Tread with the Spirit in welcoming Anglicans, South-South dialogue

Published Date: October 30, 2009

Pretty often, the rush for cliffhanging blinds media to the symmetry of the Churchscape’s contours. And so the Mother Church’s offer to welcome some troubled Anglicans has been ballooned into an endtime story.

Any prospect of Christian unity agitates deriders of religion like British biological theorist and author, Richard Dawkins. They see the Vatican move as a conspiracy against the Anglican Communion. Others rejoice it will lead to the end of a celibate priesthood. Yet others hype it as the next major religious event after the Reformation!

Hector Welgampola

And that takes my mind back to a school lesson on Church reunion around the time Syro-Malankara Archbishop Mar Ivanios visited my native Sri Lanka in the late 1940s. Impressed by the ecclesial and physical stature of the Indian prelate who united his Church with Rome in 1932, I asked my teacher whether Mar Ivanios’ pioneer mission was as significant as the Reformation/Counter-Reformation saga. I received an unforgettable lesson in Church history.

As my mentor noted, ever since invasive politics and internal weaknesses led to the East-West schism of 1054 and finally split the Western Church in the so-called Reformation, Church reunion has been more a movement of the Spirit than of random events. Long before Syro-Malankara Catholics accepted papal primacy, Christian groups of varied origin — Albanian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Chaldean, Coptic, Ethiopian, Greek, Hungarian, Maronite, Romanian, Russian, Ruthenian, Syrian, Ukrainian -– had resumed communion with Rome in the 16th-20th centuries.

So, the prospect of some Anglicans reuniting with Rome is nothing sensational as hyped by anti-Church elements. True enough, yesterday’s hot news is today’s rancid history and even media forget the Oxford Movement or John Henry Newman’s path to sainthood.

The more recent thaw in Anglican-Catholic relations began in 1960 when then Anglican leader Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher visited Pope John XXIII, ending 400 years of non-communication with Rome. During the 1970 canonization of 40 English and Welsh Martyrs, Pope Paul VI further boosted relations by calling Anglicans “a sister Church”.

A near climax seemed at hand with the first papal visit to Britain, when Pope John Paul II and Anglican Archbishop Robert Runcie prayed together at Canterbury in 1982. It seemed to seal the 14-year long dialogue through the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC). As noted in a joint statement by the present leader of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, and Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, the Vatican move is mainly the result of such dialogue.

The trend stalled, however, in the aftermath of Anglican moves to ordain women priests. If relations soured over the next decade, they also firmed at a different level under the leadership of the eminent Cardinal Basil Hume of Westminster. Even the prospect of setting up a “personal prelature” for Anglicans came up for discussion at that stage.

It was proposed by the cardinal’s long-time friend, Anglican Bishop Graham Leonard of London, who wished to lead the special structure. The cardinal was unenthused. Some saw it as a stiff upper-lipped British monk’s reluctance to have his Anglican brethren seen on par with Opus Dei, soon to be declared a personal prelature. But decades later, Rome has returned to Bishop Leonard’s proposal to set up a special structure for traditionalist Anglicans, now alongside a balancing structure for Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X.

The Spirit works in strange ways. Although the Thames does not flow into the Tiber, the ebb and tide of Londonside events had been monitored over the decades by the Rome-base Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF) headed by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

As Pope Benedict XVI, he now has the benefit of history as well as hindsight of his own responses to ecumenical overtures. He knows the CDF’s then efforts to restrict the term “sister Church” to Eastern Churches may now make Anglicans watchful of the special ordinariate offered them to ensure continuity of the Anglican heritage. But he would also recall Pope John Paul’s wise counsel to Cardinal Hume regarding relations with Anglicans, “Be generous, be generous.”

Such generous structures, no doubt, need to offer all incoming Christians a religio-cultural comfort zone, but not a base to pamper or spook what some may see as deviations or others consider outpourings of the Spirit. The benefit of millennial experience also equips the Church to appropriately respond to trends trumpeted by some zealots in the name of Churches of the Global South.

In such a scenario, the resolution for South-South dialogue accepted recently by the African Synod in Rome may sound rather tricky at face value. But the proposal made there by FABC Secretary General Archbishop Orlando Quevedo for dialogue among Southern Catholic Churches can be a timely grace for a Spirit-led evaluation of ecclesial issues cherished by all Churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America. These moves may also help open minds to the reality that celibacy-bashing liberals as well as gay-bashing conservatives are all in transit on a search for the wisdom of Jesus in an ever renewing Church –- ecclesia semper reformanda.

Such circumstances should prompt us to tread gently, as noted by Archbishop Williams at the 150th anniversary Mass of the Anglican Church in Japan, just one month before the Vatican announced the forthcoming apostolic constitution to welcome Anglicans.

“Reconciliation comes when we learn to walk lightly, to let go of both pride that cannot admit sins and errors and the bitterness that cannot let go of past injury,” the Archbishop of Canterbury told Massgoers. He added, “To walk lightly is also to understand that we do not have to depend for our value and meaning on achievement, past or present, but are welcome guests on the earth, held in the hands of a loving Creator and Redeemer.”

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Hector Welgampola, a Sri Lankan journalist, was Executive Editor of UCA News from 1987 until he retired in December 2001.

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