Malines Conversations important still, says Lord Williams at centenary service

10 December 2021 • Persistent link: iarccum.org/?p=4175

The legacy of the Malines Conversationsa series of private conversations on the unity of the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, held in Belgium from 1921 to 1927isalive and importanttoday, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams told an audience in York Minster this week.

The dialogue was the initiative of two friends, Charles Lindley Wood, the 2nd Viscount Halifax, the leading AngloCatholic layman of his day, and the Abbé Fernand Portal, and took place at the invitation of the Archbishop of Malines, Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier.

At a service on Monday to mark the centenary, Lord Williams noted their dismissal by some, including Hensley Henson, Bishop of Durham, who had described it aspredictably futile: a few unrepresentative Anglicans meet a few unrepresentative Roman Catholics. The Vatican, always courtly and polite, makes friendly noises and does absolutely nothing and the C of E likewise.”

In fact, Lord Williams said, the conversations hadkept open two very important windows. Within the Roman Catholic Church, it had allowed some vastly distinguished historical theologiansto pursue, without instantly being condemned for modernism, some urgent questions about the nature of the history of Christian thinking.” This had gone on to shape the Second Vatican Council.

On the Anglican side, the conversations hadkept again on the radar of some influential and sophisticated minds in the Church of England the question what kind of unity, what kind of global unity, the Church of England was prepared to think about and countenance”. They had shaped thereach and intellectual qualityof the AngloCatholic wing of the Church, and thefloweringof its theological scholarship.

“‘What is Catholic unity?’ remains the question that badly needs considering,” he concluded. The Malines participants hadmanifestly allowed the theology of their interlocutors to shape what they were saying. They came away changed, and perhaps, at the end of the day, that is what we may expect when theologians from different confessions come together, not simply in each others presence, but in the presence of Christ.

Responding to the talk, the Auxiliary Bishop of MalinesBrussels, Mgr Jean Kockerols, said that it was good to be reminded ofthe audacity, the courage, the enthusiasmof those involvedqualities needed today. “It is very sad, in my opinion, that our Churches remain separated, but, in so many realities, the faithful who constitute them are united,” he said.

And they bear together witness to the extent to which baptism, through the paschal mystery of Christ, gives flesh to the gospel today in our troubled world. It is perhaps a more humble witness than a century ago, but also perhaps a truer and more significant one. I do believe that the credibility of the gospel, the Christian message, is at stake, and that we are all responsible for it.”

The Archbishop of York urged those gathered tocommit ourselves to finding new approaches and new opportunities to pray with and alongside each other. To visit each others churches and shrines. To honour one another.”

The Malines Conversations: The beginning of AnglicanRoman Catholic dialogue by Rowan Williams is published by the Paulist Press. ISBN: 9780809155873