New Signals About Reunification

By Richard N. Ostling.

For the world's 825 million Roman Catholics and 65 million Anglican Christians (known in the U.S. as Episcopalians), the pursuit of church reunion has been a lengthy and delicate exercise. In 1966, Rome and Canterbury authorized talks leading to the formation of a commission to examine the religious schism that originated so dramatically in the marital frustrations of King Henry VIII. In 1982, on the eve of Pope John Paul II's historic visit to Britain, the commission issued a report saying that "substantial agreement" was possible on the major issues stemming from the 16th century rupture. The Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie, spiritual leader of the Anglicans, then authorized more talks aimed at "practical steps" toward reunion. The reconstituted commission has not reported since.

Last week, however, Rome provided a strong signal that reunification is still very much a live topic and unveiled a specific suggestion on how to proceed. The information came in a four-page letter from the Pope's top ecumenical adviser, Jan Cardinal Willebrands, to the 24-member Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, which is studying reunion. The Cardinal indicated that the Vatican is prepared to end centuries of refusal to recognize Anglican priests as legitimate, a stance that was formalized in Pope Leo XIII's 1896 decree that Canterbury ordinations are "absolutely null and void." If accomplished, that change would clear an important reunification hurdle. But as part of the arrangement, Willebrands asked for a formal Anglican statement of agreement with Rome on all essential doctrines regarding the nature of the Eucharist and the role of the priesthood in celebrating it.

Publication of the letter, which was originally sent last July, had tactical significance in the ongoing reunion negotiations. For 17 years the president of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, Willebrands may have had an eye cocked at the five-day in-camera meeting this week in Toronto of the heads of all 28 autonomous branches of world Anglicanism. By releasing the document now, Rome also seeks to provoke hard ecumenical thinking in advance of the 1988 Lambeth Conference, the once-a- decade meeting that embraces some 600 Anglican bishops around the world.

Willebrands' letter addressed what the Cardinal called "the most fundamental" obstacle to Roman recognition of Anglican clergy, Pope Leo's emphatic 1896 decree. Leo's papal bull, titled Apostolicae Curae, laid out the doctrinal basis for the previous centuries of traditional rejection of Anglican ordinations.

Leo's discrimination arises from the Roman Catholic assertion that ordination gives the church's priests the power to invoke in the Eucharist a real, mysterious re-enactment of the body-and-blood "sacrifice" of Jesus Christ. Beginning in 1552, argued the papal bull, the ordination ritual in Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer erased all mention of the priestly commission to offer sacrifice. Without such a commission, Leo ruled, in Roman Catholic terms the Anglican ordinations were defective both in the form (words) of the ritual and in the intention of the original celebrants of the rite. To this day, Anglicans themselves remain divided on the sacrifice issue, but acceptance or rejection of the concept has not been considered a grave ecclesiastical question.

Willebrands asserted that if Anglicanism would only fill the doctrinal void created by Archbishop Cranmer along lines acceptable to Rome, the Vatican "would acknowledge the possibility" that Apostolicae Curae no longer pertained. What is required, wrote Willebrands, is that "the Anglican Communion . . . state formally that it professes the same faith concerning essential matters where doctrine admits no difference." In other words, Canterbury should state positively that Anglicanism believes the same thing that Rome does about the Eucharist and its relationship to the priesthood. Such a profession, he said, would provide the "strongest possible stimulus" toward Roman Catholic recognition of Anglican orders.

The Cardinal's letter did not deal with other important differences that still remain between Canterbury and Rome. Among them: the issue of papal authority. Only briefly did Cardinal Willebrands mention a problem that may prove to be one of the knottiest of all, the ordination of women. A 1976 < Vatican declaration reaffirmed Rome's insistence that women cannot be priests. Pope John Paul is adamant on the topic. He has pointedly declared, for instance, that there were no women among Christ's chosen apostles.

Nonetheless, Episcopalians and Anglicans in the U.S., Canada and New Zealand have granted priestly orders to women, and the mother church of England appears ready to follow suit. At this week's Anglican conclave in Toronto, U.S. Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning will announce that his church is ready to approve the consecration of women as bishops.

In their reply to Willebrands, published last week, the Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops who chair the reunification commission warn that the ordination-of-women controversy "creates a fresh and grave obstacle." At their next meeting, in August, the negotiators will complete a joint statement on the nature of salvation before turning to the ordination disputes, including the issue of women. Nonetheless, Church Historian J. Robert Wright, an Episcopal priest on the reunification panel, is optimistic. He does not feel that the Vatican's 1976 condemnation of women priests was "a decisive end to all ecumenical progress." Says he: "Reunion can occur. I'm hoping for it by the year 2000, and I take the Willebrands letter as a very positive step in that direction." No one disputes, though, that many more steps must follow before the long-cherished goal is reached.

With reporting by James Shepherd/London and Daniela Simpson/Rome