wfn.org | [ENS]Griswold says resignation as co-chair of Anglican-Roman

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

Title:[ENS]Griswold says resignation as co-chair of Anglican-Roman Catholic
dialogue was his idea

by Jan Nunley 

031205-2 

12/5/2003 
 
[Episcopal News Service] Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold says his
November 26 resignation as co-chair of a key Anglican-Roman Catholic
dialogue was at his own initiative, not the result of pressure either from
the Vatican or Lambeth Palace.
 
In its World Church News section for the December 6 issue, The Tablet, a
Roman Catholic weekly published in Britain, reports speculation that
Griswold's resignation had either been prompted by Cardinal Walter Kasper's
failure to attend an Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission
(ARCIC) meeting November 25-26, or by a meeting between Kasper and the Rev.
John Peterson, secretary general of the Anglican Consultative Council.
 
"Neither Cardinal Kasper's absence from the informal talks nor his meeting
with John Peterson were the cause of my resigning as Anglican co-chairman,"
Bishop Griswold said in a brief statement issued December 5. "I had been
planning to resign, possibly after the next meeting, at which time we had
hoped to complete the agreed statement on the Blessed Virgin Mary. Being
fully committed to the work of ARCIC, I did not want the Roman Catholic
response to the ordination in New Hampshire to jeopardize this very
important work." Griswold has been one of ARCIC9s Anglican co-chairs since
1999.
 
The decision to suspend talks applied only to the International
Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM),
established in 2001 to find practical ways to implement ARCIC's agreements,
and not to ARCIC itself, which remains the "main instrument of theological
dialogue" between the two communions.
 
The Tablet reported that the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth (UK),
Crispian Hollis, prayed that the suspension would be temporary. The
publication quoted Hollis as stating that in the IARCCUM conversations "we
need to know, on the level of Church, who we are talking to" and that "the
Anglicans themselves need to be able to speak in such a way that they are
confident of being representative of the whole Anglican Communion," which is
difficult given the current controversy within the Anglican Communion over
recent actions of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

-- The Rev. Jan Nunley is deputy director of Episcopal News Service.