ARCIC churches ‘walking together’ in friendship and mutual respect
ALREADY described as “this fresh and ground-breaking document”, the Anglican – Roman Catholic International Commisssion’s “Walking Together on The Way: Learning to be the Church, Local, Regional and Universal” will be published at the end of the year and is already available on line.1 Its conception goes back to 2011, when the Commission’s third phase, ARCIC III, began its meetings at the ecumenically orientated Monastery at Bose in northern Italy. The mandate given by Pope Benedict and the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was to address the theme of the Church local and universal, and how the Church comes to discern right ethical teaching. When we look closely into these two themes of ethics and ecclesiology, we find that they reveal precisely the areas of major concern we both share within and between our two communions at this time. The central prospect arising from the document is that as the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches learn to listen repectfully to one another’s concerns, with a certain humility and willingness to re- imagine their own pastoral and administrative practice in the light of the experience of both communions, we will eventually break down the barriers which still divide us, and achieve full organic unity. We experience both tension and opportunity within our own Church structures when we seek to hold a measure of unity globally, with a measure of diversity locally. Christian ethics in this contestable field is also a very complex and challenging area, as we all know and witness. To name but two examples: Anglican experience with discussions and pastoral practice in the area of sexual orientation has been conflicted and challenging, as has the Roman Catholic discussion and pastoral practice in the area of divorce and communion.
* Full article available in printed copies.
David Moxon
formerly an Archbishop of the Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, he is co- chairman of ARCIC III and was until recently the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Representative to the Holy See and Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome.