Fraternal Visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Archbishop Rowan Williams

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

The Fraternal Visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Archbishop Rowan Williams

Posted On : September 17, 2010 4:30 PM | Posted By : Webmaster
ACNS: http://www.aco.org/acns/news.cfm/2010/9/17/ACNS4733
Related Categories: Lambeth

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI will today visit His Grace Archbishop
Rowan Williams at the Archbishop?s London home, Lambeth Palace.

Together they will address a meeting of Anglican and Roman Catholic
Diocesan Bishops from England, Scotland and Wales in the Great Hall of
the Archbishop?s Library.

Recalling fifty years of significant meetings between successive popes
and archbishops of Canterbury, Archbishop Williams will welcome Pope
Benedict to Lambeth Palace before leading the bishops in an opening 
prayer.

In his address to the bishops (full text below), Dr Williams will
stress the wider spiritual and missionary context in which ecumenical
dialogue and growth in unity must take place. He will speak of the
historic visit as ?a special time of grace and of growth in our shared
calling?, and express the hope that the occasion will be recognised as
having ?significance both to the Church of Christ and to British 
society ?.

On the topic of the common duty of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops
to engage in mission to our society, he will say, ?Our presence
together as British bishops here today is a sign of the way in which,
in this country, we see our task as one and indivisible. Our fervent
prayer is that this visit will give us fresh energy and vision for
working together.?

?Today, this involves a readiness to respond to the various trends in
our cultural environment that seek to present Christian faith as both
an obstacle to human freedom and a scandal to human intellect. We need
to be clear that the Gospel of the new creation in Jesus Christ is the
door through which we enter into true liberty and true understanding.?

?Perhaps we shall not quickly overcome the remaining obstacles to
full, restored communion; but no obstacles stand in the way of our
seeking, as a matter of joyful obedience to the Lord, more ways in
which to build up one another in holiness by prayer and public
celebration together, by closer friendship, and by growing together
both in the challenging work of service for all whom Christ loves, and
mission to all God has made.

Following an address by Pope Benedict, the Archbishop and the Pope
will exchange gifts. The Archbishop will give the Pope a leather-bound
diptych of facsimiles of full-page illuminations from the
twelfth-century Lambeth Bible (details below and photograph available
on request).

The meeting will end with Pope Benedict leading the bishops in the
Lord?s Prayer and a concluding prayer.

The Archbishop and Mrs Jane Williams will then welcome Pope Benedict
into their home, where the Archbishop and the Pope will spend half an
hour in private discussion before viewing a small selection of the
treasures from the Lambeth Palace Library (details below).

This is the first time in history that a pope will visit Lambeth
Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury?s official London residence, Pope
John Paul II having visited Archbishop Robert Runcie in Canterbury in 
1982.

> END

> Notes to editors:

The full text of the Archbishop?s address can be found below:

Address to a Meeting of Anglican and Roman Catholic Diocesan Bishops
of England, Scotland and Wales on the occasion of The Fraternal Visit
of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Great Hall, Lambeth Palace, 17
September 2010

Your Holiness, brother bishops, brothers and sisters in Christ:

It is a particular pleasure that on this historic occasion we are able
to come together as bishops of the Roman Catholic and Anglican
churches in this country to greet you, Your Holiness, during a visit
which we all hope will be of significance both to the Church of Christ
and to British society. Your consistent and penetrating analysis of
the state of European society in general has been a major contribution
to public debate on the relations between Church and culture, and we
gratefully acknowledge our debt in this respect.

Our task as bishops is to preach the Gospel and shepherd the flock of
Christ; and this includes the responsibility not only to feed but also
to protect it from harm. Today, this involves a readiness to respond
to the various trends in our cultural environment that seek to present
Christian faith as both an obstacle to human freedom and a scandal to
human intellect. We need to be clear that the Gospel of the new
creation in Jesus Christ is the door through which we enter into true
liberty and true understanding: we are made free to be human as God
intends us to be human; we are given the illumination that helps us
see one another and all created things in the light of divine love and
intelligence. As you said in your Inaugural Mass in 2005, recalling
your predecessor?s first words as pope, Christ takes away nothing
?that pertains to human freedom or dignity or to the building of a
just society. ? If we let Christ into our lives we lose absolutely
nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. Only in his
friendship is the great potential of human existence revealed.?
[Inaugural Homily, Rome, 24 April 2005]

Our presence together as British bishops here today is a sign of the
way in which, in this country, we see our task as one and indivisible.
The International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and
Mission has set before us all the vital importance of our common
calling as bishops to be agents of mission. Our fervent prayer is that
this visit will give us fresh energy and vision for working together
in this context in the name of what a great Roman Catholic thinker of
the last century called ?true humanism? ? a passionate commitment to
the dignity of all human beings, from the beginning to the end of
life, and to a resistance to every tyranny that threatens to stifle or
deny the place of the transcendent in human affairs.

We do not as churches seek political power or control, or the
dominance of Christian faith in the public sphere; but the opportunity
to testify, to argue, sometimes to protest, sometimes to affirm ? to
play our part in the public debates of our societies. And we shall, of
course, be effective not when we have mustered enough political
leverage to get our way but when we have persuaded our neighbours that
the life of faith is a life well lived and joyfully lived.

In other words, we shall be effective defenders or proclaimers of our
faith when we can show what a holy life looks like, a life in which
the joy of God is transparently present. And this means that our
ministry together as bishops across the still-surviving boundaries of
our confessions is not only a search for how we best act together in
the public arena; it is a quest together for holiness and transparency
to God, a search for ways in which we may help each other to grow in
the life of the Holy Spirit. As you have said, Your Holiness, ?a joint
fundamental testimony of faith ought to be given before a world which
is torn by doubts and shaken by fears.? [?Luther and the Unity of the
Churches?, 1983]

In 1845, when John Henry Newman finally decided that he must follow
his conscience and seek his future in serving God in communion with
the See of Rome, one of his most intimate Anglican friends and allies,
the priest Edward Bouverie Pusey, whose memory the Church of England
marked in its liturgical calendar yesterday, wrote a moving meditation
on this ?parting of friends? in which he said of the separation
between Anglicans and Roman Catholics: ?it is what is unholy on both
sides that keeps us apart?.

That should not surprise us: holiness is at its simplest fellowship
with Christ; and when that fellowship with Christ is brought to
maturity, so is our fellowship with one another. As bishops, we are
servants of the unity of Christ?s people, Christ?s one Body. And,
meeting as we do as bishops of separated church communities, we must
all feel that each of our own ministries is made less by the fact of
our dividedness, a very real but imperfect communion. Perhaps we shall
not quickly overcome the remaining obstacles to full, restored
communion; but no obstacles stand in the way of our seeking, as a
matter of joyful obedience to the Lord, more ways in which to build up
one another in holiness by prayer and public celebration together, by
closer friendship, and by growing together both in the challenging
work of service for all whom Christ loves, and mission to all God has 
made.

May this historic visit be for all of us a special time of grace and
of growth in our shared calling, as you, Your Holiness, bring us the
word of the Gospel afresh.

> © Rowan Williams 2010

> The Archbishop?s Gift to the Pope:

The Archbishop gave the Pope a leather-bound diptych (two pictures
hinged together) of facsimile full-page illuminations from the Lambeth
Bible ? a mid-12th-century volume of the Bible in Romanesque style
widely thought to have been written and illustrated at Canterbury,
which featured in the Palace Library?s 400th anniversary exhibition
this summer.

The left-hand panel depicts key moments in the book of Genesis­the
Hospitality of Abraham, Jacob?s Ladder, and the Sacrifice of Isaac).
The right-hand panel is a rare form of the Jesse Tree (featuring the
prophets, the allegorical virtues, the evangelists, the Church and the
Synagogue, the Virgin Mary, and Christ filled with the seven-fold
gifts of the Spirit).

Together these two panels represent the great sweep of the Biblical
story from Genesis to Christ and the Church.

The Pope viewed the original of the Jesse Tree illumination at the end
of his Private Meeting with the Archbishop.

A photograph of the gift is available on request.

The small number of Lambeth Palace Library treasures on display for
Pope Benedict were as follows:

?Lambeth Bible, c.1150-70, open at Tree of Jesse
?MacDurnan Gospels, ninth century, open at the beginning of Matthew?s 
G ospel
?St Anselm?s collected treatises and letters, compiled by William of
Malmesbury, c.1120-24, open at letters to Archbishop Anselm from King
Henry I and Pope Paschal II
?Archbishop?s Register of Cardinal Pole, 1556-8, open at Cardinal
Pole?s coat of arms as Archbishop
Gospels in Church Slavonic (Moscow, c.1564), open at the beginning of
St John?s Gospel