Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue Releases Joint Statement: “Ecclesiology and Moral Discernment: Seeking a Unified Moral Witness.”

April 22, 2014
WASHINGTON—The Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue in the United States (ARC-USA) has concluded a six-year round of dialogue with the release of “Ecclesiology and Moral Discernment: Seeking a Unified Moral Witness,” approved at the most recent meeting February 24-25, 2014, at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. The meeting was chaired by Bishop John Bauerschmidt of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee; the Roman Catholic co-chairman, Bishop Ronald Herzog of Alexandria, Louisiana, was unable to attend for health reasons.

In 2008 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs and the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, asked the ARC-USA to address questions of ethics and the Christian life in the context of ecclesiology, in an effort to achieve greater clarity regarding areas of agreement and disagreement. They were aware that dialogue on these issues was also taking place between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion at the international level, and also in other bilateral dialogues between churches of various traditions.

The statement reflects on the way the two churches pursue the work of teaching and learning within the Christian moral life. It examines the extent to which their respective church structures influence the way they teach and what they teach on moral questions. Inquiries and discussions about moral formation and the teaching charism of the churches guided them in addressing this topic.

With a focus on two case studies concerning migration/immigration and same sex relations, the dialogue concluded that even if the moral teachings of Anglicans and Catholics diverge on some questions, they also share important common features. The statement delves into these differences and similarities and represents progress toward a more unified Gospel witness capable of addressing contemporary concerns in ways that are useful and attractive to all Christians, as well as larger society. As Bishop Bauerschmidt said, "ARC-USA has produced some important statements in the past. This statement represents the latest landmark in our journey together as churches, and is a valuable contribution to an important topic." The full text is available online here: www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/ecumenical-and-interreligious/ecumenical/anglican/upload/arcusa-2014-statement.pdf...

Read the rest of the releast at: http://www.usccb.org/news/2014/14-066.cfm

Hat tip to Chris Buckley.

Anglicanorum Coetibus Conference

January 14, 2010
Christian Campbell
Posted on The Anglo-Catholic blog.

James Bradley writes to inform us of an Anglicanorum Coetibus conference to be held on Saturday, April 24, 2010, from 10:30 AM until 6:00 PM, at Pusey House, St. Giles, Oxford. Here is the information from the event’s Facebook page.

A day conference examining elements of Anglican Patrimony in the light of the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Benedict XVI, Anglicanorum Coetibus.

Speakers include:

Anglican Patrimony: A Catholic historian’s perspective
Professor Eamon Duffy, Professor of the History of Christianity, Fellow, Director of Studies, Magdalene College, Cambridge

The Anglican Tradition of Moral Theology
The Revd Canon Dr Robin Ward, Principal, St Stephen’s House, Oxford

The Church of England: Parochial and Pastoral
The Revd Philip North, Rector, Old St Pancras Team Ministry, London

Canon Law: A comparative study
The Revd David Ackerman, Priest in Charge Sherborne, Windrush, the Barringtons and Aldsworth, Gloucester

Conference Fee: £20 (includes coffee on arrival and buffet lunch).

Booking: Father William Davage either by telephone 01865 288024 or by email william.davage@stx.ox.ac.uk

Yet more on Sex

Fr. Hunwicke has posted a thoughtful essay on what should be a "non-problem" for Anglicans and other Christians considering entering full communion with the Catholic Church, and that is the Catholic teachings on the moral use of one's sexual powers.

I. Homophobia

I write with apprehension; because Sex is always embarassing to write about. What does the writer reveal about himself? What does this piece he's written say about me? Is he getting directly at my sexuality here? Do I applaud him or condemn him?

But there is no getting away from the fact that Sex is one of the big new dividing points opening up between Christians (and by no means always solely between denominations). And between Christianity and the World. Not the least of the tragedy is that it is less easy to talk joyfully and affirmatively about God's gift of sexuality than one would like it to be.

I wrote a little while ago about Masturbation And All That. May I recall here the main point I was getting at: the fact that the World and its Spirit, Zeitgeist, have decided that this little practice is a matter of indifference and that people who carry on about it must have some very strange hang-ups. But it is 'Tradition' that the practice is "disordered". And that's not the only thing that is, according to the Tradition, disordered. The same split has opened up with regard to Fornication ... particularly in that form of it which is called Living Together Without Being Married. The two-millennia old Tradition of the Church unambiguously condemns it. But ... And what about the 'Marriage' of divorcees? It is condemned by the most explicit words of Christ, and yet has become mainstream among non-RCs - so much so that when I went to a New Incumbents' Lunch with the Archdeacon soon after I arrived in Oxford, I was interested to find that much of the conversation, between a couple of women 'priests', was about how embarassing and intrusive it is when the Bishop tries to check up on the circumstances of the break-up of one marriage before consenting to a clergygirl's next prospective coupling (lovely word from the 1549 Marriage Service, yes?).

And what about Humanae Vitae? As I point out below in Part II, this Encyclical proclaimed, in effect, that the sort of sexual culture lived by a great proportion of First World married people is disordered and unnatural...

Read the rest of Fr. Hunwicke's essay at his blog Liturgical Notes.

Attacks on traditional Anglicans prove pope's point

Thursday, Oct. 29 2009
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

The possibility that the Catholic Church's commitment to defending traditional
marriage and the tradition of an all-male priesthood stems from anything other
than bias, and that those Anglicans attracted by that commitment could be
anything other than narrow-minded, cold-hearted simpletons, never seems to have
occurred to many who pronounced publicly on this development. As in so many
other public debates over these hot-button issues, those making the most noise
about "tolerance" and "openness" proved themselves more eager to personally
attack their opponents as sexists and homophobes than to engage in substantive
debate.

There is nothing new about this dynamic, of course. In today's dictatorship of
relativism, such ad hominem attacks increasingly take the place of reasoned
argument. And the blowback can be vicious for anyone targeted by the
self-appointed tolerance police, whether it's a beauty queen who answers
honestly about her definition of marriage, a scientist who publicly objects to
experiments on human embryos or an Anglican attracted to the very Catholic
teachings on sex and marriage that our chattering classes so abhor...

Read the whole article in The St. Louis Dispatch.