Third Summit: More Hurdles

When F. Donald Coggan was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England and spiritual leader of the world's 46 million Anglicans in 1974, he became the first Evangelical to lead the Church of England in 126 years. Last week the zealous and professorial Archbishop traveled to Rome for his first meeting with Pope Paul VI and made an unexpected and dramatic bid for Anglican and Roman Catholic intercommunion.

As a late-afternoon traffic jam clogged the Via Nazionale outside, Archbishop Coggan spoke challengingly to a congregation of Roman Catholic and Anglican clergy from the gothic pulpit of the American Episcopal Church of St. Paul. In announcing his desire for a shared communion now, the Archbishop argued that the churches face "an evangelistic task whose size escalates with the multiplying millions. 'Talk to us about reconciliation,' a skeptical world says to us, 'when you yourselves are reconciled.' " Noting that in many areas of the world Anglicans and Catholics already drink from the same chalice, Coggan asked, "Has not the time, God's time, for such official sanction arrived?"

Few listeners were prepared for such a plea, since intercommunion--which involves members of one faith taking the sacraments from the other--is generally seen by Roman Catholics as the final step in the reconciliation of the two churches after a split of more than four centuries. "It would appear that Dr. Coggan is overeager and jumping his fences without due regard for their height," sniffed a Roman Curia official. "We are a long, long way from accepting the Host at the hands of an Anglican pastor."

Pope John XXIII opened the way to a reunification of Anglicans and Catholics when he invited the Archbishop of Canterbury, then Geoffrey Fisher, to Rome in 1960. In 1966 Archbishop Michael Ramsey visited Pope Paul, but the present visit of Donald Coggan has been hailed in Vatican circles as a particularly significant milestone on the road to eventual unity.

That is because unity has become a more tangible possibility after a decade of work by a joint Anglican-Catholic commission. To date, the commission has produced substantial agreement on the nature of the Eucharist, on each church's recognition of the other's ministries and on the "universal primacy" that should be held by the see of Rome in any future union (TIME, Jan. 31). Among the major differences still unresolved: the questions of marriage after divorce, the veneration of Mary and priestly celibacy.

Women Priests. Both Donald Coggan and Pope Paul desire eventual reunification. Their joint declaration last week, issued after the two men presided together over a prayer service in the Sistine Chapel, included a pledge "to live and work courageously in the hope of reconciliation and unity in our common Lord." Yet there was no further mention of intercommunion, and the prelates noted "serious obstacles both of the past and of recent origin." Presumably, the new obstacle is the ordination of women as priests in the Episcopal Church in the U.S., a move heartily approved by the visiting Archbishop and adamantly opposed by the Pope.

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