IN A Vatican audience with Pope Benedict XVI last Saturday morning, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, expressed his “concern” about recent developments in relations between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.
Last month, in a move that some saw as “poaching”, the Vatican released an Apostolic Constitution announcing the creation of new ecclesiastical structures with which to welcome disaffected Anglican conservatives who wanted to convert to Rome.
During a 20-minute meeting with the pope, Dr Williams expressed his discomfort with the surprise Vatican announcement, a point he underlined in an interview with Vatican Radio immediately after the audience, saying: “Naturally, I wanted to express some of the concerns about the way in which the announcement of the constitution had been handled and received, because many Anglicans, myself included, felt that it put us in an awkward position for a time – not the content so much as some of the messages that were given out.”
Dr Williams also told Vatican Radio that the main message to come from his audience with the pope was that “the constitution does not represent any change in the Vatican’s attitude to the Anglican Communion”.
“The presentation of the constitution as some kind of dawn raid on the Anglican Communion misunderstands the process that happened and the actual nature of the constitution. People become Roman Catholics because they want to become Roman Catholics and because their conscience is formed in a certain way and they believe this is the will of God for them, and I wish them every blessing. But I don’t think this is a question of the Roman Catholic Church trying to attract by advertising or by special offers.”
The Vatican described the meeting as cordial, adding that it had focused on the need for all Christian communities “to promote forms of collaboration and shared witness”.
The Vatican acknowledged that discussions had also focused on recent events affecting relations between the two churches, but underlined the “shared will to continue and consolidate the ecumenical relationship between Catholics and Anglicans”. Dr Williams and the Holy See said the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (Arcic) entrusted with preparing a third phase of dialogue between the two churches meets in Rome this week.
Saturday’s meeting came just two days after Dr Williams had appeared to throw down a challenge to the Catholic Church during a speech in Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University. Calling the glass of ecumenical dialogue “genuinely half-full”, Dr Williams said those issues which separate Anglicans and Catholics may not be as “fundamentally church-dividing as our Roman Catholic friends generally assume”.
Dr Williams did, however, strongly defend one of the major points of division, namely the ordination of Anglican women priests, saying that for many Anglicans not to ordain women has an “unwelcome implication” about the difference between baptised men and women.
He suggested that the Catholic Church might learn much from the way the Anglican Communion dealt with internal arguments.