wfn.org | HEART SPEAKS TO HEART DURING ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S V

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TITLE:HEART SPEAKS TO HEART DURING ARCHBI
June 26, 1996
Episcopal News Service
James Solheim, Director
(212) 922-5385
ens@ecunet.org

96-1508
HEART SPEAKS TO HEART DURING ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S VISIT TO CHICAGO

BY DAVID SKIDMORE
           (ENS) On his first official visit to the Diocese of Chicago, May
20-24, Archbishop of Canterbury George L. Carey challenged
the Episcopal Church to look beyond internal concerns and serve Christ in the
world, and challenged Chicago's religious leaders to an
honest and open dialogue over issues that stand in the way of a "full, visible
unity."
           In an address to diocesan clergy the first morning of his visit,
and in his Eucharist sermon that noon in St. James Cathedral,
Carey urged Episcopalians to "look on, look up and look out" in living out
their faith, and to avoid becoming absorbed in "single issue
problems." Noting the contributions the Episcopal Church has made through its
relief work and leadership in ecumenical dialogues, the
archbishop encouraged the diocese to "share that generous-mindedness for which
you are well known."
           Intent on promoting his message of interfaith cooperation and
revival of Christian social and moral consciousness, Carey often
found those concerns overshadowed by more topical issues during his question
and answer sessions with the press, students and clergy. On
the minds of most was the May 15 ruling by the Court for the Trial of a Bishop
exonerating Bishop Walter Righter, retired of Iowa, of
heresy charges for having ordained a non-celibate gay man to the diaconate. 
           "I am sad personally that it came to trial," Carey told over 50
Seabury-Western seminarians May 22. "We must always avoid this
kind of thing because it is a no-win situation. No one has won anything. If
anything, the church has lost."
           The trial court's decision to dismiss charges against Bishop
Righter for having held and taught doctrine contrary to that of the
church was "a very sensible, a very wise judicial appraisal," said Carey, in
that the court adopted a narrow interpretation of the canons, and
cautioned dioceses to refrain from unilateral actions. 
           The ruling also served to remind Episcopalians that their actions
are not independent from the life of the communion's other 36
provinces. "No diocese is actually autonomous, independent," he said. "What
happens in one diocese could actually ricochet and affect other
dioceses."

MORATORIUM ON DEBATE?
           Addressing the issue during his meeting with diocesan clergy the
previous day, Carey cautioned supporters and opponents of
ordination of homosexuals against using the ruling as ammunition in the
debate. It would be better, he said, if the church agreed to a
moratorium on debating the more contentious issues like homosexuality because
of the danger of them dominating the church's agenda to
the detriment of more pressing concerns.
           As for his perspective on the participation of gays and lesbians in
the life of the church, Carey said he subscribes to four
principles: "First, homosexuals are loved by God. Second, we've got to resist
homophobia. Third, there should be no witch-hunts. And
fourth, we've got to handle this issue in the light of scripture, and then in
the light of the church and traditions as well."
           At the press conference at St. Edmund's Church on the final day of
his visit, Carey reiterated that platform, and his desire for "a
go-slow policy" on deciding whether church doctrine permits the ordination of
homosexuals. Pressed by a reporter for the Church of
England's position on the matter, Carey said that clergy in the Church of
England are expected to conform to a House of Bishops report that
lists two options: marriage or celibacy. "We say in that report that
practicing sexuality among homosexuals is not what we desire to see
from our clergy. But we do not intend to discipline people," he added. "We
treat this very much as a pastoral matter."
           On the issue of women priests, Carey said the Church of England is
seeing "a very confident female ministry emerging" nearly
four years after the General Synod voted to ordain women to the priesthood.
Over 1,800 women have been ordained priests in that span and
the ranks of those opposed to women priests are thinning out. In the London
diocese, he noted, three of the six bishops will now ordain
women to the priesthood where as only a few months ago there was only one. The
church, however, still must decide on opening the
episcopate to women, a decision, he said, that will again have to go through
the synod.
           Carey also spoke on women priests in his address at the interfaith
service at St. Edmund's Episcopal Church, May 23, citing the
November 1992 decision as an example of the accommodating nature of Anglican
polity. "There is not one diocese in England where
women are not welcome and there is cover for every clergyman or parish that
does not recognize the ministry of women as priests."

ARCHBISHOP INSPIRED BY DIOCESE'S ENERGY
           While physically trying, the event-packed schedule--which included
five major addresses and a half-dozen less formal
presentations--proved something of a tonic for the archbishop thanks to the
engaging spirit of the diocese's clergy and laity. At each of his
stops, whether preaching a Eucharist sermon in St. James Cathedral, fielding
questions from seminarians at Seabury-Western Theological
Seminary, sharing his African experiences with students at an Episcopal boys
school on Chicago's West Side, or challenging Chicago's
religious leaders to enter a dialogue in which "heart speaks to heart," Carey
moved with vigor and spoke out forcefully.
           Inspired by the spirited worship and ministry he witnessed, Carey
told reporters that "I will go home renewed and probably
exhausted as well by the energy of the people I've met here."
           Throughout his visit, Archbishop Carey stressed the need for
generosity, tolerance and mutual accountability, both within
Anglican circles and ecumenically. For Episcopalians in particular, he praised
their generosity of temperament and resources, and
encouraged them to strengthen their participation with the 70 million members
of the Anglican Communion.
           "God has blessed you with remarkable talent and ability and riches,
and that must never be underestimated," Carey told 850
diocesan members at the outdoor banquet May 21. Speaking to the exuberant
crowd under a cavernous white canvas tent stretching the
length of the street bordering the diocesan center and cathedral complex,
Carey encouraged them "to constantly look over the parapet at the
world in which you live and in which God has entrusted you with so much."

ANGLICAN GIFT FOR COMPROMISE
           At each of his appearances, Carey challenged the Episcopal Church
and the interfaith community to a more conscious effort at
healing divisions and assuring the moral and social welfare of society. With
students of Seabury-Western and Northwestern University, and
particularly with Chicago's religious leaders at the St. Edmund's service,
Carey praised the spiritual and theological diversity of the
Anglican Communion and its ability to accommodate dissent and yet live in
unity. Historically, Anglicans--particularly in Europe and North
America--"have had to learn to live with complexity, diversity and intensive
communication," said Carey in his address at St. Edmund's.
"They have developed a growing awareness of being learning communities with
each strand within the church listening, and learning and
growing together."
           The evening before he spoke to the same theme at Northwestern
University's Alice Millar Chapel. A knack for compromise has
been the great strength of the Anglican tradition, he said, and as a result
the church has developed a comprehensive doctrine and structure
that incorporates the four major expressions of Anglican faith and polity:
catholic, evangelical, liberal, and charismatic. "We do not believe
that any church possesses the entire Christian truth and that no single
tradition can claim to be the sole repository of divine revelation."
           Openness to query and debate gives Anglicans the unique ability to
serve as interpreters and mediators in ecumenical dialogue,
said Carey, particularly between Catholic and Protestant traditions, and
between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. This gift
reflects the spirit of tolerance which Anglicans have incorporated in their
faith and life, a quality that goes beyond a mere tacit acceptance of
differences to the willingness to live and work with those of other faiths.
           Yet the capacity for tolerance, mediation and interfaith
collaboration must not be taken to mean that Anglicans are prepared to
sublimate or dilute their essential identity as Christians, cautioned Carey.
"Dialogue and friendship with other faiths does not mean that we
sell our soul to a lowest common denominator of faith or to mushy
religious-sounding vagueness," he said. "I do not believe that all
religions are the same and I certainly do not believe that Jesus Christ is
merely one great religious figure among others."
           Reciprocity is among the foundation stones for any true interfaith
collaboration, noted Carey. This principle, embodied in Article
18 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, grants freedom of 
thought and religion to everyone, he said, and the freedom to
change their beliefs. Noting that Muslims, Hindus and other faiths are free to
worship and proselytize in the West, Carey argued that "this
must apply equally to the rights that Christians should have in places where
they are in a minority."
           Carey's passion on this point comes from a personal encounter with
religious discrimination during his visit to Sudan last
October, an incident he related during several of his talks. Because of the
rift between the Egyptian and Sudanese governments, Carey's
flight out of Cairo for Sudan was forced to make an intermediary stop in Saudi
Arabia. On the approach to the Red Sea coastal city of
Jidda, Saudi Arabia, Carey was told to remove all religious insignia,
including his clerical collar and pectoral cross. After landing, their
party was taken to the British compound where an ecumenical prayer service had
been scheduled. But due to Saudi regulations, the service
could not be advertised as a religious event. So it was billed as a meeting of
the Welfare Committee, P and C (for Protestant and Catholic).
"Now there is the great scandal," said Carey in his remarks to diocesan clergy
the first morning of his visit. "It seems to me that until the
Muslim community is prepared to face up to that this will continue to be the
problem."
           This is not to say Christians should set preconditions for
dialogue, but only to be clear about our responsibility to our own
tradition, stressed Carey. Christians and Muslims, representing the world's
two largest monotheistic faiths, share a major challenge quelling
extremism and religious-inspired terrorism, he said. And it is important for
Christians to appreciate the struggle Islamic societies are having
adapting to secularism. "Maybe what we can do is to travel with them, sharing
our story on what it is to actually come to terms with
modernity in our time."

"FULL, VISIBLE UNITY" REMAINS ANGLICAN GOAL
           At the interfaith service at St. Edmund's, Carey targeted his
message of ecumenical bridge-building more specifically to the
Roman Catholic Church. Speaking from the high pulpit of the Romanesque style
church--until the 1940s the home of the former Greek
Orthodox Church of St. Constantine--Carey said he stood firmly with the
Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission's (ARCIC)
statement that visible unity is an essential goal of ecumenical dialogues. 
           "I want to state categorically my commitment to the full, visible
unity of the Church of God. That must be our eventual goal
however many turns the river will take to get us to it, he said to the 20
religious leaders seated in the sanctuary, among them Joseph
Cardinal Bernardin, archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago.
           Praising the Second Vatican Council's 1963 document, the Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church--known by its Latin name
Lumen Gentium--as "a springboard for theological dialogue," one which
envisioned Christianity "as the people of God in pilgrimage with a
common purpose and common Lord," Carey also pointed out the continuing
stumbling block posed by the assertion of papal primacy and
the status of the Roman Catholic Church as the one true repository of the
faith. "No matter how charitably," Pope John Paul invited the rest
of the Christian community to explore the implications of Petrine ministry in
his recent encyclical Ut Unum Sint, said Carey, the statement
in Lumen Gentium that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church
under the oversight of the pope and his bishops remains a
significant problem for churches outside the Roman Catholic fold."
           The Roman Catholic Church has taken encouraging steps in
recognizing the legitimacy of other ecclesial bodies, noted Carey,
"but dialogue which starts from the premise that unity is only possible if it
is agreed that the Catholic Church is `more church' than the rest
of us is a very formidable problem."
           Cardinal Bernardin, in his response to Carey's address,
acknowledged that the Lumen Gentium statement of the primacy of the
Catholic Church remains a sticking point in Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogues,
as do the different understandings of papal authority and
the eligibility of women for holy orders. But the Lumen Gentium, he pointed
out, also states that many aspects of sanctification and truth
can be found outside the Catholic Church. 
           "While the Catholic Church may, indeed, hold that it is `more
church' in its own understanding than its partners," said Bernardin
"nevertheless, it is challenged by the further teaching of Lumen Gentium that
there is also `more church' than is contained in the Catholic
Church."

SHARED VALUES ARE ESSENTIAL
           Christian ecumenical efforts were not the only targets for Carey's
frank insights. At the Northwestern University symposium, his
focus turned to the challenge posed by moral relativism in secular society.
Before an audience of 100 university and seminary students and
faculty, Carey delivered a sharp criticism of "the privatization of morality,"
which he described as the tendency to shape moral judgements
according to individual opinion. The idea of eternal truths inspired by God
"is fast disappearing from much of our popular culture," he
added, as is "the idea that people in positions of authority should be
listened to with particular respect by virtue of their office."
           Shared values are essential "if society is to survive," said Carey.
There are areas of our private lives where society has no
business mandating conduct, he acknowledged, places where we are allowed to be
free from constraints. "At the same time," he added, we
must reject the idea that morality can be switched on and off like a light
switch. I do not accept the thesis that what somebody does in his or
her family life is necessarily irrelevant to what they do and how far they can
be trusted in other walks of life.
           We should have no trouble as a church, or society, he said, in
expecting "moral consistency."
           The impact of the Archbishop of Canterbury's visit, the diocese's
first since Carey's predecessor Archbishop Robert Runcie paid
a three-day visit 15 years earlier, was summed up by Bishop Frank Griswold at
the press conference at St. Edmund's.
           Praising Carey for his "ministry of encouragement" to the diocese,
Griswold observed that "it is very easy for us to become quite
parochial and focus only on what we perceive to be our issues and concerns. So
having him speak about Rwanda and the Sudan and
Northern Ireland reminds us that we are part of a larger world, and a larger
community seeking in a variety of ways to manifest the values
of the Gospel."

--DAVID SKIDMORE IS THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER OF THE DIOCESE OF CHICAGO.