Anglican-Catholic dialogue hammering out the ‘tough difficulties’

May 17, 2016 by

by Michael Swan, The Catholic Register:

TORONTO – After nearly 50 years of discourse between the Catholic and Anglican communions, the official dialogue body wants to fine-tune how it studies the differences and similarities between two churches which both call themselves Catholic.

“ARCIC III hasn’t proved itself yet,” Sir David Moxon, Anglican co-chair of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, told The Catholic Register following an ecumenical evensong on Pentecost Sunday.

This third stage of the dialogue has been meeting since 2011, but has yet to publish a major document. It is currently studying how the Church arrives at moral teaching.

The official dialogue sponsored by the Vatican and the Archbishop of Canterbury is meeting in Toronto until May 18, when a concluding communique is expected from the meeting of 22 bishops, theologians and support staff. It is the first time the body has met in Canada and, to the knowledge of the participants, the first time in 50 years that ARCIC has met during Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit first revealed the global unity of the Christian message expressed in the diversity of languages from around the world.

ARCIC III expects to publish its first book within the next four months, said Moxon. The Anglican representative to the Holy See in Rome is currently in negotiations with publishers to bring out Towards a Church Fully Reconciled, a series of essays that “will tackle the tough difficulties,” Moxon said. 

ARCIC has looked at its work since the Second Vatican Council and divided the issues into three categories — areas of agreement, issues on which the churches are still seeking agreement and areas of disagreement.

Despite 80-per-cent agreement on such questions as Church structure, Eucharist, liturgy and ethics, disagreements on ordination of women to the priesthood and as bishops, ordination of openly gay bishops, blessings of same-sex relationships and moves in some parts of the Anglican communion to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions have derailed or slowed talks over the past decade.

The current topic of discussion at ARCIC is meant to meet these controversies head-on, said Canadian Anglican Bishop Linda Nicholls.

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