Williams will meet Pope to revive talks on unity
Pastor Dale Morgan
Williams will meet Pope to revive talks on unity*
By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:16am GMT 06/11/2006
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will make his first
official visit to Pope Benedict XVI in Rome later this month in an
effort to bolster ties strained by rows over women priests and
homosexuality.
In a deeply symbolic gesture, the two leaders are planning to pray
together publicly as well as hold a private meeting.
Even more significantly, they are expected to announce a new round of
unity talks aimed at resolving the theological disputes that have
divided the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches since the Reformation.
These long-running talks were in danger of stalling after the
consecration of an openly gay Anglican bishop in America in 2003.
The new round is expected to focus on the fraught issue of where
authority lies in the two Churches. Dr Williams is also likely to
reinforce the invitation to the Pope to visit Britain that was extended
last year by the English and Welsh Catholic bishops and Tony Blair.
The Pope has, however, made it clear that he does not intend to travel
as much as his predecessor, John Paul II, and has quashed speculation
that he might make a visit soon.
The archbishop's trip, which runs between Nov 22 and 26, is particularly
symbolic because it falls 40 years after an historic meeting between Dr
Williams's predecessor, Archbishop Michael Ramsey, and Pope Paul VI.
That was the first formal meeting between the heads of the two Churches
since Henry VIII broke with Rome in the 16th century, and it raised
hopes that the centuries-old rift could be healed.
In the past decade, however, optimism that full unity could be achieved
has faded, although co-operation between the two faiths has increased in
many areas.
The Church of England's decision that women can become bishops and the
consecration in America of Anglicanism's first openly gay bishop have
driven the two denominations further apart.
In 2003 when Dr Williams visited John Paul II he was told that allowing
openly gay clergy in the Anglican Church was a "serious difficulty" on
the path to a world Christian unity.
Since then senior cardinals have delivered similar warnings over the
consecration of women as bishops and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor,
the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, has described
ecumenical relations as on "a plateau".
The election of Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as presiding bishop of
the Episcopal Church, the American branch of Anglicanism, will also
complicate relations as she is the first woman to head an individual
Anglican Church.
More fundamentally, unity talks between the two Churches have foundered
because of their different structures.
In contrast to the Pope, the archbishop wields only moral rather than
legal authority over his Church and cannot impose agreements made with
the Vatican.
The Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission has already issued
a report raising the possibility of the Pope becoming a "universal
primate" for all the Christian denominations and eventually all the
World's religions.
Canon Gregory Cameron, from the Anglican Communion office, said: "It
would be futile to pretend that there are not some concerns on the
Catholic side about developments in the Anglican Church, but there is
also a readiness to see this in the larger context."