Updated Sunday lunchtime
Media reports following the meeting:
BBC Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope to ‘seek closer ties’ and
Robert Pigott Anglicans and Catholics attempt to bridge divide
New York Times Rachel Donadio Anglican Leader and Pope Hold ‘Cordial’ Talks
Telegraph Jonathan Wynne-Jones Archbishop of Canterbury tells Pope that Catholic row left him feeling ‘awkward’
Mail on Sunday Jonathan Petre Rowan Williams confronts the Pope over ‘poaching’ of clergy
A very useful commentary by Austen Ivereigh in America +Rowan and Pope Benedict ‘mend fences’
Updates
Observer John Hooper Williams faces pope over Vatican call for converts and also
Leader comment: A subtle champion of the faith
Ruth Gledhill has Archbishop of Canterbury in Rome: In giving we receive
The BBC radio programme Sunday has a segment starting about 32 minutes in. It includes a brief audio interview with Rowan Williams.
Bishop David Hamid has a useful blog entry, see Anglican-Roman Catholic Relations.
I have found an excellent blog article on Dr. William’s speach by former Anglo-Catholic priest Fr. Dwight Longenecker at gkupsidedown.blogspot.com.
The conclusion sums things up precisely:
The Archbishop, in his well meaning speech, is only offering the Catholic Church his own latitudinarian vision. For Catholics this is as insufficient as the Sectarian solution. After the Archbishop’s speech we see again the deep philosophical divide between Catholicism and Anglicanism.
“Pope Benedict’s gift today to Dr Williams of a pectoral cross is just as strong a sign of respect for his episcopal office as was Pope Paul VI’s gift of a ring to his predecessor, Archbishop Ramsay. (Dr Williams always wears the ring whenever he sees to Pope: today was no exception)” – Austin Ivereigh, America’s ‘Today’ – I find it interesting that an American Roman Catholic publication, such as ‘Today’, should make this point – that the Pope recognises Rowan Williams as a bishop in the Church (by giving him a pectoral cross), in the same way as Pope… Read more »
Speech, please.
Fr Longenecker is an unreconstructed Catholic triumphalist — just the sort of counting up past wrongs that caused so much havoc in Ireland. His claim that the Immaculate Conception is a central doctrine of the faith is in tension with the Council’s teaching on the hierarchy of truths, on which Dr Williams is drawing.
The reference is to the earlier speech:
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/2616
The Financial Times has an interesting report from a writer who had obviously shadowed Rowan – http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cd41f6a0-d567-11de-81ee-00144feabdc0.html It covers the days around the announcement of the Anglican Ordinates and one thing it reveals is just how much Rowan has been surprised by the entree establishment gives him. While there is something charming about this naivety there are also disadvantages in missing the grounding in the privileges and relationships a more classical route to the throne of Augustine would have given him. The last time I remember the Pope giving pectoral crosses to Anglican bishops was the week Cardinal Ratzinger excommunicated… Read more »
Father Reynolds – The dogmatic status of the teaching that women can not (not may not) receive Holy Orders is far older than that. It is a part of the traditional understanding of the sacrament in the RCC.
> The recent move by Rome to specially accommodate *High-Church* Anglicans could also be construed as a tacit admission on Rome’s part recognising something of validity within the Anglican ministerial Orders – otherwise, why the uproar over the prospective ordination of female bishops in the C.of E.? This continuing ambivalence on Rome’s part must be an unceasing cause of speculation – on both banks of Tiber/Thames. There’s no ambivalence. As far as Rome is concerned, Dr Wiiliams is an unconfirmed layman. The gift of a pectoral cross was just a meaningless gesture. It must be so, because if it meant… Read more »
Absolutely spot on Robin and in the US former Lutheran,presbyterian and Methodist ministers have become Catholic priests . Indeed the Catholic Church allows all Trinitarian groups to on occasion use its churches. A friend of mine, a Methodist lady minister was ordained in a catholic cathedral in New Zealand.
“The dogmatic status of the teaching that women can not (not may not) receive Holy Orders…is a part of the traditional understanding of the sacrament in the RCC.” – Posted by anthony
If by “traditional”, anthony, you mean less than 100 years old.
It is everso tiresome to be told that REACTIONS to modern developments have some sort of hoary, ancient, “traditional” status.
Condemnation of women’s ordination *originates* w/ women’s ordination.
Condemnation of same-sex marriage *originates* with (movements toward) same-sex marriage.
This isn’t “The Faith”: it’s Newton’s First (?) Law, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
I am sure I speak for many in the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion in wondering why our leaders are so desperate for a few crumbs of recognition from the Roman Catholic Church from which our forefathers parted company centuries ago. Personally, I couldn’t care less what the Roman Catholics think about us, and I have seen nothing suggesting that they care in the slightest what we think about them. No-one at my Episcopal Church here in Washington is the least bit interested n being “reunited” with the Catholic Church, whatever that means. What on earth is wrong… Read more »
James Warren, Christians should be working together for the Kingdom. This does not require juridical unity as Dr Williams insists. But warmer mutual recognition would help. How can we tell Israelis and Palestinians to love one another if we are so touchy and distant in our relations to our sister churches?
“It is everso tiresome to be told that REACTIONS to modern developments have some sort of hoary, ancient, “traditional” status. Condemnation of women’s ordination *originates* w/ women’s ordination. Condemnation of same-sex marriage *originates* with (movements toward) same-sex marriage.” – JCF I don’t know how to interpret this. I can’t argue against a postmodernist view that history has no role in the understanding of doctrine. If that’s what you intend. It is incredible to me to imply that female ordination and homosexual marriage were accepted in the RCC prior to Pius X. The stated opinions of Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus,John Chrysostom,and Augustine… Read more »
Anthony, the Church has produced many dramatic innovations, and has then found that they were implicit in the Idea of the Gospel all along — read Newman. For instance the idea of marriage as a Sacrament begins in the middle ages. Stronger valorization of same-sex relationships and female leadership in the Church would have a very rich reservoir of material to draw on. Feminist and pro-gay theologians have been assembling it for years.
Spirit of Vatican II: I agree that we should all be working together for the Kingdom of God, and there is nothing stopping us all cooperating in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and other works of mercy. Indeed, we should each strive to excel in such endeavors. But, it is a fool’s errand to think that we can promote the Kingdom of God much by trying to eliminate the cultural differences that separate the different Christian denominations. We simply see things differently and most of us don’t want to change. I really don’t see what’s wrong with that. As… Read more »
Fr Dwight Longenecker has written an excellent book (‘The Little Rule and The Little Way’) on Thérèse and Benedict – but can’t resist polemical comments which, for me, made the book harder to read than it should have been, widening the divide between the True Faith and what people like me hold to. Clearly – like many converts of a particular tradition – he wants to find nothing of merit in the Church he has left, and everything of merit – including straight-down-the-line upholding of things like Humanae Vitae – in his new home. He may, of course, be right,… Read more »
Anthony,
It’s simply unnecessary (unnecessarily speculative) to play the “If/Then” *anachronism* game.
I’m not intending to imply “women would have been ordained” or “same-sex couples would have been married”, had they asked in the past…
…but it’s equally impossible to prove the opposite.
The past (and its conditions) are in the past.
The present (and its conditions) are in the present.
What will we make of the future? THAT is the burning question. I simply refuse to be silent, in the face of the “(Hypothetical, Imagined) Past Should Determine the Future” canard.
The more the mighty Males First Males Only church rumbles, the more I hear pain and agonies of a sickness, slow unto death. It’s all an organized, wholesale escape from believer conscience, discernment, and the holy freedom that simply will not ever completely go away, nor be completely vitiated by having somebody else work things out for you, promising utter truth and utter safety with, wait, even more, a certified guarantee of heaven. Just because this stuff persuaded many in 300, 1110, or seemed to offer hope during the Great Black Plague that nearly wiped out Europe, or is avidly… Read more »
JCF – just because you hold the moral high ground does not mean that everything you say is true. To claim that church discrimination against women and gays did not exist before the 20th century is perverse. If the premise must be that the past is all “hypothetical and imagined” I argue that the future is speculation and cannot be influenced by anything we say or do, and that the present is part of the hypothetical past before we even perceive it. If your intention is to deny the value of tradition, religious or secular, in making ethical judgments, just… Read more »
I was saddened to hear Archbishop Rowan tell his interviewer thast the Anglican position regardinging sexuality is as it was stated ten years ago. This is untrue, and he knows it. The American and Canadian provinces have moved forward, as has the Church in India. See USPG latest newsletter. So also has the Scottish Episcopalchurch, and many of his own Cof E flock.
Fr John
“I was saddened to hear Archbishop Rowan tell his interviewer that the Anglican position regardinging sexuality is as it was stated ten years ago.” – Fr. John E. Harris-White – Sad, Fr. John, but true – in a way. The trouble with official statements on behalf of Anglicans – even from (perhaps even more so from) the ABC – is that the proprieties have to be observed. And the basic truth about his statement is: that the official stand on homosexuality – expressed in ‘Lambeth 110’ from the 1998 Lambeth Conference – is still in fact the ‘enshrined’ position of… Read more »
Yes, but Rowan seems to think that ‘the Church’ is bishops or even just archbishops ! We don’t count in his eyes ! What a timewaster… ‘I was saddened to hear Archbishop Rowan tell his interviewer thast the Anglican position regardinging sexuality is as it was stated ten years ago. This is untrue, and he knows it. The American and Canadian provinces have moved forward, as has the Church in India. See USPG latest newsletter. So also has the Scottish Episcopalchurch, and many of his own Cof E flock. Fr John Posted by: Fr John E. Harris-White on Tuesday, 24… Read more »