The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, has appointed the Revd Andrew Norman as his Assistant Officer for the Anglican Communion and Ecumenism. Andrew Norman is currently serving as Associate Vicar in the Parish of Christ Church, Clifton in the diocese of Bristol. He studied PPE at Oxford and holds diplomas in French and Management studies. He trained for the ministry at Ridley Hall and holds a theology degree from the University of Cambridge.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has appointed the Revd Jonathan Gough as his Officer for Ecumenism in succession to the Revd Canon Dr Richard Marsh. Jonathan Gough is currently Senior Chaplain at the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Following his ordination in 1985, he served four years as a curate in North Devon and in Gloucester. Since 1989 he has held a series of appointments within the Royal Army Chaplains department.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has appointed the Revd William Adam as his Assistant Officer for the Anglican Communion and Ecumenism. Will Adam is currently Team Vicar in Witney in the Oxford diocese following his curacy spent at Beaconsfield, and since 1998 has been one of the Oxford Diocese’s Ecumenical Officers.

One of the subtleties of Shakespeare’s As You Like It is the existence of layers of sexual ambiguity implied in its original performance: a boy-actor played the part of a young woman disguised as a young man who at one point is pretending to be a girl. I was put in mind of these layers of meaning when I read The Eucharist: sacrament of unity (ESU), the Church of England’s highly courteous and careful response to the British and Irish bishops’ 1998 teaching document on eucharistic doctrine and sharing entitled One Bread One Body (OBOB). There is of course one vitally important difference: whereas the play’s layers form the stages in a dialectic, i.e. an interactive process, of ambiguity, the theological document offers a dialectic of clarification, which provides a model of what is involved in ecumenical reception.

The Pope, His Holiness John Paul II sent a message of greeting to the historic May 2000 gathering of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops in Mississauga, Toronto, Canada. On the eve of his 80th birthday, the Pope expressed his hope that the meeting would “bear lasting fruit” and hasten unity of the two churches.

“For more than 30 years the Anglican and the Catholic Church have been on a journey towards the restoration of unity,” said the Pope in a statement read by Cardinal Edward Cassidy to 2,000 worshippers in St Michael’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Toronto. “In some places there have been very positive developments … in other places we are not so far along the road [and] new and serious obstacles have slowed our progress. I pray that the spiritual bonds that have always lifted Catholics and Anglicans will be strengthened and deepened even further.”

Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops, paired from thirteen regions around the world, have begun their meeting in Canada in which they are reviewing and evaluating the accomplishment of thirty years of ecumenical relationship between Anglicans and Catholics in their areas. The pairs of bishops come from New Zealand, Canada, England, United States, Ireland, India, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Southern Africa, Uganda, Australia, Brazil and the West Indies.

The bishops are gathered in private session at the Queen of Apostles Renewal Centre near Toronto, Ontario, under the joint chairmanship of Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey and Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy, President of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Their first day has begun with a morning of prayer and scriptural reflection. The following days will begin and end with common prayer.

Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops from thirteen regions around the world are to gather in Canada May 14-20 to review and evaluate the accomplishment of thirty years of ecumenical dialogue between the two traditions and to reflect on how the special relationship between them has been developing in different parts of the world.

This high level meeting is happening at a time when Anglicans and Roman Catholics around the world are exploring the possibilities for further steps toward visible unity.

“The dialogue between Anglicans and Roman Catholics is only one stream in the wider river of ecumenical dialogue. The issue of authority comes up sooner or later, in one form or another, in every dialogue which addresses itself seriously to the questions of communion and unity,” the Rt Rev Mark Santer, Bishop of Birmingham and previous Co-Chairman of ARCIC (the Anglican and Roman Catholic International Commission, said. He was taking part in a presentation of the ARCIC document The Gift of Authority: Authority in the Church III, to members of the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Dundee, Scotland.

The Scottish Episcopal Church will host the 11th Meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) 14-25 September 1999. The gathering of the international groups of bishops, clergy and laity will meet in the Diocese of Brechin, Dundee, at the West Park Centre.

A full and timely agenda awaits the ACC members coming from the 38 Provinces of the Anglican Communion. Much of the business will stem from resolutions of the Lambeth Conference 1998 that have been referred to the ACC for possible action.

At a press briefing in Westminster Abbey, London, today, the co-chairmen of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), the Rt Revd Mark Santer (Anglican) and the Rt Revd Cormac Murphy-O’Connor (Roman Catholic), launched the document “The Gift of Authority”, the latest in study documents issued by 18 members of the Commission.

This new document is the third agreed statement from ARCIC to address the question of authority in the church – its nature, exercise and implications. The statement takes into account the recent work in both Churches concerned with the matter of authority – the Lambeth Conference 1998 resolutions of the topic, “The Virginia Report” (Anglican document sent to the Provinces), and the 1995 Encyclical Letter on Ecumenism, “Ut Unum Sint”.

I welcome the publication of the ARCIC’s latest document, “The Gift of Authority”. I would like to express my thanks to the Co-Chairmen of the Commission, Bishop Cormac Murphy O’Connor and Bishop Mark Santer, together with their colleagues, for all their hard work and dedication.

“The Gift of Authority” tackles the most controversial of theological issues separating Roman Catholics and Anglicans. It is noteworthy that in earlier stages in the life of ARCIC it was recognised that more work would be needed before the same level of agreement could be recorded on Authority as was achieved on the topics of the Eucharist and Ministry and Ordination.

It has just been announced by the Governors of the Anglican Centre in Rome that the Rt. Revd John Baycroft, currently the Anglican Bishop of Ottawa, Canada has been appointed as the next Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome.

While the Roman Catholic Church and Rome itself have been busy with massive campaigns of refurbishment of their great shrines, including St Peter’s, so too has the Anglican Centre in Rome been totally transformed.

Fund-raising and awareness building programmes have been a huge success and the Centre now finds itself in the midst of the splendour of the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj in the heart of the Eternal City. Rome is expecting millions of visitors in 2000, marking the Jubilee and the Holy Year and now Anglicans can be even more proud of their presence in Rome.

The Lambeth Conference sent a strong message of commitment to church unity Tuesday (August 4, 1998).

In its first plenary session to debate resolutions, the bishops recommitted the international Anglican church to journey towards “the full, visible unity of the Church as the goal of the Ecumenical Movement,” and voted to strengthen the role of its own major ecumenical agency.

“As bishops, the visible unity of the Church is a vital part of our ministry,” said Bishop Jabez Bryce of Polynesia, who introduced the report and resolutions from the conference’s Section Four. The section, comprised of approximately 200 bishops, has been discussing the theme, “Called to be One,” for the past two weeks.

What is it like to make a choice? The temptation we easily give way to is to think that it’s always the same kind of thing; or that there’s one kind of decision making that’s serious and authentic, and all other kinds ought to be like this. In our modern climate, the tendency is to imagine that choices are made by something called the individual will, faced with a series of clear alternatives, as if we were standing in front of the supermarket shelf. There may still be disagreement about what the ‘right,’ choice would be, but we’d know what making the choice was all about. Perhaps for some people the right choice would be the one that best expressed my own individual and independent preference: I’d be saying no to all attempts from outside to influence me or determine what I should do, so that my choice would really be mine. Or perhaps I’d be wondering which alternative was the one that best corresponded to a code of rules: somewhere there would be one thing I could do that would be in accord with the system, and the challenge would be to spot which one it was – though it might sometimes feel a bit like guessing which egg-cup had the coin under it in a game. But in any case the basic model would be much the same: the will looks hard at the range of options and settles for one.

A top official of the Roman Catholic church has offered a positive but cautionary assessment of the relationship between the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, according to ecumenical consultants assisting at the Lambeth Conference.

The homily at Monday night’s ecumenical vespers service by Edward Cardinal Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity at the Vatican, reasserted that the two churches “share a real, but imperfect communion,” said Dean William Franklin of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University in the United States.

“He categorically reaffirmed the commitment of the Roman Catholic Church to the full visible unity of all the baptized, which means establishment of full communion,” including reconciliation of ministries and sacraments, Dean Franklin said. Cardinal Cassidy’s statement that Anglicans and Roman Catholics are “increasingly bound up with each other,” also is a “technical but important description,” he said. And even though Cardinal Cassidy offered clear warnings that some developments in the Anglican Communion could impair that relationship, his comments reflected “a level of communion where we need to be realistic with one another,” Dean Franklin said.

It is a great pleasure to be here in this great Cathedral. It is also a pleasure to be surrounded by so many representatives of the Grand Duchy’s diverse life. I am grateful to Archbishop Fernand Franck for his invitation to make my first visit to Luxembourg. I want to greet all the different Churches that make up Luxembourg’s ecumenical community. Together, we pray Christ’s prayer that “all should be one”.

A visitor to Luxembourg is made aware by the nature of this city that he is in the very heart of Europe, although a Europe that is undergoing great change and development. Over the next few days, I look forward to learning how Luxembourg and the various institutions that are based here, are responding to the challenges of those changes. The vision of a vigorous Europe with its own sense of identity and values is one, of course, that I embrace in common with many here. I believe that the Christian community has an important, indeed pivotal, role in helping to forge a European identity. An identity which, though conscious of and grateful to its Christian inheritance, is at the same time welcoming of other faith communities.

In an unprecedented act in the country’s religious history, Ecuadorian Cardinal Bernardino Echeverria offered a sermon in the Anglican Church’s El Salvador Cathedral.

The high-ranking Catholic leader spoke at the inaugural service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, held in the Anglican Cathedral. In his vibrant sermon, Cardinal Echeverria praised the ecumenical initiative and emphasized the importance of all Christians working for unity.

“It is the first time that I have participated in a worship service in a non-Catholic Church and I have realized how much we have in common,” said the prelate. He recalled the emphasis that the II Vatican Council placed on ecumenism and underlined the fact that Pope John Paul II exhorted Christians to persevere in prayer and to seek the aid of the Holy Spirit in the search for Church unity.

Relations between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church have taken a further step with the publication of a Response by the House of Bishops to the Pope’s 1995 Encyclical on Christian unity Ut Unum Sint. In the Encyclical, the Pope invited “church leaders and their theologians” to engage with him “in a patient and fraternal dialogue” on the ministry of unity which belongs to the Bishop of Rome.

In May 1995, Lambeth Palace and the Council of Christian Unity welcomed the publication of Ut Unum Sint with its reaffirmation of the ecumenical vision of the Second Vatican Council and its strong commitment to the goal of Christian unity. A more considered response to the Encyclical was promised and encouragement was given to members of the Church of England to explore the text.

Parishioners of both Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches have joined forces to build a single church in the eastern community of Arima, Trinidad, after 13 years of planning and fund-raising on the part of both denominations.

The Church of the Annunciation, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Santa Rosa Heights, is the first church to be built under the auspices of both denominations. According to Anglican parish priest, the Revd George Pow, the joint church represents a further strengthening of the relationship between the two Churches. Mr Pow pointed to widespread instances throughout the country where the both communities have a tradition of sharing worship facilities.

In practical terms, both congregations hold separate services on Sundays and come together on three occasions during the course of the year for joint services. However, according to Mr Pow, congregations are unable to celebrate Mass together due to doctrinal differences.

The million dollar facility which seats 400 was designed as a dual purpose building allowing the community to also host cultural events.