience, even at great personal cost; and on the other hand, the warmth of his
continued friendship with his former colleagues, led him to explore with them, in
a truly eirenical spirit, the questions on which they differed, driven by a deep longing
for unity in faith. Your Grace, in that same spirit of friendship, let us renew our
determination to pursue the goal of unity in faith, hope, and love, in accordance
with the will of our one Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. With these sentiments,
I take my leave of you. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all (2 Cor 13:13).