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99-174

Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue in U.S. releases statement on 
the church

     (ENS) The Anglican-Roman Catholic Consultation in the USA 
issued on November 15 its thirteenth joint statement, an Agreed 
Report on the Local/Universal Church. The report is a review of 
the status of the discussion between Anglicans and Catholics on 
the general topic of authority in the church and specifically in 
regard to the exercise of authority in the church.

     In June 1996, ARC-USA agreed to begin a lengthy study of the 
church on how authority in exercised in both the Anglican 
Communion and the Roman Catholic Church. In four subsequent 
meetings, members of the U. S. dialogue prepared this agreed 
report to serve as an initial statement in their study.

     ARC-USA's last meeting was in Baltimore, March 11-14, 1999, 
at which time members had agreed to specific revisions of their 
common text. A draft was then circulated by mail, and members had 
a final opportunity to suggest changes.

     In the report the members of the dialogue agree on the 
definitions of the key terms of the study, summarize the current 
Anglican-Roman Catholic consensus on the relationship between the 
local church and the universal church, and then list areas where 
more discussion is needed, namely, the requirements for full 
communion, primacy and the bishop of Rome, the balance between 
the local and the universal church, and episcopacy and 
apostolicity.

     Anglicans and Roman Catholics most often use the term 
"diocese" to refer to the local church, and that is how ARC-USA 
uses the term in this report. Anglicans and Roman Catholics also 
agree that the universal church is more than an aggregate of 
local churches, that the local church and the universal church 
are fully interdependent, and that proper balance between the two 
is necessary.  It is on the question of "balance" between the 
local church and the universal church that differences arise 
between Anglicans and Catholics, and these need to be explored 
further.

     ARC-USA will begin to take up these differences at its next 
meeting in January at Marywood Center in Jacksonville. They will 
begin with the relationships between the Anglican Communion and 
the independent provinces-for example the Episcopal Church- which 
constitute that communion, and the relationship between national 
Catholic episcopal conferences, one expression of collegiality 
among bishops in the Roman Catholic Church, and the universal 
church.

     At their January meeting they will also begin their study of 
the recently released agreed statement of the Anglican-Roman 
Catholic International Commission, The Gift of Authority. This 
statement, also titled "Authority III," referring back to two 
previous agreed statements of ARCIC, also takes up the topic of 
the exercise of the authority in the church and concludes by 
naming certain "advances in agreement" and raises specific issues 
facing Anglicans and Catholics.

     "The report of ARC-USA represents a placeholder for us on 
our dialogue with the Episcopal Church from which we can measure 
our understandings of full communion and the exercise of 
authority in the church," stated Bishop John J. Snyder of St. 
Augustine, Catholic Co-Chairman of the dialogue. Bishop Ted 
Gulick of the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky is the Anglican Co-
Chairman.

     "We know that the general topic of authority is the 
remaining one from the original three areas (Eucharist and 
Ministry and Ordination), identified by those who planned the 
formal dialogues, where consensus has yet to be achieved; and our 
statement is a first step for the dialogue in the United States 
and should be studied also in light of The Gift of Authority," 
Bishop Snyder said. 

     ARC-USA was founded in 1965 and is co-sponsored by the 
Standing Commission for Ecumenical Relations of the Episcopal 
Church and the Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and 
Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic 
Bishops.

     Two volumes of ARC-USA agreements and other ARC agreed 
texts, including those of the international commission, have been 
published: Called to Full Unity: Documents on Anglican-Roman 
Catholic Relations 1966-1983 (1986) and Common Witness to the 
Gospel: Documents on Anglican-Roman Catholic Relations 1983-1995 
(1997).