There are two interesting pices on Ecumenism one an interview with Archbishop Hilarion on Catholic Orthodox dialogue and the other by William Oddie on the new round of ARCIC.
Sometimes I wonder whether Orthodoxy sees dialogue with the Catholic Church in the same way as we see dialogue with Anglicans. Those who take part in the secret discussions give reports that the Orthodox taking part are neither the brightest nor the best and seem not to take discussions too seriously and spend a lot of time squabbling amongst themselves.
That being said, for us whether unity comes or not, dialogue with the Orthodox is about rediscovery of a common Tradition, it is essentially anti-liberal, it looks to a time when East and West had a working relationship, when there was Christendom and attempts to rebuild that.
Dialogue with Anglicans is something totally different, full sacramental union is not the object, nor really is working together. On the contrary ARCIC III seems to me to be a seminar in which Professor Ratzinger has set some particularly lazy students who have in the past refused to face up to reality and have in the past fudged as much as they can, a topic which attempts to get them to face the cold realities of their differences: “Church as Communion – Local and Universal,” and “How in Communion the Local and Universal Church Comes to Discern Right Ethical Teaching”.
After ARCIC III are Anglicans and Catholics going to agree on the evils of abortion, or the assaults against the family or for that matter on gay rights to "marriage" or womens right to "ordination", or the divorced to "re-marry"?
4 comments:
Archbishop Hilarion's views on Anglican/Orthodox relations can be found at:
http://www.mospat.ru/en/2010/09/10/news25819/
It makes an interesting contrast.
Let's not forget the Catholic-Methodist dialogue. After all, it's so far advanced that a Catholic cathedral is set to host a Methodist ordination service.
The fact that Liverpool Cathedral is set to hold a Methodist ordination service is absolutely appalling. This is far, far worse than Westminster Cathedral holding a musical concert about the many names of Allah.
I am not able to get to this event in Liverpool, living as I do, some 12,000 miles away but if I could get there, I would certainly want to do what I could to disrupt this sacrilege.
Will the Blessed Sacrament be removed when this event takes place?
Is the Vatican aware of what is planned?
I ask myself how the Methodists can "ordain" anyone, they have no priests and no bishops. They have not the remotest connection with Apostolic succession.
William Oddie’s article recalls to my mind the article that Cardinal Newman’s biographer, Fr. Ian Ker, published in *The Catholic Herald* issue of 21 May 1999. I cannot now find the whole article online, but I did find this excerpt:
‘This is a Church which recently signed with its left hand the Porvoo Agreement accepting intercommunion with Lutheran Churches which do not claim to have retained the Apostolic succession, without which, on any Catholic understanding, there can be no valid orders and therefore no valid sacraments apart from baptism. With its right hand, the same Church’s representatives on the Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission (ARCIC) have now signed an agreed statement on the “gift of authority”, which has been hailed as a bombshell. I strongly suspect it is nothing of the sort.
The commission has already produced two agreed statements on authority, but that did not stop its co-chairman, Bishop Mark Santer, from supporting the ordination of women at the 1992 General Synod in spite of the very serious warnings from the Roman Catholic Church about the ecumenical implications. The same bishop who caused a stir not long ago by marrying the divorced wife of one of his clergy has now signed a statement which recognises “the primacy of the Bishop of Rome” as a “gift to be received by all the churches.” This primacy is not seen as merely honorific: no, the agreed statement has taken on board not just “indefectibility” but the dreaded Roman Catholic concept of “infallibility,” by means of which the Pope can fulfil his “duty to discern and make explicit… in certain circumstances” the “faith” of the Church.
But what would the Bishop of Birmingham say if “the universal primate” told him that he could not receive Communion because he was married to a divorcee? Would Bishop Harries of Oxford “receive” a papal condemnation of his speech in the House of Lords justifying “therapeutic cloning,” or would Archbishop Habgood have been ready to say amen to a papal condemnation of his advocacy of destructive experiments on human embryos?
[…] Anglicanism is very English in its pragmatism, its dislike of logic, its suspicion of absolute truths, its endless capacity for compromise … The Anglican Communion knows which envoys to send to Porvoo and which to Palazzola, the delightful Alban town where this statement received its final shape. My impression is that ARCIC is good at choosing sunny spots where the wine flows. No doubt there will be many more convivial ARCIC meetings.
Meanwhile those of us who know that the vast majority of Anglicans don’t know the Hail Mary, think that the Holy Souls must be the old dears in the parish, have never been to confession in their lives, will regretfully conclude that, impeccable as the Scriptural theology underlying this statement is, the fact is it is totally unreal.’
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