CENTRO PRO UNIONE N. 66 - Fall 2004 ISSN: 1122-0384 semi-annual Bulletin In this issue: Letter from the Director...................................................p. 2 The Historical Background of the Current Situation in the Episcopal Church in the United States as a Contribution to Our Ecumenical Dialogue R. William Franklin ................................................p. 3 A Bibliography of Interchurch and Interconfessional Theological Dialogues Nineteenth Supplement (2004) .......................................... p. 9 Centro Pro Unione - Via S. Maria dell'Anima, 30 - 00186 Rome, Italy A Center conducted by the Franciscan Friars of the AtonementDirector's Desk Normally the up-date of the Bibliography of the International Interchurch Theological Dialogues is printed in the Spring issue but due to the happy event of the birth of our librarian’s son and the migration of our library program from the Aleph library automation system to “Amicus”, we had to postpone this up-date until the present issue of 2004. As always, you may find the up to date (in real time) bibliography on our web site at all times (http://www.prounione.urbe.it Click on library and then on bibliography of interconfessional dialogues) In this issue, in order to shed even more light on the delicate situation between the Catholic church and the Anglican Communion, especially in the United States, we offer the text of Prof. R. William Franklin, a scholar and historian. His talk on the current situation between our two churches sheds light on the different processes for election of bishops within the Anglican Communion and the particular situation in the American Episcopal church. As many of our readers know, Pope John Paul II convoked a special synod on the Eucharist for the Fall of 2005. The theme of the Eucharist has been a central one for many of the interconfessional dialogues and much agreement has been made. In spite of this fact, there are still issues which divide the churches on the central question of the Eucharist. For this reason, the Centro Pro Unione is currently running a series of lectures on the theology of the Eucharist. The first one was given by Prof Paul DeClerck, Professor of liturgy at the Institute supérieur de liturgie, Catholic Institute of Paris. His talk was a challenging one entitled: “Une théologie de l'Eucharistie pour le 3e millénaire”. In it he treated some of the key issues that have been raised by the recent encyclical in the context of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. The next lecture will be given by Prof Paul Bradshaw of the University of Notre Dame (USA) and one of the principal experts for the current revision of the liturgical materials of the Church of England. He speaks on: “The Anglican Eucharist: One Rite, Many Theologies”. In addition to these lectures we have several others for this Fall. Dr. Myriam Wijlens Assistant Professor of Canon Law at the University of Tilburg (Netherlands) will treat the question of the theology of canon law and the necessary structures in her lecture entitled: “Structures and the Journey towards Unity: Stumbling Blocks or Cornerstones?” Two other lectures this Fall are the annual Paul Wattson/Lurana White Lecture given by Dr. Angelo Maffeis entitled: “Natura e missione della chiesa: il contributo della Commissione ‘Fede e Costituzione’”. Completing our Fall series is a lecture by our friend Rabbi Jack Bemporad, Director of The Center for Interreligious Understanding on Plato’s philosophy and the first interpretations of the Bible. The series will continue in the Spring with such topics as Eucharist and ecclesiology, inculturation, Eucharist and justice, catechesis and the piety of the Eucharist in medieval Latin and Byzantine hymnology. We would like to have our friends mark their calendars for December 1-4, 2005 when we will sponsor an international symposium on episkopé and episcopacy, the bishop vis-à-vis his church and in his church. This periodical is indexed in the ATLA Religion Database, published by the American Theological Library Association, 250 S. Wacker Drive, 16 th Floor, Chicago, IL 60606 (http://www.atla.com). James F. Puglisi, sa DirectorN. 66 /Fall 2004Bulletin / Centro Pro Unione 3 Centro Conferences CCCC The Historical Background of the Current Situation in the Episcopal Church in the United States as a Contribution to Our Ecumenical Dialogue R. William Franklin Associate for Education at Trinity Church, Boston Bishops’ Scholar in the Episcopal Diocese of New York Dean Emeritus of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University (Conference held at the Centro Pro Unione, Monday, 19 April 2004) Dear Friends in Christ, my thanks to Jim Puglisi and the Centro Pro Unione for this invitation to me to speak to you in Rome today, and I want to express my thanks also for his hospitality to Anglicans in Rome over many years. The origins of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement lie in the Episcopal Church in the USA, and so it is fitting that Jim Puglisi has asked me to make this report in Rome on the historical background of the Episcopal Church that would lead the General Convention of our Church to take two actions which must be evaluated closely as our two Churches work toward the ultimate goal of full communion. Two actions What are these actions? This past summer of 2003, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church took these steps: First, it authorized one of our dioceses, the Diocese of New Hampshire, to proceed to ordain as its bishop Canon Gene Robinson, who for many years has been living in a committed relationship with another man. Second, it authorized communities which bless single-sex relationships to continue to do so. Because of these two events, during the past nine months the eyes of the Christian world have been upon the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. We as Episcopalians need to be ready to answer two questions that our Christian brothers and sisters quite rightly are asking: Two questions First, how can the laws of ecclesiastical polity of the Episcopal Church sanction such action? And second, what does the Episcopal Church believe about the authority of Scripture in order to move in the direction of the ordination of a gay bishop and the blessing of same-sex unions. Many people think that Episcopalians are not firm about anything. I recently read in the British press this observation about our branch of the Church: “In the Church of England, people are free to believe anything they want, but fortunately none of them do.” Some history This statement applies to my home parish in the United States. I come from Trinity Church in the City of Boston, one of the largest and most historic Episcopal Churches in my country. Our current church was built 125 years ago by Phillips Brooks, the author of the Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and one of the great preachers of Anglican history. When Phillips Brooks and the Trinity congregation built our current church, they wanted it to express clearly what Episcopalians believe: That we hold to the catholic faith, but that we express the catholic tradition in our own language. So, as an architectural expression of this, Trinity Church has no nave but rather a great central space—where all members of the congregation, 1600 people in fact, can be closely gathered about the preached word, which is central to our life. But Brooks wanted to make clear that Episcopalians are not Unitarians, our building focuses clearly on THE word and THE sacraments---the architectural climax of the building is a great free-standing altar—the eucharist is the ultimate goal toward which our preaching points. And yet when Trinity Church was consecrated in 1877, Mr. Brooks welcomed Unitarians and Roman Catholics and all other Boston denominations to this central Lord’s Table. It was a gesture that got him in a lot of trouble. It was a gesture of welcome that the City of Boston never forgot. Philips Brooks was an example of a generation of American Episcopalians—the same generation built St. Paul’s Episcopal Church here in the city of Rome—a generation inspired by the new sense of national unity achieved by the United States in our Civil War to work also for greater Christian unity. This genera- tion of the 1860’s was led by the Civil War to a vision of Christian unity in which the Episcopal Church could serve as a bridge between the Catholic and the Protestant dimensions of the4 Bulletin / Centro Pro UnioneN. 66 /Fall 2004 Christian faith. They believed also that it was the special mission of the Episcopal Church in the United States to create a new synthesis of the Catholic tradition and the democratic tradition of the people, Catholicism and democracy to be brought into fusion in the United States by the Anglican tradition. This was Brooks’ goal in the architecture of Trinity Church: the Catholic structure of the building is combined with a great central space for the people to gather for the preached word, and then to gather about a free-standing altar at which the eucharist was celebrated facing the people, forshadowing the twentieth century liturgical movement. Philips Brooks said it were as if the Episcopal Church in the United States was an experiment to fuse the dome of St. Peter’s in Rome—representing the Catholic tradition—with the dome of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, completed during the Civil War—the U.S. Capitol dome repre- senting democracy. For Brooks it was essential that St. Peter’s, that the Roman Catholic Church, in some way be linked to the Catholicity of the Episcopal Church. Just after the Civil War, in April 1866, Phillips Brooks spoke these words to a small community of United States citizens who came together in the city of Rome to hear him speak: “More than ever I seem to pass beyond the sectarianism of this place, and feel as if it were indeed what one loves to dream it might be, truly catholic, the great religious home of humanity, where every good impulse, every true charity, every deep faith, every worship, and every benevolence should find representation—the great harmony here of all the discords of well-meaning and conflicting religious educations and progresses….answers vaguely some such purpose even now to those who go there.”1 From Brooks’ time this U. S. Episcopalian hope for reconciliation with the Church of Rome has moved steadily toward official recognition, first in the crafting of the Chicago Quadrilateral in 1886 by Brooks’ Massachusetts friend William Reed Huntington which brought the Episcopal Church into the Ecumenical Movement, through the founding in 1965 of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue in the United States, down to the official reception in 1985 by the Episcopal Church in the U.S. of the ARCIC I agreed statements on the eucharist and the ministry. Pastoral function of church history But now we are at a moment which some describe as a time of crisis in our ecumenical relations with the Roman Catholic Church. I believe the pastoral function of church history is to search for models like Mr. Brooks who illuminate our moments of crisis, and the crisis of the moment, it seems to me, is how to integrate the great movements of civil rights of the recent past, in the areas of race, gender, and human sexuality into new and legitimate models of Christian life. The key word here is legiti- mate, for these movements have often been rooted in secular change, and their integration into Christianity has not been without pain and separation. We think of how the commitment of some provinces of the Anglican Communion to the ordination of women has made our relations with the Roman Catholic Church more complex, while we are at the same time committed to the goal of full communion between our two Churches. We think of how the issue of the more open place of gay and lesbian Christians within our American Anglican community is now leading some provinces of the Anglican Communion to declare that they are in a state of “impaired communion” with the Episcopal Church. I am sure that you are more ready to listen to various perspec- tives from within the Episcopal Church about the current situation when you are assured that the inter-Anglican and ecumenical consequences of recent decisions are not being in any way minimized. Sixteen provinces of the Anglican Communion have declared that their communion with the Episcopal Church is now “impaired,” meaning that there is no longer interchangeability in ministry and sacramental life. In October 2003 the Archbishop of Canterbury set up a new commission to offer advice on finding a way through this state of “impaired communion,” which currently threatens to divide the Anglican Communion, and to make practical recommendations geared to maintaining the unity of the provinces. In addition, the commission will explore the possibility of the Archbishop of Canterbury exercising pastoral oversight in other Anglican provinces outside of England in exceptional circumstances. Given the great uncertainty about the nature of the Anglican Communion in the future, an impasse has been reached in the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue precisely because so much of the work in the dialogue has focused on the concept of “commuion.” In the light of ecclesiological concern and uncertainty—what exactly Anglicans understand their “commuion” to mean—the most recenlty scheduled plenary session of the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission has been postponed, and the work on publication and reception of a common Roman Catholic- Anglican statement of faith has been put on hold. In the midst of the resulting alternation of mind and heart in the light of these developments, some Episcopalians are terrified that Scripture “wrongly interpreted” will separate us from our traditional Christian values, and on the right wing of the Episcopal Church in the United States we see the potential rise of a new network of United States dioceses and parishes which remain in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury and yet do not recognize the authority of decisions made by our highest U. S. Anglican authority, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Episcopalians in this conservative camp wish to place restrictions on the interpretation of Scripture in the community of faith. Others within the U.S. Church now identify historical 1 Phillips BROOKS quoted in A.V.G. ALLEN, The Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1907) Vol. 1, 570-571; on Brooks and links to Rome see also Phillips BROOKS, Letters of Travel (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1893) 101-104.N. 66 /Fall 2004Bulletin / Centro Pro Unione 5 Christianity as a force which has dehumanized minorities on the basis of race, gender, and sexual identity. In their view historical Christianity has failed in the attempt to proclaim a liberating Christ who frees from the bondage of prejudice. Voices on the far left of our Church say that we must abandon the patriarchal texts of Scripture and move on to something else. So the question for the United States at the moment is: what is the authority of the words of a text, in our case, the Bible? Historical precedents We are in a situation in the United States not unlike that of the early spring of 1861 when individual Southern States were seceeding from the American Union because Abraham Lincoln sought to interpret the meaning of the text of the Declaration of Independence to include all the population of the United States. Text and unity: the question of the secular state in the United States of 1861, text and unity: the fundamental question that faces the Episcopal Church in this spring of 2004. Faced with secession of the South, as we today are faced with the potential secession of some of the dioceses of the Episcopal Church into a new network or some other independent structure in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Abraham Lincoln returned again and again for inspiration to the generation who had made the American Revolution, and I intend to follow Lincoln’s example this evening in Rome, by using a single historical example from the age of the American Revolution to teach us something about the distinctive ecclesial polity of the Episcopal Church and the understanding of the authority of Scripture that is an essential part of that polity. My teaching example is our first Presiding Bishop, William White, Rector of Christ Church in Philadelphia and the first Bishop of Pennsylvania. During the crisis of the Civil War, Phillips Brooks himself turned again and again to William White and the founding generation of Episcopalians who sought in their own time to create this new synthesis of Catholicism and democracy in North America. The origins of the Episcopal Church and of William White lie in an earlier convulsion of Church history—the Age of Revolution. In retrospect, the early eighteenth century was a golden age of American Anglicanism, not unlike the period for our Church from 1945 to 1965, a time of growth, prosperity, and harmony. Trinity Church in Boston itself was founded early in this eighteenth century golden age. But in the last three decades of the eighteenth century the reversal of Anglican fortunes on the North American continent was unprecedented in Christian history, and perhaps no Church until the Russian Revolution would suffer as extensive deprivations in the aftermath of social and political upheaval as did the Church of England in America—stripped by war of clergy, schools, finances, and prestige. In the Southern States, our American revolutionaries disestablished the Church, and in Virginia the government seized most of its property. The Episcopal Church with its hierarchical ministry, its formal services and prescribed liturgy seemed to reflect a fading European lineage of a vanished era, destined, like warfare, to disappear with the last of the eighteen-century generation. In New England the oldest and most influential Anglican church, King’s Chapel, in fact King’s Chapel was the mother church of Trinity Church in the City of Boston, King’s Chapel moved toward a liberal faith that would abandon the corruptions of European Christianity and recast Anglicanism in a new form that would embrace the hoped-for toleration and enterprise of American citizens. But despite these bright hopes, the Unitarianism of King’s Chapel would remain essentially the religion of one region and one class, so much so that outside the city of Boston, the Unitarian was often said to believe only in “the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the neighborhood of Boston.” In the Southern States by 1784 the Evangelical Revival had led to the formation of the separate Methodist denomination. But despite its later quickening influence elsewhere, U. S. Evangelicalism has never really receded as a regional expression of Christianity in the American South, to the point that during the last days of the Civil War in my home state of Mississippi, a Methodist preacher could exhort his Confederate fellow soldiers leaving the Civil War battlefields on the identity of the American Southern character with the Evangelical spirit: “If we cannot gain our political freedom from the North, let us at least continue to establish our mental and our spiritual independence from the Northern States in our Evangelical way.” 2 In this formative period, then, the unique contribution of those Anglicans who cast their lot with the Episcopal Church was to create a body comprehensive enough to encompass an entire nation: North and South, Black and White, saint and sinner, beginner and mature Christian. By 1792 the Episcopal Church had quickly created a series of institutions that successfully transferred to the newly-independent American States the old English ideal of the Church as an entire nation. These were: 1. A united episcopate which maintained the historic apostolic succession, 2. An American version of the English Book of Common Prayer, and 3. A federal system of church government that in a remarkable way adapted episcopacy and liturgy to a democratic society. Distinctive founding vision for the Episcopal Church This great achievement—bishops and liturgy adapted to democracy—was essentially the work of William White, 1748- 1836, first citizen of Philadelphia after Benjamin Franklin. As Presiding Bishop, William White provided a distinctive founding vision for the Episcopal Church: 1. that despite the preservation of the apostolic understanding of the authority of bishops, the government of the Episcopal Church is actually rooted in democratic principles; 2. that the primary authority of holy Scripture is interpreted by a General Convention which leads us out through the exercise 2 S.E. AHLSTROM, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972) 716.6 Bulletin / Centro Pro UnioneN. 66 /Fall 2004 of the gift of reason, and in the light of new developments in knowledge, to a deeper understanding of the truths of the Gospel. The greatness of William White’s plan for the Episcopal Church achieved by 1792 and still realized and operative among U.S. Anglicans today was that he developed both a theological and a practical model of Christianity that could keep in balance two polarities: the Catholic structure and authority of a historic faith, and Christian liberty. What Bishop White intended to do was to hold together a particular tension: 1. In which the primary authority of Scripture could be recognized and interpreted within the historical teaching of the Church. 2. But as a man of the eighteenth century, as a child of the English Reformation and of its first great theologian, Richard Hooker, there was also a place for reason in William White: the function of reason is to determine how Scripture and tradition have authority for us. This determination is made through: 1. reasonable dialogue 2. in the community of faith 3. the community of faith is defined as the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, whose political structures bring bishops, priests, and laity into a graced conversation where the future parameters of Christian life are determined. In this political process, the interior world of faith is absolutely certain about the saving event which is Jesus Christ. But in matters of polity, for example, whether women or only men should be ordained, the Episcopal Church does not believe that it possesses a divine pattern. In such matters the Church lives with probability, and it is a human faculty—reason—and the Christian community in prayerful conversation with itself exercising human reason, that ultimately determines what is finally authoritative and what is only probable for the interior world of faith and for the public life of the Church. The Word of God has authority for us as we are able to interpret it, and we are able to interpret Scripture for two reasons: 1. Because of the redemption of our humanity in the full humanity of Jesus Christ, 2. And because the Church, governed by its stressful political structures, is an extension of the Incarnation sacramentally to the whole of creation. Polity, process and ecclesiology This was the polity, process, and ecclesiology still followed by the Episcopal Church in 2003 in the election and confirmation and then ordination and consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. Robinson was constitutionally elected as Bishop of New Hampshire following this precise method in April 2003, and in August 2003 his election was confirmed by a majority vote in both houses of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. In November 2003, Robinson was ordained as Bishop of New Hampshire, with the Presiding Bishop acting as chief co-consecrator, the Presiding Bishop acting not on his own authority, but as chief presiding officer of the General Convention. In our polity of 2003, as in 1792, the Presiding Bishop possesses no independent authority. His authority and acitions derive from the ultimate ecclesial authority of the General Convention in the Episcopal Church. Likewise in our polity of 2003, as in 1792, there is no appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury that can go above or beyond the final authority of the General Convention in all matters relating to the dioceses of the Episcopal Church in the United States. What is absolutely clear in U. S. Anglicanism, in theory as well as in practice, is that from the eighteenth century, the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the meeting of the primates, none of these organs have any authority in the Episcopal Church. It is a very serious historical error to argue that today there has been some decline in the authority of the Anglican Communion. As far as the United States is concerned, there has never been any authority of the Anglican Communion or any other officer of another province of the Communion on our shores, ever. An eighteenth-century institution This situation is the result of the birth of our polity and our constitution in the eighteenth century, after a bitter war with England, and within the intellectual constructs of the eighteenth century. To understand the crisis of today, we must remember that the Episcopal Church, constitutionally speaking, still is an eighteenth-century institution. There are two places where this historical analysis touches on current issues of the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue. First, in the 1999 Agreed Statement of ARCIC, The Gift of Authority, ARCIC recognized that the concept of synodality within Anglicanism—the General Convention is essentially a synod with lay participation—synodality within Anglicanism must be evaluated and possibly incorporated within a future Church in which Anglicans and Roman Catholics are reconciled. William White’s American model represents the first adaptation of Anglican synodality to a democratic society, also to a society in which, unlike England and Ireland, Anglicanism was not an established, state religion. Second, the strength of White’s model may be found in its protection of the synodal authority of the local church, the diocese, in a national federation of dioceses. The weakness of the White model is that it finds no way to relate the local churches, even a federation of dioceses, to the universal church. The political realities of the eighteenth century—the hostility of Great Britain and the United States for one another—made any authoritative communion of American dioceses with the Church of England impossible. In terms of our polity and the place of the universal church within our polity, we American Episcopalians still inhabit an eighteenth century world. Perhaps one unintended consequence of the current crisis about the place of gay and lesbian Christians within our national and diocesan structures, is that it also forces us to ask new questions about the place of our dioceses within a world Church. Within this Enlightenment, eighteenth-century framework,N. 66 /Fall 2004Bulletin / Centro Pro Unione 7 William White had the vision of a Church of the Free in a Nation of the Free. Was this naïve American sentimental chauvinism? Of course, the reality of White’s social context was more complicated than this, it was darker and more painful. For African-Americans, the country of oppression and the country of liberation were the same country. What of William White on this question of race, which must be an immediate test for any American who espouses Christian reason and comprehension? I think William White’s ordination of Absalom Jones as the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church begins to give an answer and provides a test case to match up against current controversial developments in the Episcopal Church. Absalom Jones was a Philadelphia slave who had labored for 18 years to buy his freedom just after the Revolutionary War. Many African-Americans had believed deeply in the promises of the American Revolution. By 1794 an independent African Church had been completed in Philadelphia by a group of Black free men and Black free women, and now the African-American community had to decide on a denominational affiliation. A large majority of the congregation favored joining the Episcopal Church. Why? 1. Our worship seemed both theologically and liturgically comprehensive yet structured, allowing for the possibility of the expression of African ways within the structures of the Book of Common Prayer; 2. The African community had gained a promise from William White that he would ordain Absalom Jones as priest for the congregation, which White proceeded to do in 1804. Bishop White had a vital word to say to African-American Christians, and it was this: that biology is not destiny, that through the redemption of Jesus Christ, all men are given the possibility to share in every office of a redeemed humanity. This message, born out of the time of the adjustment of Anglicanism to the new cultural dynamic of American democracy is worthy of consideration as we are in the midst of an international period of sifting and deciding about the frontiers of communion, as the whole Christian Church continues to go through the awkward and painful task of adjusting to the new insights yielded by civil rights movements in several spheres. By what authority will we make this discernment? If we follow Bishop White, that determination will be made through reasonable dialogue within the community of faith. Only through that difficult process of discernment of Christian truth and appropriating it for ourselves can we finally know and accept the truth of Scripture for our own day. Bishop White was forced to act as an individual bishop and break the ban on the ordination of Africans to the priesthood in the United States, and for the next seventy-five years only seven individual bishops would follow his lead and ordain African- Americans to the priesthood. But finally, after the Civil War, the General Convention sanctioned the ordination of African- Americans to the priesthood in all dioceses. In 1974, again in Philadelphia, three bishops acting independently again ordained the first eleven women as priests in our church. In 1976 the General Convention followed their lead and authorized the general ordination of women. In 1987, Barbara Harris, from Philadelphia, and both Black and a woman, was elected in Boston by the single Diocese of Massachusetts as our first woman bishop. Her ordination and consecration were not sanctioned until months later by the General Convention in 1988. In 2003, again in New England, Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop, was elected by the single Diocese of New Hampshire, and then his election confirmed five months later by votes of both houses of the General Convention. There is a pattern here of action in our most revolutionary locales, Philadelphia and the region of Boston, followed by absorption of that action into structures of catholicity and unity. I must admit that this is a very American pattern, unilateral action, that can be bold and prophetic. But how does such action relate to the universal Church? That is the question of the moment. How does the protection of the autonomy, rights, and self-determination of the local church contribute to the coherence of the universal Church? “Nothing can separate us from the love of God” We live at a moment when many despair before the potential outcome of the complexities of this moment concerning the issue of human sexuality and divisions over this issue both within and between Church. Before such uncertainty, the institutional history of the Church often seems superficial and unworthy, absorbed in trivialities and rivalries, and neglecting the deepest fears and longings of God’s people. Yet this founding vision of the Episcopal Church in the United States which I have reviewed for you tonight, a vision from our early days of Revolution and also of an uncertain future, this vision speaks of faith in God’s unquenchable desire for the wholeness and restoration of every woman and man, and the record of fifteen generations of Episcopalians who have remained united in one body—even through that violent debate over slavery which tore apart the unity of most mainline US Churches—this record gives us hope that our Church life is not doomed, but may find its unimaginable fulfillment in the presence and in the joy of the One by whom and for whom we were made. The example of William White now beckons us forward in the words of the Apostle Paul “confident that nothing can separate us from the love of God, constantly leaving the things that are behind, and stretching out toward the things which lie before us, toward the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Yet any such dynamic forward must always be matched against the elements which are consistent with the authentic catholic past of the Episcopal Church, and continued dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church is the necessary and indispensable forum where this matching and testing of developments for authenticity against the authentic catholic must take place. Telling this story of Episcopal origins tonight I trust helps set the stage for a new and crucial phase of this prayerful dialogue together within the community of faith which was at the heart of William White’s understanding of polity and authority. Though in an impaired state, we do still share in that one community of faith. And I hope that you will forgive the fact that I have approached the issues that face our relationship in the future not8 Bulletin / Centro Pro UnioneN. 66 /Fall 2004 primarily as a theologian but as a historian. While history may be a lesser branch of science than theology, it does possess one virtue that I believe we are in need of at the moment—patience. Please be patient with the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as we think through what the concept of universal communion means to us. For what I have been suggesting tonight is that it is not the single issue of human sexuality that stands in the way of the reconciliation of our two Churches. What is at stake is still the question of authority. Is the model of the Church a federation of local churches—as William White thought—or is the whole creation of the Church more than the sum of its individual parts? That is the great and underlying issue facing the Anglican Communion at the moment, and before it can be cleared up it is hard to see practically how any movement toward closer relations of our two Churches can take place. Local and universal The Episcopal Church, along with the Anglican Communion, needs to explore more fully the relations between the local and the universal church. In the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams: “Anglicanism, like Orthodoxy, has a very strong historic commitment to the integrity and the independence of the local. It has, perhaps, rather underrated the significance of how localities cooperate in a unanimous and trustworthy common discernment.”3 Such universal discernment has been the long experience of the Roman Catholic Church, and so it is for this reason that we in the United States support the suggestion made by the Archbishop of Canterbury to Cardinal Walter Kasper that the next round of ARCIC’s work should focus on the relation between the local and the universal in the life of the Church. And it is because of this long Roman Catholic experience as a world church that we in the United States also welcome the request of the Archbishop of Canterbury to Cardinal Kasper that a sub-committee of IARCCUM be established to assist the Eames Commission to look for signposts for a way forward in understanding and strengthening communion by looking at resources from the ancient common tradition. One source I would suggest tonight is the Benedictine tradition, established within the Church of England between the sixth and the eighth century, and specifically Benedictine literature from the time of Gregory the Great to the time of Saint Boniface which has much to say about balancing the autonomy of a local religious community within the coherence of the universal Church. 4 There is a Latin literature of this period, common to both of our Churches, which must now be explored for its contemporary relevance to our crisis over “communion.” Mining of this monastic literature will provide, I am sure, a way forward out of our current impasse, but such mining will be a work of time, and a work of scholarship, not headlines. Patience and hope So I do not believe that this is a time to lose faith in our dialogue or in the ecumenical venture. In this lecture I have spoken often of Boston and New England as a kind of seedbed of a distinctive American Anglican approach which combines Catholicism and democracy. And so I close with words of Cardinal Kasper from his 2002 Dudleian Lecture at Harvard University. Harvard was and remains still I believe in many ways the intellectual and spiritual heart of New England, so in these sentences I believe that Cardinal Kasper is speaking of the link of the Holy See to the world I have been describing tonight. Here is Cardinal Kapser:”Our road to unity is, or can be, a long and complicated process, involving not only the authorities in the Churches, but also the life and the hearts of the faithful….This process requires determination, but also patience, which is according to the New Testament, a fundamental attitude of Christian hope and according to Peguy the little sister of hope. Patience as the sister of hope is the true strength of the Christian faith.” 5 Thank you very much. 3 R. WILLIAMS quoted in,”Synod Asks Theologians to Revisit Papal Authority,” The Tablet (February 21, 2004) 39. 4 As an introduction to the Benedictine literature of local and universal in the sixth to eighth centuries, see S. PLATTEN, Pilgrims (London: Harper Collins, 1996). 5 W. KASPER, “The Nature and Purpose of Ecumenical Dialogue,” Harvard University Divinity School Bulletin (Winter 2001-02) 22.N. 66 /Fall 2004Bulletin / Centro Pro Unione 9 A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF INTERCHURCH AND INTERCONFESSIONAL THEOLOGICAL DIALOGUES Nineteenth Supplement - 2004 ABBREVIATIONS FOR CONFESSIONAL FAMILIES CHURCHES AND COUNCILS A..............................................Anglican AC..............................Assyrian Church of the East AIC...............................African Instituted Churches B................................................Baptist CC................................Chaldean Catholic Church CEC.........................Conference of European Churches CCEE................Council of European Episcopal Conferences CP................................Constantinople Patriarchate D.......................................Disciples of Christ DOMBES...............................Groupe des Dombes E............................................Evangelicals FC.........................................Free Churches FO........................................Faith and Order L.....................Lutheran (includes German ‘Evangelische’) M.............................................Methodist MECC........................Middle East Council of Churches Mn...........................................Mennonite Mo............................................Moravian O...............................Eastern Orthodox (Byzantine) OC......................Old Catholic (includes Polish National) OO......................Oriental Orthodox (Non-Chalcedonian) Pe............................................Pentecostal R..............................................Reformed RC.......................................Roman Catholic SA........................................Salvation Army SDA.................................Seventh-Day Adventist U.........................................United Churches W...........................................Waldensian WCC..............................World Council of Churches LIST OF DIALOGUES A-B: Anglican-Baptist International Forum A-D / aus: Anglican Church of Australia-Churches of Christ Conversations A-L: Anglican-Lutheran International Commission A-L / africa: All Africa Anglican-Lutheran Commission A-L / aus: Anglican-Lutheran Conversations in Australia A-L / can: Canadian Lutheran Anglican Dialogue A-L / eng-g: Representatives of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and of the Church of England A-L / eng-nordic regions: Representatives of the Nordic countries and of the Church of England A-L / eur: Anglican-Lutheran European Regional Commission A-L / usa: Episcopal-Lutheran Dialogue in the USA A-L-R / eng-f: Official Dialogue between the Church of England and the Lutheran-Reformed Permanent Council in France A-M: Anglican-Methodist International Commission A-M / eng: Anglican-Methodist Conversation in Great Britain A-Mo: Anglican-Moravian Conversations A-Mo / usa: Moravian-Episcopal Dialogue in the USA A-O: Anglican-Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission A-O / usa: Anglican-Orthodox Theological Consultation in the USA A-OC: Anglican-Old Catholic Theological Conversations A-OC / na: Anglican-Old Catholic North American Working Group A-OO: Anglican-Oriental Orthodox Dialogue A-OO / copt: Anglican-Coptic Relations A-R: Anglican-Reformed International Commission A-RC: Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) A-RC: International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM) A-RC / aus: Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission of Australia A-RC / b: Belgian Anglican-Roman Catholic Committee A-RC / br: Brazilian Anglican-Roman Catholic National Commission A-RC / can: Canadian Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue Commission A-RC / eng: English Anglican-Roman Catholic Committee A-RC / eur: Anglican-Roman Catholic Working Group in Western Europe A-RC / f: Anglican-Catholic Joint Working Group in France A-RC / usa: Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue in the USA A-U / aus: Conversations between the Anglican Church of Australia and the Uniting Church in Australia AC-CC: Joint Commission for Unity between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church AC-OO / copt: Theological Dialogue between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Coptic Orthodox Church AC-OO / syr: Bilateral Commission between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Syrian Orthodox Church AC-RC: Mixed Committee for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East AIC-R: Dialogue between the African Instituted Churches and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches B-L: Baptist-Lutheran Dialogue B-L / g: Baptist-Lutheran Dialogue in Germany B-L / n: Baptist-Lutheran Dialogue in Norway B-L / sf: Baptist-Lutheran Conversation in Finland B-L / usa: Baptist-Lutheran Dialogue in the USA B-M-W / italy: Baptist-Methodist-Waldensian Relations in Italy B-Mn: Baptist-Mennonite Theological Conversations B-O: Baptist-Orthodox Preparatory Dialogue B-R: Baptist-Reformed Dialogue B-RC: Baptist-Roman Catholic International Conversations B-RC / f: Baptist-Catholic Joint Committee in France B-RC / usa (ab): American Baptist-Roman Catholic DialogueNext >