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 12^th to 20^th, 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.