Holding hands in Rome

LOOKING TOWARDS A CHURCH
FULLY RECONCILED
The Final Report of the Anglican-Roman Catholic
International Commission 1983–2015 (ARCIC II)
Editors A Denaux, N Sagowsky & C Sherlock
SPCK. 350 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978 0 281 077 793

After the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) the Roman Catholic Church opened up to the ecumenical movement and has entered a season of bilateral dialogues with non-catholic communions or denominations (e.g. the Eastern Orthodox churches, the Lutheran World Federation).

One of the most significant ones has been the dialogue with the Anglican Church, better known with the acronym ARCIC (Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission).

Dialogues

The first phase of the dialogue (ARCIC I, 1970-1981) produced documents on such diverse topics as the Eucharist, ministry and ordination, authority in the church, drawing its main insights into a Final Report. The controversy over the ordination of women (which Rome strongly disagreed with) showed the considerable distance between the two bodies on issues of authority and ministry, in spite of much ecumenically correct language used in the dialogue.

Five agreed statements

The second part of the dialogue (ARCIC II, 1983-2005) is the bulk of the volume. ARCIC II produced five agreed statements (on salvation, the church as communion, Christian morality, authority in the church, Mary). These documents are republished in the book and are accompanied by papers on the theological method followed in the dialogue and the overarching themes that were touched upon. A final section tells the story of ARCIC II with its 20 years of ecumenical interactions between Anglicans and Roman Catholics.

The material of this dialogue is impressive in scope and depth. Two brief points need to be mentioned. First, in these documents the catholicity of Rome and the Anglicans via media are in full display. The ability to nuance one’s own position is furthered expanded through the application of an et-et (both-and) paradigm. The overall impression is that, on crucial issues of the gospel, the outcome is so broad and comprehensive that one could find statements in line with the Bible and others in line with extra-biblical (if not anti-biblical) church tradition. Secondly, the composition of the commissions shows that the Anglo-Catholic group of Anglicanism has had a major influence on the dialogue, thus leaving the evangelicals and other voices within the Anglican Communion with little to say on these topics. It does not come as a surprise then that ARCIC II arrives very close to a Roman Catholic view of the authority of the church and Mary.

The practical value of these dialogues is difficult to say. It is a given that a few years after ARCIC II, Pope Benedict XVI issued the document Anglicanorum coetibus (groups of Anglicans) that provided for Anglicans to become Roman Catholic while retaining some liturgical practices of the Anglican tradition.

Double standards

Many observers have been puzzled by what seems a double standard policy by the Roman Catholic Church in her ecumenical relationships. On the one hand it puts the ecumenical efforts in ‘brotherly and sisterly’ terms (as in ARCIC I and II). On the other it provides institutional room for accepting disillusioned ecumenical partners to become Roman Catholics. Is this the ultimate way to looking towards a fully reconciled Church?