We greatly valued the chance to hear Cardinal Kasper at the House of Bishops meeting (5 June 2006), and were enormously grateful that he made the time to accept the Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitation to come and address the Bishops’ Meeting, to which a number of senior women in the Church of England had also been invited. Cardinal Kasper wrote and delivered a paper especially for the occasion, and was ready to engage in discussion with us. He came in a spirit of intellectual and theological rigour and engaged with us robustly and frankly, speaking with the clarity that goes with deep friendship. Cardinal Kasper embodies in himself and in his work the openness and warm spirit of much current ecumenical dialogue, and as we thank God for him, we offer these reflections in the same spirit of frankness, friendship and, we hope, rigour.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams has set out his thinking on the future of the Anglican Communion in the wake of the deliberations in the United States on the Windsor Report and the Anglican Communion at the 75th General Convention of The Episcopal Church (USA). ‘The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today, A Reflection for the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Anglican Communion’, has been sent to Primates with a covering letter, published more widely and made available as audio on the internet. In it, Dr Williams says that the strength of the Anglican tradition has been in maintaining a balance between the absolute priority of the Bible, a catholic loyalty to the sacraments and a habit of cultural sensitivity and intellectual flexibility.

As I write, conversations are taking place in Rome on the future of Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue. Whatever structures are set in place, it is certain that the dialogue will continue.

It is sometimes easy to forget how much has been achieved. The agreement of the first Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission on the Eucharist and on the Ministry is of such depth and quality that in the judgement of the Vatican no further study would seem to be required at this stage, while the 1988 Lambeth Conference confirmed that the agreement is consonant in substance with the faith of Anglicans. Such agreement should reassure Roman Catholics that the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, in the decree on ecumenism, that the Anglican Communion has a special place because of its retention of elements of Catholic faith and ecclesiastical structure, remains valid.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has today welcomed an address given by the Roman Catholic Cardinal Walter Kasper as a ‘clear and helpful contribution’ to the debate on women in the episcopate.

Cardinal Kasper had been invited by the Archbishop to address the annual meeting of all serving Church of England bishops, at which senior women clergy and those involved in the ministry of women were also present.

The Archbishop said, ‘I was particularly grateful that Cardinal Kasper was able to accept my invitation to address us directly on this topic. He himself has said, “Our friends’ problems are our problems too”. So, as we consider whether women should be ordained as bishops in the Church of England and what shape any possible legislation should take, it is important to have this kind of honesty and clarity about how changes made here might impact upon the common commitments of our two communions to the search for full visible unity in Christ’s Church. Nothing is served by avoiding these hard questions, and I appreciate the spirit in which the Cardinal has shared his perspectives with us.’