Last month, the national Canadian ARC Bishops’ Dialogue celebrated 40 years of bringing Anglican and Roman Catholics closer together. “The Canadian Anglican–Roman Catholic dialogue is one of the longest running in the world,” says Bishop Michael Ingham of the Anglican diocese of New Westminster in Vancouver.

Unity headed the agenda as five Roman Catholic and four Anglican bishops (one was absent due to illness) met over three days in Pickering, Ont., to discuss—among other things—Growing Together in Unity and Mission, a document produced by the International Anglican–Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission.

Pope Benedict XVI and Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury knelt together before the tomb of an 11th–century Christian king after affirming the need for Catholics and Anglicans to give a united witness to society. St. Edward the Confessor, who is buried in the Anglicans‘ Westminster Abbey, reigned five centuries before English Christians became divided. The pope and the primate of the Church of England paid homage together to the Christian king Sept. 17 at the end of an afternoon that included public speeches, a 30–minute private meeting and a joint ecumenical prayer service in Westminster Abbey. Archbishop Williams welcomed Pope Benedict as the first pope ever to visit Westminster Abbey, which was home to a community of Catholic Benedictine monks until 1540 when King Henry VIII dissolved the monastic community. Beginning in the afternoon with a visit to Lambeth Palace, the archbishop‘s residence, the pope told Anglican and Catholic bishops that he did not intend to discuss the difficulties the two communities have encountered on the path toward full unity, but rather to recognize the progress made in ecumenical relations and to encourage closer cooperation for the good of British society.

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI will today visit His Grace Archbishop Rowan Williams at the Archbishop’s London home, Lambeth Palace.

Together they will address a meeting of Anglican and Roman Catholic Diocesan Bishops from England, Scotland and Wales in the Great Hall of the Archbishop’s Library.

Recalling fifty years of significant meetings between successive popes and archbishops of Canterbury, Archbishop Williams will welcome Pope Benedict to Lambeth Palace before leading the bishops in an opening prayer.

In his address to the bishops (full text below), Dr Williams will stress the wider spiritual and missionary context in which ecumenical dialogue and growth in unity must take place. He will speak of the historic visit as “a special time of grace and of growth in our shared calling”, and express the hope that the occasion will be recognised as having “significance both to the Church of Christ and to British society”.

Of the fifty or so English cardinals, only one was a martyr: St. John Fisher. I am honored to be invited to give this St. John Fisher Visitor Lecture to this assembly sponsored by Newman House at Queen‘s University in Kingston. I am reminded of the prayer with which our Holy Father imposed the cardinal‘s biretta or hat on my and some four years ago this month: “Receive this red biretta as a sign of the dignity of the Cardinalate, by which you must be strong—even to the shedding of your blood—in working for the increase of the Christian faith, for the peace and tranquility of the People of God, and for the freedom and progress of the Holy Roman Church.”

As a way of celebrating these 500 years since the time of St. John Fisher‘s saintly and intrepid life, which brought him the martyr‘s crown, and of celebrating as well this year‘s promised beatification of the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman, whose search for the fullness of truth led him to Rome without requiring that he abandon the spiritual heritage that had nurtured him in the Anglican Communion, I entitled my presentation today “500 Years After St. John Fisher: Pope Benedict‘s Initiatives Regarding the Anglican Communion.”

Canon Alyson Barnett–Cowan has been appointed director for Unity, Faith and Order for the Anglican Communion. Ms. Barnett–Cowan is currently director of faith, worship and ministry of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada, a post she has held since 1995. She was recently appointed to the Inter–Anglican Standing Commission for Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO).

[Vatican City] Vatican concerns about how some recent decisions of the U.S. Episcopal Church will impact the search for full Anglican–Roman Catholic unity are echoed in a reflection by Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, the head of the Anglican Communion.

Writing July 27 about the Episcopal Church‘s recent general convention, Archbishop Williams repeatedly referred to the need to keep in mind the ecumenical implications of local church decisions in addition to their impact on the unity of the Anglican Communion as a whole.

Archbishop Williams‘ reflection, titled “Communion, Covenant and Our Anglican Future,” was published on the archbishop‘s Web site at http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams told the representatives of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting here May 5 that he wants the Anglican Communion be “more cohesive and more theologically aware.”

During his 40–minute presentation on the recommendations of the Windsor Continuation Group‘s final report, Williams said that he does not have “complete and absolute confidence that the Anglican Communion in something like the form it had 20 years ago is going to survive this crisis” over authority and differing theological perspectives.

He told those participating in the May 2–12 gathering that there “may or may not be a lasting division” in the communion, “but before we do say goodbye to each other in the communion, we owe it to the Lord of the church to have those conversations and to undertake that effort at listening to one another and taking one another seriously in the Gospel.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has awarded the Cross of St Augustine to Monsignor Donald Bolen for his service to Anglican – Roman Catholic relations.

In a private audience at Lambeth Palace the Archbishop paid warm tribute to the theological acumen and spiritual discernment that Monsignor Bolen had put unreservedly at the service of Anglican – Roman Catholic relations during his seven–year assignment to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome.

He expressed the debt of gratitude owed by the Anglican Communion, the members of the international commissions of the dialogue, and successive Archbishops of Canterbury and their Representatives to the Holy See for his friendship and dedication.

The Inter–Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations (IASCER) held its last meeting in Kyoto, Japan, under the chairmanship of the Most Revd Drexel Gomez, Primate of the Church in the Province of the West Indies. The Commission is charged with reviewing current international ecumenical dialogues involving Anglicans, and provincial and regional initiatives towards unity with other Christians. IASCER consists of representatives from each international dialogue involving Anglicans, including the multilateral dialogue of Faith and Order, and of certain other commissions and networks, and consultants who bring particular regional or theological expertise.

Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference and Church of England House of Bishops join together for second bi–lateral meeting

The Church of England House of Bishops and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales are joining together for a second bi–lateral meeting, this time at Lambeth Palace, today, Monday, November 17. In 2006, they met together in Leeds for study and worship.

They will be chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy–O’Connor.

Some in the Anglican Communion may have found themselves a little irritated by the amount of rhetoric that has issued from the Vatican in recent weeks on the divisions facing the church. The Anglican Representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Holy See, the Very Revd David Richardson, says that instead, the concerns of the Roman Catholic Church should be taken as a very positive reminder that the unity of the church is God’s will.

While the Pope was in Australia celebrating World Youth Day, he urged the Anglican Church to avoid schism, and Cardinal Dias warned in his address to the Lambeth Conference about the dangers of disunity to evangelism.

The inclusion of Ecumenical partners in the full participation of the Lambeth Conference marks a high point in Ecumenical relationships between the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church, according to Maronite Archbishop Paul Sayah of Haifa and the Holy Land.

Archbishop Sayah joined Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams at a media conference today to explain some of the progress and challenges facing ecumenical relationships. The Maronite Church is an Eastern church which is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church.

The urgency to preach the Good News is as true today as it was two thousand years ago, said Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples in the Roman Catholic Church.

In his address to the Lambeth Conference on Tuesday night, Cardinal Dias told the assembled bishops that the world was beset by Satanic groups and New age movements, and the “many ugly heads of the hideous anti–God monster,” including secularism, spiritual indifference and relativism.

The Incarnation unites us all round the crib at Bethlehem. But what kind of unity is there among Christians today? Here, the Archbishop of Canterbury looks ahead to January’s centenary Week of Christian Unity. It raises uncomfortable questions, he says, not least about communion.

A hundred years on from the establishing of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, how much further forward are we? And what exactly are we praying for during this week of prayer? On the whole, it’s become a fixture for most “mainstream” denominations, a few days when the more enthusiastic or more biddable members of the congregation turn up to someone else’s church for a well–mannered but often rather lukewarm joint service or two, or perhaps for a talk by a prominent local leader.

Church unity hasn’t happened yet, but Catholics and Anglicans have a new list of concrete suggestions for ways to bring the two churches closer.

Seven years after nine pairs of Catholic and Anglican bishops from around the world met in Mississauga, Ont., to talk and pray over 35 years of official dialogue, a joint commission of Catholic and Anglican bishops has produced a 42–page report which aims “to bridge the gap between the elements of faith we hold in common and the tangible expression of that shared belief in our ecclesial lives.”

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.’

A joint statement by Catholics and Anglican scholars finds a surprising degree of agreement about the role and status of the Virgin Mary. But have they chosen to ignore some thorny issues? When Catholics hold interfaith dialogue with Muslims, one of the first topics to be discussed is the veneration given to the Virgin Mary in the two traditions. Teaching about Mary is seen as something that unites, rather than divides Catholicism and Islam; yet among Christians, the practices of Marian doctrine and devotion have generally been read as clear indicators of the differences between Catholics and Protestants. They have also, on occasion, signified the differences even between Catholics and Orthodox.