wfn.org | Address by Anglican General Secretary to Pope John Paul II

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

ACNS 3915     |     ACO     |	  25 NOVEMBER 2004

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http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/39/00/acns3915.cfm

Address given by the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion to his
Holiness Pope John Paul II

18 November 2004

Your Holiness

I was honoured to be received by you for the first time in the company
of the 103rd Archbishop of Canterbury on his first official visit to you
in 1996. Although my time as Secretary General of the Anglican Communion
does not begin to equal the length and stamina of your own ministry in
the Holy See, I have been privileged to be party to some significant
milestones in the renewed history of the relationship between the
Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.

As Anglicans we have always been very conscious of the special
relationship between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion
acknowledged in the Decree of the Second Vatican Council Unitatis
Redintegratio, the fortieth anniversary of which has been celebrated in
Rome just this last week (1). We Anglicans are naturally proud of our
own history, stretching back to the ancient Celtic churches of the
British Isles, and of our conviction that in our life we have retained
Catholic faith and order. It is precisely this history, however, that
has given a distinctive impetus to our resolve to seek full visible
unity with the Catholic Church as a key element of our ecumenical
endeavour.

That aspiration for full visible unity, first delineated with breadth of
vision by your predecessor, Pope Paul VI, in conversations with the
100th Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Michael Ramsey, has been the star by
which Anglican - Roman Catholic relations have been navigated since
1968. It was an especial joy to see the agenda set out by those two
great Christian leaders fully addressed by the work of the Anglican
Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) over the last 38 years,
and brought to a relative stage of completion with the achievement of
the agreed statement, "Mary, Grace and Hope in Christ" at the beginning
of this year. We look forward now to the publication of this statement
in 2005, and to the publication of the collected works of both ARCIC I
and ARCIC II later next year.

I call it a "relative completion", because the work of ARCIC must still
find its fulfilment in reception by the Anglican Communion and the
Catholic Church, and to this end, I personally look forward to the
renewed dialogue of both IARCCUM, which is charged with this task, and a
third phase of ARCIC.

The ecumenical pilgrimage is far from easy, and I am conscious that
developments within Anglicanism - the ordination of women to the
priesthood and the episcopate, and more recently within the Anglican
Episcopal churches of North America, issues concerning ministry by and
to persons of a homosexual orientation - have appeared to set back our
co-operation, rather than advance it.

However, I believe that recent initiatives have shown how seriously we
wish to work co-operatively and hear the views of the Catholic Church as
we strive to discern Christ's will for us at this time; for example, the
collaborative study undertaken by a sub-commission of IARCCUM into the
ecclesiological difficulties raised by recent developments - a study
which emanated from a request by the Archbishop of Canterbury and a
positive response from Cardinal Kasper as President of the PCPCU. And we
have recently invited the Holy See, through the PCPCU, to offer its own
reflections on the Windsor Report, commissioned by the Archbishop of
Canterbury to consider how the forty-four churches of the Anglican
Communion will respond to the challenges before us. Such moves are
highly symbolic of our desire to work in ecumenical partnership with the
Catholic Church.

The churches of the Anglican Communion have been accustomed to
exercising a constitutional autonomy by which they order their
understanding of Christian faith and life. Increasingly, however, we are
learning that the life of all Christ's disciples is interdependent, and
the wisdom and counsel of the successor to the See of Peter is one
particular voice, which the Anglican Communion has come, in the spirit
of the ecumenical movement, to hold in high value and respect. Your own
ministry, generosity of spirit and hospitality, your Holiness, has
played no small part in the nurture of confidence in the conversations
between our two communions.

At the end of this year, I conclude my ministry as Secretary General of
the Anglican Communion. I do so, however, giving thanks to God for all
that has been achieved in your ministry as Bishop of Rome, for the
progress in the ecumenical dialogue between the Anglican Communion and
the Catholic Church, and hopeful that the path charted by Archbishop
Michael Ramsey and Pope Paul VI is one which will continue to flourish
under your continued sponsorship and in your partnership with the 104th
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Dr Rowan Williams.

May the God who has begun this good work in us, bring it to completion
in the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1.6).

The Revd Canon John L. Peterson
The Vatican

1. "Other divisions arose more than four centuries later in the West,
stemming from the events which are usually referred to as 'The
Reformation'. As a result, many Communions, national or confessional,
were separated from the Roman See. Among those in which Catholic
traditions and institutions in part continue to exist, the Anglican
Communion occupies a special place." From the Decree on Ecumenism
Unitatis Redintegratio given in Rome at St. Peter's, November 21, 1964.

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