At its meeting of February 27, 1987, in Toronto, Jean-Marie Tillard shared with ARC-Canada the document, “Growth in Communion: A Schema”, stressing its confidential nature and inviting Canadian ARC to offer critiques and suggestions for the June meeting of the ARCIC-II subcommission. Introducing a paper which he read at that same meeting, “Some Implications of the Fries-Rahner Theses for the Restoration of Full Koinonia Between Anglicans and Roman Catholics”, Harry McSorley expressed the view that his paper might be of some use in developing paragraphs 4 through 8 of “Growth in Communion: A Schema”.

Meeting in Ottawa April 2-3, 1987, Canadian ARC heard a paper specifically devoted to the Shema, entitled “Reflections on ‘Growth in Communion’: A Schema”, by Jean-Marc Laporte, as well as a presentation by Don Thompson which highlighted the importance of the diversity that characterizes Christian unity. The entire morning of April 3 and a good portion of the afternoon were devoted to discussion of the Schema. This was undertaken in three steps: first, the entire group identified issues and tasks that emerged in the previous evening’s discussion of the Laporte/Thompson presentations; second, the large group divided into three sub-groups to discuss what were seen as the key issues, namely, I: Koinonia and Diversity, II: Factors Impeding Unity and Options for Overcoming Them, III: The Structure of the Document; third, plenary discussion of the reports from the three sub-groups and proposals for drawing up the final list of suggestions. The latter task was achieved at a meeting of May 6, 1987 of Laporte, Thompson and McSorley, with McSorley being charged with the final draft of suggestions that are found below.