Every year those who hold official positions in the Anglican Communion with regard to Roman Catholic relations meet with their counterparts in the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) for what are termed “the Informal Talks”. These are sessions when information is shared about developments in each Communion (including our ecumenical relations with other partners) and the progress in the dialogue between us is monitored and assessed.

I participate in these “Informal Talks” in my role as the Anglican Co-Chairman of the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Communion for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM) along with the Anglican Co-Chairman of ARCIC, who also happens to be the Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome, Archbishop Sir David Moxon. The Anglican Communion’s Director of Unity, Faith and Order, the Revd Canon Dr Alyson Barnett-Cowan attends, as well as the Secretary General of the Communion, the Revd Canon Dr Kenneth Kearon. The Roman Catholic Church fields our opposite numbers.

At our recent sessions Canon Kearon, who has recently been elected Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe in his home Church of Ireland, was given a gift by Bishop Brian Farrell, the Secretary of the PCPCU. It was an Episcopal ring. Canon Kearon said of this moving gesture, “This is both a personal gift from someone who has become a good friend during our annual meetings and other conversations, and also symbolic of the deep relationships which now exist between our two Communions, which are now being expressed at every level of our Churches”.

It was a gesture reminiscent of the visit of Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey to Pope Paul VI in 1966. At that time, the Pope gave an Episcopal ring to the Archbishop. That historic meeting led to the setting up of the Anglican Centre in Rome and to the inauguration of the official dialogue between the two Communions.

In his Presidential address to the General Synod today, Archbishop Justin spoke about the issues faced by the Anglican Communion and possible ways forward. “During the last eighteen months or so I have had the opportunity to visit thirty-six other Primates of the Anglican Communion at various points. This has involved a total of 14 trips lasting 96 days in all. I incidentally calculated that it involves more than eleven days actually sitting in aeroplanes. This seemed to be a good moment therefore to speak a little about the state of the Communion and to look honestly at some of the issues that are faced and the possible ways forward.”

When Saskatoon’s Bishop Don Bolen worked for Cardinal Walter Kasper in the Vatican, the boss would tell him that all those documents produced at the Second Vatican Council weren’t supposed to sit on shelves gathering dust. “We’re supposed to act on them,” said Bolen, recollecting his time with Kasper at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Bolen had just finished co-presiding with Anglican Bishop Linda Nicholls at a Nov. 9 ecumenical celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Decree on Ecumenism, one of the most significant documents of Vatican II. The evening event was held at St. James Anglican Cathedral in Toronto. Bolen used the occasion to officially launch “A Church In Dialogue,” a first-of-its-kind publication of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops intended to help Canadian Catholic dioceses act on the Decree on Ecumenism. Catholics have studied and praised the 16 documents of the Second Vatican Council in seminaries and universities for half a century, but have seldom found a way to take up the challenge in each of them. “Our beautiful documents have not had the transformative effect they were meant to have,” said Bolen.

Earlier this week, seminarians at St. Augustine’s Roman Catholic Seminary in Scarborough, Ont., were invited to join the Wycliffe College community in Toronto for an evening of ecumenical fellowship and a lecture from Andrew Bennett, Canada’s ambassador to the Office of Religious Freedom.The evening was structured in three parts, beginning with a service of evening prayer featuring a sermon by the Rev. John-Mark Missio, lecturer in pastoral theology at St. Augustine. The service was followed by a shared meal and Bennett’s lecture.

Such events have been taking place on an annual basis for some 10 years, according to the Rev. Dr. Peter Robinson, who teaches worship and ministry at Wycliffe College, and grew out of a friendship between their respective presidents. Robinson noted that such events are held in the spirit of ecumenism, with the hope that they will give Catholics and Anglicans an opportunity to get to know each other.